It might be more accurate to say that Hardt and Negri are embracing literary theory rather than literary criticism. There has been precious little of what we used to call "close reading" in anything we have soon so far. And yet "close reading" is what Auerbach's Mimesis is all about. (And also the work of Derrida, de Man, etc..) So far, we haven't seen one shred of specific "textual" evidence...

I think that they are using literary theory (deconstruction in particular) as a smokescreen for what we will discover in the next section to be unreconstructed communism, including (most sinister to my mind) a complete annihilation of the individual conscious subject in favor of a radically decentered and unconscious historical subject in res gestae which is supposedly producing and reproducing subjectivity. Ultimately the (only, so far, implied) argument is that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the multitude's production of subjectivity.

In other words, they are radically repurposing the "decentering of the self" and the "social construction of reality" to create a new ontological basis which makes the individual conscious subject, not just illusory but "counter-revolutionary".

Hardt and Negri refer to the (depersonalized) multitude as if it were a mystical body, the subjective hero of a drama with only one protagonist (the multitude) and one disembodied nemesis (Empire). It is as if the "general will" of Rousseau were elevated to privileged ontological status and the existence of the constituent citizens were simply an "implementation detail". Sociologically, they are taking Durkheim's admonition to assume a "solution de continuité" (discontinuity) between (micro level) psychological and (macro level) sociological phenomena not as a methodological assumption, but as an ontological given.

Peaking ahead just two paragraphs, they say "Internationalism was the will of an active mass subject that recognized that the nation-states were key agents of capitalist exploitations..."

There is so much that is objectionable in this phrase that it is difficult to know where to begin. (And I don't want to jump the gun.) But I would like to point out two aspects that I think are essential to Hardt and Negri's approach: first, the notion of an "active mass subject" that is personified to the point of having characteristics that we (I, anyway) tend to associate with individual conscious subjects: the ability to "realize", "recognize", commuicate", "will", etc. Second, the depiction of the ideology of the revolutionary movement as the cogitation of that "mass subject". In other words, the assumption that while I may have been going to the demonstration because all my friends were, or because the sun was shining, or because I was hoping to get laid, we were going to the demonstration because we had "realized" that the military industrial complex was [insert marxist analysis here]...

This sort of Maussian language is in striking contrast to (just as an example) someone like Benedict Anderson who may make similar general statements, but always follows them up with details to remind us that these generalized entities are a convenient periphrastic shorthand for an immensely complex sociological situation: For example, consider the following (from "Imagined Communities):

The pre-bourgeois ruling classes generated their cohesions in some sense outside language, or at least outside print-language. If the ruler of Siam took a Malay noblewoman as a concubine, or if the King of England married a Spanish princess - did they ever talk seriously together?"

Note the way the general is brought immediately back to the particular: to emphasize the way that the general is built out of a host of particulars. So far, in Hardt and Negri, I have yet to see any evidence that they are inclined to endulge in any nostalgia for that relic of the belle époque of modernity: the individual conscious human subject.

This may have something to do with their studied avoidance of the philosophical in favor of avant-garde [sic] literary theory. They are staying on terrain in which their "perspective" commands a tactical advantage.

Could we read the disinclination of the marxists (including Marx) to concern themselves with the nature of post-revolutionary society as a refusal (avoidance?) of the question of the good? It ties in nicely with the dialectical materialist thesis that the revolution is grounded not in principles but in material necessity.

In fairness, looking back to the introduction, I see that Hardt and Negri promise that they will provide the detailed analysis whose absence I deplore in Sections 2 and 3 of the book. I look forward to reading them. (One of the defects of reading so slowly is that it is easy to forget what has gone before and one risks losing an overall sense of the shape of the book. I do, anyway. I think I need to build an outline...)

I do agree about the disappearance of philosophy. The general argument used to dispense with it goes something like this: Empire is self-justifying. It's so-called "ethical truths", etc. are inherently and intrinsically self-serving, hollow and meaningless. Empire can just as well be replaced by a counter-Empire which is also self-justifiying. Or perhaps, with a form that dispenses with justification altogether, since such auto-justifications are suspect?

Hardt and Negri claim that the central value of Empire is "peace and equilibrium". These, they would presumably argue, are not "real" values, but only goals that serve the elimination of confict and contestation. Perhaps, in time, they will present us with an alternative set of values and with more "legitimate" appeal. Then, perhaps, we will have a positive philosophical argument for those values? What is not yet clear is whether they reject the concept legitimation entirely, or just the Emperial justification based on conflict-elimination...

Jeff,
I would interpret Marx along Hegelian Aristotlean lines. He is working with a conception of the good society, which he calls a communist one.

This is the importance of Strauss. He brings the political philosophy back in and highlights its central concern.

So Marx is saying that a communist is better than a capitalist one because it allows a fuller development of freedom---- the positive freedom of developing one's powers and capacities.

Jeff,
you say:

"It might be more accurate to say that Hardt and Negri are embracing literary theory rather than literary criticism. There has been precious little of what we used to call "close reading" in anything we have soon so far. And yet "close reading" is what Auerbach's Mimesis is all about. (And also the work of Derrida, de Man, etc..) So far, we haven't seen one shred of specific "textual" evidence...

I think that they are using literary theory (deconstruction in particular) as a smokescreen for what we will discover in the next section to be unreconstructed communism."

Agreed. Again Strauss is important here. He says that there is tension between philosphy and politics in the city. The argument is like this:

Philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion with knowledge.Opinion is the element of the city.Hence philosophy is subversive as it dissolves opinion and so endangers society.

It does so by showing that the foundations of the political life of the nation-state are merely authoritative opinion or consensual agreement and so open to challenge.

Strauss then argued that philosophers must adopt a politics of moderation.They must act to improve the life of the city not merely subvert it. Hence philosophy works with an ethos of social responsibility towards the care of the city.

And so Strauss accommodates himself to (US)liberal democracy as being laid in freedom and justice.

Jeff,

You say, "Of course, Strauss did not think that philosophy was a mode of historical knowing."

This is surely one of the least important points in a good post, but it is the only one on which I think I have something interesting to contribute.

I've not read Hegel's take on history and I haven't spent much time thinking about Marx's or Nietzche's, but my thought comes from reflections during a class on Plato I recently took, lead by a man not minorly influenced by Strauss.

History "takes place within" the "eternal and unchanging order," yes, but each particular is a new and slightly different instantiation of the universal... a variation on a theme. Thus contemplation of universals, or knowledge, is, for Strauss, in fact the highest and best mode of historical knowledge. If I arrive at knowledge, I arrive at, contingently, knowledge of the past.

For example, if you told me that you left your small child in a room with a bag of cookies, and returned to find the cookies eaten, despite your assurance that you told your toddler not to eat the the cookies, I would draw from my understanding of the nature of children and interpret for you that your child had eaten them. If we got into a micro-historical argument over I would construct a syllogism to tell a story... the major premise of which would be, "Children do not control their urges." I think this is something like Strauss's approach to history. Again, how this stacks up to the likes of Hegel, Marx, Nietzche, I could not say.