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June 18, 2004
Hardt & Negri continue with their very conventional criticism of a left localism that is based on an ecological understanding of place. They say:
"What needs to be addressed, instead, is precisely the production of locality, that is, the social machines that create and recreate the identities and differences that are understood as the local...The differences of locality are neither preexisting nor natural but rather effects of a regime of production. Globality similarly should not be understood in terms of cultural, political, or economic homogenization. Globalization, like localization, should be understood instead as a regime of the production of identity and difference, or really of homogenization and heterogenization."
There is a view that accepts locality as pre-existing and globality as homogenous as Americanization. In Australia it is often called one nation conservatism and it defends tradition against the free market. But that is the reaction of the right to the cultural and economic flows of globalization.
A left localism of place can accept that it is not 'outside' to the flows of globalization and that what is a local place--a region--is shaped by the effects of a regime of production. That is certainly the common understanding of the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia and the impact this regime of production of irrigated agriculture has had on the river and its habitat.
Hardt and Negri go to say that:
"The better framework, then, to designate the distinction between the global and the local might refer to different networks of flows and obstacles in which the local moment or perspective gives priority to the reterritorializing barriers or boundaries and the global moment privileges the mobility of deterritorializing flows. It is false, in any case, to claim that we can (re)establish local identities that are in some sense outside and protected against the global flows of capital and Empire."
I don't have any problems with that given the way the way that a particular place--the river country---is being deterritorized by global economic flows. It is less a case of being "outside and protected against the global flows of Empire" than -- protecting the ecology of the river country from its destruction by the newly forming agribusinesses. That is the process of reterritorializing barriers or boundaries --eg., ensuring environmental flows.
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In a footnote to the first passage, H&N refer to Arjun Appadurai's book "Modernity at Large" as being "consistent" with their own thinking on the "production of locality".
H&N seem to accept Appadurai's assertion that locality is socially produced and reproduced and, as such, is a property of social life. They, however, focus on the extent to which it is globally produced and draw from this the conclusion that a political engagement with the "purely" local is at best an distracting illusion that risks becoming a form of unwitting collaboration. Anybody who does not clamber aboard the new Imperial Aufhebung, the authors suggest, risks becoming part of the problem. (You are either with multitude, or with the oppressors.)
In the light of such an "denunciation", it is worth remarking that the accusation of delusion might just as well be reflected back on the accusers: Hardt and Negri are both undoubtedly intelligent and learned thinkers, but intelligence and erudition are no guarantee against delusion. Delusion is fractal in nature; it can be introduced with equal facility at any level of a theoretical structure. The glimpses that we have had so far of the conceptual structure of Empire (the book) suggests that a theory is being confected that will satisfy the ideological purposes of a project of global revolution. As such, the authors are predisposed to reject partial, local, activisms. It may not be entirely coincidental that the particular form of "revolutionary practice" that the authors are engaged in (book publishing) is a primarily global endeavor.
Ideologically, the argument for global (as opposed to local) revolution in Empire (the book: historia rerum gestarum) functions similarly to the self-legitimating processes of Empire (the movie: res gestae ) that Hardt and Negri describe. So far, we appear to be expected to embrace global revolution simply because it is possible. This might be called the doctrine of normative potentiality. Presumably, Hardt and Negri will proceed to explain why it is also desirable. (I'm resisting the temptation to read ahead...)