|
July 21, 2004
Hardt and Negri say that once you adopt their perspective of the double headed eagle, then:
"....we can return to the juridical framework we investigated earlier and recognize the reasons for the real deficit that plagues the transition from international public law to the new public law of Empire, that is, the new conception of right that defines Empire. In other words, the frustration and the continual instability suffered by imperial right as it attempts to destroy the old values that served as reference points for international public law (the nation-states, the international order of Westphalia, the United Nations, and so forth) along with the so-called turbulence that accompanies this process are all symptoms of a properly ontological lack. As it constructs its supranational figure, power seems to be deprived of any real ground beneath it, or rather, it is lacking the motor that propels its movement. The rule of the biopolitical imperial context should thus be seen in the first instance as an empty machine, a spectacular machine, a parasitical machine. "
The insight here is that imperial right is setting out to destroy the old values that once served as reference points for international public law---the nation-states, the international order of Westphalia, the United Nations, and so forth. I think that is right. We have consistent attacks on international law and institutions by the US and its allies (Israel and Australia).
What is going on here? Benevolent hegemony by the US as stated dby the Washington neo-conservatives? Or is there something more? Remember that Empire a decentred and deterritorialising apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers for Hardt & Negri. Theres is a radicalised version of current understandings of "globalisation."
Consequently, they refuse "traditional" Marxist understandings of U.S. imperialism and operates with a "postmodernised global economy," Hardt and Negri reject the neocon position that the U.S. can act as a centre for an imperialist project.
Hardt & Negri say that the way the decentred and deterritorialising apparatus of rule operates has a lot to do with the multitude:
"A new sense of being is imposed on the constitution of Empire by the creative movement of the multitude, or really it is continually present in this process as an alternative paradigm. It is internal to Empire and pushes forward its constitution, not as a negative that constructs a positive or any such dialectical resolution. Rather it acts as an absolutely positive force that pushes the dominating power toward an abstract and empty unification, to which it appears as the distinct alternative."
Everything comes back to the multitude, or the people at the bottom of society. It is the multitude as a vast and amorphous mass that resists Empire at every point.
|
