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September 26, 2004
In his article, 'The Perverse Perseverance of Sovereignty' Anthony Burke says that the account of sovereignty given by Hardt and Negri in Empire is flawed.
Hardt and Negri's position is that modern sovereignty is not just an abstract locus of juridical authority, which forms the basis for Westphalian international law and order. It is also a complex disciplinary and ontological machinery of enormous depth and force whose ultimate aim is to harness and control the possibility of freedom within capitalist post-modernity.
It is an account I have much sympathy with.
Burke finds two flaws with their account. The first is that in:
"...the hope of foreseeing a renewed conflict between the revolutionary and repressive possibilities of modernity they assert a radical, irreversible passage from modernity to Empire...We can hardly mock their desire or fail to share their hope – but to do so is not always to share their optimism. I worry that projecting the emergence of the multitude as a new historical phenomenon – in teleological terms - may be to downplay the very real challenges in forming it into being and generating truly revolutionary potential from its disparate (and divided) sites and spaces of struggle."
The role of the multitude is a problem. The "multitude", is a new kind of political subject that forms one head of the two headed eagle. The multitude is a problematic since Hardt and Negri have a tendency to make global capitalist power the major focus for resistance and political action. It was in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s with the economic reforms but since 2000 it has been terrrorists, war with Iraq and refugees that have been the major focus of resistance.
But Burke leaves this standing, as he moves onto the second flaw in Hardt and Negri's account which is the one that he is more interested in. The second flaw Burke says:
"...is the wanton act of theoretical (and analytical) closure they perform amid this hope....modern sovereignty, in all its repression and horror, is passing away; and the critical paradigms that grappled with it so gamely are now at best passé and at worst complicit with the new hybrid flexible formations of capitalist Empire. This occurs because the world market 'tends to deconstruct the boundaries of the nation-state' and with them the stable orders and hierarchies of modern sovereignty."
Hardt and Negri's claim that Empire is bent on doing away with modern sovereignty is what is the problem.
Hardt and Negri see a world of 'minor and internal conflicts'. since the 'history of imperialist, inter-imperialist and anti-imperialist wars is over'. Now there are only civil wars, police actions, a 'proliferation of minor and indefinite crisis.
Is Iraq just a civil war or police action? Surely it is also about a global power securing a bigger foothold in the Middle East.
Instead of the melting away of sovereignty in Australia in postrmodernity we have the reassertion of sovereignty with economic globalisation. A conservative/neo-liberal government has harsh policies towards asylum seekers, such as mandatory detention, restrictions to legal process, and military operations to repel boats. This discourse is all about protecting our boders, the Australian state deciiding who comes into the country, and the state providing Australians with a sense of security and 'home'.
Two things are happening at once: the Australian stateis colluding in the collude in the construction of Empire, whilst it continue to insist on the ontological primacy of the state and its monopoly on the legitimate use of force as a pre-emptive strike.
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