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December 6, 2006
What I found odd about Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire (1999) was that it argued the death of imperialism, in that the old logic of warring nation-states had been replaced by a de-territorialised Empire, functioning according to a new global logic of rule. This new logic was based on large transnational corporations have effectively surpassed the jurisdiction and authority of nation-states and the corporations rule the earth. So what was the US's unilateral response to ink to the events of 11 September 2001 and the new cycle of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? There in lies the oddness.
Hardt and Negri saw the emergence of Empire as the terrain for the struggles of a radical new counterpower, the multitude, which both sustains and can potentially overcome the new order. They attacked any nostalgia for previous movements and forms of struggle---seeing them as irrelevant in today's 'postmodern' world. The multitude ----a series of heterogeneous, isolated subjects, coming together to fleetingly act in common----has been widely identified with the forces that took to the streets against the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in 1999 and at other anti-corporate globalization mobilisations since.
And yet what the events after 9/11 showed was a coalition of nation states invading and occupying Iraq.
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