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Empire (Hardt and Negri book)

December 18, 2023

For other books, see Empire (disambiguation) § Literature.

Empire is a book by post-Marxist philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Written in the mid-1990s, it was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work.[1]

Empire
Cover of the first edition
AuthorsMichael Hardt
Antonio Negri
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectsGlobalization
International relations
PublisherHarvard University Press
Publication date
2000
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages478
ISBN0-674-25121-0 (hardcover) ISBN 0-674-00671-2 (paperback)
OCLC41967081
325/.32/09045 21
LC ClassJC359 .H279 2000
Preceded byLabor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form 
Followed byMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire 

Summary edit

In general, Hardt and Negri theorize an ongoing transition from a "modern" phenomenon of imperialism, centered on individual nation-states, to an emergent postmodern construct created among ruling powers which the authors call "Empire" (the capital letter is distinguishing), with different forms of warfare:

[...] according to Hardt and Negri's Empire, the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict, the "enemy" now, whoever he is, can no longer be ideological or national. The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal, as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law. This is the enemy as a terrorist[...] In the "new order that envelops the entire space of[...] civilization", where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant, the "enemy" is simultaneously "banalized" (reduced to an object of routine police repression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order).[2]: 6 [3]: 171–172 

Hardt and Negri elaborate a variety of ideas surrounding constitutions, global war, and class. Hence, the Empire is constituted by a monarchy (the United States and the G8, and international organizations such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization), an oligarchy (the multinational corporations and other nation-states) and a democracy (the various non-government organizations and the United Nations). Part of the book's analysis deals with "imagin[ing] resistance", but "the point of Empire is that it, too, is "total" and that resistance to it can only take the form of negation - "the will to be against".[3]: 173  The Empire is total, but economic inequality persists, and as all identities are wiped out and replaced with a universal one, the identity of the poor persists.[4]

Publication history edit

Empire was published by Harvard University Press in 2000 as a 478-page hardcover (ISBN 0-674-25121-0) and paperback (ISBN 0-674-00671-2).

Influences edit

This description of pyramidal levels is a replica of Polybius' description of Roman government, hence the denomination "Empire". Furthermore, the crisis is conceived as inherent to the Empire.

Hardt and Negri are heavily indebted to Michel Foucault's analysis of biopolitics[5] and the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially their book A Thousand Plateaus. A number of concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari – such as multiplicity, deterritorialization, nomads, and control – are central to Empire's claims. Before Empire, Negri was best known for having written The Savage Anomaly (1981), a milestone book in Spinozism studies which he wrote in prison. Empire is thus, unsurprisingly, also influenced by Spinoza. It is also influenced by the work of Carl Schmitt, in particular his theory of sovereignty, as well as Niccolò Machiavelli.

The ideas first introduced in Empire (notably the concept of multitude, taken from Spinoza) were further developed in the books Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), Commonwealth (2009), and Assembly (2017), which were also written by Hardt and Negri.

Reception and legacy edit

Empire has been described by the London Review of Books as "the most successful work of political theory to come from the Left for a generation."[6] The book has been highly influential on numerous debates within the left, and has even been called "a bible of the anti-globalisation movement" by one critic and "the most influential book in recent decades on a classic sociological theme".[7][8] In a review of the book, Slavoj Žižek stated that the book "sets as its goal, writing the Communist Manifesto for the twenty-first century."[9]

Gopal Balakrishnan, reviewing the book for the New Left Review, wrote that when compared with influential conservative books such as Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, "Comparable totalizations from the Left have been few and far between; diagnoses of the present more uniformly bleak. At best, the alternative to surrender or self-delusion has seemed to be a combative but clear-eyed pessimism, orienting the mind for a Long March against the new scheme of things. In this landscape, the appearance of Empire represents a spectacular break. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri defiantly overturn the verdict that the last two decades have been a time of punitive defeats for the Left."

Empire has created important intellectual debates around its arguments. Certain scholars have compared the evolution of the world order with Hardt and Negri's world image in Empire.[10] A number of publications and debates centered on the book, both positively and negatively.[11][12] Hardt and Negri's theoretical approach has also been compared and contrasted with works of 'the global capitalism school' whose authors have analyzed transnational capitalism and class relations in the global epoch.[13]

Hardt and Negri published an essay titled 'Empire 20 Years On' in the November/December 2019 edition of New Left Review[14] in which they provide a critical analysis of the book's legacy and their perspective on it looking back.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Vulliamy, Ed (July 15, 2001). "Empire hits back". The Observer. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  2. ^ Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press.
  3. ^ a b Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton University Press.
  4. ^ Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press. pp. 179–180. The problem, as they see it, is that "postmodernist authors" have neglected the one identity that should matter most to those on the left, the one we have always with us: "The only non-localizable 'common name' of pure difference in all eras is that of the poor" (156)...only the poor, Hardt and Negri say, "live radically the actual and present being" (157)."
  5. ^ Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton University Press. p. 173. Indeed, it is the irrelevance of political beliefs or ideas and their replacement by what (thinking to follow Foucault) Hardt and Negri call the "biopolitical", that mark the special contribution of the discourse of terrorism, which we might more generally call the discourse of globalization.
  6. ^ Bull, Malcolm (2001-10-04). "You can't build a new society with a Stanley knife". London Review of Books. Vol. 23, no. 19. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  7. ^ Thompson, Paul (July 2005). "Foundation and Empire: A critique of Hardt and Negri". Capital & Class. 29 (2): 73–98. doi:10.1177/030981680508600105. ISSN 0309-8168. S2CID 56380189.
  8. ^ Steinmetz, George (July 2002). "Empire . By Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Pp. 478+xvii". American Journal of Sociology. 108 (1): 207–210. doi:10.1086/376266. ISSN 0002-9602.
  9. ^ Žižek, Slavoj (2001-09-01). "Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century?". Rethinking Marxism. 13 (3–4): 190–198. doi:10.1080/089356901101241875. ISSN 0893-5696. S2CID 140777766.
  10. ^ As a sample of those debates in the academic circles, look at this article: Mehmet Akif Okur, "Rethinking Empire After 9/11: Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order," 2013-03-10 at the Wayback Machine Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII, Winter 2007, pp.61-93. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  11. ^ Passavant, Paul; Dean, Jodi, eds. (2004). Empire's New Clothes. doi:10.4324/9780203644003. ISBN 9781135950903.
  12. ^ Elia Zaru's book is an attempt to summarize the academic debate following the release of Empire "La postmodernità di «Empire»," Mimesis Edizioni, 2018.
  13. ^ Sprague, Jeb (2011). "Empire, Global Capitalism, and Theory: Reconsidering Hardt and Negri". The Diversity of Social Theories. Current Perspectives in Social Theory. pp. 187–207. doi:10.1108/S0278-1204(2011)0000029014. ISBN 978-0-85724-821-3.
  14. ^ Hardt, Michael. "Empire, Twenty Years On". New Left Review (120). Retrieved 2022-11-01.

Further reading edit

  • Balakrishnan, Gopal (September–October 2000). "Hardt and Negri's Empire". New Left Review. New Left Review. II (5). (review)
  • Bull, Malcolm (4 October 2001). "You can't build a new society with a Stanley knife," London Review of Books, Vol. 23, No. 19, pages 3–7. Review. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • Hardt, Michael; Negri, Tony. Empire, Twenty Years On. New Left Review, Vol. 120 (2019).
  • Žižek, Slavoj (2011). "Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist manifesto for the Twenty-First Century?," Rethinking Marxism, No. 3/4 (2001). Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • Fotopoulos, Takis; Gezerlis, Alexandros (2002). "Hardt and Negri's Empire: a new Communist Manifesto or a reformist welcome to neoliberal globalisation?," Democracy & Nature: The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 8, No. 2 (July 2002). Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • Di Nardo, Pietro (2003). "The Empire does not exist: a critique of Toni Negri's ideas," In Defence of Marxism (15 January 2003). A Marxist critique of the book. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • Turchetto, Maria (2003). "The Empire Strikes Back: On Hardt and Negri," Historical Materialism, volume 11:1 (2003), p. 23–36. A marxist critique of Empire. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • Dean, Jodi; Passavant, Paul (2011). "Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri," Routledge.
  • Okur, Mehmet Akif (2007). "Rethinking Empire After 9/11: Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order", Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII (Winter 2007), pp. 61–93. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • Sprague, Jeb (2011). "Empire, Global Capitalism, and Theory: Reconsidering Hardt and Negri," "Current Perspectives in Social Theory", 2011, Vol. 29. P. 187–207. doi:10.1108/S0278-1204(2011)0000029014

External links edit

  Quotations related to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri at Wikiquote

December 18, 2023
empire, hardt, negri, book, other, books, empire, disambiguation, literature, empire, book, post, marxist, philosophers, michael, hardt, antonio, negri, written, 1990s, published, 2000, quickly, sold, beyond, expectations, academic, work, empirecover, first, e. For other books see Empire disambiguation Literature Empire is a book by post Marxist philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Written in the mid 1990s it was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work 1 EmpireCover of the first editionAuthorsMichael HardtAntonio NegriCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishSubjectsGlobalizationInternational relationsPublisherHarvard University PressPublication date2000Media typePrint Hardcover and Paperback Pages478ISBN0 674 25121 0 hardcover ISBN 0 674 00671 2 paperback OCLC41967081Dewey Decimal325 32 09045 21LC ClassJC359 H279 2000Preceded byLabor of Dionysus A Critique of the State Form Followed byMultitude War and Democracy in the Age of Empire Contents 1 Summary 2 Publication history 3 Influences 4 Reception and legacy 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External linksSummary editIn general Hardt and Negri theorize an ongoing transition from a modern phenomenon of imperialism centered on individual nation states to an emergent postmodern construct created among ruling powers which the authors call Empire the capital letter is distinguishing with different forms of warfare according to Hardt and Negri s Empire the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict the enemy now whoever he is can no longer be ideological or national The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law This is the enemy as a terrorist In the new order that envelops the entire space of civilization where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant the enemy is simultaneously banalized reduced to an object of routine police repression and absolutized as the Enemy an absolute threat to the ethical order 2 6 3 171 172 Hardt and Negri elaborate a variety of ideas surrounding constitutions global war and class Hence the Empire is constituted by a monarchy the United States and the G8 and international organizations such as NATO the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization an oligarchy the multinational corporations and other nation states and a democracy the various non government organizations and the United Nations Part of the book s analysis deals with imagin ing resistance but the point of Empire is that it too is total and that resistance to it can only take the form of negation the will to be against 3 173 The Empire is total but economic inequality persists and as all identities are wiped out and replaced with a universal one the identity of the poor persists 4 Publication history editEmpire was published by Harvard University Press in 2000 as a 478 page hardcover ISBN 0 674 25121 0 and paperback ISBN 0 674 00671 2 Influences editThis description of pyramidal levels is a replica of Polybius description of Roman government hence the denomination Empire Furthermore the crisis is conceived as inherent to the Empire Hardt and Negri are heavily indebted to Michel Foucault s analysis of biopolitics 5 and the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari especially their book A Thousand Plateaus A number of concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari such as multiplicity deterritorialization nomads and control are central to Empire s claims Before Empire Negri was best known for having written The Savage Anomaly 1981 a milestone book in Spinozism studies which he wrote in prison Empire is thus unsurprisingly also influenced by Spinoza It is also influenced by the work of Carl Schmitt in particular his theory of sovereignty as well as Niccolo Machiavelli The ideas first introduced in Empire notably the concept of multitude taken from Spinoza were further developed in the books Multitude War and Democracy in the Age of Empire 2004 Commonwealth 2009 and Assembly 2017 which were also written by Hardt and Negri Reception and legacy editEmpire has been described by the London Review of Books as the most successful work of political theory to come from the Left for a generation 6 The book has been highly influential on numerous debates within the left and has even been called a bible of the anti globalisation movement by one critic and the most influential book in recent decades on a classic sociological theme 7 8 In a review of the book Slavoj Zizek stated that the book sets as its goal writing the Communist Manifesto for the twenty first century 9 Gopal Balakrishnan reviewing the book for the New Left Review wrote that when compared with influential conservative books such as Francis Fukuyama s The End of History and the Last Man Comparable totalizations from the Left have been few and far between diagnoses of the present more uniformly bleak At best the alternative to surrender or self delusion has seemed to be a combative but clear eyed pessimism orienting the mind for a Long March against the new scheme of things In this landscape the appearance of Empire represents a spectacular break Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri defiantly overturn the verdict that the last two decades have been a time of punitive defeats for the Left Empire has created important intellectual debates around its arguments Certain scholars have compared the evolution of the world order with Hardt and Negri s world image in Empire 10 A number of publications and debates centered on the book both positively and negatively 11 12 Hardt and Negri s theoretical approach has also been compared and contrasted with works of the global capitalism school whose authors have analyzed transnational capitalism and class relations in the global epoch 13 Hardt and Negri published an essay titled Empire 20 Years On in the November December 2019 edition of New Left Review 14 in which they provide a critical analysis of the book s legacy and their perspective on it looking back See also editAutonomous Marxism Anti globalization movement TiqqunReferences edit Vulliamy Ed July 15 2001 Empire hits back The Observer Retrieved April 6 2021 Hardt Michael Negri Antonio 2000 Empire Cambridge Massachusetts amp London England Harvard University Press a b Michaels Walter Benn 2004 The Shape of the Signifier 1967 to the end of history Princeton University Press Hardt Michael Negri Antonio 2000 Empire Cambridge Massachusetts amp London England Harvard University Press pp 179 180 The problem as they see it is that postmodernist authors have neglected the one identity that should matter most to those on the left the one we have always with us The only non localizable common name of pure difference in all eras is that of the poor 156 only the poor Hardt and Negri say live radically the actual and present being 157 Michaels Walter Benn 2004 The Shape of the Signifier 1967 to the end of history Princeton University Press p 173 Indeed it is the irrelevance of political beliefs or ideas and their replacement by what thinking to follow Foucault Hardt and Negri call the biopolitical that mark the special contribution of the discourse of terrorism which we might more generally call the discourse of globalization Bull Malcolm 2001 10 04 You can t build a new society with a Stanley knife London Review of Books Vol 23 no 19 ISSN 0260 9592 Retrieved 2022 07 11 Thompson Paul July 2005 Foundation and Empire A critique of Hardt and Negri Capital amp Class 29 2 73 98 doi 10 1177 030981680508600105 ISSN 0309 8168 S2CID 56380189 Steinmetz George July 2002 Empire By Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press 2000 Pp 478 xvii American Journal of Sociology 108 1 207 210 doi 10 1086 376266 ISSN 0002 9602 Zizek Slavoj 2001 09 01 Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the Twenty First Century Rethinking Marxism 13 3 4 190 198 doi 10 1080 089356901101241875 ISSN 0893 5696 S2CID 140777766 As a sample of those debates in the academic circles look at this article Mehmet Akif Okur Rethinking Empire After 9 11 Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order Archived 2013 03 10 at the Wayback Machine Perceptions Journal of International Affairs Volume XII Winter 2007 pp 61 93 Retrieved 13 May 2013 Passavant Paul Dean Jodi eds 2004 Empire s New Clothes doi 10 4324 9780203644003 ISBN 9781135950903 Elia Zaru s book is an attempt to summarize the academic debate following the release of Empire La postmodernita di Empire Mimesis Edizioni 2018 Sprague Jeb 2011 Empire Global Capitalism and Theory Reconsidering Hardt and Negri The Diversity of Social Theories Current Perspectives in Social Theory pp 187 207 doi 10 1108 S0278 1204 2011 0000029014 ISBN 978 0 85724 821 3 Hardt Michael Empire Twenty Years On New Left Review 120 Retrieved 2022 11 01 Further reading editBalakrishnan Gopal September October 2000 Hardt and Negri s Empire New Left Review New Left Review II 5 review Bull Malcolm 4 October 2001 You can t build a new society with a Stanley knife London Review of Books Vol 23 No 19 pages 3 7 Review Retrieved 13 May 2013 Hardt Michael Negri Tony Empire Twenty Years On New Left Review Vol 120 2019 Zizek Slavoj 2011 Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist manifesto for the Twenty First Century Rethinking Marxism No 3 4 2001 Retrieved 13 May 2013 Fotopoulos Takis Gezerlis Alexandros 2002 Hardt and Negri s Empire a new Communist Manifesto or a reformist welcome to neoliberal globalisation Democracy amp Nature The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy Vol 8 No 2 July 2002 Retrieved 13 May 2013 Di Nardo Pietro 2003 The Empire does not exist a critique of Toni Negri s ideas In Defence of Marxism 15 January 2003 A Marxist critique of the book Retrieved 13 May 2013 Turchetto Maria 2003 The Empire Strikes Back On Hardt and Negri Historical Materialism volume 11 1 2003 p 23 36 A marxist critique of Empire Retrieved 13 May 2013 Dean Jodi Passavant Paul 2011 Empire s New Clothes Reading Hardt and Negri Routledge Okur Mehmet Akif 2007 Rethinking Empire After 9 11 Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order Perceptions Journal of International Affairs Volume XII Winter 2007 pp 61 93 Retrieved 13 May 2013 Sprague Jeb 2011 Empire Global Capitalism and Theory Reconsidering Hardt and Negri Current Perspectives in Social Theory 2011 Vol 29 P 187 207 doi 10 1108 S0278 1204 2011 0000029014External links edit nbsp Quotations related to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri at Wikiquote Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Empire Hardt and Negri book amp oldid 1187195242, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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