Empire

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but empire is alive and well. It is, as the authors demonstrate in this work the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognise the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's empire draws on elements of US constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers. This book identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in post-modern society - to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communications and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of post-industrial forms of labour and production help to define the new imperial global order. More than analysis, "Empire" is also an utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterise today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm - the basis for a truly democratic global society.

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Empire...is a bold move away from established doctrine. Hardt and Negri's insistence that there really is a new world is promulgated with energy and conviction. Especially striking is their renunciation of the tendency of many writers on globalization to focus exclusively on the top, leaving the impression that what happens down below, to ordinary people, follows automatically from what the great powers do. -- Stanley Aronowitz The Nation So what does a disquisition on globalization have to offer scholars in crisis? First, there is the book's broad sweep and range of learning. Spanning nearly 500 pages of densely argued history, philosophy and political theory, it features sections on Imperial Rome, Haitian slave revolts, the American Constitution and the Persian Gulf War, and references to dozens of thinkers like Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hegel, Hobbes, Kant, Marx and Foucault. In short, the book has the formal trappings of a master theory in the old European tradition...[This] book is full of...bravura passages. Whether presenting new concepts--like Empire and multitude--or urging revolution, it brims with confidence in its ideas. Does it have the staying power and broad appeal necessary to become the next master theory? It is too soon to say. But for the moment, Empire is filling a void in the humanities. -- Emily Eakin New York Times 20010707 One of the rare benefits to the credit [of the contemporary Empire] is to have undermined the ramparts of the nation, ethnicity, race, and peoples by multiplying the instances of contact and hybridization. Perhaps, at least this is the hope forwarded by these two Marx and Engels of the internet age, it has thus made possible the coming of new forms of transnational solidarity that will defeat Empire. -- Aude Lancelin Le Nouvel Observateur A sweeping neo-Marxist vision of the coming world order. The authors argue that globalization is not eroding sovereignty but transforming it into a system of diffuse national and supranational institutions--in other words, a new 'empire'...[that] encompasses all of modern life. Foreign Affairs The collaboration between American literary theorist and Italian political philosopher has produced a strange and graceful work, of rare imaginative drive and richness of intellectual reference. However counter-intuitive its conclusions, Empire is in its own terms a work of visionary intensity. -- Gopul Balakrishnan New Left Review Globalization's positive side is, intriguingly, a message of a hot new book. Since it was published last year, Empire ...has been translated into four new languages, with six more on the way...It is selling briskly on Amazon.com and is impossible to find in Manhattan bookstores. For 413 pages of dense political philosophy--whose compass ranges from body piercing to Machiavelli--that's impressive. -- Michael Elliott Time 20010723 How often can it happen that a book is swept off the shelves until you can't find a copy in New York for love nor money?...Empire is a sweeping history of humanist philosophy, Marxism and modernity that propels itself to a grand political conclusion: that we are a creative and enlightened species, and that our history is that of humanity's progress towards the seizure of power from those who exploit it. -- Ed Vulliamy The Observer 20010715 Hardt is not just bent on saving the world. He has also been credited with dragging the humanities in American universities out of the doldrums...[Empire] presents a philosophical vision that some have greeted as the 'next big thing' in the field of the humanities, with its authors the natural successors of names such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Sunday Times 20010715 Hailed as the new Communist Manifesto on its dust jacket, this hefty tome may be worthy of such distinction...Hardt and Negri analyze the multiple processes of globalization...and argue that the new sovereign, the new order of the globalized world, is a decentered and d

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Michael Hardt is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University. Antonio Negri is an independent researcher and writer. He has been a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua.

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Preface 1. The Political Constitution of the Present 1.1 World Order 1.2 Biopolitical Production 1.3 Alternatives within Empire 2. Passages of Sovereignty 2.1 Two Europes, Two Modernities 2.2 Sovereignty of the Nation-State 2.3 The Dialectics of Colonial Sovereignty 2.4 Symptoms of Passage 2.5 Network Power: U.S. Sovereignty and the New Empire 2.6 Imperial Sovereignty Intermezzo: Counter-Empire 3. Passages of Production 3.1 The Limits of Imperialism 3.2 Disciplinary Governability 3.3 Resistance, Crisis, Transformation 3.4 Postmodernization, or The Informatization of Production 3.5 Mixed Constitution 3.6 Capitalist Sovereignty, or Administering the Global Society of Control 4. The Decline and Fall of Empire 4.1 Virtualities 4.2 Generation and Corruption 4.3 The Multitude against Empire Notes Index

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