Empire (28 page)

States to the Islamic Brothers—have spread most widely among

those who have been further subordinated and excluded by the

recent transformations of the global economy and who are most

threatened by the increased mobility ofcapital. The losers in the

processes ofglobalization might indeed be the ones who give us

the strongest indication ofthe transformation in progress.

TheIdeology of theWorld Market

Many ofthe concepts dear to postmodernists and postcolonialists

find a perfect correspondence in the current ideology of corporate

capital and the world market. The ideology ofthe world market

has always been the anti-foundational and anti-essentialist discourse

par excellence. Circulation, mobility, diversity, and mixture are its

very conditions of possibility. Trade brings differences together and

the more the merrier! Differences (of commodities, populations,

cultures, and so forth) seem to multiply infinitely in the world

market, which attacks nothing more violently than fixed boundaries:

it overwhelms any binary division with its infinite multiplicities.

As the world market today is realized ever more completely,

it tends to deconstruct the boundaries ofthe nation-state. In a

previous period, nation-states were the primary actors in the modern

imperialist organization ofglobal production and exchange, but to

the world market they appear increasingly as mere obstacles. Robert

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Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is in an excellent position

to recognize and celebrate the overcoming ofnational boundaries

in the world market. He contends that ‘‘as almost every factor of

production—money, technology, factories, and equipment—

moves effortlessly across borders, the very idea of a [national] econ-

omy is becoming meaningless.’’ In the future ‘‘there will be no

national
products or technologies, no national corporations, no national industries. There will no longer be national economies, as

least as we have come to understand that concept.’’18 With the

decline ofnational boundaries, the world market is liberated from

the kind ofbinary divisions that nation-states had imposed, and in

this new free space a myriad of differences appears. These differences

ofcourse do not play freely across a smooth global space, but rather

are regimented in global networks ofpower consisting ofhighly

differentiated and mobile structures. Arjun Appadurai captures the

new quality ofthese structures with the analogy oflandscapes, or

better, seascapes: in the contemporary world he sees finanscapes,

technoscapes, ethnoscapes, and so forth.19 The suffix ‘‘-scape’’ allows

us on the one hand to point to the fluidity and irregularity ofthese

various fields and on the other to indicate formal commonalities

among such diverse domains as finance, culture, commodities, and

demography. The world market establishes a real politics ofdif-

ference.

The various -scapes ofthe world market provide capital with

potentials on a scale previously unimaginable. It should be no sur-

prise, then, that postmodernist thinking and its central concepts

have flourished in the various fields ofpractice and theory proper

to capital, such as marketing, management organization, and the

organization ofproduction. Postmodernism is indeed the logic by

which global capital operates. Marketing has perhaps the clearest

relation to postmodernist theories, and one could even say that the

capitalist marketing strategies have long been postmodernist,
avant

la lettre.
On the one hand, marketing practices and consumer con-

sumption are prime terrain for developing postmodernist thinking:

certain postmodernist theorists, for example, see perpetual shopping

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and the consumption ofcommodities and commodified images as

the paradigmatic and defining activities ofpostmodern experience,

our collective journeys through hyperreality.20 On the other hand,

postmodernist thinking—with its emphasis on concepts such as

difference and multiplicity, its celebration of fetishism and simulacra,

its continual fascination with the new and with fashion—is an

excellent description ofthe ideal capitalist schemes ofcommodity

consumption and thus provides an opportunity to perfect marketing

strategies. As a marketing theorist says, there are clear ‘‘parallels

between contemporary market practices and the precepts ofpost-

modernism.’’21

Marketing itself is a practice based on differences, and the

more differences that are given, the more marketing strategies can

develop. Ever more hybrid and differentiated populations present

a proliferating number of ‘‘target markets’’ that can each be addressed

by specific marketing strategies—one for gay Latino males between

the ages ofeighteen and twenty-two, another for Chinese-American

teenage girls, and so forth. Postmodern marketing recognizes the

difference of each commodity and each segment of the population,

fashioning its strategies accordingly.22 Every difference is an oppor-

tunity.

Postmodern marketing practices represent the consumption

cycle ofcontemporary capital, its external face, but we are even

more interested in the postmodernist tendencies within the cycle

ofcapitalist production. In the productive sphere, postmodernist

thinking has perhaps had the largest direct impact in the field of

management and organization theory. Authors in this field argue

that large and complex modern organizations, with their rigid

boundaries and homogeneous units, are not adequate for doing

business in the postmodern world. ‘‘The postmodern organization,’’

one theorist writes, ‘‘has certain distinctive features—notably, an

emphasis on small-to-moderate size and complexity and adoption

offlexible structures and modes ofinterinstitutional cooperation

to meet turbulent organizational and environmental conditions.’’23

Postmodern organizations are thus imagined either as located on

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the boundaries between different systems and cultures or as internally

hybrid. What is essential for postmodern management is that organi-

zations be mobile, flexible, and able to deal with difference. Here

postmodernist theories pave the way for the transformation of the

internal structures ofcapitalist organizations.

The ‘‘culture’’ within these organizations has also adopted

the precepts ofpostmodernist thinking. The great transnational

corporations that straddle national boundaries and link the global

system are themselves internally much more diverse and fluid cultur-

ally than the parochial modern corporations ofprevious years. The

contemporary gurus ofcorporate culture who are employed by

management as consultants and strategy planners preach the effi-

ciency and profitability ofdiversity and multiculturalism within

corporations.24 When one looks closely at U.S. corporate ideology

(and, to a lesser but still significant extent, at U.S. corporate practice), it is clear that corporations do not operate simply by excluding the

gendered and/or racialized Other. In fact, the old modernist forms

ofracist and sexist theory are the explicit enemies ofthis new

corporate culture. The corporations seek to include difference

within their realm and thus aim to maximize creativity, free play,

and diversity in the corporate workplace. People of all different

races, sexes, and sexual orientations should potentially be included

in the corporation; the daily routine ofthe workplace should be

rejuvenated with unexpected changes and an atmosphere offun.

Break down the old boundaries and let one hundred flowers

bloom!25 The task ofthe boss, subsequently, is to organize these

energies and differences in the interests of profit. This project is

aptly called ‘‘diversity management.’’ In this light, the corporations

appear not only ‘‘progressive’’ but also ‘‘postmodernist,’’ as leaders

in a very real politics of difference.

The production processes ofcapital have also taken forms that

echo postmodernist projects. We will have ample opportunity to

analyze (particularly in Section 3.4) how production has come to

be organized in flexible and hybrid networks. This is, in our view,

the most important respect in which the contemporary transforma-

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tions ofcapital and the world market constitute a real process of

postmodernization.

We certainly agree with those contemporary theorists, such

as David Harvey and Fredric Jameson, who see postmodernity as

a new phase ofcapitalist accumulation and commodification that

accompanies the contemporary realization ofthe world market.26

The global politics of difference established by the world market

is defined not by free play and equality, but by the imposition of

new hierarchies, or really by a constant process ofhierarchization.

Postmodernist and postcolonialist theories (and fundamentalisms in

a very different way) are really sentinels that signal this passage in

course, and in this regard are indispensable.

Truth Commissions

It is salutary to remind ourselves that postmodernist and postcolonial

discourses are effective only in very specific geographical locations

and among a certain class ofthe population. As a political discourse,

postmodernism has a certain currency in Europe, Japan, and Latin

America, but its primary site ofapplication is within an elite segment

ofthe U.S. intelligentsia. Similarly, the postcolonial theory that

shares certain postmodernist tendencies has been developed primar-

ily among a cosmopolitan set that moves among the metropolises

and major universities ofEurope and the United States. This speci-

ficity does not invalidate the theoretical perspectives, but it should

make us pause for a moment to reflect on their political implications

and practical effects. Numerous genuinely progressive and liberatory

discourses have emerged throughout history among elite groups,

and we have no intention here ofquestioning the vocation ofsuch

theorizing
tout court.
More important than the specificity ofthese theorists are the resonances their concepts stimulate in different

geographical and class locations.

Certainly from the standpoint of many around the world,

hybridity, mobility, and difference do not immediately appear as

liberatory in themselves. Huge populations see mobility as an aspect

of their suffering because they are displaced at an increasing speed in

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dire circumstances. For several decades, as part ofthe modernization

process there have been massive migrations from rural areas to

metropolitan centers within each country and across the globe. The

international flow oflabor has only increased in recent years, not

only from south to north, in the form of legal and illegal guest

workers or immigrants, but also from south to south, that is, the

temporary or semipermanent worker migrations among southern

regions, such as that ofSouth Asian workers in the Persian Gulf.

Even these massive worker migrations, however, are dwarfed in

terms of numbers and misery by those forced from their homes

and land by famine and war. Just a cursory glance around the world,

from Central America to Central Africa and from the Balkans to

Southeast Asia, will reveal the desperate plight ofthose on whom

such mobility has been imposed. For them, mobility across bound-

aries often amounts to forced migration in poverty and is hardly

liberatory. In fact, a stable and defined place in which to live, a

certain immobility, can on the contrary appear as the most ur-

gent need.

The postmodernist epistemological challenge to ‘‘the Enlight-

enment’’—its attack on master narratives and its critique oftruth—

also loses its liberatory aura when transposed outside the elite intel-

lectual strata ofEurope and North America. Consider, for example,

the mandate ofthe Truth Commission formed at the end ofthe

civil war in El Salvador, or the similar institutions that have been

established in the post-dictatorial and post-authoritarian regimes of

Latin America and South Africa. In the context of state terror and

mystification, clinging to the primacy ofthe concept oftruth can

be a powerful and necessary form of resistance. Establishing and

making public the truth ofthe recent past—attributing responsibility

to state officials for specific acts and in some cases exacting retribu-

tion—appears here as the ineluctable precondition for any demo-

cratic future. The master narratives of the Enlightenment do not

seem particularly repressive here, and the concept oftruth is not

fluid or unstable—on the contrary! The truth is that this general

ordered the torture and assassination ofthat union leader, and this

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colonel led the massacre ofthat village. Making public such truths