Empire (34 page)

foundation—of the project. In Machiavelli’s constituent formation

ofa new republic, Spinoza’s democratic liberation ofthe multitude,

and Marx’s revolutionary abolition ofthe state, the inside continues

to live in an ambiguous but no less determinate way in the outside

that is projected as utopia.

We do not want to suggest here that modern critiques of

modernity have never reached a real point ofrupture that allows

a shift of perspective, nor that our project cannot profit from these

modern critical foundations. Machiavellian freedom, Spinozist de-

sire, and Marxian living labor are all concepts that contain real

transformative power: the power to confront reality and go beyond

the given conditions ofexistence. The force ofthese critical con-

cepts, which extends well beyond their ambiguous relation to mod-

ern social structures, consists primarily in their being posed as onto-

logical demands.4 The power ofthe modern critique ofmodernity

resides precisely where the blackmail ofbourgeois realism is re-

fused—in other words, where utopian thought, going beyond the

pressures ofhomology that always limit it to what already exists,

is given a new constituent form.

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The limitations ofthese critiques become clear when we ques-

tion their power to transform not only the objective we are aiming

for, but also the standpoint ofcritique. One briefexample should

be sufficient to illustrate this difficulty. The fifth part of Spinoza’s

Ethics
is perhaps the highest development ofthe modern critique

ofmodernity. Spinoza takes on the theoretical challenge to establish

full knowledge oftruth and discover the path ofthe liberation of

the body and the mind, positively, in the absolute. All other modern

metaphysical positions, particularly those transcendental positions

ofwhich Descartes and Hobbes are the first major representatives,

are inessential and mystificatory with respect to this project of

liberation. Spinoza’s primary objective is the ontological develop-

ment ofthe unity oftrue knowledge and the powerful body along

with the absolute construction ofsingular and collective immanence.

Never before had philosophical thought so radically undermined

the traditional dualisms ofEuropean metaphysics, and never before,

consequently, had it so powerfully challenged the political practices

oftranscendence and domination. Every ontology that does not

bear the stamp ofhuman creativity is cast aside. The desire
(cupiditas)
that rules the course ofthe existence and action ofnature and

humans is made love
(amor)
—which invests at once both the natural

and the divine. And yet, in this final part ofthe
Ethics,
this utopia has only an abstract and indefinite relation to reality. At times,

setting out from this high level of ontological development, Spino-

za’s thought does attempt to confront reality, but the ascetic proposal

halts, stumbles, and disappears in the mystical attempt to reconcile

the language ofreality and divinity. Finally, in Spinoza as in the

other great modern critics ofmodernity, the search for an outside

seems to run aground and propose merely phantasms ofmysticism,

negative intuitions ofthe absolute.

ThereIs No MoreOutside

The domains conceived as inside and outside and the relationship

between them are configured differently in a variety of modern

discourses.5 The spatial configuration ofinside and outside itself,

I M P E R I A L S O V E R E I G N T Y

187

however, seems to us a general and foundational characteristic of

modern thought. In the passage from modern to postmodern and

from imperialism to Empire there is progressively less distinction

between inside and outside.

This transformation is particularly evident when viewed in

terms ofthe notion ofsovereignty. Modern sovereignty has gener-

ally been conceived in terms ofa (real or imagined) territory and

the relation ofthat territory to its outside. Early modern social

theorists, for example, from Hobbes to Rousseau, understood the

civil order as a limited and interior space that is opposed or contrasted

to the external order ofnature. The bounded space ofcivil order,

its place, is defined by its separation from the external spaces of

nature. In an analogous fashion, the theorists of modern psychology

understood drives, passions, instincts, and the unconscious meta-

phorically in spatial terms as an outside within the human mind, a

continuation ofnature deep within us. Here the sovereignty ofthe

Selfrests on a dialectical relation between the natural order ofdrives

and the civil order ofreason or consciousness. Finally, modern

anthropology’s various discourses on primitive societies function as

the outside that defines the bounds ofthe civil world. The process

ofmodernization, in all these varied contexts, is the internalization

ofthe outside, that is, the civilization ofnature.

In the imperial world, this dialectic ofsovereignty between

the civil order and the natural order has come to an end. This is

one precise sense in which the contemporary world is postmodern.

‘‘Postmodernism,’’ Fredric Jameson tells us, ‘‘is what you have when

the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good.’’6

Certainly we continue to have forests and crickets and thunder-

storms in our world, and we continue to understand our psyches

as driven by natural instincts and passions; but we have no nature

in the sense that these forces and phenomena are no longer under-

stood as outside, that is, they are not seen as original and indepen-

dent ofthe artifice ofthe civil order. In a postmodern world all

phenomena and forces are artificial, or, as some might say, part of

history. The modern dialectic ofinside and outside has been re-

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placed by a play ofdegrees and intensities, ofhybridity and artific-

iality.

The outside has also declined in terms of a rather different

modern dialectic that defined the relation between public and pri-

vate in liberal political theory. The public spaces ofmodern society,

which constitute the place ofliberal politics, tend to disappear in the

postmodern world. According to the liberal tradition, the modern

individual, at home in its private spaces, regards the public as its

outside. The outside is the place proper to politics, where the action

ofthe individual is exposed in the presence ofothers and there

seeks recognition.7 In the process ofpostmodernization, however,

such public spaces are increasingly becoming privatized. The urban

landscape is shifting from the modern focus on the common square

and the public encounter to the closed spaces ofmalls, freeways,

and gated communities. The architecture and urban planning of

megalopolises such as Los Angeles and Sa˜o Paolo have tended to

limit public access and interaction in such a way as to avoid the

chance encounter ofdiverse populations, creating a series ofpro-

tected interior and isolated spaces.8 Alternatively, consider how the

banlieu ofParis has become a series ofamorphous and indefinite

spaces that promote isolation rather than any interaction or commu-

nication. Public space has been privatized to such an extent that it

no longer makes sense to understand social organization in terms

ofa dialectic between private and public spaces, between inside

and outside. The place ofmodern liberal politics has disappeared,

and thus from this perspective our postmodern and imperial society

is characterized by a deficit of the political. In effect, the place of

politics has been de-actualized.

In this regard, Guy Debord’s analysis ofthe society ofthe

spectacle, more than thirty years after its composition, seems ever

more apt and urgent.9 In imperial society the spectacle is a virtual

place, or more accurately, a
non-place
ofpolitics. The spectacle is at once unified and diffuse in such a way that it is impossible to

distinguish any inside from outside—the natural from the social,

the private from the public. The liberal notion of the public, the

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189

place outside where we act in the presence ofothers, has been both

universalized (because we are always now under the gaze ofothers,

monitored by safety cameras) and sublimated or de-actualized in

the virtual spaces ofthe spectacle. The end ofthe outside is the

end ofliberal politics.

Finally, there is no longer an outside also in a military sense.

When Francis Fukuyama claims that the contemporary historical

passage is defined by the end ofhistory, he means that the era of

major conflicts has come to an end: sovereign power will no longer

confront its Other and no longer face its outside, but rather will

progressively expand its boundaries to envelop the entire globe as

its proper domain.10 The history ofimperialist, interimperialist, and

anti-imperialist wars is over. The end ofthat history has ushered

in the reign ofpeace. Or really, we have entered the era ofminor

and internal conflicts. Every imperial war is a civil war, a police

action—from Los Angeles and Granada to Mogadishu and Sarajevo.

In fact, the separation of tasks between the external and the internal

arms ofpower (between the army and the police, the CIA and the

FBI) is increasingly vague and indeterminate.

In our terms, the end ofhistory that Fukuyama refers to is

the end ofthe crisis at the center ofmodernity, the coherent and

defining conflict that was the foundation and raison d’eˆtre for

modern sovereignty. History has ended precisely and only to the

extent that it is conceived in Hegelian terms—as the movement

ofa dialectic ofcontradictions, a play ofabsolute negations and

subsumption. The binaries that defined modern conflict have be-

come blurred. The Other that might delimit a modern sovereign

Selfhas become fractured and indistinct, and there is no longer an

outside that can bound the place ofsovereignty. The outside is

what gave the crisis its coherence. Today it is increasingly difficult

for the ideologues of the United States to name a single, unified

enemy; rather, there seem to be minor and elusive enemies every-

where.11 The end ofthe crisis ofmodernity has given rise to a

proliferation of minor and indefinite crises, or, as we prefer, to an

omni-crisis.

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It is useful to remember here (and we will develop this point

further in Section 3.1) that the capitalist market is one machine

that has always run counter to any division between inside and

outside. It is thwarted by barriers and exclusions; it thrives instead

by including always more within its sphere. Profit can be generated

only through contact, engagement, interchange, and commerce.

The realization ofthe world market would constitute the point of

arrival ofthis tendency. In its ideal form there is no outside to the

world market: the entire globe is its domain.12 We might thus use

the form of the world market as a model for understanding imperial

sovereignty. Perhaps, just as Foucault recognized the panopticon

as the diagram ofmodern power, the world market might serve

adequately—even though it is not an architecture but really an

anti-architecture—as the diagram ofimperial power.13

The striated space ofmodernity constructed
places
that were

continually engaged in and founded on a dialectical play with their

outsides. The space ofimperial sovereignty, in contrast, is smooth.

It might appear to be free of the binary divisions or striation of

modern boundaries, but really it is crisscrossed by so many fault

lines that it only appears as a continuous, uniform space. In this

sense, the clearly defined crisis ofmodernity gives way to an omni-

crisis in the imperial world. In this smooth space ofEmpire, there

is no
place
ofpower—it is both everywhere and nowhere. Empire

is an
ou-topia,
or really a
non-place.

Imperial Racism

The passage from modern sovereignty to imperial sovereignty shows

one of its faces in the shifting configurations of racism in our

societies. We should note first ofall that it has become increasingly

difficult to identify the general lines of racism. In fact, politicians,

the media, and even historians continually tell us that racism has

steadily receded in modern societies—from the end of slavery to de-

colonization struggles and civil rights movements. Certain specific

traditional practices ofracism have undoubtedly declined, and one

might be tempted to view the end ofthe apartheid laws in South

I M P E R I A L S O V E R E I G N T Y

191

Africa as the symbolic close of an entire era of racial segregation.

From our perspective, however, it is clear that racism has not

receded but actually progressed in the contemporary world, both