Empire (66 page)

developed not
imperial
but
imperialist
forms. The concept of Empire nonetheless survived in Europe, and its lack ofreality

was continually mourned. The European debates about Empire

and decline interest us for two primary reasons: first, because

the crisis ofthe ideal ofimperial Europe is at the center of

these debates, and second, because this crisis strikes precisely in

that secret place ofthe definition ofEmpire where the concept

ofdemocracy resides. Another element that we have to keep in

mind here is the standpoint from which the debates were

conducted: a standpoint that adopts the historical drama ofthe

decline ofEmpire in terms ofcollective lived experience. The

theme of
the crisis of Europe
was translated into a discourse on

G E N E R A T I O N A N D C O R R U P T I O N

375

the decline ofEmpire and linked to the crisis ofdemocracy,

along with the forms of consciousness and resistance that this

crisis implies.

Alexis de Tocqueville was perhaps the first to present the

problem in these terms. His analysis ofmass democracy in the

United States, with its spirit ofinitiative and expansion, led him

to the bitter and prophetic recognition ofthe impossibility f

or

European eĺites to continue to maintain a position ofcommand

over world civilization.3 Hegel had already perceived something

very similar: ‘‘America is . . . the country ofthe future, and its

world-historical importance has yet to be revealed in the ages which

lie ahead . . . It is a land ofdesire for all those who are weary

ofthe historical arsenal ofold Europe.’’4 Tocqueville, however,

understood this passage in a much more profound way. The reason

for the crisis of European civilization and its imperial practices

consists in the fact that European virtue—or really its aristocratic

morality organized in the institutions ofmodern sovereignty—

cannot manage to keep pace with the vital powers ofmass de-

mocracy.

The death ofGod that many Europeans began to perceive

was really a sign ofthe expiration oftheir own planetary centrality,

which they could understand only in terms ofa modern mysticism.

From Nietzsche to Burkhardt, from Thomas Mann to Max Weber,

from Spengler to Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, and numerous

other authors who straddled the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,

this intuition became a constant refrain that was sung with such

bitterness!5 The appearance ofthe masses on the social and political

scene, the exhaustion ofthe cultural and productive models of

modernity, the waning ofthe European imperialist projects, and

the conflicts among nations on questions ofscarcity, poverty, and

class struggle: all these emerged as irreversible signs ofdecline.

Nihilism dominated the era because the times were without hope.

Nietzsche gave the definitive diagnosis: ‘‘Europe is sick.’’6 The two

World Wars that would ravage its territories, the triumph offascism,

and now, after the collapse of Stalinism, the reappearance of the

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T H E D E C L I N E A N D F A L L O F E M P I R E

most terrible specters ofnationalism and intolerance all stand as

proofto confirm that these intuitions were in fact correct.

From our standpoint, however, the fact that against the old

powers ofEurope a new Empire has formed is only good news.

Who wants to see any more ofthat pallid and parasitic European

ruling class that led directly from the ancien re´gime to nationalism,

from populism to fascism, and now pushes for a generalized neolib-

eralism? Who wants to see more ofthose ideologies and those

bureaucratic apparatuses that have nourished and abetted the rotting

European eĺites? And who can still stand those systems oflabor

organization and those corporations that have stripped away every

vital spirit?

Our task here is not to lament the crisis ofEurope, but rather

to recognize in its analyses the elements that, while confirming its

tendency, still indicate possible resistances, the margins ofpositive

reaction, and the alternatives ofdestiny. These elements have often

appeared almost against the will ofthe theorists ofthe crisis oftheir

own times: it is a resistance that leaps to a future time—a real and

proper future past, a kind of future perfect tense. In this sense,

through the painful analyses ofits causes, the crisis ofEuropean

ideology can reveal the definition ofnew, open resources. This is

why it is important to follow the developments of the crisis of

Europe, because not only in authors such as Nietzsche and Weber

but also in the public opinion ofthe times, the denunciation of

the crisis revealed an extremely powerful positive side, which con-

tained the fundamental characteristics of the new world Empire we

are entering today. The agents ofthe crisis ofthe old imperial world

became foundations of the new. The undifferentiated mass that by

its simple presence was able to destroy the modern tradition and

its transcendent power appears now as a powerful productive force

and an uncontainable source ofvalorization. A new vitality, almost

like the barbaric forces that buried Rome, reanimates the field of

immanence that the death ofthe European God lef

t us as our

horizon. Every theory ofthe crisis ofEuropean Man and ofthe

decline ofthe idea ofEuropean Empire is in some way a symptom

G E N E R A T I O N A N D C O R R U P T I O N

377

of the new vital force of the masses, or as we prefer, of the desire

ofthe multitude. Nietzsche declared this from the mountaintops:

‘ I have absorbed in myselfthe spirit ofEurope—now I want to

strike back!’’7 Going beyond modernity means going beyond the

barriers and transcendences ofEurocentrism and leads toward the

definitive adoption ofthe field ofimmanence as the exclusive terrain

ofthe theory and practice ofpolitics.

In the years after the explosion of the First World War, those

who had participated in the great massacre tried desperately to

understand and control the crisis. Consider the testimonies ofFranz

Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin. For both ofthem a kind of

secular eschatology was the mechanism by which the experience

ofthe crisis could be set free.8 After the historical experience of

war and misery, and also perhaps with an intuition ofthe holocaust

to come, they tried to discover a hope and a light ofredemption.

This attempt, however, did not succeed in escaping the powerful

undertow ofthe dialectic. Certainly the dialectic, that cursed dialec-

tic that had held together and anointed European values, had been

emptied out from within and was now defined in completely nega-

tive terms. The apocalyptic scene on which this mysticism searched

for liberation and redemption, however, was still too implicated in

the crisis. Benjamin recognized this bitterly: ‘‘The past carries with

it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There

is a secret agreement between past generations and the present. Our

coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded

us, we have been endowed with a
weak
Messianic power, a power

to which the past has a claim.’’9

This theoretical experience arose precisely where the crisis of

modernity appeared with the most intensity. On this same terrain

other authors sought to break with the remnants ofthe dialectic

and its powers ofsubsumption. It seems to us, however, that even

the strongest thinkers ofthe day were not able to break with the

dialectic and the crisis. In Max Weber the crisis ofsovereignty and

legitimacy can be resolved only through recourse to the irrational

figures ofcharisma. In Carl Schmitt the horizon ofsovereign prac-

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tices can be cleared only by recourse to the ‘‘decision.’’ An irrational

dialectic, however, cannot resolve or even attenuate the crisis of

reality.10 And the powerful shadow of an aestheticized dialectic slips

even into Heidegger’s notion ofa pastoral function over a scattered

and fractured being.

For the real clarification ofthis scene, we are most indebted

to the series ofFrench philosophers who reread Nietzsche several

decades later, in the 1960s.11 Their rereading involved a reorienta-

tion ofthe standpoint ofthe critique, which came about when they

began to recognize the end ofthe functioning ofthe dialectic and

when this recognition was confirmed in the new practical, political

experiences that centered on the production ofsubjectivity. This

was a production ofsubjectivity as power, as the constitution ofan

autonomy that could not be reduced to any abstract or transcendent

synthesis.12 Not the dialectic but refusal, resistance, violence, and

the positive affirmation of being now marked the relationship be-

tween the location ofthe crisis in reality and the adequate response.

What in the midst ofthe crisis in the 1920s appeared as transcendence

against history, redemption against corruption, and messianism

against nihilism now was constructed as an ontologically definite

position outside and against, and thus beyond every possible resi-

due ofthe dialectic. This was a new materialism which negated

every transcendent element and constituted a radical reorientation

ofspirit.

In order to understand the profundity of this passage, one

would do well to focus on the awareness and anticipation of it in

the thought ofLudwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s early writings

gave a new life to the dominant themes of early twentieth-century

European thought: the condition ofdwelling in the desert ofsense

and searching for meaning, the coexistence of a mysticism of the

totality and the ontological tendency toward the production of

subjectivity. Contemporary history and its drama, which had been

stripped away from any dialectic, were then removed by Witt-

genstein from any contingency. History and experience became

the scene ofa materialist and tautological refoundation ofthe subject

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379

in a desperate attempt to find coherence in the crisis. In the midst

ofWorld War I Wittgenstein wrote: ‘‘How things stand, is God.

God is, how things stand. Only from the consciousness of the

uniqueness of my life
arises religion—science—and art.’’ And further:

‘‘This consciousness is life itself. Can it be an ethics even if there

is no living being outside myself? Can there be any ethics if there

is no living being but myself? If ethics is supposed to be something

fundamental, there can. If I am right, then it is not sufficient for

the ethical judgment that a world be given. Then the world in

itselfis neither good nor evil . . . Good and evil only enter through

the
subject.
And the subject is not part ofthe world, but a boundary ofthe world.’’ Wittgenstein denounces the God ofwar and the

desert ofthings in which good and evil are now indistinguishable

by situating the world on the limit oftautological subjectivity:

‘‘Here one can see that solipsism coincides with pure realism, ifit

is strictly thought out.’’13 This limit, however, is creative. The

alternative is completely given when, and only when, subjectivity

is posed outside the world: ‘‘My propositions serve as elucidations

in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recog-

nizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to

climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder

after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and

then he will see the world aright.’’14 Wittgenstein recognizes the

end ofevery possible dialectic and any meaning that resides in the

logic ofthe world and not in its marginal, subjective surpassing.

The tragic trajectory ofthis philosophical experience allows

us to grasp those elements that made the perception ofthe crisis

ofmodernity and the decline ofthe idea ofEurope a (negative but

necessary) condition ofthe definition ofthe coming Empire. These

authors were voices crying out in the desert. Part ofthis generation

would be interned in extermination camps. Others would perpetu-

ate the crisis through an illusory faith in Soviet modernization.

Others still, a significant group ofthese authors, would flee to

America. They were indeed voices crying out in the desert, but

their rare and singular anticipations oflife in the desert give us the

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means to reflect on the possibilities ofthe multitude in the new

reality ofpostmodern Empire. Those authors were the first to define

the condition ofthe complete deterritorialization ofthe coming

Empire, and they were situated in it just as the multitudes are

situated in it today. The negativity, the refusal to participate, the

discovery ofan emptiness that invests everything: this means situat-

ing oneselfperemptorily in an imperial reality that is itselfdefined