Empire (74 page)

articulated explicitly by Foucault but remains implicit in his work. We

follow the excellent commentaries of Gilles Deleuze in this interpretation.

See Gilles Deleuze,
Foucault
(Paris: Minuit, 1986); and ‘‘Post-scriptum 420

N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 3 – 2 5

sur les socie´teś de controˆle,’’ in
Pourparlers
(Paris: Minuit, 1990). See also Michael Hardt, ‘‘The Withering ofCivil Society,’’
Social Text,
no. 45

(Winter 1995), 27–44.

2. See primarily Michel Foucault,
The History of Sexuality,
trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), 1:135–145. For other treatments of

the concept ofbiopolitics in Foucualt’s opus, see ‘‘The Politics ofHealth

in the Eighteenth Century,’’ in
Power/Knowledge,
ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 166–182; ‘‘La naissance de la me´decine sociale,’’ in
Dits et ećrits
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 3:207–228, particularly p. 210; and ‘‘Naissance de la biopolitique,’’ in
Dits et ećrits,
3:818–825.

For examples ofwork by other authors following Foucault’s notion of

biopolitics, see Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, eds.,
Michel Foucault:
Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
(Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1992), pp. 133–142; and Jacques Donzelot,
The Policing of Families,
trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1979).

3. Michel Foucault, ‘‘Les mailles du pouvoir,’’ in
Dits et ećrits
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 4:182–201; quotation p. 194.

4. Many thinkers have followed Foucault along these lines and successfully

problematized the welfare state. See primarily Jacques Donzelot,
L’invention du social
(Paris: Fayard, 1984); and Franc¸ois Ewald,
L’e´tat providence
(Paris: Seuil, 1986).

5. See Karl Marx, ‘‘Results ofthe Immediate Process ofProduction,’’ trans.

Rodney Livingstone, published as the appendix to
Capital,
trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1976), 1:948–1084. See also Antonio Negri,
Marx beyond Marx,
trans. Harry Cleaver, Michael Ryan, and Maurizio Viano (New York: Autonomedia, 1991).

6. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,
The Dialectic of Enlightenment,
trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972).

7. See Gilles Deleuze and Feĺix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus,
trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1987).

8. See, for example, Peter Dews,
Logics of Disintegration: Poststructuralist
Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory
(London: Verso, 1987), chaps. 6

and 7. When one adopts this definition ofpower and the crises that

traverse it, Foucault’s discourse (and even more so that ofDeleuze and

Guattari) presents a powerful theoretical framework for critiquing the

welfare state. For analyses that are more or less in line with this discourse, see Claus Offe,
Disorganized Capitalism: Contemporary Transformations of
Work and Politics
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985); Antonio Negri,
Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings
(London: Red Notes, 1988); and the essays by Antonio Negri included in Michael Hardt and Antonio

N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 6 – 2 8

421

Negri,
Labor of Dionysus
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994), pp. 23–213.

9. The notions of‘‘totalitarianism’’ that were constructed during the period of the cold war proved to be useful instruments for propaganda but

completely inadequate analytical tools, leading most often to pernicious

inquisitional methods and damaging moral arguments. The numerous

shelves ofour libraries that are filled with analyses oftotalitarianism should today be regarded only with shame and could be thrown away with no

hesitation. For a briefsample ofthe literature on totalitarianism from the

most coherent to the most absurd, see Hannah Arendt,
The Origins of

Totalitarianism
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951); and Jeanne Kirkpat-rick,
Dictatorships and Double Standards
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). We will return to the concept oftotalitarianism in more detail in

Section 2.2.

10. We are referring here to the thematics of
Mobilmachtung
that were developed in the Germanic world primarily in the 1920s and 1930s, more or

less from Ernst Ju¨nger to Carl Schmitt. In French culture, too, such

positions emerged in the 1930s, and the polemics around them have still

not died down. The figure ofGeorges Bataille is at the center ofthis

discussion. Along different lines, on ‘‘general mobilization’’ as a paradigm ofthe constitution ofcollective labor power in Fordist capitalism, see

Jean Paul de Gaudemar,
La mobilisation geńeŕale
(Paris: Maspero, 1978).

11. One could trace a very interesting line of discussions that effectively develop the Foucauldian interpretation ofbiopower f

rom Jacques

Derrida’s reading ofWalter Benjamin’s ‘‘Critique ofViolence’’ (‘‘Force

ofLaw,’’ in Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson,

eds.,
Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice
[New York: Routledge, 1992], pp. 3–67) to Giorgio Agamben’s more recent and more stimulating

contribution,
Homo sacer: il potere sovrano e la nuda vita
(Turin: Einaudi, 1995). It seems fundamental to us, however, that all of these discussions

be brought back to the question ofthe productive dimensions of‘‘bios,’’

identifying in other words the materialist dimension of the concept be-

yond any conception that is purely naturalistic (life as ‘‘zoè’ ) or simply anthropological (as Agamben in particular has a tendency to do, making

the concept in effect indifferent).

12. Michel Foucault, ‘‘La naissance de la me´decine sociale,’’ in
Dits et ećrits
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 3:210.

13. See Henri Lefebvre,
L’ideologie structuraliste
(Paris: Anthropos, 1971); Gilles Deleuze, ‘ A quoi reconnait-on le structuralisme?’’ in Franc¸ois Chaˆtelet, ed.,
Histoire de la philosophie,
vol. 8 (Paris: Hachette, 1972), pp. 299–335; 422

N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 8 – 3 0

and Fredric Jameson,
The Prison-House of Language
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).

14. When Deleuze formulates his methodological differences with Foucault

in a private letter written in 1977, the primary point ofdisagreement

comes down precisely to just such a question ofproduction. Deleuze

prefers the term ‘‘desire’’ to Foucault’s ‘‘pleasure,’’ he explains, because desire grasps the real and active dynamic ofthe production ofsocial reality whereas pleasure is merely inert and reactive: ‘‘Pleasure interrupts the

positivity ofdesire and the constitution ofits plane ofimmanence.’’ See

Gilles Deleuze, ‘‘Deśir et plaisir,’’
Magazine Litteŕaire,
no. 325 (October 1994), 59–65; quotation p. 64.

15. Feĺix Guattari has perhaps developed the extreme consequences ofthis

type of social critique, while carefully avoiding falling into the anti–‘‘grand narrative’’ style ofpostmodernist argument, in his
Chaosmosis,
trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis (Sydney: Power Publications, 1995). From a

metaphysical point ofview, among the followers ofNietzsche, we find

roughly analogous positions expressed in Massimo Cacciari,
DRAN: meŕi-

diens de la dećision dans la penseé contemporaine
(Paris: L’E

ćlat, 1991).

16. In English, see primarily the essays in Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt,

eds.,
Radical Thought in Italy
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1996). See also Christian Marazzi,
Il posto dei calzini: la svolta linguistica
dell’economia e i suoi effetti nella politica
(Bellinzona: Edizioni Casagrande); and numerous issues ofthe French journal
Futur anteŕieur,
particularly nos. 10 (1992) and 35–36 (1996). For an analysis that appropriates central

elements ofthis project but ultimately fails to capture its power, see Andre´

Gorz,
Misère du preśent, richesse du possible
(Paris: Galileé, 1997).

17. The framework on which this line of inquiry is built is both its great

wealth and its real limitation. The analysis must in effect be carried

beyond the constraints ofthe ‘‘workerist’’ (
operaista
) analysis ofcapitalist development and the state-form. One of its limitations, for example, is

highlighted by Gayatri Spivak,
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
(New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 162, who insists on the fact that the

conception ofvalue in this line ofMarxist analysis may function in the

dominant countries (including in the context ofcertain streams offeminist

theory) but completely misses the mark in the context ofthe subordinated

regions ofthe globe. Spivak’s questioning is certainly extremely important

for the problematic we are developing in this study. In fact, from a

methodological point ofview, we would say that the most profound and

solid problematic complex that has yet been elaborated for the critique

of biopolitics is found in feminist theory, particularly Marxist and socialist N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 0 – 3 2

423

feminist theories that focus on women’s work, affective labor, and the

production ofbiopower. This presents the framework perhaps best suited

to renew the methodology ofthe European ‘‘workerist’’ schools.

18. The theories ofthe ‘‘turbulence’’ ofthe international order, and even

more ofthe new world order, which we cited earlier (see primarily the

work ofJ. G. Ruggie), generally avoid in their explanation ofthe causes

ofthis turbulence any reference to the contradictory character ofcapitalist relations. Social turbulence is considered merely a consequence ofthe

international dynamics among state actors in such a way that turbulence

can be normalized within the strict disciplinary limits ofinternational

relations. Social and class struggles are effectively hidden by the method

ofanalysis itself. From this perspective, then, the ‘‘productive bios’’ cannot really be understood. The same is more or less the case for the authors

ofthe world-systems perspective, who focus primarily on the cycles of

the system and systemic crises (see the works ofWallerstein and Arrighi

cited earlier). Theirs is in effect a world (and a history) without subjectivity. What they miss is the function of the productive bios, or really the

fact that capital is not a thing but a social relationship, an antagonistic relationship, one side ofwhich is animated by the productive lif

e of

the multitude.

19. Giovanni Arrighi,
The Long Twentieth Century
(London: Verso, 1995), for example, claims such a continuity in the role of capitalist corporations.

For an excellent contrasting view in terms ofperiodization and method-

ological approach, see Luciano Ferrari Bravo, ‘‘Introduzione: vecchie e

nuove questioni nella teoria dell’imperialismo,’’ in Luciano Ferrari Bravo, ed.,
Imperialismo e classe operaia multinazionale
(Milan: Feltrinelli, 1975), pp. 7–70.

20. See, from the perspective of political analysis, Paul Kennedy,
Preparing for
the Twenty-first Century
(New York: Random House, 1993); and from

the perspective ofeconomic topography and socialist critique, David

Harvey,
The Condition of Postmodernity
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).

21. Marx,
Capital,
1:742.

22. On this point the bibliography we could cite is seemingly endless. In

effect, theories of advertising and consumption have been integrated ( just in time) into the theories ofproduction, to the point where we now

have ideologies of‘‘attention’’ posed as economic value! In any case, for

a selection ofthe numerous works that touch on this field, one would

do well to see Susan Strasser,
Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the
American Mass Market
(New York: Pantheon, 1989); Gary Cross,
Time
and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture
(New York: Routledge,

424

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 2 – 3 4

1993); and, for a more interesting analysis from another perspective, The

Project on Disney,
Inside the Mouse
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). The production ofthe producer, however, is not only the production ofthe consumer. It also involves the production ofhierarchies,

mechanisms ofinclusion and exclusion, and so forth. It involves finally

the production ofcrises. From this point ofview, see Jeremy Rifkin,
The
End of Work: The Decline of Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-market Era
(New York: Putnam, 1995); and Stanley Aronowitz and

William DiFazio,
The Jobless Future
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994).

23. We are indebted to Deleuze and Guattari and their
A Thousand Plateaus
for the most fully elaborated phenomenological description of this industrial-monetary-world-nature, which constitutes the first level ofthe world

order.

24. See Edward Comor, ed.,
The Global Political Economy of Communication
(London: Macmillan, 1994).

25. See Stephen Bradley, ed.,
Globalization, Technologies, and Competition: The
Fusion of Computers and Telecommunications in the 90s
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1993); and Simon Serfaty,
The Media and

Foreign Policy
(London: Macmillan, 1990).

26. See Ju¨rgen Habermas,
Theory of Communicative Action,
trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). We discuss this relationship