Empire (75 page)

between communication and production in more detail in Section 3.4.

27. See Hardt and Negri,
Labor of Dionysus,
chaps. 6 and 7.

28. Despite the extremism ofthe authors presented in Martin Albrow and

Elizabeth King, eds.,
Globalization, Knowledge, and Society
(London: Sage, 1990), and the relative moderation ofBryan S. Turner,
Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity
(London: Sage, 1990), and Mike Featherstone, ed.,
Global Culture, Nationalism, Globalization, and Modernity
(London: Sage, 1991), the differences among their various positions are really relatively

minor. We should always keep in mind that the image ofa ‘‘global civil

society’’ is born not only in the minds ofcertain postmodernist philoso-

phers and among certain followers of Habermas (such as Jean Cohen and

Andrew Arato), but also and more importantly in the Lockean tradition

ofinternational relations. This latter group includes such important theo-

rists as Richard Falk, David Held, Anthony Giddens, and (in certain

respects) Danilo Zolo. On the concept ofcivil society in the global

context, see Michael Walzer, ed.,
Toward a Global Civil Society
(Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995).

29. With the iconoclastic irony ofJean Baudrillard’s more recent writings

such as
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,
trans. Paul Patton (Bloomington: N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 5 – 3 8

425

Indiana University Press, 1995), a certain vein ofFrench postmodernism

has gone back to a properly surrealist framework.

30. There is an uninterrupted continuity from the late cold war notions of

‘‘democracy enforcing’’ and ‘‘democratic transition’’ to the imperial theo-

ries of ‘‘peace enforcing.’’ We have already highlighted the fact that many moral philosophers supported the GulfWar as a just cause, whereas

juridical theorists, following the important lead of Richard Falk, were

generally opposed. See, for example, Richard Falk, ‘‘Twisting the U.N.

Charter to U.S. Ends,’’ in Hamid Mowlana, George Gerbner, and Herbert

Schiller, eds.,
Triumph of the Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 175–190. See also the discussion

ofthe GulfWar in Danilo Zolo,
Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Govern-

ment,
trans. David McKie (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).

31. For a representative example, see Richard Falk,
Positive Prescriptions for the
Future,
World Order Studies Program occasional paper no. 20 (Princeton: Center for International Studies, 1991). To see how NGOs are integrated

into this more or less Lockean framework of ‘‘global constitutionalism,’’

one should refer to the public declarations of Antonio Cassese, president

ofthe United Nations Criminal Court in Amsterdam, in addition to his

books,
International Law in a Divided World
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), and
Human Rights in a Changing World
(Philadelphia: Temple

University Press, 1990).

32. Even the proposals to reform the United Nations proceed more or less

along these lines. For a good bibliography ofsuch works, see Joseph

Preston Baratta,
Strengthening the United Nations: A Bibliography on U.N.

Reform and World Federalism
(New York: Greenwood, 1987).

33. This is the line that is promoted in some ofthe strategic documents

published by the U.S. military agencies. According to the present Penta-

gon doctrine, the project ofthe enlargement ofmarket democracy should

be supported by both adequate microstrategies that are based on (both

pragmatic and systemic) zones ofapplication and the continual identifica-

tion ofcritical points and fissures in the antagonistic strong cultural blocs that would lead toward their dissolution. In this regard, see the work of

Maurice Rounai ofthe Strategic Institute in Paris. See also the works on

U.S. interventionism cited in Section 1.1, note 28.

34. One should refer, once again, to the work of Richard Falk and Antonio

Cassese. We should emphasize, in particular, how a ‘‘weak’’ conception

ofthe exercise ofjudicial functions by the U.N. Court ofJustice has

gradually, often under the influence of Left political forces, been trans-

formed into a ‘‘strong’’ conception. In other words, there is a passage

426

N O T E S T O P A G E S 4 1 – 4 7

from the demand that the Court of Justice be invested with the functions

ofjudicial sanction that come under the authority ofthe U.N. structure

to the demand that the court play a direct and active role in the decisions ofthe U.N. and its organs regarding norms ofparity and material justice

among states, to the point ofcarrying out direct intervention in the name

ofhuman rights.

35. See Max Weber,
Economy and Society,
trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1968), vol. 1, chap. 3,

sec. 2, ‘‘The Three Pure Types ofAuthority,’’ pp. 215–216.

1 . 3 A L T E R N A T I V E S W I T H I N E M P I R E

1. We mean to ‘‘flirt with Hegel’’ here the way Marx described in the

famous postscript to volume 1 of
Capital
(trans. Ben Fowkes [New York: Vintage, 1976]) ofJanuary 24, 1873 (pp. 102–103). As they did to Marx,

Hegel’s terms seem useful to us to frame the argument, but quickly we

will run up against the real limit oftheir utility.

2. This presentation is admittedly simplified, and many studies present much more sophisticated discussions ofplace. It seems to us, however, that

these political analyses always come back to a notion of‘‘defending’’ or

‘‘preserving’’ the bounded local identity or territory. Doreen Massey ar-

gues explicitly for a politics of place in which place is conceived not as

bounded but as open and porous to flows beyond, in
Space, Place, and

Gender
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994), in particular p. 5. We would contend, however, that a notion ofplace that has no

boundaries empties the concept completely ofits content. For an excellent

review ofthe literature and an alternative conception ofplace, see Arif

Dirlik, ‘‘Place-based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics ofPlace,’’

unpublished manuscript.

3. We will return to the concept ofthe nation at greater length in Sec-

tion 2.2.

4. ‘ I view location as a fundamental material attribute of human activity

but recognize that location is socially produced.’’ David Harvey,
The

Limits of Capital
(Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1984), p. 374.

Arjun Appadurai also discusses ‘‘the production oflocality’’ in a way

consistent with Harvey and with our argument in
Modernity at Large:

Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1996), pp. 178–199.

5. Erich Auerbach,
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature,
trans. Willard Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953).

6. This methodological connection between critique and construction that

rests firmly on the basis ofa collective subject was articulated well in

N O T E S T O P A G E S 4 8 – 5 2

427

Marx’s own historical writings and developed by various traditions of

heterodox Marxist historiography in the twentieth century, such as the

work ofE. P. Thompson, the Italian workerist writers, and the South

Asian subaltern historians.

7. See, for example, Guy Debord’s
Society of the Spectacle,
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994), which is perhaps the

best articulation, in its own delirious way, ofthe contemporary conscious-

ness ofthe triumph ofcapital.

8. For a good example ofthis deconstructionist method that demonstrates

its virtues and its limitations, see the work ofGayatri Spivak, in particular her introduction to Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds.,
Selected Subaltern Studies
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3–32.

9. See ArifDirlik, ‘‘Mao Zedong and ‘Chinese Marxism,’ ’ in Saree Makdisi,

Cesare Casarino, and Rebecca Karl, eds.,
Marxism beyond Marxism
(New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 119–148. See also ArifDirlik, ‘‘Modernism

and Antimodernism in Mao Zedong’s Marxism,’’ in ArifDirlik, Paul

Healy, and Nick Knight, eds.,
Critical Perspectives on Mao Zedong’s Thought
(Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1997), pp. 59–83.

10. On the tactical ambiguities ofthe ‘‘national politics’’ ofthe socialist and communist parties, see primarily the work ofthe Austro-Marxists, such

as Otto Bauer’s
Die Nationalita¨tenfrage und die Sozialdomocratie
(Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1924); and Stalin’s influential ‘‘Marxism and

the National Question,’’ in
Marxism and the National and Colonial Question
(New York: International Publishers, 1935), pp. 3–61. We will return

to these authors in Section 2.2. For a special and particularly interesting case, see Enzo Traverso,
Les marxistes et la question juive
(Paris: La Brèche, 1990).

11. On the cycle ofanti-imperialist struggles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (seen from the Chinese perspective), see Rebecca

Karl,
Staging the World: China and the Non-West at the Turn of the Twentieth
Century
(Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming).

12. On the hypothesis that struggles precede and prefigure capitalist development and restructuring, see Antonio Negri,
Revolution Retrieved
(London: Red Notes, 1988).

13. This notion ofthe proletariat might thus be understood in Marx’s own

terms as the personification ofa strictly economic category, that is, the

subject oflabor under capital. As we redefine the very concept oflabor

and extend the range ofactivities understood under it (as we have done

elsewhere and will continue to do in this book), the traditional distinction 428

N O T E S T O P A G E S 5 5 – 6 0

between the economic and the cultural breaks down. Even in Marx’s

most economistic formulations, however, proletariat must be understood

really as a properly
political
category. See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Labor of Dionysus
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994), pp. 3–21; and Antonio Negri, ‘‘Twenty Theses ofMarx,’’ in

Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarino, and Rebecca Karl, eds.,
Marxism beyond

Marxism
(New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 149–180.

14. See Michael Hardt, ‘‘Los Angeles Novos,’’
Futur anteŕieur,
no. 12/13

(1991), 12–26.

15. See Luis Gomez, ed.,
Mexique: du Chiapas à la crise financière,
Supplement,
Futur anteŕieur
(1996).

16. See primarily
Futur anteŕieur,
no. 33/34,
Tous ensemble! Re´flections sur les
luttes de novembre-dećembre
(1996). See also Raghu Krishnan, ‘‘December 1995: The First Revolt against Globalization,’’
Monthly Review,
48, no.

1 (May 1996), 1–22.

17. Karl Marx,
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
(New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 121.

18. See Gilles Deleuze, ‘‘Postscript on Control Societies,’’ in
Negatiations,
trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995),

pp. 177–182.

19. In opposition to the theories ofthe ‘‘weakest link,’’ which not only were the heart ofthe tactics ofthe Third International but also were largely

adopted by the anti-imperialist tradition as a whole, the Italian
operaismo
movement ofthe 1960s and 1970s proposed a theory ofthe ‘‘strongest

link.’’ For the fundamental theoretical thesis, see Mario Tronti,
Operai e
capitale
(Turin: Einaudi, 1966), esp. pp. 89–95.

20. One can find ample and continuous documentation ofthese techniques

of disinformation and silencing in publications ranging from
Le Monde

Diplomatique
to
Z Magazine
and the
Covert Action Bulletin.
Noam Chomsky has tirelessly worked to unveil and counter such disinformation in

his numerous books and lectures. See, for example, Edward Herman and

Noam Chomsky,
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass

Media
(New York: Pantheon, 1988). The GulfWar presented an excellent example ofthe imperial management ofcommunication. See W. Lance

Bennett and David L. Paletz, eds.,
Taken by Storm: The Media, Public

Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); and Douglas Kellner,
The Persian Gulf TV War

(Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).

21. This operation offlattening the struggles in the f

orm ofan inverted

homology with the system is adequately represented by the (in other

N O T E S T O P A G E S 6 1 – 7 3

429

respects quite impressive and important) work ofImmanuel Wallerstein

and the world systems school. See, for example, Giovanni Arrighi, Ter-

ence Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein,
Antisystemic Movements
(London: Verso, 1989).

22. Keeping in mind the limitations we mentioned earlier, one should refer

here to the work ofFeĺix Guattari, particularly the writings ofhis final

period such as
Chaosmosis,
trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis (Sydney: Power Publications, 1995).

P O L I T I C A L M A N I F E S T O

1. Louis Althusser, ‘‘Machiavel et nous,’’ in
E