Empire (Negri and Hardt book)

Empire - The New World Order is a book of the American literary scholar Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the Italian philosopher. It was described by Slavoj Žižek as an attempt to "communist [n ] manifest [s ] of the 21st century " and is considered a central work of Operaism. The original English edition ( Empire. Globalization as a new Roman order, awaiting its early Christian ) was published in 2000, the German translation in 2002.

Meanwhile, a second band (Multitude - War and Democracy in the Empire ), and a third band ( Commonwealth: The end of the property ) published.

Skip to content

Empire attempts to describe the current world order. The power has no clear center more, rather, it is everywhere, it pervades our lives as " biopower " that nation-states are losing importance, wars are to police actions, it is immaterial and networked produced ( " Immaterial labor "). The institutions of the disciplinary society according to Michel Foucault, such as school, prison or hospital, lose their limit and are extended over the whole of society. Hence the ubiquitous society of control forms. This identifies linguistic set, military units, patterns of migration, social movements, companies, physiological structures and even personal relationships.

The Empire knew no outside anymore, it encompasses the whole world and the whole of life. The Empire can deal flexibly with various subject forms, flat hierarchies and the various exchange in computer networks. However, his power is only apparent. The Empire can only react to the actions of the multitude (quantity, multiplicity ). Be It, which is creative and productive and thus the Empire Build only. The Empire is nothing without the multitude.

"Multitude " is in the book Empire, a dazzling concept and difficult to translate, he is in the multitude - performed more accurately War and Democracy in the Empire. In the German translation is " amount " is used, but you can also use it as multiplicity, as a variety (of persons, entities, " singularities " ) understand. He goes back to the philosophy of Cicero ( De re publica ), Spinoza ( multitudo ) and Gilles Deleuze ( rhizome ).

Since there is no more external, is missed by Negri and Hardt any policy that refers to a position outside the Empire. Instead, it was necessary to have come " to himself " the multitude and so throw off the parasitic Empire and achieve a renewed communism. This is being done in the enforcement of three rights: the global citizenship, social wage and the re-appropriation.