What's Left of Philosophy 117 | Hardt and Negri's Empire, 25 Years Later
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Jul 7, 2025 Explore the influential themes of Hardt and Negri's 'Empire' as it critiques globalization and revisits localism versus global dynamics. Discover the concept of the 'multitude' as a response to global capital and how technology transforms labor identities in a cybernetic world. Delve into the realities of deindustrialization and the impact of historical movements like the Arab Spring. The discussion navigates the limitations of traditional political parties and emphasizes the need for innovative approaches to public dissent and political organization.
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Empire as New Global Power
- Hardt and Negri diagnose "Empire" as a new global form of capitalist power beyond the nation-state.
- They describe a "society of control" where power operates biopolitically through communication networks, subsuming subjectivity.
Multitude as Fluid Subject
- The multitude is a fluid, creative, and constantly reinventing political subject opposed to fixed identities.
- It rejects traditional categories like nation, race, or class and forms new universals through singular struggles.
Resistance in Control Society
- The "society of control" relies on information technologies to subsume individuals fully into capitalist structures.
- Resistance arises by finding and exploiting gaps within power networks, similar to molecular reactions in chemistry.
