On Hardt and Negri's Empire
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posted by DR. AZLY RAHMAN at
2:43 PM
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
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1 Comments:
Reading through the preface of the Empire book, few phrases within the preface holds interesting ideas and point of views:
1-The passage to Empire emerges from the twilight of modern sovereignty (sovereignty of the European nation-states beyond their own boundaries) which considered the corner stone for imperialism.
2-In contrast to imperialism, Empire is a de-centered and de-territorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. New form of sovereignty has emerged, and no nation-state can today, form the center of an imperialist project.
3-Even though the Empire we faced today wields enormous power of oppression and destruction, the passage to Empire and its processes of globalization offer new possibilities to the forces of liberation (forces of the multitude) through reorganizing these processes and redirecting them towards new ends. Through this struggle, the multitude will have to invent new democratic forms and a new constituent power that will one day take us through and beyond Empire.
These points reminds me of Hollywood films were universal evil power rules the earth by manipulating the resources and technology within its constructed universal savage and instinct based civil life without cultural heritage (usually this construct accure after a global war that demolish all civilizations and world order). Then, a man from this same society coincidently and for a stupid reason, collides with the evil power and demolishes it, with no hint of what is coming after.
Collision between the idea and its encounter create a new idea also with its own new encounter idea.
Also the Quran Islamic scripture says: if it wasn’t for people’s interaction and compete among each other, the earth would have got corrupted.
Empire can’t survive without creating its own identity, and one of the key elements for identity is culture, or else its going to be the same as the hollywood movie. It is impossible to enforce a culture upon another, or bounding various cultures without common goal or interest.
It would be more convincing if the suggested Empire and its processes operate through multi cultural construct that seek mutuality rather than differences and the acceptance of the diversity within its construct to regulate its existence and continuity.. And yet has the flexibility to contain and adapt with the encounter.
The book suggests philosophical reconstruct rather than renovation and continuation for human history, based on capitalistic foundations to construct an Empire that can lead to a post Empire. The same order that socialism had to go through in order to reach communism and failed, because of its unawareness, underestimating, of the power of element that shaped history and human cultures.
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