>So it's not
>like Negri rejected doctrinaire communism for the
>first time in Empire...read "Marx After Marx",
>"Insurgencies", "Labor of Dionysus" and other previous
>works.
Which was precisely my point, Thomas--why I said I got so little new from the book. Thank you for making it precise whereas I didn't.
Also, I'm not saying that 'Empire' is just the sum of its influences. But I am saying the part where it is supposed to be the most original I find totally uncompelling.
I have to disagree about the unimportance of Baudrillard to the discussion in Empire. First re-reading Empire, I finally found one Baudrillard citation in the notes. But why don't you read Baudrillard and then you can see where, in part, the idea of pushing the Empire of the sign through to something else comes from? Only Baudrillard is a total pessimist. Not only are the 'masses' consumerist dead weight, when the capitalist empire bursts in hypertrophy the results will not be anything better.
The idea of a 'deterritorialized empire' is lifted straight from modernist and post-modern analysis of the USA's very real empire, though now we are largely talking about numerous military bases and uncontested sea and air power, as well as a nuclear capability to bring civilization to an end--a possibility if the US ever had a leadership clique as unstable as existing ones are inaccessible to any checks and balances.
And then there is the militarized foreign policy that puts dominant US interests first. As dysfunctional as American democracy may be, defining those interests is what American politics and its narrow spectrum is always about.
Against the book Empire, some of us argue that the world system such as it is has not transcended American dominance or even hegemony. Of course, for American firsters, any decline in American power would be ruinous for the world. The American mission starts with its near unshakeable belief in itself.
I'd be the last person to say the elite of the US control the world in its entirety--they just act like they do and never have any doubts about why they ought to--and hence they find even the possibility of self-reform totally outside their consciousness. It's easy to see just how unilateraland self-contained the Clintonites were and now just how unilateral, bullying, turbo-charged and over-funded the vengeful Bush weenies are.
Of course, their quest for victory is not just material. It's not just about the need for locks on mineral resources (especially oil). They want to rewrite history as well--Somalia, Lebanon, and Iraq will probably be the next targets in the worldwide 'war on terror'.
>Again, I have to ask if you really read this book
>Yoshie. As I have said and it is made clear
>throughout the book that Negri is describing Empire;
>he is not against the breakdown of nationalism per se,
>but wants to see it replaced by global communism.
>That's the bit that the reviewer from Time Magazine
>and YOU seem to not get.
If you back up you'll see Yoshie's analysis did not rest only on this point, but rather also the weakness of the belaboured dance Negri does around American nationalist messianism and hegemony. It's a weakness in Deleuze and Guattari, too, that they seem to know so little about the USA.
There is something to that idea of why so many American firster 'lefties' could swallow the book--besides its citing a bunch of Europeans they likely haven't read since grad school, it's like a double fudge sundae with nuts and no guilt. WE ARE ALL VICTIMS OF EMPIRE. And American workers, with their lack of political participation and ineffective unions, are the vanguard for what comes next. Sure, just like they are the vanguard that leads the world into a deregulated, frictionless market www utopia of symbolic workers and consumers who always get what they want when they want it.
>you need to
>either go back and read Negri and Hardt closely or
>SHUT UP, because you dont know what the hell you are
>talking about.
I'm from a place where they often say things like this, only substitute Bible for Negri and Hardt. In some places it could be the Koran or Das Kapital. If Yoshie came to her conclusions and criticisms without reading the book, she is probably the best intuitive thinker on the list--a distinct possibility (since people scream 'shut up' to her a lot). Also, most books like this could be summed up in about 20 pages or even less, but you can't get people to pay 20 bucks for that. Why I broke down and bought this one, whereas Atlantic Monthly or Foreign Policy articles (Fukuyama, Huntingdon, etc.) usually suffice, is the fault of Amazon.com.
Charles Jannuzi