----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Alexandre wrote:
>
> >>Brad de Long wrote
> >>
> >>By people who think that in some way September 11 was "an attack
upon
> >>Empire," a "doing unto Empire as Empire has done unto you," rather
> >>than an act of mass murder
> >
> >-There are no contradiction between those two conceptions, in the
end
> >-it was both mass murder and an attack upon Empire
>
> Perhaps attacks on the Empire should be divided into four different
categories:
>
> (1) justified and effective attacks on the Empire;
>
> (2) justified but ineffective attacks on the Empire;
>
> (3) unjustified but effective attacks on the Empire;
>
> (4) unjustified and ineffective attacks on the Empire.
> --
> Yoshie
>
=============
This is great except that it assumes what, to your ideological 'opponents', needs to be proved; namely that *empire* is a social kind, a genuine category in any historico-social ontology. I'm not saying that it isn't, just that it's an essentially contestable concept and that those who find the concept repugnant have plenty of epistemic tools to challenge it's use as a category.
As I argued with a very dear ex-college roommate who's in the Army and hasn't talked to me since the US-China incident earlier this year when I told him it was only a matter of time before somebody was gonna 'body slam' the American empire, imperialism isn't sexy anymore--indeed it never has been. It won't go because it's attacked, it'll go when the US elites and the US 'body politic' realize the Swedes and the Dutch have more fun despite the fact utopias are beyond our reach. Capitalism or not, the US now has the opportunity and responsibility to act like a *potlatch* society; indeed it must become one at the very least if it wants to make it to 2050 or even 2030 and still wants to attempt to play a creative role on this planet. This means listening to the oppressed with fresh ears and fresh brains. Whether an old dog can learn the new tricks others are more than ready to teach remains to be seen....
Ian