Negri interview

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Oct 24 15:08:04 PDT 2001


Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Negri speaking]
> What must be done? "Exodus", withdraw from the
> debate, desert, desert to the end: work, war, knowledge. That means
> building up another life which is not that of these 'messieurs', the
> talibans of the dollar and the talibans of oil.

It's this proposition, which derives from nothing and leads to nothing, which makes me think that _Empire_ is too frivolous to be worth a critique. Actually, Doug made exactly the same critique of it (on Pen-L I think). I forget his exact words, but at the end of his post he spoke of a lack of concreteness in the sections of _Empire_ proposing what to do. I don't see how that lack of concreteness can conceivably be remedied. It wasn't a stylistic fault in the book; it was an unfillable hole in the entire worldview from which the book flowed. And it is impossible (as well as rather silly) to critique an absence.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list