----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> According to your argument (such as it is), pretty soon, we will have
> no term for any complex phenomenon, like capitalism. In any case, it
> explains nothing about Hardt's preference for the empty term
> "Anti-Americanism."
> --
> Yoshie
================
Let me see if I understand your assertions:
1) "Anti-Americanism" does not refer -it is an empty term.
2) When I suggest that if that is indeed the case, then the term USA can be unbundled and from at least one perspective can be shown to be such an immense array of contradictions such that homogenizing "it" in order to make blanket generalizations regarding "it" as a unified/reified agent are every bit as vacuous and false as "liberals don't care about civil liberties in times of crisis" you regard this as an explanation, when in fact it is not.
3) You then merely reassert that anti-Americanism is an empty term without any supporting defense of said assertion. No, please don't provide one.
4) It is indeed an open question as to whether capitalism is a signifier capable of elucidating and explaining the motivations of agents in the political economy. I would hold that it is, but, more importantly, that there are varieties of capitalism and that understanding the pluralizing/differentiating tendencies of capitalisms/markets is of far more consequences for getting a handle on how to understand/participate and deal with the global/local strategies of resistance in pursuing and exploring possible modes of transforming the current dynamics of financialization, gender/race/class realignments-displacements, ecosystem plunder etc. etc. This means paying critical attention to vocabularies and idioms without feeling the need to have a master idiom with its setting up of binaries in order to feel secure and exclusionary vis a vis new concepts, categories, narratives etc. Complex systems theory, would in fact facilitate the further elaboration of understanding the current conjuncture particularly with regards to technologies. In that sense there is *plenty* more to say and write about.
Ian