Empire (17 page)

The Hegelian relationship between particular and universal brings

together in adequate and functional terms the Hobbes-Rousseau

theory ofsovereignty and Smith’s theory ofvalue. Modern Euro-

pean sovereignty is capitalist sovereignty, a form of command that

overdetermines the relationship between individuality and univer-

sality as a function ofthe development ofcapital.

The Sovereignty Machine

When the synthesis ofsovereignty and capital is fully accomplished,

and the transcendence ofpower is completely transformed into a

transcendental exercise ofauthority, then sovereignty becomes a

political machine that rules across the entire society. Through the

workings ofthe sovereignty machine the multitude is in every

moment transformed into an ordered totality. We should play close

attention to this passage because here we can see clearly how the

transcendental schema is an ideology that functions concretely and

how different modern sovereignty is from that of the ancien re´gime.

In addition to being a political power against all external political

powers, a state against all other states, sovereignty is also a police

power. It must continually and extensively accomplish the miracle

ofthe subsumption ofsingularities in the totality, ofthe will ofall

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into the general will. Modern bureaucracy is the essential organ of

the transcendental—Hegel
dixit.
And even ifHegel exaggerates a

bit in his quasi-theological consecration ofthe body ofstate employ-

ees, at least he makes clear their central role in the effective function-

ing ofthe modern state. Bureaucracy operates the apparatus that

combines legality and organizational efficiency, title and the exercise

ofpower, politics and police. The transcendental theory ofmodern

sovereignty, thus reaching maturity, realizes a new ‘‘individual’’ by

absorbing society into power. Little by little, as the administration

develops, the relationship between society and power, between the

multitude and the sovereign state, is inverted so that now power

and the state produce society.

This passage in the history ofideas does indeed parallel the

development ofsocial history. It corresponds to the dislocation of

the organizational dynamic ofthe state from the terrain ofmedieval

hierarchy to that of modern discipline, from command to function.

Max Weber and Michel Foucault, to mention only the most illustri-

ous, have insisted at length on these metamorphoses in the sociologi-

cal figures ofpower. In the long transition from medieval to modern

society, the first form of the political regime was, as we have seen,

rooted in transcendence. Medieval society was organized according

to a hierarchical schema ofdegrees ofpower. This is what modernity

blew apart in the course ofits development. Foucault refers to this

transition as the passage from the paradigm of sovereignty to that

ofgovernmentality, where by sovereignty he means the transcen-

dence ofthe single point ofcommand above the social field, and

by governmentality he means the general economy ofdiscipline

that runs throughout society.34 We prefer to conceive of this as a

passage
within
the notion ofsovereignty, as a transition to a new

form of transcendence. Modernity replaced the traditional transcen-

dence ofcommand with the transcendence ofthe ordering function.

Arrangements ofdiscipline had begun to be formed already in the

classical age, but only in modernity did the disciplinary diagram

become the diagram ofadministration itself. Throughout this pas-

sage administration exerts a continuous, extensive, and tireless effort

T W O E U R O P E S , T W O M O D E R N I T I E S

89

to make the state always more intimate to social reality, and thus

produce and order social labor. The old theses, à la Tocqueville,

ofthe continuity ofadministrative bodies across dif

f

erent social

eras are thus profoundly revised when not completely discarded.

Foucault, however, goes still further to claim that the disciplinary

processes, which are put into practice by the administration, delve

so deeply into society that they manage to configure themselves as

apparatuses that take into account the collective biological dimen-

sion ofthe reproduction ofthe population. The realization of

modern sovereignty is the birth ofbiopower.35

Before Foucault, Max Weber also described the administrative

mechanisms involved in the formation of modern sovereignty.36

Whereas Foucault’s analysis is vast in its diachronic breadth, Weber’s

is powerful in its synchronic depth. With respect to our discussion

ofmodern sovereignty, Weber’s contribution is first ofall his claim

that the opening ofmodernity is defined as a scission—a creative

condition ofindividuals and the multitude against the process of

state reappropriation. State sovereignty is then defined as a regulation

ofthis relationship offorce. Modernity is above all marked by the

tension ofthe opposing f

orces. Every process oflegitimation is

regulated by this tension, and operates to block its capacity for

rupture and recuperate its creative initiative. The closure ofthe

crisis ofmodernity in a new sovereign power can be given in old

and quasi-naturalist forms, as is the case with traditional legitimation;

or rather, it can be given in sacred and innovative, irrationally

innovative, forms, as in charismatic legitimation; or finally, and this

is to a large extent the most effective form of late modernity, it

can be given in the form of administrative rationalization. The

analysis ofthese forms oflegitimation is Weber’s second relevant

contribution, which builds on the first, the recognition ofthe

dualism ofthe paradigm. The third relevant point is Weber’s treat-

ment ofthe procedural character ofthe transformation, the always

present and possible interweaving ofthe various forms oflegitima-

tion, and their continuous capacity to be extended and deepened

in the control ofsocial reality. From this follows a final paradox:

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ifon the one hand this process closes the crisis ofmodernity, on

the other hand it reopens it. The form ofthe process ofclosure is

as critical and conflictual as the genesis ofmodernity. In this respect

Weber’s work has the great merit to have completely destroyed

the self-satisfied and triumphant conception of the sovereignty of

the modern state that Hegel had produced.

Weber’s analysis was quickly taken up by the writers engaged

in the critique ofmodernity, from Heidegger and Lukaćs to Hork-

heimer and Adorno. They all recognized that Weber had revealed

the illusion ofmodernity, the illusion that the antagonistic dualism

that resides at the base ofmodernity could be subsumed in a unitary

synthesis investing all ofsociety and politics, including the produc-

tive forces and the relations of production. They recognized, finally,

that modern sovereignty had passed its peak and begun to wane.

As modernity declines, a new season is opened, and here we

find again that dramatic antithesis that was at the origins and basis

ofmodernity. Has anything really changed? The civil war has

erupted again in full force. The synthesis between the development

ofproductive forces and relations ofdomination seems once again

precarious and improbable. The desires ofthe multitude and its

antagonism to every form of domination drive it to divest itself

once again ofthe processes oflegitimation that support the sovereign

power. Certainly, no one would imagine this as a return ofthat

old world ofdesires that animated the first humanist revolution.

New subjectivities inhabit the new terrain; modernity and its capital-

ist relations have completely changed the scene in the course ofits

development. And yet something remains: there is a sense ofde´jà

vu when we see the reappearance ofthe struggles that have continu-

ally been passed down from those origins. The experience of the

revolution will be reborn after modernity, but within the new

conditions that modernity constructed in such a contradictory way.

Machiavelli’s return to origins seems to be combined with Nietz-

sche’s heroic eternal return. Everything is different and nothing

seems to have changed. Is this the coming ofa new human power?

‘‘For this is the secret ofthe soul: when the hero hath abandoned

it, then only approacheth it in dreams—the super-hero.’’37

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91

H UMANISM AFTER THE D EATH OF M AN

Michel Foucault’s final works on the history of sexuality bring to life once
again that same revolutionary impulse that animated Renaissance humanism. The ethical care of the self reemerges as a constituent power of self-creation. How is it possible that the author who worked so hard to convince
us of the death of Man, the thinker who carried the banner of antihumanism
throughout his career, would in the end champion these central tenets of
the humanist tradition? We do not mean to suggest that Foucault contradicts
himself or that he reversed his earlier position; he was always so insistent
about the continuity of his discourse. Rather, Foucault asks in his final
work a paradoxical and urgent question: What is humanism after the death
of Man? Or rather, what is an antihumanist (or posthuman) humanism?

This question, however, is only a seeming paradox that derives at

least in part from a terminological confusion between two distinct notions
of humanism. The antihumanism that was such an important project for

Foucault and Althusser in the 1960s can be linked effectively to a battle
that Spinoza fought three hundred years earlier. Spinoza denounced any

understanding of humanity as an
imperium in imperio.
In other words,
he refused to accord any laws to human nature that were different from the
laws of nature as a whole. Donna Haraway carries on Spinoza’s project

in our day as she insists on breaking down the barriers we pose among the
human, the animal, and the machine. If we are to conceive Man as separate
from nature, then Man does not exist. This recognition is precisely the
death of Man.

This antihumanism, however, need not conflict with the revolutionary

spirit of Renaissance humanism we outlined earlier from Cusano to Marsilius. In fact, this antihumanism follows directly on Renaissance humanism’s
secularizing project, or more precisely, its discovery of the plane of immanence.

Both projects are founded on an attack on transcendence. There is a strict
continuity between the religious thought that accords a power above nature
to God and the modern ‘‘secular’’ thought that accords that same power

above nature to Man. The transcendence of God is simply transferred to

Man. Like God before it, this Man that stands separate from and above

nature has no place in a philosophy of immanence. Like God, too, this

transcendent figure of Man leads quickly to the imposition of social hierarchy
and domination. Antihumanism, then, conceived as a refusal of any transcen-92

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dence, should in no way be confused with a negation of the
vis viva,
the
creative life force that animates the revolutionary stream of the modern
tradition. On the contrary, the refusal of transcendence is the condition of
possibility of thinking this immanent power, an anarchic basis of philosophy:

‘‘Ni Dieu, ni maıˆtre, ni l’homme.’’

The humanism of Foucault’s final works, then, should not be seen

as contradictory to or even as a departure from the death of Man he proclaimed
twenty years earlier. Once we recognize our posthuman bodies and minds,
once we see ourselves for the simians and cyborgs we are, we then need to
explore the
vis viva,
the creative powers that animate us as they do all of
nature and actualize our potentialities. This is humanism after the death
of Man: what Foucault calls ‘‘le travail de soi sur soi,’’ the continuous
constituent project to create and re-create ourselves and our world.

2.2

S O V E R E I G N T Y O F T H E

N A T I O N - S T A T E

Foreigners, please don’t leave us alone with the French!

Paris graffito, 1995

We thought we were dying for the fatherland. We realized quickly

it was for the bank vaults.

Anatole France

As European modernity progressively took shape, ma-

chines ofpower were constructed to respond to its crisis, searching

continually for a surplus that would resolve or at least contain the

crisis. In the previous section we traced the path ofone response

to the crisis that led to the development ofthe modern sovereign

state. The second approach centers on the concept ofnation, a

development that presupposes the first path and builds on it to

construct a more perfect mechanism to reestablish order and