Empire (26 page)

the value and limitations ofpostmodernist and postcolonialist theo-

ries is a first step in this project.

Politics of Difference

In order to appreciate fully the critical powers of postmodernist

discourses, one must first focus on the modern forms of sovereignty.

As we saw in the previous sections, the world ofmodern sovereignty

is a Manichaean world, divided by a series ofbinary oppositions

that define Selfand Other, white and black, inside and outside,

ruler and ruled. Postmodernist thought challenges precisely this

binary logic ofmodernity and in this respect provides important

resources for those who are struggling to challenge modern dis-

courses ofpatriarchy, colonialism, and racism. In the context of

postmodernist theories, the hybridity and ambivalences ofour cul-

tures and our senses ofbelonging seem to challenge the binary logic

ofSelfand Other that stands behind modern colonialist, sexist,

and racist constructions. Similarly, the postmodernist insistence on

difference and specificity defies the totalitarianism of universalizing

discourses and structures ofpower; the affirmation offragmented

social identities appears as a means ofcontesting the sovereignty of

both the modern subject and the modern nation-state, along with

all the hierarchies they imply. This postmodernist critical sensibility

is extremely important in this regard because it constitutes the

proposition (or the symptom) ofa break with respect to the entire

development ofmodern sovereignty.

It is difficult to generalize about the numerous discourses that

go under the banner ofpostmodernism, but most ofthem draw at

least indirectly on Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard’s critique ofmodernist

master narratives, Jean Baudrillard’s affirmations of cultural simula-

cra, or Jacques Derrida’s critique ofWestern metaphysics. In the

most basic and reductive formulation, postmodernist theories are

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defined by many oftheir proponents as sharing one single common

denominator, a generalized attack on the Enlightenment.2 From

this perspective the call to action is clear: Enlightenment is the

problem and postmodernism is the solution.

We should take care, however, to look more closely at what

exactly is intended by ‘‘Enlightenment’’ or ‘‘modernity’’ from this

postmodernist perspective.3 We argued earlier that modernity

should be understood not as uniform and homogeneous, but rather

as constituted by at least two distinct and conflicting traditions. The

first tradition is that initiated by the revolution ofRenaissance

humanism, from Duns Scotus to Spinoza, with the discovery of

the place ofimmanence and the celebration ofsingularity and

difference. The second tradition, the Thermidor of the Renaissance

revolution, seeks to control the utopian forces of the first through

the construction and mediation ofdualisms, and arrives finally at

the concept ofmodern sovereignty as a provisional solution. When

postmodernists propose their opposition to a modernity and an

Enlightenment that exalt the universality ofreason only to sustain

white male European supremacy, it should be clear that they are

really attacking the second tradition ofour schema (and unfortu-

nately ignoring or eclipsing the first). It would be more accurate,

in other words, to pose postmodernist theory as a challenge neither

to the Enlightenment nor to modernity in toto but specifically to

the tradition ofmodern sovereignty. More precisely still, these

various theoretical contestations are brought together most coher-

ently in a challenge to the dialectic as the central logic ofmodern

domination, exclusion, and command—for both its relegating the

multiplicity of difference to binary oppositions and its subsequent

subsumption of these differences in a unitary order. If modern

power itselfis dialectical, the logic goes, then the postmodernist

project must be nondialectical.

Once we recognize postmodernist discourses as an attack on

the dialectical form of modern sovereignty, then we can see more

clearly how they contest systems ofdomination such as racism

and sexism by deconstructing the boundaries that maintain the

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141

hierarchies between white and black, masculine and feminine, and

so forth. This is how postmodernists can conceive their theoretical

practice as heir to an entire spectrum ofmodern and contemporary

liberation struggles. The history ofchallenges to European political-

economic hegemony and its colonial rule, the successes ofnational

liberation movements, women’s movements, and antiracist strug-

gles, are all interpreted as the heritage ofpostmodernist politics

because they, too, aim at disrupting the order and the dualisms of

modern sovereignty. Ifthe modern is the field ofpower ofthe

white, the male, and the European, then in perfectly symmetrical

fashion the postmodern will be the field of liberation of the non-

white, the non-male, and the non-European. As bell hooks says,

in its best form radical postmodernist practice, a politics of difference,

incorporates the values and voices ofthe displaced, the marginalized,

the exploited, and the oppressed.4 The binaries and dualisms of

modern sovereignty are not disrupted only to establish new ones;

rather, the very power of binaries is dissolved as ‘‘we set differences

to play across boundaries.’’5

Postmodernist thinking has been received by a wide range of

scholars as a clarion call to a new paradigm ofacademic and intellec-

tual practice, and as a real opportunity to dislodge the dominant

paradigms ofscholarship in their own field.6 One ofthe most

important examples from our perspective is the postmodernist chal-

lenge in the field ofinternational relations.7 Here the ‘‘modernist’’

paradigm ofresearch is more or less identified with the methods

ofrealism and neorealism, and thus centered on the concept of

sovereignty, commonly understood as synonymous with the power

ofnation-states, the legitimate use ofstate violence, and territorial

integrity. From a postmodernist perspective, this ‘‘modernist’’ inter-

national relations, because ofits acceptance ofand focus on these

boundaries, tends to support the dominant power and the sover-

eignty ofnation-states. Authors in this field thus make a clear

connection between the critique ofthe binary dualisms ofthe

‘‘Enlightenment’’ developed in the context ofthe philosophical and

literary postmodernists and the challenge to the fixed boundaries

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ofmodern state sovereignty. Postmodernist international relations

theorists strive to challenge the sovereignty ofstates by deconstruct-

ing the boundaries ofthe ruling powers, highlighting irregular and

uncontrolled international movements and flows, and thus fractur-

ing stable unities and oppositions. ‘‘Discourse’’ and ‘‘interpretation’’

are presented as powerful weapons against the institutional rigidities

ofthe modernist perspectives. The resulting postmodernist analyses

point toward the possibility of a global politics of difference, a

politics ofdeterritorialized flows across a smooth world, free ofthe

rigid striation ofstate boundaries.

Although many ofthe various postmodernist theorists are lucid

in their refusal ofthe logics ofmodern sovereignty, they are in

general extremely confused about the nature of our potential libera-

tion from it—perhaps precisely because they cannot recognize

clearly the forms of power that have today come to supplant it.

When they present their theories as part ofa project ofpolitical

liberation, in other words, postmodernists are still waging battle

against the shadows ofold enemies: the Enlightenment, or really

modern forms of sovereignty and its binary reductions of difference

and multiplicity to a single alternative between Same and Other.

The affirmation of hybridities and the free play of differences across

boundaries, however, is liberatory only in a context where power

poses hierarchy exclusively though essential identities, binary divi-

sions, and stable oppositions. The structures and logics ofpower

in the contemporary world are entirely immune to the ‘‘liberatory’’

weapons of the postmodernist politics of difference. In fact, Empire

too is bent on doing away with those modern forms of sovereignty

and on setting differences to play across boundaries. Despite the

best intentions, then, the postmodernist politics of difference not

only is ineffective against but can even coincide with and support

the functions and practices of imperial rule. The danger is that

postmodernist theories focus their attention so resolutely on the

old forms of power they are running from, with their heads turned

backwards, that they tumble unwittingly into the welcoming arms

ofthe new power. From this perspective the celebratory affirmations

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ofpostmodernists can easily appear naive, when not purely mystifi-

catory.

What we find most important in the various postmodernist

currents ofthought is the historical phenomenon they represent:

they are the symptom ofa rupture in the tradition ofmodern

sovereignty. There is, ofcourse, a long tradition of‘‘anti-modern’’

thought that opposes modern sovereignty, including the great think-

ers ofthe Frankfurt School (along with the entire republican line

we have traced back to Renaissance humanism). What is new,

however, is that postmodernist theorists point to the
end
ofmodern sovereignty and demonstrate a new capacity to think outside the

framework of modern binaries and modern identities, a thought of

plurality and multiplicity. However confusedly or unconsciously,

they indicate the passage toward the constitution ofEmpire.

TheLiberation of Hybridities, or

Beyond Colonial Binaries

A certain stream ofpostcolonial studies also proposes a global politics

of difference and might be well situated in line with postmodernist

theory. Our analysis ofmodern sovereignty in the preceding sections

poses already a strong potential rationale for an accord between

postcolonialist and postmodernist theories. Insofar as modern sover-

eignty was identified with Europe’s tendency toward global domina-

tion, and more important, insofar as colonial administration and

imperialist practices were central components in the constitution

ofmodern sovereignty, postmodernist and postcolonialist theories

do indeed share a common enemy. Postmodernism appears in this

light to be fundamentally post-Eurocentric.

Postcolonial studies encompasses a wide and varied group of

discourses, but we want to focus here on the work of Homi Bhabha

because it presents the clearest and best-articulated example ofthe

continuity between postmodernist and postcolonialist discourses.

One ofthe primary and constant objects ofBhabha’s attack are

binary divisions.
In fact, the entire postcolonial project as he presents it is defined by its refusal of the binary divisions on which the

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colonialist worldview is predicated. The world is not divided in

two and segmented in opposing camps (center versus periphery,

First versus Third World), but rather it is and has always been

defined by innumerable partial and mobile differences. Bhabha’s

refusal to see the world in terms of binary divisions leads him to

reject also theories oftotality and theories ofthe identity, homoge-

neity, and essentialism ofsocial subjects. These various refusals are

very closely linked. The binary conception ofthe world implies

the essentialism and homogeneity ofthe identities on its two halves,

and, through the relationship across that central boundary, implies

the subsumption ofall experience within a coherent social totality.

In short, the specter that haunts Bhabha’s analysis and that coherently

links together these various opponents is the Hegelian dialectic,

that is, the dialectic that subsumes within a coherent totality the

essential social identities that face each other in opposition. In this

sense one could say that postcolonial theory (or at least this version

ofit) is, along with postmodernist theories, defined above all by

its being nondialectical.

Bhabha’s critique ofthe dialectic—that is, his attack on binary

divisions, essential identities, and totalization—is both a sociological

claim about the real nature ofsocieties and a political project aimed

at social change. The former is in fact a condition of possibility of

the latter. Social identities and nations were never really coherent

imagined communities; the colonized’s mimicry ofthe colonizer’s

discourse rearticulates the whole notion ofidentity and alienates it

from essence; cultures are always already partial and hybrid forma-

tions. This social fact is the basis on which a subversive political