Empire (84 page)

7. See Michael Hardt, ‘‘The Withering ofCivil Society,’’
Social Text,
no.

45 (Winter 1995), 27–44.

8. For an excellent explanation ofFoucault’s conception ofthe diagram,

see Gilles Deleuze,
Foucault,
trans. Seań Hand (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1988), pp. 34–37.

9. On the relation between identity and belonging and on the constitution of a ‘‘whatever’’ subjectivity, see Giorgio Agamben,
The Coming Community,
trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1993).

10. Rosa Luxemburg,
The Accumulation of Capital,
trans. Agnes Schwarzchild (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), p. 446.

11. The classic work in this regard is Samir Amin’s
Accumulation on a World
Scale,
trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).

12. See Mike Davis,
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
(London: Verso, 1990), pp. 221–263.

13. Michel Aglietta has demonstrated clearly in structural terms the violent and dictatorial powers ofmonetary regimes. See his
La violence de la

monnaie
(Paris: PUF, 1982). See also the essays in Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway, eds.,
Global Capital, National State, and the Politics of Money
(London: Macmillan, 1995).

4 . 1 V I R T U A L I T I E S

1. On this style ofpolitical theorizing, see C. B. Macpherson,
The Political
Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1962); and Albert O. Hirschman,
The Passions and the

Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

2. On the immanent relation between politics and ontology, see Antonio

Negri,
The Savage Anomaly,
trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1991); and Baruch Spinoza,
Theologico-Political
Treatise,
in
The Chief Works of Spinoza,
vol. 1, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Press, 1951), pp. 1–278.

3. On postmodern right and postmodern law, see Michael Hardt and

Antonio Negri,
Labor of Dionysus
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994), chap. 6, pp. 217–261.

468

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 5 5 – 3 5 7

4. See Re´mi Brague,
Du temps chezPlaton et Aristote
(Paris: PUF, 1982).

5. G. W. F. Hegel,
Science of Logic,
trans. A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1989), pp. 327–385.

6. The measure ofvalue means its orderly exploitation, the norm ofits

social division, and its capitalist reproduction. Certainly Marx goes beyond Marx, and one should never pretend that his discussions oflabor and

value are only a discourse on measure: beyond value, labor is always the

living power ofbeing. See Antonio Negri, ‘‘Twenty Theses on Marx,’’

in Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarino, and Rebecca Karl, eds.,
Marxism

Beyond Marxism
(New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 149–180.

7. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics,
trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), p. 119 (1129b30).

8. On the virtual, see Gilles Deleuze and Feĺix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy?,
trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1994); and Gilles Deleuze,
Bergsonism,
trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone, 1988), pp. 94–

103. Our conception ofvirtuality and its relationship to reality is some-

what different from the one that Deleuze derives from Bergson, which

distinguishes between the passage from the virtual to the actual and that

from the possible to the real. Bergson’s primary concern in this distinction and in his affirmation of the virtual-actual couple over the possible-real

is to emphasize the creative force of being and highlight that being is not merely the reduction ofnumerous possible worlds to a single real world

based on resemblance, but rather that being is always an act ofcreation

and unforeseeable novelty. See Henri Bergson, ‘‘The Possible and the

Real,’’ in
The Creative Mind,
trans. Mabelle Andison (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), pp. 91–106. We certainly do recognize the need

to insist on the creative powers ofvirtuality, but this Bergsonian discourse is insufficient for us insofar as we also need to insist on the reality of the being created, its ontological weight, and the institutions that structure

the world, creating necessity out ofcontingency. On the passage from

the virtual to the real, see Gilbert Simondon,
L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique
(Paris: PUF, 1964); and Brian Massumi, ‘‘The Autonomy of Affect,’’
Cultural Critique,
no. 31 (Fall 1995), 83–109.

9. Marx’s discussions ofabstraction have a double relation to this discourse ofvirtuality and possibility. One might do well in fact to distinguish

between two Marxian notions ofabstraction. On the one hand, and on

the side ofcapital, abstraction means separation from our powers to act,

and thus it is a negation ofthe virtual. On the other hand, however, and

on the side oflabor, the abstract is the general set ofour powers to act,

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 5 8 – 3 6 7

469

the virtual itself. See Antonio Negri,
Marx Beyond Marx,
trans. Harry Cleaver, Michael Ryan, and Maurizio Viano (New York: Autonomedia,

1991); and Karl Marx,
Grundrisse,
trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 83–111.

10. On the relation between the singular and the common, see Giorgio

Agamben,
The Coming Community,
trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis:

University ofMinnesota Press, 1993).

11. See primarily Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morals,
trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967).

12. See Bernard Aspe and Muriel Combes, ‘‘Du vampire au parasite,’’
Futur
anteŕieur,
no. 35–36 (1996), 207–219.

13. On the priority ofresistance to power, see Gilles Deleuze,
Foucault,
trans.

Seań Hand (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1988), p. 89:

‘‘The final word on power is that
resistance comes first.
’

14. This dialectic ofobstacle and limit, with respect to the power ofthe mind on the one hand and political power on the other, was well understood by

that current ofthe phenomenology ofsubjectivity that (in contrast to the

Heideggerian current) recognized Nazism and thus the capitalist state as

the true limit ofhistorical progress. From Husserl to Sartre we find the

central effort to transform limit into threshold, and in many ways Foucault takes up this same line. See Edmund Husserl,
Crisis of European Sciences
and Transcendental Phenomenology,
trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: North-western University Press, 1970); Jean-Paul Sartre,
Critique of Dialectical
Reason,
trans. Quentin Hoare (London: Verso, 1990); and Deleuze,
Foucault.

15. See Jacques Rancière,
La mesentante: politique et philosophie
(Paris: Galileé, 1995).

16. One example ofsuch a Kantian reverie is Lucien Goldmann,
Mensch,

Gemeinschaft und Welt in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants
(Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1945).

17. See Karl Marx, ‘‘On the Jewish Question,’’ in
Early Writings,
trans.

Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (London: Penguin, 1975),

pp. 211–241.

18. See Paul Virilio,
L’insecurite´ du territoire
(Paris: Stock, 1976).

19. On the importance ofthe linguistic in the contemporary economy, see

Christian Marazzi,
Il posto dei calzini: la svolta linguistica dell’economia e i
suoi effetti nella politica
(Bellinzona: Casagrande, 1995).

20. See Giorgio Agamben,
Homo sacer: il potere sovrano e la nuda vita
(Turin: Einaudi, 1995).

21. On this conception ofthe machinic, see Feĺix Guattari,
L’inconscient machi-nique: essais de schizo-analyse
(Fontenay-sous-Bois: Encres/Recherches, 470

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 6 7 – 3 7 7

1979); and Gilles Deleuze and Feĺix Guattari,
Anti-Oedipus,
trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Lane, and Helen Lane (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1983).

22. Karl Marx,
Capital,
vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1976), pp. 554–555.

23. Obviously when we speak about a materialist telos we are speaking about a telos that is constructed by subjects, constituted by the multitude in

action. This involves a materialist reading ofhistory which recognizes

that the institutions ofsociety are formed through the encounter and

conflict ofsocial forces themselves. The telos in this case in not predetermined but constructed in the process. Materialist historians such as Thu-

cydides and Machiavelli, like the great materialist philosophers such as

Epicurus, Lucretius, and Spinoza, have never negated a telos constructed

by human actions. As Marx wrote in the introduction to the
Grundrisse,

it is not the anatomy ofthe ape that explains that ofhumans but, vice

versa, the anatomy ofhumans that explains that ofthe ape (p. 105). The

telos appears only afterwards, as a result ofthe actions ofhistory.

4 . 2 G E N E R A T I O N A N D C O R R U P T I O N

1. See Charles de Secondat Montesquieu,
Considerations of the Causes of the
Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline,
trans. David Lowenthal (New York: Free Press, 1965); and Edward Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the

Roman Empire,
3 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1993).

2. See Machiavelli,
Discourses,
trans. Leslie Walker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950); and Antonio Negri,
Il potere costituente
(Milan: Sugarco, 1992), pp. 75–96.

3. Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America,
trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).

4. G. W. F. Hegel,
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History,
trans. H. B.

Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 170.

5. Massimo Cacciari provides a stimulating analysis ofthe f

ortunes and

decline ofthe idea ofEurope with his usual erudition in
Geo-filosofia

dell’Europa
(Milan: Adelphi, 1994).

6. Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science,
trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 99 (sec. 24).

7. Friedrich Nietzsche,
Werke,
ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), vol. 8, pt. 1, p. 77; cited in Cacciari,
Geo-filosofia dell’Europa,
p. 9. The original passage reads, ‘‘Ich habe den Geist Europas in mich genommen—nun will ich den Gegenschlag thun!’’

8. See Franz Rosenzweig,
The Star of Redemption,
trans. William Hallo (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 7 7 – 3 9 6

471

9. Walter Benjamin, ‘‘Theses ofthe Philosophy ofHistory,’’ in
Illuminations,
trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), pp. 253–264; quotation

p. 254 (Thesis 2).

10. On the fortunes of European irrationalism, see Georg Lukaćs,
The Destruction of Reason,
trans. Peter Palmer (London: Merlin, 1980).

11. We are referring primarily to Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jac-

ques Derrida.

12. See Hans Ju¨rgen Krahl,
Konstitution und Klassenkampf
(Frankfurt: Neue Kritik, 1971).

13. Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Notebooks, 1914–16,
ed. G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University ofChicago Press,

1979), pp. 79–80 (August 1 and 2 and September 2, 1916).

14. Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1961), p. 74.

15. Hannah Arendt,
On Revolution
(New York: Viking, 1963).

16. Gilles Deleuze often sings the praises of American literature for its nomadism and deterritorializing powers. It seems that for Deleuze, America

represents a liberation from the closed confines of European conscious-

ness. See, for example, ‘‘Whitman’’ and ‘‘Bartleby, ou la formule,’’ in

Critique et clinique
(Paris: Minuit, 1993), pp. 75–80 and 89–114.

17. Serge Guilbaut,
How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1983).

18. See Antonio Gramsci, ‘‘Americanism and Fordism,’’ in
Selections from the
Prison Notebooks,
trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 279–318.

19. Hannah Arendt has become a favorite author for political theorists in the United States and Europe who want to reconceive politics. See, for

example, the essays in Bonnie Honig, ed.,
Feminist Interpretations of Hannah
Arendt
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); and Craig Calhoun and John McGowan, eds.,
Hannah Arendt and the Meaning

of Politics
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1997).

20. On the philosophical conceptions ofgeneration and corruption, see

Reiner Schu¨rmann,
Des he´ge´monies briseés
(Mouvezin: T.E.R., 1996).

4 . 3 T H E M U L T I T U D E A G A I N S T E M P I R E

1. Saint Augustine,
The City of God,
trans. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 430 (Book XI, Chapter 1).

2. Plotinus,
Enneads,
trans. Stephen MacKenna (London: Faber and Faber, 1956), p. 63 (1.6.8).