<nettime> Re: Zagreb interview with Michael Hardt

[Ognjen Strpic <ognjen@mi2.hr>]

>And I don't think
>the movements Hardt is talking about are potentially fascistic in any way,
>he's basically talking about the kind of people who went to Porto Alegre
>and hung out on its fringes.

he isn't addressing any fascistic movement, that's for sure. the problem
as i see it is precisely that his words found their reference where H&N
didn't want them -- ie. in dynamic of fascist/ic and other totalitarian
movements.

i also think it would be very unfair to authors of Empire to read their
text only, or primarily, as a manifesto, disregarding its theoretical
structure. and the bug/feature of any theoretical work is that its
propositions and arguments are abstract enough to be applied to many
different situations and contexts. a good theory is, so to say, recyclable
for various purposes. it's just this particular purpose that we would
prefer to avoid, because it corrupts the theory as a whole.

>The notion of the "multitude," as I understand it, is >supposed to
encourage this far left. But the promise of the multitude is >not that of
some swirling rainbow nebula of humanity, surging up in >magical mobility
to change everything. That's a great image and it >translates some of the
wonderful suprise of the reappearence of resistance >movvements, with new
techniques. But it's not precise enough. and I think >it now should just
be abandoned.

that's more or less what i'm suggesting. however, if the problem with
multitude is only in not-precise-enough-formulation, your conclusion may
be premature. that is, maybe an equally theoretically strong and appealing
version of the notion of multitude can be proposed that would avoid those
... unpleasant developments. if so, the wholesale abandonment would be
unnecessary. unfortunately, i can't think of anything that could do the
job.

>But take a movement like Kein Mensch ist Illegal. It calls for the
>dissolution of all borders and it convokes a transnational cooperative
>network to rework, amplifly and promote that general call, mostly through
>specific actions of solidarity. Zizeck said that such a call, which is
>also found in Empire, would lead to fascist resistance.

this is, of course, a tough one: i've come to think that political
solution, at the level of argumentation, will include some kind of
universalist position coupled with restrictions on invoking protection of
political correctness in political argument. in my opinion, the issue here
isn't only the fact that such resistance occurs, but that it operates on
ethnic, religious and some other premises which ethos of political
correctness forbid us to treat as preferences and are therefore not open
to dispute. i'd rather not bother you all with this any further until i
think it through.

to get back to Empire's manifesto-theoretical aims, Hardt says he is
actually considering to publish a short version of Empire, more readable
book targeted at broader (theorists out, presumably) readership. i wish
him luck, although i hope he will not give up working on the more
recyclable material.

Ognjen




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