Re: AUT: Hardt Interview from Jornal do Brasil

[asc <satellitecrash@xxxxxxxxx>]

if anyone knows if the articles hardt mentions are
online please send to the list...
if no one responds i'll look and see what i can
find...
-Sean

--- Thiago Oppermann <topp8564@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> My lattest blitz-translation... Apologies for
> x-posting and the generally
> crummy syntax..
>
>
> From Jornal do Brasil Online
> www.jbonline.terra.com.br
>
> Old New World
>
> Philosopher Michael Hardt, , author of Empire, says
> that the USA changes
> tactics to maintain hegemony
>
> Alexandre Werneck
>
> Little has changed. This is the opinion of American
> philosopher Michael
> Hardt,  five months after the attacks of September
> 11. For him, the world
> continues practically the same. It has become easier
> to say that everything
> has changed, he warns. Hardt, professor of
> literature at Duke University in
> North Carolina, is author, together with Italian
> philosopher and political
> scientist Antonio Negri, of one of the most impotant
> books of 2001, Empire.
> The work is a snapshot of globalization as a
> phenomenon which, if on the one
> hand buried the old imperialism, has on the other
> created what the authors
> call an imperial system, a network of global power
> more powerful than the
> action of the United States and its armies. Hardt is
> in Brazil to
> participated, from Wednesday, in the World Social
> Forum in Porto Alegre, the
> international meeting of members of the worldwide
> left intelligentsia.
> Today, in Rio de Janeiro, he is awaited in the
> closing debate of the Vozes
> do milenio [voices of the millennium] series, which
> aims to think
> globalization through [*] and which is promoted by
> the School of
> Communications of the Federal University of Rio de
> Janeiro (UFRJ) and by the
> Republics Museum. The meeting will take place at 3pm
> in the auditory of the
> Science and Culture Forum of the UFRJ. At 43 years
> of age Hardt is
> preoccupied with the creation of an old times
> democracy, with equality and
> collective participation and says that the left
> should be more utopian.
> Next, his interview:
>
>
> - How do you explain that a book about
> globalization, with so clearly a
> Marxist reading as Empire has become an editorial
> success?
>
> I dont know exactly, but I think that this might
> have happened because the
> book is utopian. I do not mean utopian in the sense
> of something which
> cannot be, but in the sense that we believe the
> world can be better. I think
> that there is a lack of utopian thinking in the left
> today.
>
> - And people miss this utopia?
>
>  And this is understandable. But I dont think that
> the process is
> understood in its full complexity. The amercian
> media had difficulties
> understanding the book. People asked me if
> globalization was good or bad.
> The answer is: neither and both. And this is also
> hard for people to
> understand. Most people who liked the book are
> opposed to neoliberalism. But
> there is not only an option between neoliberalism
> and the previous model.
> Many aspects of globalization, the economic, the
> cultural and the political
> are bad, are forms of exploitation. But at the same
> time, the same process
> caries an intense potential for liberation.
>
> - What can be said today, sometime after the attacks
> of September 11  2001?
>
> I think that there is much exaggeration regarding
> how much things have
> changed after that day. Without doubt, something
> changed, its undeniable,
> but it has become very easy for people to say that
> everything has changed,
> that this is now another world. These same people,
> however, say the same
> things they said before September 11. [Touch]
>
> - What has changed then?
>
> After what happened, it seems that the United States
> has returned to an old
> style of imperialist action, like the European
> imperialist powers of a
> hundred years ago. This is true, but it is not
> central. The most important
> aspects have not changed. In the last ten years, the
> military and diplomatic
> ideology of the United States has had two
> dimensions. One is this
> imperialist movement, with military actions in the
> Gulf , in Bosnia, etc.
> But another is the imperial ideology. That is, it
> acts for global interests,
> with a new logic of power which is not that of the
> nation-state.
>
> - And how does it work?
>
> When we spoke in the debate about human rights in
> Kosovo, some said that the
> American armys discourse of promotion of human
> rights is an ideological
> mystification [* tense is present in the original]
> and that, in reality,
> they are only an imperialist power. I think  that
> there is an ambiguity,
> even contradiction, in the ideology of the American
> army and diplomacy the
> two principles are acting at the same time. In what
> refers to the episodes
> of September 11, the imperialist dimension is more
> apparent because the
> United States is talking tough, with the voice of a
> Nation-State protecting
> its own territory. But Antonio Negri and I believe
> that, in the long term,
> the imperial logic will be more effective and the
> imperialist logic will no
> longer succeed. The scenario of the old imperialism
> is ineffective to fight
> against this new enemy which emerged with the
> (terrorist) attacks. It is for
> this reason that the Americans are perplexed. There
> is much discussion in
> the American armed forces about what is an enemy
> which operates through a
> network and how to attack it. Al-Qaeda and other
> terrorist groups are
> networks. The old form of military and political
> control is not able to
> attack a structure like this. The imperial form is
> more effective.
>
> - But isnt the American State increasingly more
> powerful than other states?
>
> This is true. But when we say that the
> Nation-States, even the most powerful
> such as the United States, are declining, this does
> not mean that they are
> less important. It means that the kind of domination
> which they exert is
> decomposing [literally unmaking itself; se
> desfazendo]. This power is
> assuming new forms. Dutch sociologist Saskia Sassen
> says that the ministers
> in charge of the global economy exert local
> functions, but connected to a
> global vision. She uses Davos  as example of a
> species of training camp,
> where these ministers meet other economists and go
> home afterwards to
> continue the old functions [perhaps: roles] related
> to their own countries.
> But they do not do this in a national theatre. The
> functionaries of the
> American government are in fact managing global
> capital.
>
> - Do you think that after September 11 the left has
> come to be victim of
> revenge against anti-Americanism?
>
> Soon after that event, the rightwing press in the
> USA begun to say that the
> antiglobalization movements were as bad as
> terrorism. Four articles in
> rightwing weekly magazines said that I, Antonio
> Negri and our book Empire
> were responsible for September 11.
>
> - What were the arguments?
>
=== message truncated ===


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings!
http://greetings.yahoo.com


     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---