Re: AUT: Empire

[topp8564@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The conservative article is at:

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html

Some of it is hilarious: "the most pernicious books published in recent memory"
sounds like a sales pitch.

Some of it is just plain lazy:

"Empire?s pages brim with the science?fiction?like neologisms that typify much
contemporary academic writing:?agentic,? ?biopower,?
?deterritorialization??words that give those who wield them the sense of gaining
Shaman?like access to hidden realms."

A lot of it, though, is just a silly ad-hominem on Negri, peppered with such
missives as "trade has grown by 1,600% since GATT" , not mentioning the
inequalities involved.

This however, I thought made some sense:

"If Hardt and Negri?s depiction of global capitalism is mendacious, their hazy
alternative to it?absolute democracy, open borders, equal compensation?is
apolitical utopian nonsense. How would such schemes actually work? Hardt and
Negri never say."

The reviewer identified the books beaming optimism as its selling point, and it
is true, I think, that we were long overdue for a brash affirmation of the left.
But I think that at times this affirmation hasn't been very well connected to
present struggles - or at least the connection has not been stated so clearly
these conservatives could not misundertand it. Perhaps there is no such
formulation, and we should not worry... but maybe we're not doing ourselves any
favours. On this point, I suppose that authoritarian theocrats aren't going to
swallow the line that the capacity for freedom has to be acquired by the
exercise of freedom itself.  But that's no excuse not to think ahead.

Thiago









I couldn't get through to the the Coates review.

Quoting michael pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

>
>
>    Two new reviews. http://www.cpgb.org/worker/420/index.html
> scroll down to Andrew Coates.
>    From the theo-cons on the Right, http://www.firstthings.com
> current issue or previous.
> Michael Pugliese
>
>
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>


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