Empire »

Michael Hardt is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University.

Antonio Negri is an independent researcher and writer. He has been a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua.

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.

Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society-to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order.

More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm-the basis for a truly democratic global society. Michael Hardt is Assistant Professor in the Literature Program at Duke University. Antonio Negri is an independent researcher and writer and an inmate at Rebibbia Prison, Rome. He has been a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua.

Sunday Times [UK]

Empire presents a philosophical vision that some have greeted as the 'next big thing' in the field of the humanities.

PART 1: The Political Constitution of the Present

1.1 World Order

1.2 Biopolitical Production

1.3 Alternatives within Empire

PART 2: Passages of Sovereignty

2.1 Two Europes, Two Modernities

2.2 Sovereignty of the Nation-State

2.3 The Dialectics of Colonial Sovereignty

2.4 Symptoms of Passage

2.5 Network Power U.S. Sovereignty and the New Empire

2.6 Imperial Sovereignty

INTERMEZZO: COUNTER-EMPIRE

PART 3: Passages of Production

3.1 The Limits of Imperialism

3.2 Disciplinary Governability

3.3 Resistance, Crisis, Transformation

3.4 Postmodernization, or The Informatization of Production

3.5 Mixed Constitution

3.6 Capitalist Sovereignty, or Administering the Global Society of Control

PART 4: The Decline and Fall of Empire

4.1 Virtualities

4.2 Generation and Corruption

4.3 The Multitude against Empire

Notes

Index