Film: The Corporation

Additional material about the Film "The Corporation" you can find here:
- http://www.thecorporation.com/ and here
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation

Question #7

The question for "3.1 The Long March of Democracy" is:

"In which ways is democracy an unfinished and unrealized project?"

The paper is due Wed, Jan 9, 6pm.

Question #6

"Expose the notion of the common
(as presented in 2.3 Traces of the multitude)"

The paper is due as usual at Wed 6pm. Class will be Thursday 6-9pm at CTC 107.

Question #5

Question #5 for Friday, Dec 14, to be submitted on Dec 13 is:

"Expose the hierarchies and divisions of the system of power"

(Unless other notice, thursday class will be held in CTC 107 and friday class at the Philosophy Department.)

Question #4

The question #4 for the class discussion next thursday (to be submitted by wednesday 6pm) is the following:

"How does the change in production help in the construction of the multitude?"

The question for friday, dec 14, will be posted shortly...

Question #3

(for Thursday, Dec 6, 2007)

Please characterize the different forms of resistance: People’s army, Guerilla warfare, Network struggle.

Antonio Negri on "Empire"

(in: Antonio Negri: Negri on Negri, see Bibliography below)

"Our work has been chiefly one of linguistic clarification. In fact, there is a certain lingering ambiguity about the term 'Empire' itself, which entered almost at once into the political and journalistic lexicon and rapidly becams static. By 'Empire' we mean something very precise: the transfer of sovereignty of nation-states to a higher entity. But this transfer has almost invariably been interpreted in terms of an 'internal analogy' - as if Empire were implicitly a nation-state on a world scale. One consequence of this trivialization has been the rather sloppy inference that Empire corresponds to the United States. We insist, to the contrary, that the great transfers of sovereignty that are now taking place - in the military sphere, in the monetary sphere, and in the cultural, political, and linguistic spheres - cannot be reduced to any such internal analogy. This amounts to saying that the structure of Empire is radically different from that of nation-states.
The process that led to Empire grew out of several contradictory phenomena: the struggles of the working classes in the developed countries against capital, which have rendered the reproduction of the capitalist system impossible on the national scale; the anticolonial wars and Vietnam, which gave rise to very considerable anti-imperialist pressures that left their mark on capital at its highest and most central levels; and, finally, the crisis of socialist countries, where the socialist management of capital failed to develop in the face of ever greater demands for liberty. Together these things caused imbalances at a global level, with the result that the passage to Empire was punctuated by many extremely violent conflicts. The imperial process that we describe is therefore contradictory both in its origin and its development. Today we have a world governance that seeks to impose forms of government that extend to the whole biopolitical issue of planetary citizenship. What we tried to do in writing this book was to begin to define the fields of struggle and the forces of opposition within the very heart of Empire." (p. 59-60)

Question #2

How does the new war look from the perspective of the military?

Question #1

The question for the first class on "Multitude" is the following
(required readings, p. xi - 35, preface and Chapter 1.1 Simplicissimus):

1. What makes the war today different from other wars?

Please answer this question with 300 to 500 words, and submit it by Wednesday, 6pm. Don't forget to think of a question to bring along next meeting.

Commented Bibliography (Extended):

- Boron, Atilio A.: Empire & Imperialism. A Critical Reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, translated by Jessica Casiro, London / New York: Zed Books, 2005
A critical approach to “Empire” arguing that we are still in the age of Imperialism
- Flood, Andrew: Is the emperor wearing clothes? March 2002, Online: http://struggle.ws/andrew/empirereview.html
A critical anarchist review of “Empire”, which can provide a good introduction into “Empire”, although the author seems to underestimate the book
- Hardt, Michael: The Withering of Civil Society, in: Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon Heller (eds.): Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy and Culture, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1998, p. 23 – 39
- Hardt, Michael: Affective Labor, in: boundary 2, Vol. 26, No. 2. (summer, 1999), p. 89 – 100
A short and clear overview what the change from material to immaterial production is about.
- Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio: Multitude. War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, the Penguin Press: New York, 2004
- Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio: Empire, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2000 (Paperback edition 2001). Online: http://www.infoshop.org/texts/empire.pdf
- Hardt, Michael: Folly of our masters of the universe, in: The Guardian, December 18, 2002, Online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,861942,00.html
Very interesting and stimulating comment of Hardt about the (impending) war on Iraq understood as a backlash into Imperialism. He argues that the US is acting against its own interests.
- Negri, Antonio: Kairòs, Alma Venus, Multitudo, in: Antonio Negri: Time for Revolution, translated by Matteo Mandarini, London / New York: Continuum, 2003, p. 139 – 262
The second essay of this volume entitled “Kairòs, Alma Venus, Multitudo” was written after “Empire” and attempts to deepen the thoughts developed therein. Some topics that are central to “Multitude” (the common) or go beyond (love) are already discussed there.
- Negri, Antonio: Negri on Negri, in conversation with Anne Dufourmantelle, translated by M.B. DeBevoise, New York: Routledge, 2004
Nice, fascinating interview with Negri on a good 150 pages. Easy to read, insightful, especially on the political struggle Negri was involved.
- Vulliamy, Ed: Empire hits back, in: The Guardian, July 15, 2001, Online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4221990,00.html
Easy to read, but not substantial review of “Empire”

Course Description

We are living in a time of rapid change: Technological innovations and political change transform the way we live. An increasing mobility of goods, services and labor modifies the different areas of our life. Political power, power in general, shifts away of the nation state. All these developments are normally referred to as globalization. This course will provide a genuine philosophical understanding of globalization focusing on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s neo-Marxist and postmodern account of history and society
The course consists out of three parts: A short first part, comprising the first two meetings, will summarize Hardt and Negri’s conceptual framework lied out in Empire. The main part of the course will discuss the sequel to Empire, Multitude (published 2004) and critically discuss the main ideas therein of “war”, “multitude” and “democracy”. The third and final part will discuss the Antonio Negri’s Essay “Kairòs, Alma Venus, Multitudo”, which provides a deepening of the thoughts presented in Empire and Multitude.