An/Other IR: Views from the South Week Eight: Globalisation

Hardt & Negri: Empire …as new logic and structure of rule A new form of sovereignty – a new series of national & supranational organisations united under a single logic of rule. Regulates global exchanges (rather than there being more autonomous economic relations), Lack of territorial or fixed boundaries for production and exchange (money, tech, people and goods), not the imperialism of nation-sates, Manages new hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies and plural exchanges through modulated networks of command, Blends elements of 1st & 3rd Worlds, Transformation of production processes: productive labour given way to communicative, cooperative affective labour, End product is the production of social life itself – Biopolitics.

Characteristics of Empire Fundamental lack of spatial boundaries: Empire essentially encompasses the spatial totality. Suspension of history, fixing existing conditions for eternity – lack of temporal boundaries, ‘end of history’, effectively seeking a position outside of history (cf Nandy) Regulates human interaction, but also seeks to produce new social life: “the object of its rule is social life in its entirety, and thus Empire presents the paradigmatic form of biopower”. “Although continually bathed in blood; the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace - a perpetual universal peace outside of history”

Multitude Within Empire is the means of its downfall (it is a symptom of new powers, not their pilot). Our political task is not simply to resist, but to reorganise and redirect to produce new democratic forms Through labour the Multitude produces itself as singularity: “The Multitude affirms its singularity by inverting the ideological illusion that all humans on the global surfaces of the world market are interchangeable” How does the Multitude become political? Cooperation and communication through the spheres of biopolitical production define a new productive singularity.

Global Citizenship Spatial movement constitutes the Multitude in limitless place (movement can make capital’s boundaries porous) New movements produce new residencies, the flow of bodies defining new rivers and ports (wither passports cf 9/11) Circulation produces consciousness, produces agency through spatial re-appropriation The Contradiction of Empire – restricts movement but requires it. Why? To restrict formation of political consciousness Multitude becomes political when it addresses its own oppression (Occupy, UK Uncut)

Steps to Global Citizenry Movement: Recognition of importance of movement at the level of law (residency + labour = citizenship) Multitude, in responding to the demands of capital as labour force, must be given control of movement Time and Body: Multitude constructs new categories of time Shifts time from a transcendental category to one of immanence This has ontological effects

Social Labour Multitude is not a Working Class (partial movement), but a true proletariat: Not just wage labourers, but all labourers (inc. reproductive and non-productive) Because Empire is about Biopolitics (production of social life) the Multitude will highlight the productiveness of all forms of labour, not just wage labour As labour moves outside the factory walls it becomes difficult to maintain the fiction of the measurable working day (email, texts) Out of the ashes of the Empire’s biopolitics the Multitude, in realising the productiveness of non-productive labou,r will turn to the need for a social wage – a citizen wage: “…even those who are unemployed, because the entire multitude produces, and its production is necessary from the standpoint of social capital

OCCUPY Hardt & Negri “This is how the Multitude gains the power to affirm its autonomy, travelling and expressing itself through an apparatus of widespread, transversal territorial reappropriation” But they don’t have any demands? From the course readings, what would you say to this charge? How does Hardt & Negri’s thesis of the multitude stack up in terms of understanding perspectives from the Global South?