From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com
Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 21:05:38 +0100
Subject: Re: What is Empire about? - subjectivity



--------------EA4A082F2A9686E36990A10F

Hugh and all

 **multitude, subjectivity, production, measure, appropriation etc., it
should be easy to summarize in one or two thousand words.**.

Let''s look - with  subjectivity and continue to work through the list .

So let's look at subjectivity... In section 1.2 there is a discussion of
biolpolitics and the society of control. This discussion relates
directly to the work of Foucault and Deleuze and Gauttari - the
relationship between biopolitics and subjectivity within N&H remains the
question of re-production and the ongoing construction of producers. The
postmodern society of the present is that "...in which mechanisms of
command become ever more 'democratic' ever more immanent to the social
field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the
citizens..."(P23). A curious subjectivity that bears only a slight or
passing relation to the 'human subject' as descended from Freud closer
rather to the subject as descended from 'theories of ideology and
subjectivity'.

To make this clearer it is worth remembering that "The great industrial
and financial powers thus produce not only commodities but also
subjectivities... They produce agentic subjectivities within the
biopolitical context: they produce needs, social relations, bodies and
minds - which is to say they produce producers..." (33). Here then is
the actual starting point for N&H's version of subjectivity not just in
the biopolitical realm -for it is a notion of subjectivity where the
accent and the active part of the word is derived from the word through
the words 'subject' or 'subjugated'. The derivation from the
biopolitical context is accented through "...in the biopolitical sphere,
life is made to work for life..." to be the point of reproduction. The
reference here also moves through into the production and productive
elements of language and communication - the theory goes that the
production of new langauge forms relates directly to the new globalised
world order through the production of new forms of subjectivity... To
this point we are addressing the notion of subjectivity as related to
from the position of capital. But it is equally important to consider
that the new figures of subjectivity, and you cannot think this in terms
of biopolitic, also generate new forms of resistence, her obviously
formed around the revolutionary subject 'the multitude'.

In other words there is a return to the subject through - Freud -
perhaps not quite the subject contained in the 'libidinal economy' of
Lyotard - but not far away... After all '...a new theory of subjectivity
must be formulated that operates primarily through knowledge,
communication and language...'  Lyotard more or less states that this is
his intention in both LE and The Differend... This variety of
subjectivity becomes important because of the way in which it takes the
logic of the libidinal economy  and places it in a postmodern frame.
'When one adopts the perspective of the activity of the multitude, its
production of subjectivity and desire, one can recognise how
globalisation, operates a real deterritorialisation of the previous
structures of exploitation and control, is really a condition of the
liberation of the multitude...' This subjectivity then is not about the
underlying construction of the libidinal economy, it is not about the
construction of the consciopus/preconscious/unconscious and so on - no
polymorphous perversity here - no what is here is a predominantly social
subject. Perhaps even an 'inoperative subject' a 'coming subject'...
Here then is the reference back towards the notion of subjectivity
descended from Freud and passed through Althussar - interppellation -
'the hey-you' of subjectivity and recognition - on top of this
postmodern subjectivity is overlaid - p196 on - (based on Deleuze) the
construction of the subjectivity is wholly considered as being social,
school, home, army and so on....

Writing this, extracting it from the text makes me think that the claim
of subjectivity may be to much, an abuse of the word - what is defined
here is a social-subjectivity, he way in which we are pinned down,
transfixed by our given social roles, from the factory to the multitude
and back again. It is  not clear how the social-subjectivity has been
reconstituted to be marked and constructed as different from the
libidinal subject of before....

Always this text is haunted by the anti-humanism and post-humanism we
deal with on an everyday basis. On this micro-social level which is
being defined as the field of 'subjectivity' what can be considered
struggle and resistence?

reghards

sdv.

hbone wrote:

>      Steve, Thanks.  A detailed reply deserves a detailed
>      response.  I'll try.   Steve wrote:
>
>      All reading is intertextual... and considering that the text
>      refuses to be 'standalone' I am mystified by the below
>      statements.
>
>      **  1) I'm familiar with the intertextual approach set forth
>      by various writers, and "refusal" , as in refusal of work,
>      refusal to believe what the authority, (the State, the Boss,
>      the Politicians, the Media) wants you to beleve) is a use of
>      the term I was not familiar with, but think I  understand.
>      2) Which statements are mysterious?**
>
>      If as you state below you wish to make a reading that
>      revolves around the 'Empie' text alone
>
>      ** The text alone contains the names of dozens of authors
>      who have written many books. H&N use this method to present,
>      illuminate, justify, their own ideas, the ideas that they
>      decided to publish. Sometimes they quote directly from a
>      reference, sometimes not. I don't think they suggested
>      reading of referenced works is a pre-requisite to
>      undrstanding Empire.**
>
>       - an intellectual method I think I disapprove of because of
>      the impossibility of the practice - then I suggest you open
>      up with a close textual reading of Section 4.3 'The
>      multitude against the empire'.  Or alternatively perhaps
>      section 3.4 'Postmodernization, or the informatisation of
>      production'. However given that the latter is very much
>      written against the grain of Lyotard's anti-historical
>      approach, and I've used this and other related sections of
>      the text continuously for the past year, I think the former
>      is more useful as it presumes to state what they regard as a
>      'revolutionary subject'.
>
>      **O.K   I'll re-read 4.3.including these items that I noted
>      in a previous post:
>
>      page 416 - Mass migrations have become necessary for
>      production.
>            -  What we need to grasp is how the multitude is
>      organized and
>               redefined as a positive political power.
>      page 417 - Imperial capital does indeed attack the movements
>      of the multitude
>      with a tireless determination:  it patrols the seas and the
>      borders; within each country it
>      divides and segregates; and in the world of labor it
>      reinforces the cleavages and borderlines of race, gender,
>      language, culture, and so forth.  Even then, however, it
>      must be careful not to restrict the productivity of the
>      multitude too much because Empire too
>      depends on this power.
>      page 418  - What specific and concrete practices will
>      animate this political
>      project?  We cannot say at this point.   What we can see
>      nonetheless is a
>      first element of a political demand:  "global citizenship".
>      page 419 -  Empire too depends on this power.
>                    - In modernity, reality was not conceivable
>      except as measure, and                 measure in turn was
>      not  conceivable except as a (real or formal) a priori that
>      corralled being within a transcendent order
>      421 - a social wage and a guaranteed income for all.
>      422 - Knowledge has to become linguistic action and
>      philosophy has to become a real "reappropriation of
>      knowledge"  In other words knowledge and communication have
>      to constitute life through struggle.
>      424 - the right to reappropriate.
>      425 - the earthly city must demonstrate its power as an
>      apparatus of the
>      mythology of  the multitude. being-knowing-having power.
>
>      428 - a society in which the basis of power is defined by
>      the expression of
>      the needs of all.
>
>      **And perhaps we should attempt a mutual understanding of
>      "multitude", "production",  "subjectivities", "measure",
>      "appropriation", and "re-appropriation".**
>
>      If you don't want to write a summary or synthesis of the
>      text then how do you want to advance?
>
>      **After we explain our understanding of the most troublesome
>      terms, we can summarize, with a chance of being
>      understood.**
>
>      Some initial thoughts below:
>
>      Consider the contents of the book - it is in four parts:
>      Part 1 'The political constitution of the present, Part 2
>      Passages of soveriegnty, an inter-mezzo Counter-Empire, part
>      three passages of production, part 4 the decline and fall of
>      empire.
>
>      Actually the 'Empire'; text fits within the range of
>      leftwing texts that discuss the current postmodern economy
>      as being something with positive elements, but it does not
>      have the statistical evidence to support itself,
>
>      **.Agreed**
>
>       Including most startling of all a new (maxist/hegalian)
>      revolutionary subject... Perhaps equally interesting but
>      without any actual supporting evidence is the notion of
>      'empire' itself - it is emphasized that the notion is not a
>      metaphor but a political concept which demands 'a political
>      approach' (xiv). The supporting evidence seems thin because
>      you would assume that the nation-state was in some sense in
>      retreat whereas the actual evidence suggests that this is
>      not the case. Think of the problems the Kyoto agreement has
>      with the Nation-states non-cooperative USA, the G8
>      conference with the meeting of the poor countries in
>      Zanzibar... It is true that there is a vast lack of
>      boundries for postmodern capitalism(xiv) however whilst
>      capital has no territorial boundries what evidence is there
>      that globalisation is threatening to suspend history? It
>      does not re-create 'the end of history' but rather so they
>      argue creates new forms of resistence...
>
>      **Agree in general, but we need to explore "new forms of
>      resistance" - what is truly new is often difficult to
>      recognize.**
>
>      The initial three key points and rules of empire are: 1.
>      Empire posits a regime that  encompasses the spatial
>      totality, actually the entire civilised world (leaves out
>      Afghanistan I would imagine) but no boundries limit its
>      scope.
>
>      **Afghanistan, like other warring countries doesn't fit now,
>      but perhaps will in the future.**
>
>       2. The concept presents itself not as an empire that
>      originates from conquest, but rather as an order that
>      suspends history (and proposes to be eternal, where does
>      this piece of 'end of history' get justified from?).
>
>      **You may not agree with my theory that "History" doesn't
>      exist.. What does exist is narratives of past events
>      recorded in books and other artifacts.  Persons who lived
>      the events or read the narratives can, if memory serves,
>      recall them.  So history, at that poin exists in living
>      brain/bodies.  Incidentally, I like the "Empire's" emphasis
>      on "minds and bodies", and that idea should help disabuse us
>      of 19th century philosophy which treats "History" as a
>      mysterious, transcendent, non-human force, like the
>      traditional panoply of gods and mystics that most
>      post-modern thinkers consider fictitious.  Of course the
>      gods and mystics are real to religious persons.  As real to
>      them as living authors, TV and the Internet are for
>      non-believers.**
>
>      Empire as a concept then is post-hegelian and by default
>      anti-Kantian and very much against the sublime. 3. Empire
>      operates at all points in the social register from the very
>      highest down to the lowest points in the social world. As
>      such it aims to rebuild human nature into its own
>      requirements.
>
>      **To argue about Hegel and Kant I would have to read them,
>      but if living authors have something to say to us, and use
>      words of H&K to explain what they are trying to tell us, why
>      not.  I didn't know they were against the sublime.**
>
>      Is this a reasonable starting point....Hugh? Is this what
>      you want?
>
>      **Yes, its reasonable.  After we post statements on our
>      understanding of what the  authors' mean by multitude,
>      subjectivity, production, measure, appropriation etc., it
>      should be easy to summarize in one or two thousand words.**.
>
>      thanks,
>
>      Hugh
>
>
>

--------------EA4A082F2A9686E36990A10F

HTML VERSION:

 **multitude, subjectivity, production, measure, appropriation etc., it should be easy to summarize in one or two thousand words.**.

Let''s look - with  subjectivity and continue to work through the list .

So let's look at subjectivity... In section 1.2 there is a discussion of biolpolitics and the society of control. This discussion relates directly to the work of Foucault and Deleuze and Gauttari - the relationship between biopolitics and subjectivity within N&H remains the question of re-production and the ongoing construction of producers. The postmodern society of the present is that "...in which mechanisms of command become ever more 'democratic' ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens..."(P23). A curious subjectivity that bears only a slight or passing relation to the 'human subject' as descended from Freud closer rather to the subject as descended from 'theories of ideology and subjectivity'.

To make this clearer it is worth remembering that "The great industrial and financial powers thus produce not only commodities but also subjectivities... They produce agentic subjectivities within the biopolitical context: they produce needs, social relations, bodies and minds - which is to say they produce producers..." (33). Here then is the actual starting point for N&H's version of subjectivity not just in the biopolitical realm -for it is a notion of subjectivity where the accent and the active part of the word is derived from the word through the words 'subject' or 'subjugated'. The derivation from the biopolitical context is accented through "...in the biopolitical sphere, life is made to work for life..." to be the point of reproduction. The reference here also moves through into the production and productive elements of language and communication - the theory goes that the production of new langauge forms relates directly to the new globalised world order through the production of new forms of subjectivity... To this point we are addressing the notion of subjectivity as related to from the position of capital. But it is equally important to consider that the new figures of subjectivity, and you cannot think this in terms of biopolitic, also generate new forms of resistence, her obviously formed around the revolutionary subject 'the multitude'.

In other words there is a return to the subject through - Freud - perhaps not quite the subject contained in the 'libidinal economy' of Lyotard - but not far away... After all '...a new theory of subjectivity must be formulated that operates primarily through knowledge, communication and language...'  Lyotard more or less states that this is his intention in both LE and The Differend... This variety of subjectivity becomes important because of the way in which it takes the logic of the libidinal economy  and places it in a postmodern frame. 'When one adopts the perspective of the activity of the multitude, its production of subjectivity and desire, one can recognise how globalisation, operates a real deterritorialisation of the previous structures of exploitation and control, is really a condition of the liberation of the multitude...' This subjectivity then is not about the underlying construction of the libidinal economy, it is not about the construction of the consciopus/preconscious/unconscious and so on - no polymorphous perversity here - no what is here is a predominantly social subject. Perhaps even an 'inoperative subject' a 'coming subject'... Here then is the reference back towards the notion of subjectivity descended from Freud and passed through Althussar - interppellation - 'the hey-you' of subjectivity and recognition - on top of this postmodern subjectivity is overlaid - p196 on - (based on Deleuze) the construction of the subjectivity is wholly considered as being social, school, home, army and so on....

Writing this, extracting it from the text makes me think that the claim of subjectivity may be to much, an abuse of the word - what is defined here is a social-subjectivity, he way in which we are pinned down, transfixed by our given social roles, from the factory to the multitude and back again. It is  not clear how the social-subjectivity has been reconstituted to be marked and constructed as different from the libidinal subject of before....

Always this text is haunted by the anti-humanism and post-humanism we deal with on an everyday basis. On this micro-social level which is being defined as the field of 'subjectivity' what can be considered struggle and resistence?

reghards

sdv.

hbone wrote:

Steve, Thanks.  A detailed reply deserves a detailed response.  I'll try.   Steve wrote:

All reading is intertextual... and considering that the text refuses to be 'standalone' I am mystified by the below statements.

**  1) I'm familiar with the intertextual approach set forth by various writers, and "refusal" , as in refusal of work, refusal to believe what the authority, (the State, the Boss, the Politicians, the Media) wants you to beleve) is a use of the term I was not familiar with, but think I  understand.  2) Which statements are mysterious?**

If as you state below you wish to make a reading that revolves around the 'Empie' text alone

** The text alone contains the names of dozens of authors who have written many books. H&N use this method to present, illuminate, justify, their own ideas, the ideas that they decided to publish. Sometimes they quote directly from a reference, sometimes not. I don't think they suggested reading of referenced works is a pre-requisite to undrstanding Empire.**

 - an intellectual method I think I disapprove of because of the impossibility of the practice - then I suggest you open up with a close textual reading of Section 4.3 'The multitude against the empire'.  Or alternatively perhaps section 3.4 'Postmodernization, or the informatisation of production'. However given that the latter is very much written against the grain of Lyotard's anti-historical approach, and I've used this and other related sections of the text continuously for the past year, I think the former is more useful as it presumes to state what they regard as a 'revolutionary subject'.

**O.K   I'll re-read 4.3.including these items that I noted in a previous post:

page 416 - Mass migrations have become necessary for production.
      -  What we need to grasp is how the multitude is organized and
         redefined as a positive political power.
page 417 - Imperial capital does indeed attack the movements of the multitude
with a tireless determination:  it patrols the seas and the borders; within each country it
divides and segregates; and in the world of labor it reinforces the cleavages and borderlines of race, gender, language, culture, and so forth.  Even then, however, it must be careful not to restrict the productivity of the multitude too much because Empire too
depends on this power.
page 418  - What specific and concrete practices will animate this political
project?  We cannot say at this point.   What we can see nonetheless is a
first element of a political demand:  "global citizenship".
page 419 -  Empire too depends on this power.
              - In modernity, reality was not conceivable except as measure, and                 measure in turn was not  conceivable except as a (real or formal) a priori that corralled being within a transcendent order
421 - a social wage and a guaranteed income for all.
422 - Knowledge has to become linguistic action and philosophy has to become a real "reappropriation of knowledge"  In other words knowledge and communication have to constitute life through struggle.
424 - the right to reappropriate.
425 - the earthly city must demonstrate its power as an apparatus of the
mythology of  the multitude. being-knowing-having power.

428 - a society in which the basis of power is defined by the expression of
the needs of all.

**And perhaps we should attempt a mutual understanding of "multitude", "production",  "subjectivities", "measure", "appropriation", and "re-appropriation".**

If you don't want to write a summary or synthesis of the text then how do you want to advance?

**After we explain our understanding of the most troublesome terms, we can summarize, with a chance of being understood.**

Some initial thoughts below:

Consider the contents of the book - it is in four parts: Part 1 'The political constitution of the present, Part 2 Passages of soveriegnty, an inter-mezzo Counter-Empire, part three passages of production, part 4 the decline and fall of empire.

Actually the 'Empire'; text fits within the range of leftwing texts that discuss the current postmodern economy as being something with positive elements, but it does not have the statistical evidence to support itself,

**.Agreed**

 Including most startling of all a new (maxist/hegalian) revolutionary subject... Perhaps equally interesting but without any actual supporting evidence is the notion of 'empire' itself - it is emphasized that the notion is not a metaphor but a political concept which demands 'a political approach' (xiv). The supporting evidence seems thin because you would assume that the nation-state was in some sense in retreat whereas the actual evidence suggests that this is not the case. Think of the problems the Kyoto agreement has with the Nation-states non-cooperative USA, the G8 conference with the meeting of the poor countries in Zanzibar... It is true that there is a vast lack of boundries for postmodern capitalism(xiv) however whilst capital has no territorial boundries what evidence is there that globalisation is threatening to suspend history? It does not re-create 'the end of history' but rather so they argue creates new forms of resistence...

**Agree in general, but we need to explore "new forms of resistance" - what is truly new is often difficult to recognize.**

The initial three key points and rules of empire are: 1. Empire posits a regime that  encompasses the spatial totality, actually the entire civilised world (leaves out Afghanistan I would imagine) but no boundries limit its scope.

**Afghanistan, like other warring countries doesn't fit now, but perhaps will in the future.**

 2. The concept presents itself not as an empire that originates from conquest, but rather as an order that suspends history (and proposes to be eternal, where does this piece of 'end of history' get justified from?).

**You may not agree with my theory that "History" doesn't exist.. What does exist is narratives of past events recorded in books and other artifacts.  Persons who lived the events or read the narratives can, if memory serves, recall them.  So history, at that poin exists in living brain/bodies.  Incidentally, I like the "Empire's" emphasis on "minds and bodies", and that idea should help disabuse us of 19th century philosophy which treats "History" as a mysterious, transcendent, non-human force, like the traditional panoply of gods and mystics that most post-modern thinkers consider fictitious.  Of course the gods and mystics are real to religious persons.  As real to them as living authors, TV and the Internet are for non-believers.**

Empire as a concept then is post-hegelian and by default anti-Kantian and very much against the sublime. 3. Empire operates at all points in the social register from the very highest down to the lowest points in the social world. As such it aims to rebuild human nature into its own requirements.

**To argue about Hegel and Kant I would have to read them, but if living authors have something to say to us, and use words of H&K to explain what they are trying to tell us, why not.  I didn't know they were against the sublime.**

Is this a reasonable starting point....Hugh? Is this what you want?

**Yes, its reasonable.  After we post statements on our understanding of what the  authors' mean by multitude, subjectivity, production, measure, appropriation etc., it should be easy to summarize in one or two thousand words.**.

thanks,

Hugh