From: "Nicholas J. Kiersey" <nkiersey-AT-vt.edu>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: [VT_THEORY] on empire and negri
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 17:28:15 -0400


Yes, I remember the scene. But where that scene is certainly 
romanticized in its representation, I struggle to see how such 
representation can be found in Negri. Has not Negri struggled mightily 
to define the multitude in a non-localized way. There is no represented 
'there" to the multitude. Locally, we only find differences. Voting for 
Republicans or democrats doesn't exclude you then from the category of 
multitude. I think it is a little harsh to say the multitude is simply 
something born out of Negri's nostalgic imagination. It is a virtual 
concept - a tool - to help us understand a possible global people.

Meanwhile, the funniest part of that earlier review by Fukuyama surely 
must be the following paragraph:

> But this raises the question of why India and China have been able to 
> take advantage of globalization, while Africa has not. The answer has 
> largely to do with the fact that the former have strong, 
> well-developed state institutions providing basic stability and public 
> goods. They had only to get out of the way of private markets to 
> trigger growth. By contrast, modern states were virtually unknown in 
> most of sub-Saharan Africa before European colonialism, and the 
> weakness of states in the region has been the source of its woes ever 
> since.

For anyone familiar with the history of the rise of the Asian economies 
for the 30 years prior to 1997, this is a total fantasy. Yes, Asian 
states were 'strong' but it is not true to say that their success can 
be attributed to those states 'getting out of the way'. Read Wade and 
Veneroso on this and we see that Asian states were in fact heavily 
involved in the rise of the various chaebol, etc. It is simply that the 
high debt ratios that we usually ascribe to 'strong developmental 
states' was not present as these were taken on by the corporations 
instead. In the Asian case then, the whole state/corporation dichotomy 
fails as a meaningful way to describe governance there.

And, viz sub-Saharan Africa, there is a viable argument to make that it 
is in fact not the historical absence of 'trust' in these areas that 
has lead to the deficit of "public goods" but, in fact, the machette 
approach of western powers to establishing regulation in these areas 
that has left the region so adrift. Not all public goods need be 
provided by something looking like a Westphalian 'strong state'. There 
is a sinister imperialism couched in these words - he's pulling a 
Robert Kaplan or a Samuel Huntington. Something wrong in culture, 
stupid. Nothing to do with us.

NiK

On Aug 24, 2004, at 19:28, Thomas Seay wrote:

> We have been discussing this and I think this article
> is worthless;  on the other hand, I thought that
> Fukuyama had a couple of interesting things to say in
> his article.
>
> For example, I remember Fukuyama pointed out that a
> whole lot of the "multitudes" in the USA are voting
> Republican...just as the exit polls in the last French
> Presidential run-off in France found that a lot of
> workers had voted Le Pen.
>
> I dont see Negri addressing this issue anywhere.
> There is this romantic notion of the multitudes that
> seems to be a construction of his imagination.
> Whenever I try to picture the "multitudes" using
> Negri's description, the image that comes to mind is
> that scene from the second Matrix where the cave
> dwelling hordes are engaged in a  dionysian dance.
> You know the scene.
> --- "Nicholas J. Kiersey" <nkiersey-AT-vt.edu> wrote:
>
>> interesting... sorry if you all have read this
>> already. When i first
>> read this I was furious at the clear lack of effort
>> on the part of the
>> author. But then I started to think that authors are
>> not really authors
>> at all, but relays. And perhaps what this author is
>> relaying is worth
>> taking seriously if we want to bring our ideas into
>> a more
>> strategically advantageous situation.
>>
>> NiK
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I can't take it any more. None of the world's real
>> problems - from
>>> poverty to tyranny to climate change - are
>> discussed in Negri's work,
>>> except to claim that the poor are "more alive",
>> and the citizens of
>>> liberal democracies are living under the "real
>> tyranny", and... oh, I
>>> give up. It's not just that this preacher of
>> Empire has no clothes; he
>>> is living in an intellectual nudist colony. There
>> are some important
>>> anti-globalisation writers, such as Monbiot and
>> Joseph Stiglitz. But
>>> Negri is trying to keep alive a patient - Marxism
>> - whose heart stopped
>>> beating long ago.
>>>
>>> So, this is where revolutionary Marxism comes to
>> die. It has been
>>> reduced to an obscure parlour game for ageing
>> bourgeois nostalgics,
>>> played out a few feet from Buckingham Palace by an
>> old terrorist who
>>> needs us to forget.
>>>
>>> from
>>>
>>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=552229
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Nicholas J. Kiersey
>> PhD Student, Environmental Design & Planning
>> VPI&SU
>> email: nkiersey-AT-vt.edu
>> home: nicholaskiersey-AT-mac.com
>> mobile phone: (540) 998-1218
>> AIM: NervousFishdown
>>
>>
>>
>>      --- from list
>> aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>
>
> ====> The real world gives the subset of what is; the product space 
> represents the uncertainty of the observer.  The product space may 
> therefore change if the observer changes; and two observers may 
> legitimately use different product spaces within which to record the 
> same subset of actual events in some actual thing. The "constraint" is 
> thus a relation between observer and thing; the properties of any 
> particular constraint will depend on both the real thing and on the 
> observer.  It follows that a substantial part of the theory of 
> organization will be concerned with properties that are not intrinsice 
> to the thing but are relational between observer and thing.
>
> W. Ross Ashby
>
>
> 		
> _______________________________
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>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>

Nicholas J. Kiersey
PhD Student, Environmental Design & Planning
VPI&SU
email: nkiersey-AT-vt.edu
home: nicholaskiersey-AT-mac.com
mobile phone: (540) 998-1218
AIM: NervousFishdown



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