Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 19:19:38 +0100
Subject: Re: marxist grand narrative - the return?


Hugh/Eric

One of the recent points I have trying to make is that the political shift has
been away from the perspectives engaged in by Lyotard towards an acceptance of
the necessity of  grand narratives. Lyotards rejection of western marxist
positions has itself been supplanted by a reengagement in those forms of
theoretical and political practice... There is a, as evidenced in the Empire
text itself, shift towards an acceptence that change is possible and that the
pessimism so much in evidence in Lyotard's late writings may be misplaced...

In the discussion point raised below - the attempt at a 'universal' history is a
longstanding leftwing dream derived in this case from the work of D&G in turn
related to Marx, Dumezil and Mumford. The issue is related to what is the intent
of the text - which can be placed as an attempt to construct an argument around
the new faces of the postmodern empire. (see the sections on Imperial
Sovereignty for example)

regards

sdv


> Christian religion is what destroyed the Roman Empire by destroying the
> civic passion that pagan society had sustained, the conflictual but loyal
> participation of the citizens in the continuous perfecting of the
> constitution and the process of freedom.
>
> We should be clear where that when we speak of the "city" or "democracy" in
> quotation marks as the basis for the expansive activity of the Republic, and
> as the only possibility for a lasting empire, we are introducing a concept
> of participation that is linked to the vitality of a  population and to its
> capacity to generate a dialectic of counterpowers - a concept, therefore,
> that has little to do with the classical
> or the modern concept of democracy.
>
> Even the reigns of Genghis Khan and Tamerlance were from this perspective
> somewhat "democratic," as were Caesar's legions, Napoleon's armies, and the
> armies of Stalin and Eisenhower, since each of them enabled the
> participation of a population that supported its expansive action.  What is
> central in all these cases is that a terrain of immanence be affirmed.
>
> Immanence is defined as the absence of every external limit from the
> trajectories of the action of the multitude, and immanence is tied only, in
> its affirmations and destructions, to regimes of possibility that constitute
> its formation and development.
>
> Here we find ourselves back at the center of the paradox by which every
> theory of Empire conceives the possibility of its own decline - but now we
> can begin to explain it.  If Empire is always an absolute positivity, the
> realization of a government of the multitude, and an absolutely immanent
> apparatus, then it is exposed to crisis precisely on the terrain of this
> definition, and not for any other necessity
> or transcendence opposed to it.
>
> Crisis is the sign of an alternative possibility on the plane of Immanence -
> a crisis that is not necessary but always possible.  Machiavelli helps us
> understand this immanent, constitutive, and ontological sense of crisis.
> Only  in the present situation, however, does this coexistence of crisis and
> the field of crisis and the field of immanence become completely clear.
> Since the spatial and temporal dimensions of political action are no longer
> the limits but the constructive mechanisms of imperial government, the
> coexistence of the positive and the negative on the terrain of immanence is
> now configured as an open alternative.  Today the same movements and
> tendencies constitute both the rise and the decline of Empire.
>
>  imminet apparatus, then it is exposed to crisis precisely on the terrain of
> this definition, and not for any other necessity or transcendency opposed to
> it.  Crisis is the sign of an alternative possibility on the plane of
> immanence - a crisis that is not necessary but always possible.  Machiavelli
> helps us understand this immanent , concstitutive
> constitutive, and ontological sense of crisis.  Only in the present
> situation,
> however, does this coexistence of crisis and the field of immanence become
> completely clear.  Since the spatial and temporal dimensions of political
> action are no longer the limits but the
> constructive mechanisms of imperial government, the coexistence of the
> positive and
>
>  Eric/All,
>
> Eric wrote:
>  > So here is the gauntlet I am laying down. Would you be willing to
>  > discuss Empire critically with us here?  To evaluate what AN and MH have
>  > to say both as theory and in its implications for action?
>
> O.K.
>
>  I suggest we start with these assertions which  I've copied from Empire
>  online:.
>
> I see this approach  as a very grand narrative, which we can work our
> way  through beginning with an understanding of its seminal terms, such as
> "immanence", "multitude",  the democratic elements of  armies, fascism and
> assorted
> historical despotisms
>
>  best,
>  Hugh
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> THIS  EXTRACT BEGINS AT PAGE 391 OF THE ONLINE VERSION ,
> ( BOOK PAGES ARE DIFFERENT.)
>
> Christian religion is what destroyed the Roman Empire by destroying the
> civic passion that pagan society had sustained, the conflictual but loyal
> participation of the citizens in the continuous perfecting of the
> constitution and the process of freedom.
>
> We should be clear where that when we speak of the "city" or "democracy" in
> quotation marks as the basis for the expansive activity of the Republic, and
> as the only possibility for a lasting empire, we are introducing a concept
> of participation that is linked to the vitality of a  population and to its
> capacity to generate a dialectic of counterpowers - a concept, therefore,
> that has little to do with the classical
> or the modern concept of democracy.
>
> Even the reigns of Genghis Khan and Tamerlance were from this perspective
> somewhat "democratic," as were Caesar's legions, Napoleon's armies, and the
> armies of Stalin and Eisenhower, since each of them enabled the
> participation of a population that supported its expansive action.  What is
> central in all these cases is that a terrain of immanence be affirmed.
>
> Immanence is defined as the absence of every external limit from the
> trajectories of the action of the multitude, and immanence is tied only, in
> its affirmations and destructions, to regimes of possibility that constitute
> its formation and development.
>
> Here we find ourselves back at the center of the paradox by which every
> theory of Empire conceives the possibility of its own decline - but now we
> can begin to explain it.  If Empire is always an absolute positivity, the
> realization of a government of the multitude, and an absolutely immanent
> apparatus, then it is exposed to crisis precisely on the terrain of this
> definition, and not for any other necessity
> or transcendence opposed to it.
>
> Crisis is the sign of an alternative possibility on the plane of Immanence -
> a crisis that is not necessary but always possible.  Machiavelli helps us
> understand this immanent, constitutive, and ontological sense of crisis.
> Only  in the present situation, however, does this coexistence of crisis and
> the field of crisis and the field of immanence become completely clear.
> Since the spatial and temporal dimensions of political action are no longer
> the limits but the constructive mechanisms of imperial government, the
> coexistence of the positive and the negative on the terrain of immanence is
> now configured as an open alternative.  Today the same movements and
> tendencies constitute both the rise and the decline of Empire.
>
>  imminet apparatus, then it is exposed to crisis precisely on the terrain of
> this definition, and not for any other necessity or transcendency opposed to
> it.  Crisis is the sign of an alternative possibility on the plane of
> immanence - a crisis that is not necessary but always possible.  Machiavelli
> helps us understand this immanent , concstitutive
> constitutive, and ontological sense of crisis.  Only in the present
> situation,
> however, does this coexistence of crisis and the field of immanence become
> completely clear.  Since the spatial and temporal dimensions of political
> action are no longer the limits but the
> constructive mechanisms of imperial government, the coexistence of the
> positive and