Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 18:35:33 -0100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: What is Empire about? - measure


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--Boundary_(ID_EnSRf/Df5ZOrWJnmKaOX2A)




  Steve/All,
   
  Continuing the effort to understand how certain words are used in Empire, we come to "measure" 
   
  The dictionary gives definitions such as amount, bounds, tolerance, degree  to the word "measure" used as a noun. 

  This is a beginning, but only a beginning to  understanding its use in Empire.   

  The following examples give more depth.
  227 - The very qualities of labor power (difference, measure, and determination) can no longer be grasped, and similarly, exploitation can no longer be localized and quantified. In effect, the object of exploitation and domination tends not to be specific productive activities but the universal capacity to produce, that is, abstract social activity and it comprehensive power. This abstract labor is an activity without place, and yet it is very powerful. It is the cooperating set of brains and hands, minds and bodies; it is both the non-belonging and the creative social diffusion of living labor; it is the desire and the striving of the multitude of mobile and flexible workers; and at the same time it is intellectual energy and linguistic and communicative construction of the multitude of intellectual and affective laborers

  229 - The identification of the enemy, however, is no small task given that exploitation tends no longer to have a specific place and that we are immersed in a system of power so deep and complex that we can no longer determine specific difference or measure.

  332 - According to Polybius' analysis, monarchy anchors the unity and continuity of power. It is the foundation and ultimate instance of imperial rule. Aristocracy defines justice, measure, and virtue. and articulates their networks throughout the social sphere.

  335 - The processes of the real subsumption, of subsuming labor under capital and absorbing global society within Empire, force the figures of power to destroy the spatial measure and distance that had defined their relationships, merging the figures in hybrid forms.

  372 - The political must also be understood as ontological owing to the fact that all the transcendental determinations of value and measure that used to order the deployments of power (or really determine its prices, subdivisions, and hierarchies) have lost their coherence.

  373 - The great Western metaphysical tradition has always abhorred the immeasurable. From Aristotle's theory of virtue as measure, to Hegel's theory of measure as the passage from existence to essence, the question of measure has been strictly linked to that of transcendent order.

  373 - Just as God is necessary for the classical transcendence of power, so too measure is necessary for the transcendent foundation of the values of the modern state. If there is no measure, the metaphysicians say, there is no Cosmos, and if there is no Cosmos, there is no state.

  In this framework one cannot think the immeasurable, or rather, one "must not" think it Throughout modernity, the immeasurable was the object of an absolute ban, an epistemological prohibition. This metaphysical illusion disappears today, however, because in the context of biopolitical ontology and its becomings, the transcendent is what is unthinkable. When political transcendence is still claimed today it descends immediately into tyranny and barbarism. When we say immeasurable, we mean that the political developments of imperial being are outside of every preconstituted measure.

  regards,

  Hugh


--Boundary_(ID_EnSRf/Df5ZOrWJnmKaOX2A)

HTML VERSION:

 

Steve/All,

 

Continuing the effort to understand how certain words are used in Empire, we come to "measure"

 

The dictionary gives definitions such as amount, bounds, tolerance, degree  to the word "measure" used as a noun.

 

This is a beginning, but only a beginning to  understanding its use in Empire.  

 

The following examples give more depth.

227 - The very qualities of labor power (difference, measure, and determination) can no longer be grasped, and similarly, exploitation can no longer be localized and quantified. In effect, the object of exploitation and domination tends not to be specific productive activities but the universal capacity to produce, that is, abstract social activity and it comprehensive power. This abstract labor is an activity without place, and yet it is very powerful. It is the cooperating set of brains and hands, minds and bodies; it is both the non-belonging and the creative social diffusion of living labor; it is the desire and the striving of the multitude of mobile and flexible workers; and at the same time it is intellectual energy and linguistic and communicative construction of the multitude of intellectual and affective laborers

229 - The identification of the enemy, however, is no small task given that exploitation tends no longer to have a specific place and that we are immersed in a system of power so deep and complex that we can no longer determine specific difference or measure.

332 - According to Polybius' analysis, monarchy anchors the unity and continuity of power. It is the foundation and ultimate instance of imperial rule. Aristocracy defines justice, measure, and virtue. and articulates their networks throughout the social sphere.

335 - The processes of the real subsumption, of subsuming labor under capital and absorbing global society within Empire, force the figures of power to destroy the spatial measure and distance that had defined their relationships, merging the figures in hybrid forms.

372 - The political must also be understood as ontological owing to the fact that all the transcendental determinations of value and measure that used to order the deployments of power (or really determine its prices, subdivisions, and hierarchies) have lost their coherence.

373 - The great Western metaphysical tradition has always abhorred the immeasurable. From Aristotle's theory of virtue as measure, to Hegel's theory of measure as the passage from existence to essence, the question of measure has been strictly linked to that of transcendent order.

373 - Just as God is necessary for the classical transcendence of power, so too measure is necessary for the transcendent foundation of the values of the modern state. If there is no measure, the metaphysicians say, there is no Cosmos, and if there is no Cosmos, there is no state.

In this framework one cannot think the immeasurable, or rather, one "must not" think it Throughout modernity, the immeasurable was the object of an absolute ban, an epistemological prohibition. This metaphysical illusion disappears today, however, because in the context of biopolitical ontology and its becomings, the transcendent is what is unthinkable. When political transcendence is still claimed today it descends immediately into tyranny and barbarism. When we say immeasurable, we mean that the political developments of imperial being are outside of every preconstituted measure.

regards,

Hugh