Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Author Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
Country United States
Language English
Subject Political Science
Marxism
Globalization
Philosophy
Postmodernism
Publisher Penguin Books
Publication date
2004
Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages 448 pp.
ISBN 1-59420-024-6
OCLC 54487542
321.8 22
LC Class JC423 .H364 2004
Preceded by Empire
Followed by Commonwealth

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire is a book by post-marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, published in 2004. It is the second installment of a "trilogy" also comprising Empire (2000) and Commonwealth (2009).

Summary

Multitude is divided into three sections: "War," which addresses the current "global civil war";[1] "Multitude," which elucidates the "multitude" as an "active social subject, which acts on the basis of what the singularities share in common";[1] and, "Democracy," which critiques traditional forms of political representation and gestures toward alternatives.

Multitude addresses these issues and elaborates on the assertion, in the Preface to Empire, that:

"The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges."[2]

The rapid growth of the alter-globalisation movement, evident in the large protests in Seattle in 1999 and in Genova in 2001, along with the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, also in 2001, seemed to substantiate the optimistic outlook at the end of Empire. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and subsequent rise of state-sponsored "counter-terrorism" seem, however, to have complicated this optimism.


Notes

  1. 1 2 Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Penguin Books. 2009. Pg. 4. Pg. 100.
  2. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Empire. Harvard University Press. 2000. Pg 15.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/10/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.