Empire

Introduction

Negri and Michael Hardt wrote “Empire” in the 1990s; it appeared in 2000. The book argues that sovereignty has taken a new form: not an imperialism centred on nation-states, but a network of national, supranational and economic powers without a territorial centre or fixed borders, which the authors call Empire. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s biopolitics, Gilles Deleuze’s society of control and Marx, it describes a mode of production in which immaterial labour, communication and cooperation become central. The same processes create the multitude, a plurality of producers who could turn this cooperation against Empire. The book was widely read in the movements against neoliberal globalisation; Slavoj Žižek and others criticised its political vagueness, and the authors continued the project in “Multitude” (2004) and “Commonwealth” (2009).

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