Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2004). NY: The Penguin Press. Empire is referred to as a new global sovereignty ruled by a network power, which consists of dominant nation-states as its primary nodes along with supranational institutions, major capital corporations and other smaller powers, just like the Internet, a distributed network. The combination of these elements constitutes a global order, which is characterized with unequal participation at all levels and a global state of war. Multitude, an alternative concept to this, preserves differences while seeking to communicate and act in common. Here the authors suggest two faces to globalization. One is the spread of hierarchy and conflicts spread by Empire and the other is the creation of networks for cooperation that preserves both difference and commonality (Preface). [Thus, globalization is a contemporary Janus , which has two faces looking at two different directions.] WAR By the global state of war, the authors mean that war is be...