This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Empire (book) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Empire |
| Author | Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Political theory |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press (original) |
| Pub date | 2000 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 362 |
| Isbn | 9780674007036 |
Empire (book) is a 2000 political theory text by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri that proposes a new framework for understanding global sovereignty in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Combining analyses drawn from Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and Giambattista Vico with references to institutions such as United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and European Union, the work argues that a postmodern form of imperial organization—termed "Empire"—has supplanted classical territorial empires. The book sparked debates involving scholars from Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University, and activist networks including Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Hardt, an American literary critic associated with Duke University and Brown University, and Negri, an Italian political philosopher who had been involved with Operaismo and faced legal action in Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, collaborated across transatlantic intellectual networks. The manuscript arises from dialogues that engaged texts by Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Hannah Arendt, and responds to geopolitical shifts after the end of the Cold War and events such as the Gulf War. Published in English by Harvard University Press in 2000, the volume was subsequently discussed at venues including Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, London School of Economics, and festivals tied to the World Social Forum.
The book opens by asserting that sovereignty has been reconfigured into a deterritorialized order labeled "Empire," embodied by networks of institutions such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and corporate entities including Microsoft, ExxonMobil, and General Electric. Hardt and Negri map continuities with earlier forms of power represented by the Roman Empire, British Empire, and colonial projects like those of Spain and Portugal, while emphasizing differences produced by supranational arrangements exemplified by the European Community and NAFTA. Drawing on theoretical resources from Marxism, Postmodernism, Autonomism, and thinkers such as Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze, the authors outline how labor, biopolitics, and networked production transform resistance. The latter sections analyze the role of social movements including Movimento Passe Livre, Indigenous movements of Chiapas, and anti-globalization protests in mounting a "multitude" that could challenge Empire alongside tactics inspired by Worker cooperatives and cultural producers linked to Critical Theory circles.
Key themes include sovereignty redefinition tied to technological infrastructures like the Internet, financial mechanisms centered on Wall Street and City of London, and security architectures represented by the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security. The book develops a theory of the "multitude" as a collective subject distinct from the proletariat and the nation-state frame associated with the Treaty of Westphalia, Versailles Treaty, and postwar institutions. Engaging debates in Cultural Studies, Political Philosophy, and International Relations, Hardt and Negri synthesize arguments from Immanuel Kant-inflected cosmopolitanism, Foucault's biopolitics, and Negri's own Operaismo roots. Critics have probed the book's treatment of capitalism via comparisons to analyses by David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Giovanni Arrighi, and contrasted its normative claims with frameworks advanced by John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Samuel Huntington.
Reception was polarizing across academic and activist milieus. Reviews appeared in journals and venues such as New Left Review, The Nation, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, and New York Review of Books. Scholars at Princeton University, University of Chicago, and Cambridge University debated its empirical grounding and predictive claims, while activists at demonstrations including the 1999 Seattle protests and gatherings linked to the World Social Forum engaged with its vocabulary of "Empire" and "multitude." The book influenced subsequent publications by Hardt and Negri, responses by critics like Jodi Dean and Michael Albert, and interdisciplinary work across Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography. Policy analysts at institutions such as the Brookings Institution and think tanks like RAND Corporation engaged with its implications for globalization and security.
Originally released in English by Harvard University Press, the work was translated into multiple languages, with editions published by houses in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Brazil. Translations engaged translators familiar with texts by Antonio Gramsci, Karl Marx, and Michel Foucault to render concepts like "multitude" and "Empire" into Italian, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages. Subsequent printings and paperback editions appeared from academic and independent presses, and companion texts by the authors—such as "Multitude" and "Commonwealth"—were likewise published and translated.
Empire catalyzed generations of scholarship linking critical theory with global social movements, informing work at centers including Institute for Advanced Study, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, and programs in Global Studies at universities worldwide. Its terminology entered activist lexicons alongside references to events such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and movements opposing Free Trade Area of the Americas. Debates provoked by the book continue to shape inquiries into sovereignty, transnational networks, and the capacities of collective subjects, influencing authors and critics across disciplines including Political Science, History, and Cultural Geography.
Category:2000 non-fiction books Category:Political books Category:Works by Michael Hardt Category:Works by Antonio Negri