Hardt and Negri's Empire and Real Empire: The Terrors of 9-11 and After1

Abstract What can Empire tell us about the world after September 11 2001? A book with such hubris and impact should cast light on the horrific attack on New York’s Twin Towers and its interpretive framework should assist analysis of the post 9-11 world. However, although much of Empire’s repertoire is useful, its analytic and prescriptive capacity is compromised by its tendency to analyse the global political economy as if its telescopic vision is a fait accompli. Firstly, Empire is written as if all the world’s production has been ‘informationalised. ’ Secondly, it renders states irrelevant. Thirdly, it sees all effective resistance to current global realities as postcapitalist. These projections may be tendential but are presently utopian and fantastic. 9-11 and thereafter have reinforced trends against Hardt and Negri’s teleology. Their vision is premature, although promising and even inspiring. Their analysis, although provocative, rests on shaky foundations. The world economy is based on commodities more substantial than information. The state — in first and third worlds — is far from dead and many contradictions arise therein. Resistance is as much pre-modern or modern as ‘postmodern. ’ The globe’s trajectory is not yet what is predicted — or assumed — in Empire