Metropolitanism and postcoloniality in Hardt and Negri'sEmpiretrilogy

Bibliographic Data

ID2178979
AuthorsJaecheol Kim (0000-0001-6058-0797)
Year2015
Volume51
Issue6
Pages672-684
Publication date2015-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2015.1080177
OpenAlexW2199006855
LanguageEN
References cited14

This article surveys Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire trilogy – Empire, Multitude and Commonwealth – in terms of postcolonialism. As “the Communist Manifesto for the 21st Century”, the trilogy has inspired contemporary leftist debates on transnationalism and shaped critical discourses about biopolitics and immaterial labor. In their manifesto, Hardt and Negri claim that old empires perished long ago, and the postcolonial condition no longer explains the current global order. Yet the trilogy is fraught with localized postcolonial issues, and the trilogy resounds with old national and colonial issues such as nationalism, imperialism and local unrests, the anxieties of which the authors cannot obliterate. By developing these localized postcolonial questions, this article takes issue with the way the trilogy assimilates postcolonial social formations that reside beneath the grand narrative of global Empire

Ancient history · Art · Biopower · Colonialism · Empire · Literature · Manifesto · Multitude · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Postcolonialism (international relations · Sociology · Transnationalism · Trilogy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Gender Studies · History · Law