‘Subterranean Passages of Thought’: Empire's Inserts

Scattered throughout Hardt and Negri's Empire are a number of short sections whose manifesto-like energy contrasts with the relatively expository style of the main text. These passages, modeled after the scholie of Spinoza's Ethics, are meant to suggest new ways of thinking about material already presented, to highlight the affective aspect of the material, and to point to hidden connections among different discursive elements. Several of these which did not appear in the published version of Empire for reasons of space are published here for the first time. The matters touched on are as diverse as those in Empire itself: Totality as a philosophical problem, the gender of biopolitical production, the relationship between genocide and the nationstate, the possibility of hope; the paradoxes of unemployment, the function of fear, postmodern prophecy,Hollywood's imperial fantasy, and the paradoxical relationship between being-against and love that has puzzled and fascinated many of Empire's readers.