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Wesleyan University
Moving beyond Biopower: Hardt and Negri's Post-Foucauldian Speculative Philosophy of History
Author(s): Ral Fillion
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 44, No. 4, Theme Issue 44: Theorizing Empire (Dec., 2005), pp.
47-72
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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History and Theory,ThemeIssue 44 (December 2005), 47-72
? Wesleyan University 2005 ISSN: 0018-2656
MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER:HARDT AND NEGRI'S POSTFOUCAULDIAN SPECULATIVEPHILOSOPHYOF HISTORY
REALFILLION
ABSTRACT
I arguein this paperthat the attemptby Michael Hardtand Antonio Negri in Empireand
Multitudeto "theorizeempire"should be read both against the backdropof speculative
philosophy of history and as a developmentof the conception of a "principleof intelligibility" as this is discussed in Michel Foucault'srecently publishedcourses at the College
de France.I also arguethat Foucault'swork in these courses (and elsewhere) can be read
as implicitly providing what I call "prolegomenato any future speculative philosophy of
history."I define the latter as concerned with the intelligibility of the historical process
consideredas a whole. I furthersuggest, througha brief discussion of the classical figures
of Kant,Hegel, and Marx,thatthe basic featuresof speculativephilosophy of historyconcern the articulationof both the telos and dynamicsof history.My claim is that Hardtand
Negri provide an accountof the telos and dynamicsof history that respects the strictures
imposed on speculative philosophy of history by Foucault's work, and thus can be considered as providing a post-Foucauldianspeculative philosophy of history. In doing so,
they providea challenge to other"theoretical"attemptsto accountfor our changingworld.
This paper has a number of objectives; the principal one is to examine the novel
use made of the concepts of "biopower" and the "biopolitical," which Michael
Hardtand Antonio Negri take from the work of Michel Foucault.I would like to
arguethat their developmentof these concepts should be read as contributingto
a renewed concern with speculative philosophy of history as both a context and
a challenge to contemporarytheoreticalefforts to account for a changing world.

In other words, I am suggesting that the "theorizing"that animates the writing
projectsMichael Hardtand Antonio Negri published as Empirel and Multitude2
should be understoodas speculative philosophy of history and that such speculative theorizingcan indeedhelp us make bettersense of our changing world than
do the more traditionalefforts of political theory.
It may appearsomewhatodd to make use of concepts developed by Foucault
in orderto produce speculativephilosophy of history given the alleged hostility
Foucault had toward such a mode of philosophizing. A subsidiaryobjective of
this paper is to show that Foucault's work, far from being hostile to speculative
1. MichaelHardtandAntonioNegri,Empire(Cambridge,
Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,
referredto as Empirein thetext.
2000).Hereafter
2. Michael Hardtand Antonio Negri, Multitude:Warand Democracy in the Age of Empire(New
to as Multitude
in thetext.
York:ThePenguinPress,2004).Hereafter
referred
48
REAL FILLION
philosophy of history,actually can be read, not as itself a contribution,but as an

articulationof what a renewed speculative philosophy of history would need to
considerin orderto be relevanttoday.His work offers what mightbe called "prolegomena to any futurespeculativephilosophy of history,"as it were. In light of
this, I am here proposing a reading of the work of Hardt and Negri as a postFoucauldianspeculative philosophy of history.
A thirdobjective of this paperis to arguethat a reconsiderationof speculative
philosophy of history can help us reconsiderwhat our various theoreticalefforts
arefor. I will arguethat the focus of theorizing should not be on the production
of more or less coherenttheories meant to account for some theory-independent
object or to provide some kind of guidance for practice;ratherthe focus of theorizing should be on intelligibility,on renderingmore intelligible the object of
our concern.In the case of this paper,the object of concern is a changing world,
and the focus of theorizingis therefore1) on makingsense of the natureand characteristicsof such change, and 2) on giving sense or directionto our engagements
in such a world.
I. THE CHALLENGEOF INTELLIGIBILITYAND
SPECULATIVEPHILOSOPHYOF HISTORY
It is perfectly accurateto say that Hardt and Negri are involved in a project of
theorizing something they call "Empire"and that therefore it is legitimate to
questionthe coherence and relevance of their particularuse of this concept. This
indeed has been the focus of many critical appraisalsof their work.3However, if
we trulywant to appreciatewhat Hardtand Negri are doing, then we need to distinguish their attemptto theorize something they call Empire from the production of a (more or less coherent) "theory"of empire (understoodas an already
constitutedobject of enquirydenoting an expandingform of rule and dominion).
Most critics have insisted on treatingtheir work (especially the book Empire)as
the latter,andjudge it to be a failure as a theory largely because of its ultimate
lack of coherenceas a theory.To read Hardtand Negri in this way is a mistake.
It is clear from the way their texts are written(complete with intermezzos,excursuses, and otherforms of italicized andboxed asides, additions,and similarscholia) that they are not concerned with producing something called a theory of
Empire.Rather,they are concernedwith theorizingwhat they believe can be discerned as an emerging "globalorder,a new logic and structureof rule-in short,
a new form of sovereignty"(Empire,xi). Their theorizing efforts are concerned
with makingsense of a changingworld in terms of the emergence and the effects
of a "new logic and structureof rule" that they call Empire, which at the same
time allows them to articulatethe forces thatare ruledin termsof somethingthey
call the "multitude."Their object of concern is the dynamic interactionbetween
the emergence of a particularform of rule and the forces that are ruled by it.
Their effort to theorize the changing conditions of our contemporaryworld is a
3. Their work has been the subject of numerousreviews, many of which are of doubtful value.
One of the better reviews is the review essay by Andreas Kalyvas, "Feet of Clay? Reflections on
Hardtand Negri's Empire,"Constellations 10, no. 2 (2003), 264-279.
MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER
49
mode of philosophizing that, following Michael Oakeshott, we can call the

explorationof the "conditionalplatform of understanding"that expresses itself
in what people are thinking,saying, and doing in a given time and place.
Wheneverwe attemptto understandwhat humanbeings are doing, we need to
realize, as Oakeshottremindsus, that:
is not suchthatwe eitherenjoyit or lackit altogether.
Tobehumanandto
Understanding
be awareis to encounteronly whatis in somemannerunderstood.
Thus,it maybe said
is an unsoughtcondition;we inexorablyinhabita worldof intelligithatunderstanding
as anengagement
bles.Butunderstanding
is anexertion;it is theresolveto inhabitanever
moreintelligible,or an ever less mysteriousworld.This unconditional
engagementof
I shallcall "theorizing."
It is an engagementto abatemysteryratherthan
understanding
to achievedefinitiveunderstanding.4
The point I wish to draw from Oakeshotthere is his concern with intelligibility. Theorizing has an unconditional commitment to intelligibility. That is, it
interrogatesa world (which, as a world, is always a world of particularintelligibles) whose intelligibility is unsatisfying to the intelligence that engages it. We
might call this the challenge of intelligibility.Our intelligences are formed within particularconstellationsor configurationsof modes of thinking that promote
certain ways of understandingthe world, both in terms of the ways the world
presentsitself to us and in termsof the expectationswe have about how to make
our way within it, both in termsof the way it is and the way it ought to be. Such
modes of thinking will be more or less satisfying to those who engage in them,
and insofar as they are so engaged, they will produce effects that affect the continued exercise of those intelligences. Theorizing, because of its unconditional
commitmentto intelligibility,is called for precisely when the effects on the continued exercise of intelligence within particularmodes of thinking include various forms of dissatisfaction,curiosity,bemusement,confusion, disbelief, disorientation,cynicism, outrage,distrust,a sense of powerlessness, and so on. Depending on the kinds of effect it is respondingto, the effort to theorize may require
the use of various resourcesthatinclude our imaginationas well as our ability to
present ideas with clarity and logical rigor. What emerges from the more sustained efforts to theorize are what Oakeshott calls "theorems"(to be distinguished from "theories,"which are the specialized objects producedby and for
"theorists"),which should be understoodnot as "an unconditionalterminus"that
calls for acceptanceor rejection,but ratheras a proposed"understandingwaiting
to be understood."5
From the theorizing efforts of Hardtand Negri, then, emerges the "theorem"
or concept of Empire that is meant to rendermore intelligible (less mysterious)
our intelligent engagementwith our changing world. Or, put otherwise, the conceptualarticulationof the theoremspecifically called Empireis meant to capture
the specific ways that the world we are engaged in has changed (vis-t-vis our
4. Michael Oakeshott,On HumanConduct(Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1975), 1.
5. Ibid., 2. The usefulness of considering the notions of "theorizing"and "theorem"is that they
focus "our attention upon the engagement, thus suggesting that we may more profitably ask ourselves, what is theorizing?than, what is a theorem?What is the relationshipbetween theorizing and
doing? than, what is the relationbetween theory and practice?"(Ibid., 3, note 1).
50
REAL FILLION
of thinking about the world in terms

more traditional-and unsatisfying-modes
of national sovereignty and international relations) and continues to change.
They characterize their concept of Empire in the following way:
The concept of Empire is characterizedfundamentallyby a lack of boundaries:Empire's
rule has no limits. First and foremost, then, the concept of Empire posits a regime that
effectively encompasses the spatialtotality, or really that rules over the entire "civilized"
world. No territorialboundarieslimit its reign. Second, the concept of Empire presents
itself not as a historical regime originatingin conquest, but ratheras an order that effectively suspendshistory and therebyfixes the existing state of affairsfor eternity.Fromthe
perspectiveof Empire,this is the way things will always be and the way they were always
meant to be. In other words, Empire presents its rule not as a transitorymoment in the
movement of history,but as a regime with no temporalboundariesand in this sense outside of history or at the end of history.Third,the rule of Empire operateson all registers
of the social orderextending down to the depthsof the social world. Empirenot only manages a territoryand a populationbut also createsthe very world it inhabits.It not only regulates humaninteractionsbut also seeks directlyto rule over humannature.The object of
its rule is social life in its entirety,and thus Empire presents the paradigmaticform of
biopower.Finally,althoughthe practice of Empireis continuallybathedin blood, the concept of Empireis always dedicatedto peace-a perpetualand universalpeace outside of
history.(Empire,xiv-xv)
The particular characteristics of the theorem of Empire presented here can
legitimately be called "imperial" insofar as Hardt and Negri are attempting to
theorize, like many others, our sense that the world is increasingly becoming one
world because it is increasingly falling under a singular, expanding form of rule
and dominion (traditional characteristics of historical empires). However, in
order to assess the particular way in which Hardt and Negri theorize the characteristics of today's Empire, I am suggesting that we consider their efforts against
the backdrop, and eventually as a specific form, of speculative philosophy of history. My primary motivation for doing so is quite simple: their primary concern
is with the movement of our changing world as well as its direction. These are
the traditional concerns of speculative philosophy of history. Given the particular characteristics of imperial rule, Hardt and Negri seem especially concerned
with re-activating the sense of history that is in fact occluded by the emerging
world order. This reactivation of history as discernible (and intelligible) movement seems to be overlooked by many critics who argue that, because for Hardt
and Negri there is no "outside" to Empire, they preclude any way of imagining
a transcending of it.6 And yet, of course, precisely what Hardt and Negri are trying to do is to provide, by identifying the "state" of the world in terms of Empire,
"a general theoretical framework and a toolbox of concepts for theorizing and
acting in and against Empire" (Empire, xvi). We can get a better sense of what is
of value and importance in what they are doing by treating Empire (or rather
Empire/Multitude, which better expresses the dynamic that animates this concept), following Foucault, as a principle of intelligibility.7
6. See, for example, the critiqueproposedby Ian Angus in his article:"Empire,Borders,Place: A
Critiqueof Hardtand Negri's Concept of Empire,"Theory& Event 7:3 (2004).
7. A notion developed in his courses at the College de France.These courses are in the process of
being publishedin France.English translationsare also forthcoming,the lectures of 1975-1976 having recently appearedas Michel Foucault, "SocietyMust Be Defended": Lecturesat the College de
51
What Foucault means when he invokes a principle of intelligibility is akin to

Kant's use of the notion of a regulativeidea, that is, something that governs and
structuresthe organizationof thought.Of course, Foucaultis not engaged in the
same project as Kantis. His concern is not with establishingand articulatingthe
conditions of objectivityper se, but ratherwith examining historically the ways
in which things coalesce and make sense in the particularways that they do.
Hence the appeal to the notion of intelligibility.The idea of a principle of intelligibility is meantto capturethe movement of thought(at a given time) that gathers around and structuresitself around (or coalesces around) certain ways of
making sense of privileged objects of concern. A principle of intelligibility
describes the object, the goal, and the foundationof a particularexercise of reason or reasoning at a given time, arising out of specific conditions and responding to those conditions.One example Foucaultdevelops is thatof the State as this
arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The movements of thought
aroundconceptualizingthe State at this time are, according to Foucault, as significant for understandingthe development and transformationof "Western
rationality"as are the activities giving rise to naturalscience. I will returnto
Foucault'streatmentof this notion laterwhen we explore the use Hardtand Negri
make of Foucault's linked conception of biopower.
The salient featureof Empire as a principle of intelligibility on which I wish
to focus in this paper is found in the second point the authors identify in suggesting it, namely that:
Empirepresentsitselfnot as a historicalregimeoriginatingin conquest,butratheras an
orderthateffectivelysuspendshistoryandtherebyfixes the existingstateof affairsfor
of Empire,thisis thewaythingswill alwaysbe andtheway
eternity.Fromtheperspective
theywerealwaysmeantto be. Inotherwords,Empirepresentsits rulenotas a transitory
moment in the movementof history, but as a regime with no temporalboundariesand in
thissenseoutsideof historyor at theendof history.(Empire,xiv-xv,my emphasis)

It is against this ahistorical (or perhapssuprahistorical)self-conception of a
contemporaryWorldOrderthat Hardtand Negri "counter-theorize,"as it were.
It is in this sense, moreover,that we should treat their conceptual suggestions as
evolving within a context of the speculativephilosophy of history,insofaras they
are concerned to make sense of the movement or dynamics of social life (which,
following both Marx and Foucault or, perhapsmore accurately,by insisting on
the theoretical relevance of a post-Foucauldiandevelopment of key features of
Marx's thought,they characterizeprincipallythroughthe focal point of "biopolitical production")whose intelligibility they seek to bring to light. In more traditionallanguage, they are attemptingto describe what sense can be made of the
historical process as a whole. They are fully justified in this, as we all are, given
that, far from being defunct, speculative philosophy of history is alive and well
France, 1975-1976, transl. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003). In the lecture of 10 March
1976, Foucault makes use of the concept of "grids of intelligibility,"which, like the "principlesof
intelligibility"he appeals to in the following lectures, serve to identify the way at a given time certain discursive practicescoalesce aroundparticularnotions in orderto yield a differentkind of intelligibility that proves responsive in unforeseen ways to the "actualities"of the day as "sense" is
attemptedto be made of them.
52
REALFILLION
and is a prime (thoughlargely unacknowledged)considerationof any thoughtful

approachto understandingthe world. It is at the heartof the myriaddiscussions
surrounding such speculative concepts as "globalization" and "cosmopolitanism" as well as forming the backdrop of references to "modernity,""latemodernity,"and "post-modernity."All of these concepts make implicit (though
sometimes explicit) use of a sense of the movement of history and presuppose
the intelligibility of thinking of social life in termsof this movement.That is, all
of these concepts contain within them a sense that the present is distinguishable
from the past and contains within it elements that indicate certainfeatures of a
possible future.
Explicit consideration of the importance of distinguishing how the present
both arises out of, and in doing so differs from, the past that then suggests reconsidering how to conceive of what the futureholds might serve as a definition of
speculative philosophy of history. It is speculative because it attemptsto grasp
history as a whole, that is, to treatit as an intelligible whole, and in doing so distinguishes itself from those activities that seek to establishfacts. It is a particular
form of theorizing,one that concerns itself with understandingor making sense
of a developing whole. It is not fanciful; it deals with the actually developing
world as it is seen to be developing, though the whole it articulatesneeds to be
imagined in orderto be thought (no one experiences-or can devise an experiment that tests-the "whole" of the world). That is, such speculative theorizing
cannot deny the facts of the world, indeed it must appeal to them insofar as it
claims to be about the world; however, the point of its endeavoris not to establish these facts, but ratherto use them in order to make sense of the world that
reveals them to us.
Speculativetheorizing,as in any otherform of theorizing,can be done well or
badly. It is done well if it attainsits objective of helping us make sense of the
object of concern, of renderingthe world more intelligible, less confounding.It
is done badly if it fails to renderthe world more intelligible, perhapsby introducing confusing distinctionsand constructsthat actuallyrenderour understanding of the world more opaque. Or perhapsby promisinga clarity to the workings
of the world belied by an honest appreciationof the facts, that is, by favoring its
theoreticalconstructionsover the realities insisted on by attentionto those facts.
Speculative philosophy of history is indeed prone to this second kind of failure
because its commitmentto the intelligibility of the social world (which matches,
while distinguishingitself from, the commitment of the naturalscientist to the
intelligibility of the naturalworld) typically contains an element of hopefulness
that, if left uncheckedby an appreciationof the facts, can lead to a kind of wishful thinking about the relevance of its theorizing efforts. However, to stifle the
hopefulness that otherwise stimulates speculative philosophizing or theorizing
because of the dangerof wishful thinkingis, to my mind, itself a form of wishful thinkingpervertedby its own denial of the role that hopefulness plays in the
very attemptto make sense of the world.
One of the most interesting features of the speculative efforts of Hardt and
Negri is their fully assumed appreciationof the role of hopefulness in theorizing
about the world we live in. The question as to how we should evaluate these
53
efforts then might be put this way: Do they help us better make sense of our
world and give us a bettersense of the direction it is taking?To use Oakeshott's
expression, do they enable us to "inhabitan ever more intelligible, or an ever less
mysterious world"in a way that helps us realize its possibilities?
II. CLASSICALSPECULATIVEPHILOSOPHYOF HISTORY:BASIC FEATURES
Partof what distinguishesspeculativethoughtfrom otherforms of thoughtis that

it attempts to describe and account for objects (things, processes) that do not
exist in a way amenable to verification. That is, an essential part of the object
speculative thought considers does not (yet) exist as such other than as a function of the speculativeeffort. We nevertheless include such objects in our experience, indeed in our everyday experience. Whenever we think of the future, we
are dealing with such a speculative object, that is, something that does not (yet)
exist. Thus, speculativephilosophy of history differs from historical researchin
that its preoccupationwith history includes a speculative preoccupationwith the
whole of history,which includes not only the past, but the present and future as
well. Indeed, its preoccupationis with the ways in which the past, the present,
and the futureinteractand can be thoughttogether and theorized.
One way of theorizinghistory as a whole is to consider the past, present, and
futureas a single process. To think of the past, present, and future as a process is
to assume or presumethat the past, present, and future cohere in an intelligible
way or in certaindiscernibleways. A particularway of describingthat coherence
is to say that this process is directed,that it can, as a process, be seen to be moving in a particulardirection,or in a particulardirectedfashion. When this kind of
speculative move is made, two questions might be said to arise. The first concerns what the directionis, which often gets specified by asking what is the endpoint or destinationthat (ultimately)governs the direction.This is the teleological question: it asks what is the end, or telos of this speculative process called
history. The second question concerns what drives the process such that it is
directedin the way thatit is. One might be temptedto call this questionthe causal
one, but thatmight lead one to thinkthatthe process of history needs to be understood as derivingfrom something outside of history,whereas partof the point of
these speculativeefforts is to accountfor this process from within it. It would be
more accurateto call this question one of the dynamics of history: what, if anything, can be said to move history,to be the motor of history?
To illustratehow these questions have been answeredin what might be called
classical speculativephilosophyof history (whose representativefigures are, for
the purposes of this discussion, Kant, Hegel, and Marx), we might schematize
mattersin the following way. For the first, teleological question, we can identify
in each of these speculativeefforts a particulartelos.
For Kant, we are headed towardperpetualpeace, a world orderof cosmopolitan law thatwill guaranteehumanrightsfor all and allow humanbeings to pursue
asymptoticallythe realizationof our naturalcapacities. This is expressed most
clearly in his Idea for a Universal Historyfrom a CosmopolitanPoint of View.
54
REAL FILLION
The telos itself is probablymost eloquentlyexpressedin the Eighth Thesis (para.

27): "The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of
Nature'ssecretplan to bringforth a perfectly constitutedstate as the only condition in which the capacities of mankindcan be fully developed, and also bring
forth that externalrelationamong states which is perfectlyadequate to this end."8
Much of the subsequentstory of the developmentof speculativephilosophyof
historycan be read (particularlyif one focuses on Hegel andMarx) as the attempt
to give this telos historicalform and content, an attemptto concretize the abstract
ideal it articulates.Another way to put it is to say that by appealing more concretely to historyas opposed to nature,Hegel andMarx attendedto the movement
of this ideal as it graduallyactualizes itself in and throughthe development of
world history.Given that, we can articulatetheir responsesin the following way.
For Hegel, we are headed towarda social orderof mutualrecognition founded on the developingrealizationand actualizationof freedomwithin and through
our increasinglyself-conscious social relations, whereas for Marx, we are headed toward a new form of social relations that recognizes that the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
This is all statedvery schematically.However, all I want to do here is to point
to the articulationof the telos of history when history as a whole is considered
speculatively.Moreover,this attemptto considerhistoryspeculatively as a whole
is probably most clearly articulatedby Kant who, interestingly, of the three
thinkers is most populartoday. That is, his speculative articulationof the cosmopolitanideal fuels much theorizingabout the challenges facing contemporary
conditions of co-existence on the planet.But just as interestingly,these theoretical efforts (from Habermasto Held9)seemed marredby their limited applicability to real-worldconditions.Partof the reason for this is that such theorizing,like
Kant's, is insufficiently attentive to the historical conditions of its articulation.
Kant, after all, talks about the intelligibility of the historicalprocess as a whole
in terms of a "secretplan of Nature"by which he betraysan actual disdainfor or
despairabout what actuallygoes on "in history,"which, if humanbeings did not
also show themselves capable of rationalthought,could only be characterizedas
"this idiotic course of things human"(para. 18). Similarly,the "normative"project of contemporarytheorizing-that is, of providing and articulatingstandards
and norms for evaluating the relative worth of particularconcrete effortsbetraysa blindnessto the implicationof this type of theorizingso as to maintain
in place already existing structuresof exploitation. In terms of the speculative
philosophy of history, this kind of speculative effort does not sufficiently consider how the attemptto articulatethe telos of history combines with an understandingof the dynamicsof history,of what moves history towards this end.
8. ImmanuelKant, On History, ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis:Bobbs-Merrill,1963).
9. JiirgenHabermas,The Inclusion of the Other:Studies in Political Theory(Cambridge,Mass.:
MIT Press, 1998); David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge,Eng.: Polity Press,
1995). I cite these merely as examples. The literatureon questions of "cosmopolitanism"and the
reconsiderationof Kant is voluminous. However, for the purposes of this paper, those discussions
precisely tend toward an ahistorical"principleof intelligibility"of a global world order and do not
pay sufficient attentionto the speculative philosophy of history that undergirdstheir "theoretical"
efforts.
55
Here again, it is considerationof Kant's speculative effort that best reveals

this. Kant's articulationof the dynamics of social life appeals to an abstract
notion of conflict and antagonism given the title of "unsocial sociability," in
which the capacitiesof humanbeings develop (and thus serve social life) through
the conflicts that otherwise characterizesocial life. His Fourth Thesis states:
"Themeans employedby Natureto bringabout the developmentof all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause
of a lawful order among men" (para. 20). Thus the motor, or the dynamics of
social life, is to be found in Nature. History is merely the stage upon which
Nature, throughhumaninteraction,acts out its Plan (the rationaldevelopmentof
human capacities). For Kant, "the sources of unsociableness and mutualopposition from which so many evils arise, drive men to new exertions of their forces
and thus to the manifold development of their capacities" (para. 21). Thus for
Kant it is an abstract"unsociableness"that drives social life forwardtoward its
end. I say "abstract"because this unsociablenessdoes not arise out of social life,
it is put there by Nature as part of its plan. At least, that is the speculative
response proposedby Kantto make sense of both the dismal spectacle of human
conflict and the gains in rationalunderstanding(of nature and the idea of lawfulness) that considerationof history as a whole reveals. Subsequentspeculative
attemptswill criticize the abstractivecharacterof Kant'sproposal.
III. FOCUS ON THE DYNAMICS OF HISTORY
The problem with the Kantianapproachis that the dynamic principle does not
match the teleological principle. Of course, from Kant's perspective this is not
really a problem,because he does not really attemptto articulatea telos that is to
be realized in history. Indeed, Kant is not especially concerned with history, he
is concerned with rationality.The sole purposeof articulatinga telos and engaging in speculative philosophy of history is to safeguardand promote the use of
reason and rationalitywhen thinkingabouthuman affairs (again, somethingthat
is not always easy given the dismal spectacle of our history). The "secretplan of
Nature"that Kantproposesas being at the heartof the historicalprocess is meant
to encourage us in the use of our rationalfaculties and not to give in to despair.
The telos it articulatesis meantto serve asymptoticallyas a goal we foreverseek
to approachknowing full well that we will never achieve it. It proposes a regulative ideal that is meantto guide our rationalappreciationand evaluation of our
combined efforts.As mentionedalready,this approachinspires many contemporary efforts to establish normativeframeworksfor the appreciationand evaluation of practicalinitiatives and their concrete results. The problemwith this general approach, of course, is that these various normative frameworks seem to
have little purchasein the real world, that is, the world as it historically unfolds,
that is, the telos it espouses is not adequatelyarticulatedwith the dynamicsthat
are meant to bring it about.It appearsthatour rationalfaculties cannotwield sufficient power to order conflict in the way the telos suggests. If this is nevertheless nature'ssecret plan for us, it appearsthat the secret remains secure.
56
REALFILLION
Hegel challenges this kind of speculative effort by insisting on the historical

dynamic meant to realize the telos of history.He does this both phenomenologically and logically, that is, both throughan examinationof the struggleand conflict generatedby the development of an unhappy self-consciousness bound to
the recognition of others and throughan examinationof the way thought works
out the contradictionsit generates in its thinking. Recall that Hegel, ratherthan
speakingof a "secretplan of nature,"develops the notion of the "cunningof reason" as a way to characterizethe dynamic process of history as it realizes the
ideal (or, more precisely, the Idea, a distinctionthat need not detain us here) or
its telos. The difference with Kantis not so much with the insistence on conflict
being at the heart of history and the fact that the process of history works itself
out "behindthe backs" as it were of the actors of history; it is ratherthat Hegel
insists that the progressive realizationof the telos must be seen as arising out of
the struggle of historical actors and is not merely "placed" there (that is,
assumed or postulated as it is in Kant). That is, ratherthan speak of a kind of
unsocial sociability as governing the development of social life, Hegel speaks
about the way that particularinterestsas they conflict generate the "universal."
The universalis articulatedin and throughthe expression and pursuitof particular interests.Hegel writes:
interestscontendwithone another,andsomearedestroyedin theprocess.But
Particular
of particular
it is fromthisveryconflictanddestruction
thingsthatthe universalemerges,
andit remainsunscatheditself.Forit is notthe universalIdeawhichentersintoopposiand
untouchedandunharmed,
tion,conflict,anddanger;it keepsitselfin thebackground,
sendsforththeparticular
interestsof passionto fightandwearthemselvesoutin its stead.
It is whatwe maycall the cunningof reasonthatit sets the passionsto workin its service, so thatthe agentsby whichit gives itselfexistencemustpay the penaltyandsuffer
theloss.Forthelatterbelongto thephenomenal
world,of whichpartis worthlessandpart
is of positivevalue.Theparticular
is as a ruleinadequate
in relationto the universal,and
individualsaresacrificedandabandoned
as a result.TheIdeapaysthe tributewhichexistenceandthetransientworldexact,butit paysit throughthepassionsof individuals
rather
thanoutof its ownresources.10
History, for Hegel, far from merely providing an asymptotic glimpse of its
fully realized idea, is quite literally the ground out of which the universal ideal
arises, emerges, and realizes itself throughthe struggle and conflict of all those
passions that do not know any better and that, because they are finite, must
exhaustthemselves and disappear.History,thus, is not only the spectacleof these
passions wasting themselves; it is not an "idiotic course of things human."It is
ratherthe site and groundof the UniversalIdea, which withouthistory would not
exist (and continues to exist only throughits cunning use of these passions). The
link between the telos and the dynamicsof history is much more explicit in Hegel
than it is in Kant. This being so, Hegel demonstratesa much more sustained
appreciationof the actual (or actualizing)role of conflict in generatingand sustaining the ideal. But of course the objection that will be raised is that, ultimately, for Hegel, history is about an Idea. Indeed, as the above quotationmakes
10. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectureson the Philosophyof WorldHistory: Introduction,transl.H. B. Nisbet
(Cambridge,Eng.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1975), 89.
57
clear, it is about how an Idea uses history (that is, conflict and contradiction)in
orderto realize itself. So thatin the end we have not strayedthat far from Kant's
(ultimate) disdain for the suffering and effort that actually feed the historical
process.
In otherwords, thoughHegel does succeed in thinkingmore systematicallythe
way the telos of history needs to be articulatedwith the dynamics of history,
which is anotherway of saying that the ideal must arise out of or emerge from
the real (and not merely be confined to a theoretically constructed normative
frameworkmeant to measurethe real), his thought still remainstoo quick to reconcile itself with the emergingideal it believes it is its supremetask to articulate.
Enter Marx and the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach,which calls on philosophers, not merely to interpret,but to change the world.11
IV. THE ELEVENTHTHESIS
The relevance of the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach,which declares that the point
is to change the world and not merely to interpretit (as is the privileged activity
of philosophers),is the way it challenges us to consider our relation both to the
world and to our efforts to theorize that world. A traditionalresponse to this
forcefully stated injunctionhas been to insist that theorizingitself was a kind of
social practice and should be evaluated as such.12 But of course, Marx's point
still needs to be addressed.What function does theorizingaboutthe social world
have? Does it serve to justify (or at least articulatethe norms for justifying) particularsocial orders(and criticizing disorders)?Or does it attemptmore directly
to change the orderof the social world it is theorizing?
Both of these questions, in the way they are formulated,seem to presupposea
kind of independenceof the theorizingeffort from the social world with which it
is concerned.Or more precisely, these questions do not seem sufficiently to recognize the implicationthat theorizing itself has in the order it theorizes, indeed,
its dependenceon the structuresof a world that makes theorizing itself possible
and an engagementeffectively undertaken.Philosophers(and other theorists)fail
to appreciatethis dependence when they restrictthemselves to "interpretingthe
world,"especially those philosopherswho would claim to have some insight into
its "ultimate"nature. The world is something we all, philosophers included,
strugglewithin (and do not contemplatefrom without). Our efforts to theorize or
make better sense of the world (in Oakeshott'sphrase, to "inhabitan ever more
intelligible world")form part of that struggle. However, such a struggle should
not be understoodtoo abstractlyor too generally;it is a strugglewithin determinate historicalconditions.To say thatthese conditions are historicalis to say that
11. Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. L. H. Simon
(Indianapolis:HackettPublishingCompany, 1994), 101. Hereafterreferredto as Marx in the text.
12. A classic statement of this position can be found in Charles Taylor, "Social Theory as
Practice," in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge, Eng.:
CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985), 91-115. However, even thoughTaylor appreciatesthe way theorizing is itself a practice, it remains a privileged practice connected to an "objectivity"that (ultimately) transcendsthose practicesby aiming (asymptotically)"to tell us what is really going on, to
show us the real, hithertounidentifiedcourse of events" (94).
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REAL FILLION
they are in theprocess of changing into somethingdifferentfrom what they were.

As Marx has famously written: "Men make their own history, but they do not
make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstanceschosen by
themselves, but undercircumstancesdirectly encountered,given and transmitted
from the past" (Marx, 188).
What Marx wants us to understandis that the conditions within which and
about which we theorize are dynamic, simply because they are continuously
reconstitutedthroughour struggleto live out our lives within a world whose limited intelligibility points beyond itself. In other words, Marx understandsthat
theorizingitself falls within determinatesocial relationsorganizedin highly particular ways that both permit and circumscribethose theorizing efforts. Hence
the different kinds of writing he engaged in, and the different theorems that
emerged from these efforts. From those determinaterelations he found himself
"inhabiting,"he attempted to inhabit an "ever more" intelligible world that
involved thinking through their contradictions and obscurities. In thinking
throughthe contradictionsand obscuritiesthat otherwisecharacterizedthe social
relationsthatpermittedhis particulartheorizingefforts, moreover,he thoughthe
could discern and attemptedto articulatethe ways in which the world was in
effect changing, that in effect "withinthe old society, the elements of a new one
have been created,and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with
the dissolution of the old conditions of existence"(Marx, 174).
Whatis interestingfrom the point of view of the speculativephilosophyof history is that, within the dynamics of a changing world, Marx claims that a telos is
discernible;a telos thatMarx sees as effectively animatingthose dynamics. "Our
epoch," Marx and Engels write in the CommunistManifesto, "the epoch of the
bourgeoisie, possesses . . . this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class
antagonisms. Society is more and more splitting into two great hostile camps,
into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat"
(Marx, 159). Given these dynamics,his theorizingtakes the form of a manifesto
whereby he engages himself to do battle with one of the camps in question. That
is, he is joining what he sees as the basic or most general strugglegoing on in his
present.While few today accept this basic dichotomousdivision of social life in
the name of pluralisticconditions of complexity (thoughwe shall see below how
Hardtand Negri seek to revitalizethis Marxianway of characterizingthe dynamics of social life withoutrejectingour pluralistic,complex present),a closer look
at the speculativedimension of this claim merits renewed consideration.
Marx is pointing to the movement within social life: society is more and more
splitting into two. This is the vantagepoint, for Marx, of the present. Within the
strugglesin which humanbeings are engaged at present,one can see not only the
various conflicts that have been generated in the past when different interests
confrontone another,but an orientationthat increasinglydefines itself as a basic
opposition.Whatmakes this oppositionbasic is that,instead of the confrontation
between differentminorityinterests,which has been the source of countless conflicts in the past, what Marx was witnessing in his day was a radicallynew situation, one thatopposed not only various minorityinterests,but minorityinterests
59
themselves and the majorityinterest of all those who struggle to make a living.
"All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the
interestof minorities.The proletarianmovement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority,in the interests of the immense majority" (Marx, 168). This is what the capitalist mode of organizing social life is
achieving in its pursuitof ever greaterriches and wealth: the creation of a class
of the immense majoritywhose interests lie not in the exploitation of another
class, but in the eliminationof class interestsper se. Thus, for Marx, the dynamics of the productiveforces as organized under capitalist exploitation take on a
very distinctive shape and direction. Close attention to the actual dynamics of
this historical movement-the pitting of bourgeois class interests in increasing
profits and wealth and the emergingclass(less) interestsof a self-associatingproductive proletariat-reveals the telos of history itself: "In the place of the old
bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms,we shall have an association, in which the free developmentof each is the conditionfor the free development of all" (Marx, 176).
Thus, Marx's thinkingengaged this changing situationby trying both to make
sense of it as a changing, dynamic situation and to help give sense or direction
to those dynamics by articulatingthem to the telos they were said to reveal in a
more sustained way than did either Kant or Hegel, whose concern for the permanentand the universalgoverned more forcefully their conception of the intelligibility of the historicalprocess. In that sense Marx might be said to have produced the most successful speculative philosophy of history.That is, the telos of
the free developmentof all can indeed be seen to be an ultimatedirectionor end
that manifests itself at the heartof the basic struggle that animates the dynamics
of social life. It is the demonstratedintimacy of the telos and the dynamics within Marx's understandingof, and engagement with, history that is most significant. He shows how history is revealing to us an unfolding world in which our
individual commitments to making a life for ourselves and the struggles that
ensue pit our common struggle to do so against structuralforms of organization
that would prevent the free development of those forces (our own productive
efforts) in order to appropriatethem in the interests of a few. These are the
dynamics of history.But because these dynamics engage all of us, Marx allows
us at the same time to see through that engagement the end (the telos) of that
engagement:the free development of our own productiveforces in the interests
of all. In short, for Marx, the dynamics and the telos of history are one and the
same, the formerviewed from within the context of our present,the latterviewed
according to our anticipationsgiven that present as illuminated by an understandingof the past.
V. FOUCAULT'SPROLEGOMENATO SPECULATIVEPHILOSOPHYOF HISTORY
As we will see, Hardtand Negri should be read as attemptingto renew and rearticulate Marx's speculative framework as an appropriate and powerful
response to contemporaryreal-worldconditions. This may seem like a quixotic
60
REAL FILLION
enterpriseat best, given that neitherMarx's thoughtin general, nor his speculative philosophy of history in particular,command widespreadallegiance in contemporaryefforts to think aboutreal-worldconditions.They appearto have two
strikes against them already.And the next pitch they swing at is Foucault!
It would certainlybe accurateto say that Foucaultnot only does not practice
speculative philosophy of history in the manner of the classical theorists, his
thoughtin fact can be read as a sustainedchallenge to such a mannerof philosophizing abouthistory.However, the challenge he poses should not be read as a
rejectionof the speculativeefforts of thinkerssuch as Kant,Hegel, andMarx. On
the contrary,the challenge he poses might be read as in some sense "prolegomena to any future speculative philosophy of history,"as it were, insofar as his
developmentsof both archaeology and genealogy to some extent pose practical
(and historiographical)limits to the use of history or "historicalreason"made by
philosophers.My suggestion is that Hardt and Negri in fact take these "prolegomena"into considerationin their own speculativeefforts.
The challenge Foucault's work poses to speculativephilosophy of history can
be stated briefly in the following way: any telos attributedto and/or within the
movement of history must be articulatedin terms that are immanentto the practices that characterizea given time. Or, to put it in terms used by the historian
Paul Veyne, who clearly influenced Foucault's thinkingon historiography,13
any
account of a telos working itself out in history must be given in "sublunar"
terms.14What Veyne means by this felicitous expression is that human beings
inhabita world governednot only by the laws of nature(which presumablyhold
throughoutthe universe) but also by the ends they give themselves throughtheir
activities as these are modulatedand affected by chance and happenstance.The
challenge that recognition of our sublunarcondition poses for speculative philosophy of historyis that when we think of history as a whole, we are not to consider it as governedby overarchinglaws; nor are we to consider it to be the product of mere chance; nor are we to think that historyis directedtowardan end in
the ways that our various activities are. None of these speculative moves are
deemed acceptablebecause they do not reflect the historicalworld that, after all,
is the purportedobject of speculation.The sublunarworld is the historicalworld
as we live it (and succumbto it). Note these restrictionsdo not as a consequence
eliminate any ground for speculative efforts to think the whole of history as
directedmovement. On the contrary,given that in the sublunarworld the future
remains open and beyond the grasp of knowledge, then speculation is not only
relevant,it is called for. We might call the challenge Foucaultposes here in terms
of a principleto be heeded by any future speculative philosophy of history: the
principle of immanence. When considering the process of history, one cannot
appeal to anythingoutside of that process (a kind of deus ex machina) as governingit in orderto account for its directedness.Or, statedpositively, everything
13. Foucaultacknowledgeshis debt to Veyne concerninghow one is to "theorize"historicalintelligibility in Securitd, Territoire, Population: Cours au College de France, 1977-1978 (Paris:
Seuil/Gallimard,2004), 244-245.
14. PaulVeyne, Commenton ecrit l'histoire suivi de Foucault rdvolutionneI'histoire(Paris:Seuil,
1978), 72, 99.
61
that we need to renderthe historicalprocess more intelligible to us can be found

within the historicalprocess. Therefore,this principleis not a reductiveone. It is
merely focused on the actual object of concern.
Given this restriction,what happens to the notion of a telos governing history? It must not only arise out of the historical forces deploying themselves, but
needs to be understood as animating them. This is precisely what Hardt and
Negri are attemptingto articulatewhen they speak of the "materialistteleology"
of the multitudethat is "ontologically groundednot on any 'vide pour le futur'
but on the actual activity of the multitude,its creation, production,and power"
(Empire, 66), and which through attention to "the revolutionarypast, and the
contemporarycooperativeproductivecapacities throughwhich the anthropological characteristicsof the multitudeare continuallytranscribedand reformulated,
cannot help revealing a telos, a materialaffirmationof liberation"(Empire,395,
my emphasis).
I will attemptto show briefly how this works in a moment, but first I want to
complete these prolegomenaand consider the second featureof speculative philosophy of history that I identified above, namely, the dynamicsof history. Does
Foucault impose any restrictionson our speculations concerning the motor of
history, of what drives history forward?
Here is where I think things get interestinginsofar as Hardtand Negri make
very productiveuse of Foucault's work, making it do things he himself seemed
reluctantto have it do-namely, not only to help us make sense of our historical
engagements but also to help us give sense or directionto our efforts. Foucault's
archaeologicaland genealogical investigations, because of their close attention
to historicaldetail and the challenge they pose to progressivistconceptions of the
historical process, would seem to involve a rejection of the speculative impulse
to try and make sense of history as a whole. One might even go furtherand suggest that, like Kant's own prolegomena with regard to the use of pure reason,
Foucaultrecognizes thatthe impulse to speculate aboutthe whole of history will
continue to arise inasmuchand insofar as we do think abouthistory and, in order
to circumscribe this impulse, he articulates what might be regarded as the
"defaultposition"of any honest and dispassionateconsiderationof what history
as a whole might be said to reveal to us. It is not exactly edifying, but it does
seem to confirm what close attention to the complexity of historical developments tends to reveal, namely that:"Humanitydoes not graduallyprogress from
combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity,where the rule of law
finally replaces warfare;humanity installs each of its violences in a system of
rules and thus proceeds from dominationto domination."'5
I call this the "defaultposition"for two reasons. First, because I suspect that it
is the position many would take if obliged to articulatea position concerninghistory as a whole (something most believe they are under no obligation to do).
Second, despite what it seems thatmany readas Foucault'sconceptionof the historical process, I do not thinkthat Foucaultis here articulatinga position that he
15. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,"in The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow
(New York:Pantheon, 1984), 85.
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REAL FILLION
would call his own. Foucault,in his work, consistently refused to write from the
perspective of "humanity"and chose to focus on the deployment of discursive
practicesthat, of course, he describedprecisely as being "installedin systems of
rules."That is, what interestshim here are not what might be called the dynamics of historyas dominationbut ratherthe intelligibilitydisplayedwithin the ways
in which "humanityinstalls each of its violences in a system of rules";it is the
(relative)intelligibilityof those "installations"that preoccupiedhis theorizing.
Now, it is true that such "installations"are describedas violences, by which I
think we should understand"forcefullyimposed." This is something Hardtand
Negri will pick up on. This reference to violences and domination implicitly
refers to something that suffers such violences and is dominated. However,
Foucault notoriouslyrefuses to name that something, indeed refuses to conceptualize or theorize it as a "something"though, interestingly,in his lectures he
that get organizedand managed by the difdoes speak of the "multiplicities"16
ferent principles of intelligibility that coalesce into the "State," or neoliberal
"governmentality"or "disciplinarity,"or, as we shall discuss in a moment, the
biopolitical concern with "control"and "security."
The point he is makingand thatis of interestfor speculativephilosophy of history is that the intelligible structuresof rule that have coalesced in history (that
have given historyits particularshapes and formations)have never exhaustedthe
availablepossibilities, but ratherhave indeed taken shape against the multiplicities that effectively call for responsesthat in turnproduceconcrete effects within those multiplicities, which call for furtherresponses.17One might say, then,
that the patternsof intelligibility that manifest themselves within history do so
accordingto what Foucault,in his Archaeologyof Knowledge,calls the principle
of rarity or rarefactionwhereby what is said and done at a particulartime does
not arise out of an unspoken plenitude,nor does it suppose such a plenitude of
sense and meaning, but ratherconfigures a particularenunciative field of sense
that raises particularproblems at a particulartime that are taken up in particular
ways.18 Or put anotherway, in termsof specifically historicalintelligibility,particularitydoes not contrastwith universalitybut with multiplicity.
How does this affect how we areto conceive the dynamicsof history?It means
that we cannotthink of the historicalprocess as a singular,universalprocess but
as one that is composed out of an irreduciblemultiplicity issuing into rare discursive formationsthatproduceresponsesto particularproblemsthatthemselves
have unintendedeffects. Foucaulthimself refuses to engage in the general, speculative questionas to whetherthereis a discernibleparticulardynamicto the formation of particulardiscursive practices, but his thought does not preclude a
16. Foucault,Se'curit',Territoire,Population, 13-14.
17. Foucaultsays: "Aufond, l'intelligibilit6 en histoire r6sideraitpeut-etreen quelquechose qu'on
pourrait appeler la constitution ou la composition des effets. Comment se composent des effets
globaux, comment se composent des effets de masses ? Comment s'est constitu6 cet effet global
qu'est la nature ? Comment s'est constitue l'effet Etat 'a partirde mille processus divers dont j'ai
essay6 simplementde vous indiquerquelques-uns?"Ibid., 244.
18. For this notion of "rarity,"cf. Michel Foucault, L'archdologiedu savoir (Paris: Gallimard,
1969), partIII, chapterIV.
63
speculativeinterestin identifying such a dynamic, as long as it acknowledgesthe

rarity and the multiplicitythat otherwise condition its possibility.
In fact, it is precisely at this point that Hardt and Negri take up the general,
speculative question and move us beyond Foucault's own refusal and perhaps
beyond the default position it seems to imply.
VI. THE DYNAMIC TELOSOF HARDT AND NEGRI'S
SPECULATIVEPHILOSOPHYOF HISTORY
We are now in a position to understandhow Hardtand Negri, throughthe development of the concepts of Empire and multitude,attemptto theorize (that is, to
make sense of and to give sense to) the dynamics and the telos of the multiplicity, the complex conditions of human interaction,what Hardtand Negri call the
"OntologicalDramaof the Res Gestae"(Empire,46-49) that animatesthe movement of history as it is unfolding today.
Hardtand Negri adopt Marx's speculative frameworkinsofar as the dynamic
animating Empire/multitudeis a re-actualizationof the bourgeoisie/proletariat
confrontation.It is a re-actualizationin a different epoch, however, one whose
movements have taken on different shapes, though the core notion of a basic
struggledefined by a basic confrontationremains.However, for Hardtand Negri
this confrontationis no longer to be understood"dialectically,"that is, driven by
contradiction,resolved throughnegation, and reconstitutinga "higher"unity or
synthesis.
Whatthen is the remainingcharacterof the basic confrontation?For Marx,the
bourgeoisie represented a revolutionary movement within history that transformed society in the way it appropriatedthe fruits of productive labor through
its control and ownershipof the means of production.The consolidation of that
movement and the interestsit served realizeda particularform of rule, typically
articulatedin the ruleof law as institutionalizedwithin and throughthe structures
of what are understoodas sovereign nation-states.What Hardtand Negri want to
point out, especially in Empire, is that the deployment of the form of rule that
accompanies and consolidates capitalist exploitation has taken on a form that
explodes the consolidation of these earlier institutional forms. Capitalist
exploitation of the productiveforces of society continue; however, the consolidation of that exploitation has taken on a different form, which they propose to
name "Empire"given that it is an imperial rather than a state form of rule.
Althoughan imperialform of rule, Empireis not imperialism,because it does not
operate from a "territorialcenter of power";on the contrary,it "is a decentered
and deterritorializingapparatusof rule that progressively incorporatesthe entire
global realm within its open, expanding frontier"notably through the way it
"manageshybrid identities, flexible hierarchies,and plural exchanges through
modulating networks of command" (Empire, xii-xiii). The key feature of the
form of rule Hardtand Negri are attemptingto describe is that its basic strategy
is to consolidate its rule by matching the movement of social productiveforces
while denying its own historicity.Indeed, this denial is key because its principal
effect is to conceal or obscure the fact that Empireontologically depends on the
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productive forces themselves, whereas the latter are potentially autonomousin

the sense that the multitude "has the capacity to create society on its own"
(Multitude,225, my emphasis). It is in the affirmationof this capacity that Hardt
and Negri move beyond Foucault and his conception of biopower operating
within a "society of control."(Thoughthey note that Foucault himself nevertheless posed the question in his essay "Whatis Enlightenment?":"Whatis at stake
is this: How can the growth of capabilities [capacitis] be disconnectedfrom the
intensification of power relations?"[quoted in Empire, 184]. Hardt and Negri
attemptto answerthis question by affirmingthe ontological primacyof biopolitical production,as we shall see below.)
Hardtand Negri want us to see that there is indeed in the world today something that can intelligibly be called "Empire"whose purposeis to consolidate its
form of rule as a New World Order,an Order that claims finally to be able to
achieve what human beings have always wished for: peace and prosperitythat
today can (only) be envisaged on a global scale. However, by showing that
Empire actually proceeds by a consolidated effort to establish such a form of
rule, Hardtand Negri at the same time point to the forces that this form of rule
intends effectively to rule. Like Marx, Hardtand Negri show that, at least as far
as our world is organized at present, we need to distinguish between the forms
and structuresof that organization(and who controls in the name of what) and
theforces thatactually get organizedin the particularways thatthey do. If we are
to relate this generalpoint to our individuallives as they unfold from day to day,
it is the distinctionbetween what and how I do what I do every day and thefact
that I am the one who does it. Whateverpart I may have in deciding what and
how I do what I do on a given day (for some of us this is considerable,for others it is negligible), the point of the distinctionis to remindus that it will not get
done unless I do it (technically speaking,unless someone does it). It is important
not to allow ourselves to downplay the fundamental(indeed, the ontological)
point being made here by thinkingthatit is not necessarythatI do x or y, because
if I don't do it, someone else will. If I don't do it, someone else must do it, if x
or y is to get done. X or y will not be if it does not get done by the likes of you
and me.
So much for this materialistreminder.The means and forms of particularproductive capacitiesof a given society dependon the productiveforces of that society, and the productiveforces of any society, the expendituresof energythey represent, are the animatingmovementof thatsociety (literally,the breathingin-andout, bodily displacementsof beings establishing and maintainingrelations with
one another).What Hardtand Negri want us to see is that the animatingmovement of social life today has taken on decidedly "immaterial"forms in such a
way that allows us to see in a new light the dynamic of the basic struggleidentified by Marx. Today,while most of us are still required"to make a living" (that
is, have most of our daily activities constrainedby obtaining and exchanging
money for productsof which we make use), more and more of us make that living less by producing "material"objects or commodities than by producing
"immaterial"ones, "such as a service, a culturalproduct, knowledge, or com-
MOVINGBEYONDBIOPOWER
65
munication"(Empire,290). This increasedengagementin what Hardtand Negri

call affective labor, that is, "laborthat produces or manipulatesaffects such as
feelings of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion [as one recognizes] in the work of legal assistants, flight attendants,and fast food workers
(service with a smile)" (Multitude,108), allows us to see (and calls upon us to
theorize) differently the dynamic that animates social life. Hardt and Negri
describe the differencein the following way:
Materialproduction-theproduction,for example,of cars, televisions,clothing,and
food--createsthemeansof sociallife. Modemformsof sociallife wouldnot be possible
withoutthesecommodities.Immaterial
production,
by contrast,includingthe production
andaffectiverelations,tends
of ideas,images,knowledges,communication,
cooperation,
to createnotthemeansof sociallife butsocial life itself.Immaterial
productionis biopolitical.(Multitude,146)
It is by means of the introductionof this last term that Hardtand Negri want
to redescribethe dynamics at the heart of the basic struggle that animates contemporarysocial life. For Hardtand Negri, if Marx was able to describe a basic
struggleshapingitself into an opposition between the bourgeoisie'sownership of
the means of productionand the productiveforces of the proletariatitself, today
that struggle needs to be understoodless in terms of a (dialectically tense) confrontationthan as animatinga "collective biopolitical body" that cannot be neatly divided into base and superstructure.Superstructuralconsiderations (ideas,
knowledges, affective relations) are integratedinto the very deployment of the
forces of productionin complex ways thataffect "thevery unfoldingof life itself,
the process of the constitutionof the world, of history"such that any "analysis
mustbe proposednot throughideal forms but within the dense complex of experience" (Empire, 30). Their own analytic effort is to help us make our way
throughthis "dense complex of experience" by re-articulatingthe terms of the
struggle we are engaged in as a struggle against "biopower"in the name of the
possibilities inherentin "biopoliticalproduction."
The distinction between biopower and biopolitics that Hardtand Negri make
use of tracks the distinction they make between Empire and multitude. If, as I
have been insisting throughoutthis discussion, we understandthese terms as
principles of intelligibility that help us make sense of the movement that animates our changing world (principles that make use of, but also compete with,
other notions such as globalization and postmodernitythat also contain within
them an implicit sense of the movement of history), then the notion of biopower
is meantto describethe differentways Empireconsolidates its hold on the forces
of production,which Hardtand Negri furtherdistinguishin terms of immaterial
productionand affective labor, or more generally, biopolitical production. The
productiveforces within the biopolitical are theorizedas generatinga biopolitics
that is meant to captureand make sense of the movement of the multitudethat,
in its resistanceto biopower,is graduallyrevealingitself as a "power-to"produce
a commonalitythat challenges the reactionaryrule of biopower. Or, stated more
succinctly, biopower is what imperial sovereignty or Empire exercises as a
"power-over"the forces of social production of the multitude, which itself is
66
REALFILLION
becoming increasingly biopolitical through the development of immaterial

labor.19(A good way to keep these two forms of power distinctis to thinkof constitutedpower as power-overthe forces exhibitedby the constitutingpower-to of
human energies and efforts. This power-over is accomplishedthroughthe structural organizationof those energies and efforts. We will come back to this particularway of describingthe distinctiona little later.)
Standing above society as a presumed transcendent, sovereign authority,
biopower imposes order on the biopolitical production that actually "creates
social relationshipsand forms throughcollaborativeforms of labor"(Multitude,
94-95). It is towardthe dynamicsof these createdsocial relationshipsthat Hardt
and Negri want to draw our attention:
FromoneperspectiveEmpirestandsclearlyoverthemultitudeandsubjectsit to therule
At thesametime,however,fromtheperof its overarching
machine,as a newLeviathan.
andcreativity,fromwhatwe havebeencallingtheontospectiveof socialproductivity
is reversed.Themultitudeis therealproductive
forceof
thehierarchy
logicalperspective,
of capturethatlives only off the
our socialworld,whereasEmpireis a mereapparatus
dead
vitalityof the multitude-as Marxwould say, a vampireregimeof accumulated
laborthatsurvivesonlyby suckingoff the bloodof theliving.(Empire,62)
Thus it is by appealing to the dynamic creativity of the multitude that they
indeed attemptto move beyond the controllingand reactive interestsof biopower and indeed beyond Foucault's conception of biopower and the "defaultposition" of history as differentconfigurationsof dominationsucceeding one another. While making use of his insights into the biopolitics of contemporaryforms
of rule, they claim that Foucault's conception is restricted by his inability to
move beyond a structuralistepistemology "thateffectively sacrifices the dynamic of the system, the creative temporalityof its movements, and the ontological
substance of cultural and social reproduction"such that, ultimately,Foucault's
approachdoes not adequatelygrasp "the real dynamics of productionin biopolitical society" (Empire,28).
WhatHardtand Negri do in their attemptto identify the dynamicof our changing world is to draw our attention to the way biopolitical production through
immaterial,affective labor-labor that is defined through communication,creativity,and contact-is increasinglydefining a commonworld thatdoes not deny
the singularity and multiplicity of that world. Note that this dynamic also
describesthe telos of the affirmativedemocraticfreedomof all in what Hardtand
Negri call "a new possibility for politics" (Multitude,336) in which "the wide
social diffusion and economic centrality of these practices [the performanceof
19. It is importantto note that Hardtand Negri are not denying that most people across the planet are involved in materialand not immateriallabor.As they put it in a critical response to Timothy
Brennan:"Ourargumentis thatimmaterialproductiontoday occupies the position thatindustrialproduction did in a previous era, when the industrialsector occupied a small percentageof the global
economy but imposed a tendency on all other sectors. Just as agricultureand mining were industrialized in a previous period, today manufactureis being 'informationalized,'that is, transformedby
circuits of informationand communication.
Our argumentis about the dominanceof immaterial
on the economy as a whole. .. " Michael Hardt and
labor and the transformativeeffects it has ....
Antonio Negri, "TheRod and the ForestWarden:A Response to TimothyBrennan,"Critical Inquiry
29 (Winter2003), 371.
67
immaterial production] of the common in our world provide conditions that

make possible a projectfor the creationof a democracybased on free expression
and life in common" (Multitude,202).
Perhapsthe best way to illustratethe telos of affirmativedemocraticfreedom
as itself the dynamicmovementof history is to consider the migratorymovement
of people as they uproot and displace themselves in order to remake their lives
elsewhere, which translatesinto the formationof increasinglymulticulturalsocieties throughoutthe world.
Hardtand Negri allow us to theorize this movement, not from the perspective
of the various destinations that receive "immigrants,"but from the movement
itself, in its desire for betterlives. As they write:
Partof the wealthof migrantsis theirdesirefor somethingmore,theirrefusalto accept
theway thingsare.Certainlymostmigrationsaredrivenby theneedto escapeconditions
or deprivation,
buttogetherwiththatnegativeconditionthereis
of violence,starvation,
alsothe positivedesirefor wealth,peace,andfreedom.Thiscombinedact of refusaland
expression of desire is enormouslypowerful. (Multitude, 133, my emphasis.)
Indeed, in an increasingly multiculturalworld (that is, one that understands

that history is moving us in the directionof increasinginteractionamong people
from different backgrounds),it is becoming clearer how our anticipations are
best representedby this combined "act of refusal" to accept the world as it is
organized at present and the "expressionof desire" for a better world, one that
recognizes that a sharedworld is a world that combines the many possibilities of
different worlds into a common world. Again, as Hardt and Negri point out:
"Migrantsmay often travel empty-handedin conditions of extreme poverty,but
even then they are full of knowledges, languages, skills and creative capacities:
each migrant brings with him or her an entire world" (Multitude, 133). An
increasingly multiculturalworld increasingly recognizes the importance and
wealth of what migrantscarrywith(in) them.
Of course, the focus is still too often on the contributionthat can be made to
some establishedorder,for example, a receiving state as defined by its immigration policies. However, ratherthanfocus on the receptionof "immigrants"to the
relative ordering of particularnation-states,20if one focuses on the movement
itself, propelled by both refusal and desire, one can discern a very different
world, not the constitutedworld, but one that is constituting itself through the
affirmationof the differences of its singularcapacities. Trackingthis movement
is tracking the movement of what Hardt and Negri theorize as the multitude,
which we can now read as a term that allows us to move away from the adjective "multicultural,"which too often constrainsus merely to qualify an existing
social orderin terms of its always limited "recognitionof differences."
20. Nation-states are not obsolete within the new imperial order. On the contrary,according to
Hardtand Negri, they "serve various functions:political mediation with respect to the transnational
corporations,and redistributionof income according to biopolitical needs within their own limited
territories.Nation-statesare filters of the flow of global circulationand regulatorsof the articulation
of global command;in other words, they captureand distributethe flows of wealth to and from the
global power, and they discipline their own populations as much as this is still possible" (Empire,
310).
68
REAL FILLION
In the currentdeveloping movement of history, it is importantto understand

that the representativesof these differentsocial ordersare constrainedto respond
to the affirmationsof forces they cannot do without, forces that increasingly
affirm themselves as singularities that invert "the ideological illusion that all
humanson the global surfaces of the world marketare interchangeable"by promoting through the labor of the multitude "the biopolitical singularizationsof
groups and sets of humanity,across each and every node of global interchange"
(Empire,395).
Many critics seem to think that the multitudeis merely a fanciful theoretical
construct that would bypass the hard work of political action that, as Ernesto
Laclau puts it, "presupposesantagonismand hegemony,"21that is, a basic political frameworkbased on conflict. Such critics insist that any understandingof
politics involves a theory of the articulationof the various forces/strugglesthat
animate social life. Here we see the kind of theoreticalposition that essentially
makes and insists on a place for itself, that claims that, without its intervention,
everythingwould be hopeless, or at least senseless (in the specific sense of lacking sense or direction). For example, Laclau makes use of a dichotomy (a
favoritemove by theoreticiansthatunfortunatelyeitherends up settingup a false
dichotomy-other possibilities are available--or building a strawperson,whose
function is to make one's own alternativeappearmore significant than it is):
which
eitherresistanceto oppressionis somekindof naturalandautomaticmechanism
or it is a complexsocial conwill spontaneously
operatewhateverthe circumstances,
structionwhichhas conditionsof possibilityexternalto itself.Forme the secondis the
correctanswer.Theabilityandthewill to resistarenot a gift fromheavenbutrequirea
thatareonlytheproductof thestrugglesthemselvesand
set of subjectivetransformations
thatcanfail to takeplace.Whatis missingin Empireis anycoherenttheoryof political
.22
subjectivity...
Note that it is assumed here that the productionof such a theory can provide
such a political subjectivity,whereas the point of Hardtand Negri is that such
theoretical productivity,like other forms of productivity,needs to be thought
within our wider biopolitical context and is at best a contributionto the formation of the desired political subjectivity. Laclau ends his piece by saying:
"Perhapsthe ultimateincoherence of this book is that it proposes fragmentsof a
perfectly acceptable political program,while its conditions of implementation
are denied by the centraltheoreticaland strategiccategories on which its analysis is based. Multitudesare never spontaneouslymultitudinarious;they can only
become so throughpolitical action."23I would arguethat, on the contrary,this is
not an incoherencein the book but an assumptionby the critic that conditionsof
implementationare determinedby theory.Part of what is so interestingin Hardt
and Negri is that their writing project is far more engaged than is their critics'
privileged position as theoreticalguardiansof the right conditions of either revolution, reform,or restoration.
21. ErnestoLaclau, "CanImmanenceExplain Social Struggles?,"Diacritics 31:4 (2001), 6.

22. Ibid., 8.
23. Ibid., 10.
MOVINGBEYONDBIOPOWER
69
In fact, Hardt and Negri can be said to be responding to Laclau's call for a
coherent notion of "political subjectivity."Indeed, such political subjectivity is
largely what Multitudeis constructedto provide. It proceeds by tracking, as it
were, the movementof the multitudeitself and not by imposing on it the kind of
coherence sought by theory.Moreover,that movement is perhapsbest expressed
in the unrulyforces that resist and challenge the forms of rule that seek to consolidate privileged positions within the New World Order,the rule of imperial
networkpower. It is these unrulyforces that the concept of multitudeis meant to
express and ultimately to help constructas a counter-imperialforce and as the
site for the renewal, indeed the realization,of democracy (Multitude,219). What
needs to be done, that is, what needs to be theorizedis not an alternativeform of
rule, but that which poses itself as the challenge to any form of rule as a "powerover" that finds its most complete expression in the rule of Empire. In other
words, what needs to be theorizedis the productivepotentialof the unrulyforces
themselves: hence the projectof articulatingthis potentialthroughthe concept of
"multitude."
One way of doing this is by distinguishingthe multitudefrom the masses or
the mob. The latter display an unruliness as well, but it is one that does not
belong to any projectand consequentlyis prone to manipulation.The unruliness
of the multitude,on the otherhand,is precisely one that can be theorized.This is
done by appealingto the notion of singularities and by defining the multitudeas
a set of singularitiesby which is designated "a social subject whose difference
cannot be reduced to sameness, a difference that remains different"(Multitude,
99). It is this dimension of social subjectivitythat theoreticallydistinguishesthe
multitudefrom crowds, masses, and mobs. Hardtand Negri write:
Sincethe differentindividualsor groupsthatmakeup the crowdareincoherentandrecognizeno commonsharedelements,theircollectionof differencesremainsinertandcan
easilyappearas one indifferentaggregate.Thecomponentsof the masses,the mob,and
the crowd are not singularities-and this is obvious from the fact that their differences so
easily collapse into the indifferenceof the whole. Moreover,these social subjectsare fundamentallypassive in the sense that they cannot act by themselves but rathermust be led.
The crowdor the mobor the rabblecan have socialeffects-often horriblydestructive

effects-but cannot act of their own accord.That is why they are so susceptible to external manipulation.The multitude designates an active social subject, which acts on the
basisof whatthe singularities

sharein common.Themultitudeis an internallydifferent,
andactionis basednoton identityor unity(or,
multiplesocialsubjectwhoseconstitution
muchless, indifference)
buton whatit hasin common.(Multitude,100)
To get a sense of what they are talking about and attemptingto theorize, one
might think of one's participationin protestmarches.A protestmarchis an activity of the multitude,somethingparticularlymanifest when it is large, filling city
streets, describing a completely different circulating flow than the usual one
(even when it respects certain rules-like marchingthe right way down a oneway street-while overridingothers-like not stoppingat red lights). The march,
although it gathers numerous people, is not a crowd. Crowds gather around
objects other than themselves. A march gathers around itself. It thus makes sense
to call it a "subject."But it is a multiple subject. The gatheringa protest march
70
REAL FILLION
initiates is variouslyjustified for the participants.Though it may have a focus or

target (say the war in Iraq), the commonalities it expresses are not reduced or
restrictedto them. Although it has organizers,it is not a function of that organization; indeed, it might be said thatthe reason that it has organizersis because it
is a self-generating swell of activity (driven, like the migrants above, by the
refusal of the way things are and the desire for somethingelse) that, in that selfgeneration,calls for organization(and thus organizers).A protest marchis both
movement and expression (usually culminating at a particularspot where various speeches are heard-which, interestingly,often prove to be anti-climactic,
usually because the speeches try too hardto rally aroundparticularconceptions
and interests what has already been self-constituted through the march. The
speeches continue that self-constitution when they are explicitly celebratory
ratherthan moralistic).
Thus, as this example illustrates,the action of the multitudeis real. But it is
also ideal. This, as Foucault tells us, is what we should expect from a principle
of intelligibility, in the sense that such a principle, while it regulates what is
thought about the real, also at the same time as it formulatesitself increasingly
prescribesan ideal. Thatis, the functionof makingsense of a given realityis supplemented by the task of giving sense or direction to the modes of thinking it
governs and regulates.24If one treats this conception of Empire/multitudeas a
principle of intelligibility, as somethingthat is meant to allow us to make sense
of features of the world that are not well served by existing and established
modes of thought, then I think it appears much less fanciful than Hardt and
Negri's critics charge and becomes an interestingattemptto capturethe sense of
movement within social life that many simply call "history."
Indeed,in the presentcontext, one might propose as a definitionof historyprecisely this sense of the movement of social life as the realities it confrontsstruggle with the ideals it espouses. The charge of fancifulness ignores the profoundly historicaldimensionto the theorizingof HardtandNegri, the fact thatthey see
themselves as participatingin a widerprocess to which they wish to contributein
partby attemptingto articulatethe telos of this historicalprocess, which they call
the material affirmationof the liberation of the multitude (Empire, 395). The
affirmationis materialand thereforereal;but its realitytakes the form of an affirmation and in that sense is ideal. They write: "The teleology of the multitudeis
theurgical;it consists in the possibility of directingtechnologies and production
towardits own joy and its own increasein power. The multitudehas no reasonto
look outside its own history and its own presentproductivepower for the means
necessary to lead towardits constitutionas a political subject"(Empire,396).
When we recognize that the world is increasinglybecoming multicultural,for
example, we are implicitly recognizingand acknowledgingthat "we are a multiplicity of singularforms of life andat the same time sharea common global existence" (Multitude,127). Such recognitionand acknowledgmentcalls upon us to
"thinkall cultural singularitiesnot as anachronisticsurvivals of the past but as
equal participantsin our common present"(Multitude,126). This common pres24. Cf. Foucault, Sdcuritd,Territoire,Population, 294-295.
71
ent lived in contact leads us to articulateour sharedanticipations of the future,

anticipations shaped through the "cooperation,collaboration, and communication" that shapes what Hardtand Negri theorize as "the common" that is made
and remade every day throughour continuedinteraction.
It is this creationof the common that best describes our "living labor,"which
Hardt and Negri, following Marx, describe as "the fundamentalhuman faculty:
the ability to engage the world actively and create social life" (Multitude, 146).
Moreover, this common is increasingly created throughour increasing engagement in forms of immateriallabor that, even if still largely controlledby imperial rule throughdifferent "processes of private appropriation"(Multitude, 186),
nevertheless points beyond the dictates of imperial rule because the continued
exploitation of our immateriallabor is at the same time the exploitation of our
continued ability to speak to one another, and this ability to speak to one another is precisely what enables us to create the common we share. In an increasingly multiculturalworld, our sharedlanguages can no longer be conceived as a single language (a mother tongue, or a national language); rather,language, like
speech, needs to be understoodin the mode of communication,of communicating with one another,which increasinglydefines what we do anyway throughour
biopolitical productivity.The task at hand is to redirect that productivityaway
from the controlled interestof the few to the common interest, which "is a general interest that is not made abstractin the control of the state but ratherreappropriatedby the singularitiesthat cooperatein social, biopolitical production;it
is a public interestnot in the hands of a bureaucracybut managed democratically by the multitude"(Multitude,206).
Evoking the universalappealto some concept of democracyby various forms
of rule, Hardtand Negri insist that:
Democracycan no longerbe evaluatedin the liberalmanneras a limitof equalityor in
the socialistway as a limit of freedombut rathermustbe the radicalization
without
reserveof bothfreedomandequality.Perhapssomedaysoonwe will havearrivedat the
pointwhenwe canlookbackwithironyat thebarbaricold timeswhenin orderto be free
we hadto keepourbrothersandsistersslavesor to be equalwe wereconstrained
to inhumansacrificesof freedom.Inourview,freedomandequalitycanbe the motorsof a revof democracy.
220)
(Multitude,
olutionaryreinvention
Thatrevolutionarypotentialis to be found in the multitude,today's equivalentof
which throughthe dynamics of its engagement in immateMarx's proletariat,25
rial, communicativelabor,is finally able to articulatethe telos of its effort, which
is thatsame immaterial,communicativeworkingtogether to develop our various
capacities that moves us beyond the need to be ruled throughfear, which is the
hallmarkof biopower, in order to celebrate the desire for life that animates the
common world we share.
25. "Having achieved the global level, capitalistdevelopment is faced directly with the multitude,
withoutmediation"(Empire,237).
REAL FILLION
72
VII.CONCLUDING
REMARKS
Thus, as far as the speculative philosophy of history is concerned, suitably

refashioned with respect to Foucault's prolegomena, I submit that Hardt and
Negri have indeed successfully articulatedthe telos of history (whose description
respects the principle of immanence) with the dynamics of history (whose
descriptionrespects the principle of rarity)and thus enable us to move beyond
the "defaultposition"that sees in historyonly successive regimes of domination.
While recognizing the role of conflict in history, like the classical speculative
philosophers Hardt and Negri do not despair of the efforts of human beings.
Ratherthanpostulate,as Kant does, an "unsocialsociability"at the heartof both
the conflict and the effort, however, they point to a dawning "social sociability"
that may require,as suggested by Hegel, the use of cunning to outwit forms of
power that would manipulateit, though more than Hegel, they show how such
cunning cannotbe the sole privilege of "theory."Theirs, like ours, is merely one
contributionwithin this wider effort.
Universityof Sudbury
Sudbury,Ontario, Canada

Wiley Wesleyan University

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History and Theory,ThemeIssue 44 (December 2005), 47-72

? Wesleyan University 2005 ISSN: 0018-2656

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER:HARDT AND NEGRI'S POSTFOUCAULDIAN SPECULATIVEPHILOSOPHYOF HISTORY

a challenge to contemporarytheoreticalefforts to account for a changing world.

philosophy of history,actually can be read, not as itself a contribution,but as an

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

mode of philosophizing that, following Michael Oakeshott, we can call the

of thinking about the world in terms

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

What Foucault means when he invokes a principle of intelligibility is akin to

thissenseoutsideof historyor at theendof history.(Empire,xiv-xv,my emphasis)

and is a prime (thoughlargely unacknowledged)considerationof any thoughtful

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

Partof what distinguishesspeculativethoughtfrom otherforms of thoughtis that

The telos itself is probablymost eloquentlyexpressedin the Eighth Thesis (para.

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

Here again, it is considerationof Kant's speculative effort that best reveals

Hegel challenges this kind of speculative effort by insisting on the historical

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

they are in theprocess of changing into somethingdifferentfrom what they were.

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

that we need to renderthe historicalprocess more intelligible to us can be found

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

speculativeinterestin identifying such a dynamic, as long as it acknowledgesthe

productive forces themselves, whereas the latter are potentially autonomousin

munication"(Empire,290). This increasedengagementin what Hardtand Negri

becoming increasingly biopolitical through the development of immaterial

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

immaterial production] of the common in our world provide conditions that

Indeed, in an increasingly multiculturalworld (that is, one that understands

In the currentdeveloping movement of history, it is importantto understand

21. ErnestoLaclau, "CanImmanenceExplain Social Struggles?,"Diacritics 31:4 (2001), 6.

The crowdor the mobor the rabblecan have socialeffects-often horriblydestructive

basisof whatthe singularities

to call it a "subject."But it is a multiple subject. The gatheringa protest march

initiates is variouslyjustified for the participants.Though it may have a focus or

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER

ent lived in contact leads us to articulateour sharedanticipations of the future,

Thus, as far as the speculative philosophy of history is concerned, suitably

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