Define Empire

-a decentered, deterritorialized system of economic and legal/political power

-a system with apparently no limits and a “smooth world” at its disposal
-ironically digs its own grave by creating new avenues of connection and
possibilities for revolt amont the “multitude”

Explain the “Control Society”

-H&N see a paradigm shift in the modes of sovereignty and circulation of power
(from disciplinary society to control society)
-not clean breaks, but deepenings and intensifications of previous
economic tendencies and modes of sovereignty
-according to Deleuze, we’re at the beginning of something new in terms of the
way society is structured and the way subjects are produced (constituted,
formed, the ways in which “humans” are formed and unformed through certain
connections and assemblages)
-we are moving away from old institutions of subject formation (institutions of
discipline and confinement: prison, school, factory)
-these old institutions don’t disappear, rather take on a slightly different role
within larger social whole and supplemented by other mechanisms of power
-these old institutions still had insides and outsides; Deleuze’s Control Society
suggests there no longer is an outside
-mechanisms of power/discipline/control are becoming increasingly subtle, fluid,
invisible, ubiquitous, overlapping, and constant; they infuse social life at every
possible level
-workplace that’s always present
-constant surveillance
-education & assessments that never end
-Control Societies have made old forms of resistance useless
-old model: attack power from the outside (where is power in control
society?)

Immanence and Sovereign Capture: explain both and explain which one is
more basic and why
-according to H&N, discovery of immanence took place between the 13-15th
century
-there was a dialectical interplay between the ontologically basic, affirmative,
constituent forces of human potentiality/vitality/productive powers on the one
hand
-on the other was the constituted, reactive, secondary, capturing, but also
productive powers
-Plane of Immanence is essentially our collective potentiality

Postmodernisms shortcomings according to H&N

-chief characteristics of PM are:
 1. Deconstruction of binaries
2. Critique of enlightenment/modernity
-the latter is what H&N don’t like; they believe that European modernity is not
simply about sovereignty and transcendent power, it is also about the multitude
discovering their immanent potential and productive power
-to discard European modernity is to miss the multitude’s discovery of
immanence
-PM attempts to unleash “differences” through deconstruction
-H&N question how revolutionary this really is
-modern economy loves difference; more consumers, more producers,
more markets…
-This critique is not good because it suffers from equivocation regarding
concept of difference (it wasn’t difference for difference sake, rather difference
that makes a difference)
-Empire is predicated upon either covering over or annihilating such
radical otherness
-PM is teasing out the ontological opening in western metaphysics; doing
it in the name of trying to open the space for another form of life
-but the limit to PM discourse is that there is no articulate theory of resistance

Explain post-modernization or normalization of the economy and how

immaterial labor becomes increasingly dominant
-there is a rupture in production/consumption
-industrial production⇒service/information/post-modern economy
-modernization/manufacturing hasn’t disappeared
-it continues in both dominant and non-dominant countries; increasingly
outsourced to non-dominant countries
-but dominant flows of capital are sliding away from these domains
-information society and post-modernization produces its own type of subjects
-repressive aspect: control society, spectacle
-productive aspect: cyborg
-immaterial labor
-symbolic analytical work
-highly paid problem-solving consulting style work
-affective labor (health services)

How do H&N characterize “The Good”? Do you share their vision?

-The Good is found in our shared non-essentialized, autonomous, productive life
activity beyond wage labor
-it is this autonomous productive life activity that has been captured
Be able to explain how resistance simply means securing the space to
produce otherwise, also be able to explain what H&N believe to be the chief
obstacles standing in the way of producing otherwise
-our creation and production as the multitude is ontologically basic
-we’re always producing, creating, innovating, cooperating, sharing, and so on
-Empire would shut down without the multitude’s production
-we have the capacity to resist, it just gets captured and channeled into global
capitalism

-there are two obstacles in the way of producing otherwise:

1.TINA attitudes
2.Benjamin/Agamben/neo-situationists and their messianism, mystical
withdrawal, and quietistic refusal of the status quo
-both seem to accept powerlessness in the face of Empire

Essay Question
-3 points that will allow us to take back our productive powers

1. Global Citizenship
-connection and linkages between people are blocked by the state (unless they
are favorable to flows of capital)
-this is a demand to grant citizen status and freedom of movement for those who
make capital flow
-the multitude eventually taking over this freedom for itself

2.Social Wage and Guaranteed Income For All

-capitalism needs us all, paid and unpaid workers
-all of us need to be equally and fairly compensated
-also a demand from the state

3. The Right to Re-appropriation

-all machines/technology returned to us; also information on how to use them