PLA509 – Lecture > Transpacific > Summary + Glossary > 2020

TITLE:
Planning from a Transpacific Multitude

ABSTRACT:
In the space between Singapore, Beijing and Vancouver, a centreless Transpacific Empire is forming. This
new kind of empire is composed of networks of social, economic, cultural, spatial and political forces
that together transform and control not just territories but our subjectivities. These controls can
diminish the capacity for certain groups and individuals to act and speak. In this lecture, it is suggested
that countering this limitation does not mean adopting isolating localisms on one extreme or letting the
market run its course on the other. Rather, it is to ask what can be done to approach ethical territory-
making within this Transpacific Empire. To address this question, one may draw from the concept of the
Multitude, especially as developed by Baruch Spinoza, and later by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
The Multitude concept is used to articulate how diverse groups can work in solidarity against Empire,
while maintaining difference. A key characteristic of the Multitude is this solidarity of differences.

Taking this solidarity of differences as key, what form planning and a plan attending to this take? If the
Transpacific Empire is always shifting, then a plan to resist it should also be shifting in form – a plan
always in the process of being in formation. This plan is a living constellation of words, concepts and
diagrams that are recomposed at each return. As such, what amounts to an ethical moment will always
be situated in the turns and folds of the re-planning process – a materially situated ethics, and ethics
attentive to potentials and capacities rather than what is now.

The next step for this Transpacific plan is to set sail, encounter new bodies and ideas, again and again.

Fig. 1: The resistances and struggles that constitute the Multitude are capable
of breaking up the hierarchical strata that are the controlled territories of
Empire. From these broken shards, new territories can be formed, that may
give the space and time for the historically threatened to act and speak.
PLA509 – Lecture > Transpacific > Summary + Glossary > 2020

COMPARISON OF TERMS:
This table is to give the reader a quick comparison of the different political-philosophical terms used in this lecture,
and specifically to help contextualise what the Multitude is resisting against.

We should note while this table seems to suggest a chronological passing from imperium to empire to Multitude,
this is not necessarily the case. All three political fields are possible, and the Multitude certainly does not posit
itself as the finality. Rather it is the force that cuts through Empire, continuously, to intervene and hopefully carve
out new territories within Empire that allow certain oppressed groups greater capacity to act and speak.

Imperium Empire Multitude

Defined geographic Centreless, networked world that Centreless, connected world that is
centre-periphery with a pervades all aspects of life. capable of using the same
Form

Sovereign. If not the networked channels of Empire to

sovereign then a State- counter Empire.
as-Leviathan.
Discipline people and Controlled production of new People and groups come together,
spaces into ideal subjectivities and spaces via a potentially across the globe, and
citizens and colonies reformation of people and lands produce a new will toward change.
Function

driven by the logic of exponential This is done without necessary

growth. People are encouraged to
think and act, even be inventive, to
contribute to this logic of growth.
State dominates over Public and private realms are
the private subject in so blurred to an extent governments
as to produce an order and businesses work by the same
that serves the economic drive. Politics and
sovereign’s political and economic growth are conflated into
Political Drive
representation by the State or any
international organisation.
The will toward change is for
individuals and groups to gain
greater capacity to act and speak
against oppression. In fact, the
“ethical moment” is founded in the

economic power. one movement. process of gaining more capacity to

act. As such, this result in ever-
mutating political and economic
structures that go beyond the
Public-Private binary. It is a
continuous resistance against
Empire (and Imperium) – Empire’s
foil.
Standardisation and Variations is encouraged but only if Difference is celebrated. It is
Attitude toward Identity and

uniformity are key. they have the ability to help the understood that two groups, each
logic of economic growth advance struggling against Empire in its own
and manifest more widely. way, need not be reduced to one
Difference

single revolutionary identity. What

is “common” in different struggles
is their internal pursuit of not just
quantifiable difference, but the act
of differentiation (becoming
different from oneself).
Imperium is seen as the Empire does not posit itself or its Multitude, like Empire, does not
Relation to history

final evolution of form at the end of history because
humanity where a few its governance and economic
rule (or represent) the structures evolves. However, these
many. From savagery to variations are always to serve the
salvation. logic of exponential economic
growth.
posit itself at the end of history. It
too continually evolves, but what
changes is the form, tactics,
geopolitics and character of
resistance and struggles. It eschews
a final form of governance
PLA509 – Lecture > Transpacific > Summary + Glossary > 2020

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS:

Gilles Deleuze
- “Postscript on the Societies of Control” in Rethinking Architecture (ed. Neil Leach), London and
New York: Routledge, 1998.
- Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (tr. Robert Hurley), San Francisco: City Light Books, 1988.

Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri

- Empire, Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2000.
- Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, New York: Penguin, 2004.
- Commonwealth, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Jean Hillier
- Stretching beyond the Horizon: A Multiplanar Theory of Spatial Planning and Governance,
Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007.
- “Baroque Complexity” in Complexity and Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations (eds.
Gert de Roo, Jean Hillier & Joris van Wezemael), London & New York: Routledge, 2016.

Baruch Spinoza
- Ethics (tr. Edwin Curley), London & New York: Penguin, 1996.
- A Political Treatise (tr. R.H.M Elwes), Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004.