Empire and the dialectics

Abstract

The present study deals with the question of the systematic place occupied by dialectics in the book Empire, by post-Marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. To do so, rather than searching for possible patterns of dialectical argumentation which might arise in the work, the study examines the explicit reconstruction and the critical use of the concept of dialectics by Negri and Hardt. Regarding Empire’s concept and critical use of dialectics, the investigation takes the work as a particular case of the broader question of the exhaustion of dialectics and the correlative revival of Spinozism within Marxism. The general thesis which I try to make plausible is that Empire’s – broadly equivocal – concept of dialectics has consequences for the whole construction of the work, which become particularly clear regarding the problem of mediation