<nettime> Abstracts in English of the articles in Multitudes #7

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

The French quarterly 'Multitudes' (in French) has the following articles 
in its december 2001 issue (#7). If you're interested in  the 
content of previous issues, contact me & I'll oblige (or fwd).

Multitudes has afficially a site at http://www.samizdat.net/multitudes 
but it's not very much up yet.

..........................

Christian  Marazzi: À l'ére de la sécurité sociale mondiale
(in the era of global social security)

 The anti-global movement as the growth of new economies in peripheries
contrast the symbolic leadership of American brands. The terrorist attacks
on New York and Washington, highly symbolic too, appeared at the very moment
when the new economy crisis became obvious. It is not possible to grow up
information means too much, because consumers cannot pay them attention
enough. But the knowledge produced by multitudes remain in their brain while
crisis is around.


Antonio Negri Ainsi commenca la chute de l'empire
(And so began the fall of the empire)

Genoa was the expression of " social workers ", mobile, flexible, poor,
intelligent, unpredictable, radical, computers over the shoulder and camera
in the fist. One was able to see appearing from this movement of movements
something as a religion which assembles on the bottom. In the becoming
woman of this multitude avoiding confrontation, so different from "warriors"
of formerly, in the strategy of exodus, one can be tried to see the
beginning of the decline of the Empire


Yann Moulier-Boutang : Apocalypse New-York
(whatever ;-)

A new disorder appears with the destruction of the WTC, but does it  mean
the end of the isolationism of the USA, world presence of which has never
stopped existing notably under an immaterial shape. Really caesura of
September 11 is in thousand civil victims who made ledge world trade: for
the terrorime it is necessary that a whole population is afraid for its
life. The capitalist antiglobalization developed in very big speed blocking
strategic objectives of the capitalism,  Theocratic islam  aspires now, to
mime the power of the Multitudes, also we have to defend a politics of the
Multitudes which develops democracy and strengthens the spaces of freedom


Roberto Bui alias Wu Ming : Lettre sur les Tute Bianche
(A letter about the 'Tute Bianche')


Tute Bianche are  not a movement but a device of subjectivation working
inside vaster movements. Each is free to put or to remove Tuta Bianca. It
indicates that he respects the style of it: the refusal of the separation
violence /nonviolence, reference to t zapatisme, the relationship  of a
particular type  with the  media. Tute Bianche are auto-sarcastic, ironic,
rich in invention,. In search of a hegemony of minority cultures, they put
in crisis representations, destabilize media.etc. But if since Seattle one
can speak about a real movement it is mainly because hundred thousand
persons put their body at the risk of the bats, of the eargas,  and now ,
balls.


Paolo Virno : Multitudes et principe d'individuation
(The multitudes and the principle of individuation)

The concept of "multitude" opposes for a long time to that of the "people".
The people is a homogeneous unity, whereas the multitude is a network of
peculiarities. The individuals who compose the multitude are not
nevertheless atoms of one given but the result of a process of
individuation. Of what consists this individuation which produces the
individual from universal conditions? One can tempt an answer by using
Gilbert Simondon's reflections and Russian psychologist L. Vygotskij. With
the aid of these authors one will end maybe in a more relevant comprehension
of the Marxian concept of " social individual »


Alain Joxe :  Des guerres asymétriques ?
(Asymetric wars?)

There are still no strategic consequences of September 11 but causes. Among
these, the invention of a genocidal armed attack coming from the inside of
the United States , while the system of defence was not ready for this
asymmetric war, nevertheless anticipated with geo-strategists.
Consequentially, the United States showed themselves  not capable to defend
themselves against the social and ideological consequences of their absolute
superiority and also  the world opposition in the effects of the
globalization,  administered by the United States but also by the European
Union. The strategic culture of the United States shows that they do not
look in conquest  for world, or in appropriation  of new territories, but to
dominate it economically and culturally. By assuming the leadership of the
military intervention the United States offer themselves at the same moment
as master of the world and as hirelings for the benefit of the global system
of market economy


Starhawk : Fascisme à Gênes
(Fascism in Genova)

Through invasion of the Diaz school, where held the electronic  coordination
of the demonstrators, and the extravagantly violent treatment of the
arrested activists gives evidence of the fact that fascism did not die, and
is openly tolerated by the leaders of present states. A police plan fiction,
imagined by the author, allows to realize the set of incidents without
dissociating the groups some of the others. The author returns so justice to
all the multitudes of their  common  membership of the movement.


Luca Casarini , Beppe Caccia : Nous sommes allés à Gênes, nous désertons
leur guerre.
(We've been in Genova, and we're opting out of their war)

Genoa, an extraordinary event. Network of networks, links between
differences around shared radical objectives:illegitimacy of G8, civil
disobedience etc. The multitudes in open  conflict  against the power of the
Empire were confronted with the global Sovereign, with the bare and rough
exercise of the force. But beyond summits and beyond their symbolic reach,
the Multitudes are today called to confront with the set of the production
and with the expropriation of the social wealth. A jump is necessary: from
the civil disobedience to social disobedience. But on September 11 changes
the horizon. Manathan it is the end of all the ambiguities and it is the
beginning of the Permanent Global War necessary for the reproduction of
power in the era of the globalization. Social disobedience has to be then
disobedience in a ''War empire', desertion.


Entretien avec Michaël Hardt : Nouvelles d'Amérique
(Conversation with Michael Hardt: News from America)

Michaël Hardt emphasizes the non hierarchical structure, in network,  of
anti-globalization movements. Having international organizations for target,
they have no anti-American character of the movements which preceded them.
Since September 11 they are the object of a questioning coming from media
because of their political violence. For Michaël Hardt true retort in the
terrorism is not the limitation of liberties, but on the contrary the
extension of the democracy at a world level. The American military device
has beautiful to possess certain monopoly of the technologies of destruction
it does not mean that the United States can impose their law, because there
is no centre in the world power. The terrorists make a mistake by attacking
the United-States as nation. Empire requires quite other shape of politics.


Yoshihiko Ichida : Questions d'Empire
(Empir/ical/ questions ;-)


The attack of September 11 verified M Hardt's and  T. Negri's main thesis
and  by breaking with the politics of nation -state :Empire materializes
under our eyes. At the same time however, event leads us to question
definitions proposed in their book. It seems that we attend the end of the "
 small crises " which characterized Empire. And that the current visibility
is how a protest against the definition of its essence as " abstract machine
". But the most serious problem is in its "ontological" foundation: the
Multitudes. If they are they who support and determine the state of the
Empire, are they forced to keep pace with this last one, including when the
stability seems shaken? Which is then the line of possible flight for the
Multitudes?



Toni Negri : Ruptures dans l'Empire, puissance de l'exode
(Breakpoints in the Empire, power of exodus)


New York constitutes a break of the process of imperial constitution.
Multiple crisis which takes three essential forms (military,, currency and
communication) it concerns imperial sovereign power. Answer - war wants the
constituent shape of the new order. Too much far from any keynesian logic
the State intervenes here according to  neoliberal authoritarian logic  as
one of the poles of the report of sovereign power. In front of the Empire
and of his copy - terrorism,  desertion and exodus are the political
laboratory of the multitudes.


Anne Querrien : Multitudes en fugues
(Fleeing Multitudes)


    A presentation of some pieces taken from the editorial board electronic
discussion about the concept of multitude. Multitude is a virtual social
form; it is the networking of differing subjectivities in search about the
common, the equal, the life. The multitude is the living as acting. It is a
work method the limits of which are those of the present state of
globalisation.


Eric Alliez : Différence et répétition de Gabriel Tarde
(Difference and repetition: Gabriel Tarde) 


If we begin to sense that Deleuze will have been the first to recognise
Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) as a kind of "precursor" which he explored in his
most untimely actuality, the constitutive character of Tarde's inspiration
for Deleuze has not been closely studied. It seems, however, as if Deleuze's
critique and overcoming of structuralist thought depends upon this
reactualisation of Tarde's work. This will allow us to better understand the
extended "forgetting" of  Tarde, buried for so long under the Durkheimian
structural model which has dominated the social and human sciences.
.

Maurizio Lazzarato :La psychologie économique contre l'Economie politique
(Economic Psychology vs Political Economy)


Because of his  ontology of t force and  desire Gabriel Tarde's philosophy
constitutes  a  toolskit to wonder about the contemporary Capitalism.
Economic Psychology  supposes cooperation autonomous and independent from
human beings co-producting by composing their differences. Tarde, indeed,
wonder about the conditions of the production of the new which it sees in
the " cooperation between brains ": brains act some on the others by
desires, faiths and affects. Tarde do   the " production of knowledge  " the
real production of the modern societies, which results in an economy of the
traffic, the streams of desire and the faith. Economics is not a theory of
the production but a theory of the reproduction


Jean-Philippe Antoine : Tarde , commun sensationnel
(Tarde, stunningly common (?)

Tarde make of the art a plan of invention (and  imitation)  which leaves of
a very wide definition -  everything human making - to include meanings  of
the word more specialized . He does not break only so privilege indû of
fine art, but accentuates the capacity of the art, fundamental for the
contemporary societies, to socialize very sensations, communicating in a
common sensational,  the difference of the individuals


René Schérer: Tarde, puissances de l' invention
(Tarde: the Power of Invention)

Commenting    "La logique sociale "of Gabriel Tarde, René Schérer
demonstrates the striking lines of a thought completely devoted to the idea
of invention : intersubjective vision of the social, distinction between
creation and reproduction and between invention and a rehearsal which
characterizes as much work as capital, power and enjoyment of an invention
made by peculiar associations, opening in,  and on others and
multiplicities, aversion of any binding system. He drows-up a parallel
between this not - academic thinker and Charles Fourier's system, to open on
the social  conceived as a planetary brain


Bertrand Ogilvie : Comparer l'incomparable
(Comparing what cannot be compared)

What international law has come to describe as genocide has evidently become
a privileged form of politics in the 20th century. In this perspective,
three questions present themselves-genocide's relationship to the past, its
nature, and its future. When compared to all previous massacres, the
extermination-form seems to be original, even though it draws on an ancient
arsenal of forms of hatred (the case of anti-Semitism). Genocide is state
violence taken to the extreme, a violence that defies the logic of war and
depredation and is instead preferentially directed against its own populace.
In the end, genocide finds its purpose in the prospect of self-purification,
which, totally in disregard of the conditions required to form an authentic
people, can proceed as far as self-extermination. Genocide's goal can thus
no longer be sought in the elimination of the victim, but rather first and
foremost in terms of a radical crisis in the construction of identity. If
Nazism is the most extreme example, the genocide in Rwanda appears to be the
most pure. One might think that industrialized States have passed beyond
this stage, because they judge it too costly, but that they have bequeathed
it to the entities (not necessarily States) they dominate, whose identities
have been gradually shattered under the pressure of decades of colonization,
and now of globalization.



Ghassan Khatib : Le problème palestinien non résolu ; l'effet "aimant"
demeure
(The unresolved Palestinoian Problem: the 'magnet' effect)

Analysis of the stake that represents Palestinian problem not resolved on
the geostrategic chessboard and attempts of illegal securement of the
legitimacy of the cause of which it is the object once again  after
September 11.


Giselle Donnard : Les femmes en noir de Jérusalem
(The Jerusalem 'Women in Black')

" Women in black " of Jerusalem appeared during first Intifada. Every
Friday, Place of France in  Jerusalem - East their posters " End of
occupation » say clearly in English, in Hebrew and in Arabic their refusal
of the politics of occupation of territories, which there is no possible
peace without the occupied territories are returned and constitute a
Palestinian State. As Mothers of the May place which inspired them their
tenacity paid; they became symbolic of the nonviolent resistance of the
women in a situation of injustice. The other groups of women in black built
up themselves, through the world, in Colombia, Italy,  Spain,  USA...


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