enough! (or, too much)

[joculum]

A Footnote to a New Theory of entirely too much

I guess to do it right I would have to add how globalization has created a planet full of contending cultures such as previously existed only in isolated zones, and I would have to bring my theory into contention against those three books that Everybody Has Read Or Pretends He or She Has Read: Empire, Multitudes, and now Commonwealth.

But cut me some slack, I just now figured out how all this fits together, and I have always had difficulty framing all this in terms of Commonly Accepted Categories, even though it consists of a bunch of commonly accepted categories, just categories commonly accepted in different academic disciplines, which don’t seem to like to converse with one another.

Comments

[sheherazahde.livejournal.com]

I found "Multitudes", and "Commonwealth", but is "Empire" Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power" by Niall Ferguson?

I really love reading your posts!

[joculum.livejournal.com]

No, no, this is the triad by that famous duo Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Empire was the one that started it all, so ubiquitous that you can even download a pirated version, or could as of earlier this year. I don't recommend their clotted prose per se, it's just the trendy artworld reading for the past several years because it offers a neo-Marxist Reading of Absolutely Everything Out There. Not my fave set of books. I would want to have an argument with them, were I to attempt it.

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking of Marx, Freud, and suchlike modern grand reciters, have you read about the alleged influence of Guénon and Evola on Negri? Mostly proposed by people trying to discredit Negri, but well, hmmm. RC

[joculum.livejournal.com]

Hmm, indeed. Perhaps thee and me should explicate further in the interest of those who are interested, but in lieu of that, do you have any bibliographic sources? Negri is not one of those people I have investigated in any depth.

[(Anonymous)]

On examination, this line is rather thinner than I thought. John Reilly, the interesting conservative Catholic blogger, says that "Negri's analysis of modern history follows Evola's point by point, even when it makes no sense, as in the assertion that America is the first country whose political system wholly excludes the transcendent." When I read that a couple of years ago, I thought I'd read something similar about Negri's connections in a highly critical review in the NYRB, but I don't think Evolian fascism was specifically adverted to in the latter. Further, Reilly now proposes that this resemblance might be due to the parallel influence of Augustine's _City of God_ (but what about the reference to America?). I also find a cite to a talk by Michael Pugliese which turns out to be, in fact, a direct quote from Reilly.

I do think the matter deserves to be pursued by those who've read both Negri and more Evola than I have. There are so many crypto-, semi-, or quasi-Guenonian writers scattered across the respectable intellectual landscape--Eliade, Schumacher, even Wendell Berry--that it wouldn't be inherently surprising for Negri to have been impressed at one time with that sort of thing and then covered up his tracks. RC