As some of you may know, I have been a regular contributor at Reality Sandwich. This week we’re starting an online reading group for the book, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, which I’ll be facilitating. I hope you will participate. Below is the intro text for the group posted on the site. To find out how to participate follow this Reality Sandwich link.
Reality Sandwich | Multitude Reading Group:
Decentralized networks, smart mobs, collective intelligence, open source software, biopolitics, the emergent social Web and the integration of love percolate the New Edge, yet how do we use all these sexy, geeky, quasi-spiritual concepts to deconstruct the global empire of control and build a movement in response?
Welcome to the first Reality Sandwich reading group, featuring Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. As the subtitle suggests, the book grapples with two of the most pressing issues of our age. It can be argued that all other causes that we care about – health, environment, media, etc. – pivot on the dual problem of a militarized system trying to maintain global control while it pushes against the unfinished work of democracy. We’re led to believe that “democracy” is codified, set in stone in the guise of the world empire envisioned by the Neocons, yet the reality is that democracy is a work in process. We are constantly shaping it, evolving it, but often in unconscious ways. The goal of Multitude is to make more conscious the nuts and bolts of this process, and to demonstrate how it is evolving along with the emergent paradigm of network theory, immaterial production and knowledge work.
