internationalism revisited or in praise of internationalism
Titel:
internationalism revisited or in praise of internationalism
Auteur:
Parry, Benita
Verschenen in:
Interventions
Paginering:
Jaargang 5 (2003) nr. 2 pagina's 299-314
Jaar:
2003-06
Inhoud:
Because Empire presents itself as a reinvention of Marxism under the banner of left-anarchist thought, it is relevant to consider whether it converges with the return of Marxism to intellectual life. The argument of this essay is that the book's 'rhizomic' methodology produces a map of a deterritorialized globalization from which the Marxist landmarks of capitalism's structural unevenness, concentrated state power, and class conflict are absent; while an insistence on the spontaneous activities of mobile multitudes issues in the erasure of class agency, organized left politics, and socialist internationalism. In a curious turn, a study that formally declares its allegiance to 'communism' and presents itself as a manifesto for insurrection becomes embroiled in the consensual ideology of a depoliticized cosmopolitanism which contrives to occlude the power and functioning of an actually existing and territorialized empire. The essay draws attention to the ways in which Empire impinges on some prominent tendencies within the postcolonial discussion since both display a post-nationalist recoil from nation-based struggles and, by denigrating national liberation struggles, fail to differentiate between the class compositions, ideologies, and trajectories of anticolonial movements. Furthermore, both manifest an affection for dispersal and diaspora that militates against a proper attention to the material and existential conditions of post-independence regimes and dispossessed migrant populations.
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