Introduction

Abstract

In 2005, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri indicated in the book Empire that “sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. This new global form of sovereignty is what we call empire.” Thus, “in contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm with its open, expanding frontiers” (xii). It replaces the old nationalist and imperialist states via a global “regime with no temporal boundaries” (xv). Many postmodern critiques of oppressive nationalist and imperial states are therefore obsolete, and even postcolonial “discourses are effective only in very specific geographical locations” (154). Politics of difference that are the basis of such critiques have no place in a system that incorporates them to support “the functions and practices of imperial rule” (142).