A Reformation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Biopolitical Subject

Achieving Commonwealth: A Reformation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Biopolitical Subject

Tiffany Rose Doucet

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Social and Political Thought)

Acadia University Fall Graduation 2019

Contents

Introduction 1 Perspective 14 Chapter Breakdown 17

Chapter One: Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject 21 Empire and the Potential of the Multitude toward Commonwealth 24 Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject 29 Modification of the Production of Social life 35 Already-Present Subjects who Actively Produce the Commonwealth 37 Already-Present Forms of the Commonwealth 40 Realization of the Commonwealth 42 Conclusion 46

Chapter Two: Potential of Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject 48 Production without Empire? 51 Power in Action? 58 Required Common: Another Multitude 62 The Gift Giver 65 Capitalist Freedom 68 Conclusion 70

Chapter Three: The Affirmative Zoë-subject 72 What is Zoë? 73 Braidotti’s Theory of Zoë 76 How to Realize Zoë through Nomadism 83 Conclusion 89

Conclusion 91 Zoë-subject’s Deviations from Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject 92 Achievements 98 Conclusion 100

References 102

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Abstract

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s trilogy offers an analysis of the powers of contemporary global society and the biopolitical subject’s potential resistance. In Empire, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire and Commonwealth, they reconceptualize the power relations of contemporary global society and the production of an alternative world by redefining the subject through affirmative biopolitics. I argue that their biopolitical subject’s productive potential and communal bonds remain unrealized. I contend that Hardt and Negri’s reliance on biopolitics as the subject’s defining characteristic is an undertheorized problem. Therefore, I argue that Hardt and Negri’s reliance on biopolitics limits their understanding of the subject. To remedy this shortcoming, I engage with Rosi Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject and nomadic theory. Braidotti theorizes a vital, sustainable, and productive subject through an affirmative theory of Zoë and the production of subjectivity through becoming-nomadic. By reimagining Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject through Zoë the bonds the subject makes to one other are strengthened and the subject’s productivity is directed towards sustaining life.

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Introduction

We can already recognize that today time is split between a present that is already dead and a future that is already living - and the yawning abyss between them is becoming enormous. In time, an event will thrust us like an arrow into that living future. -Hardt and Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

As seen in the quote above, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that contemporary global society is living in two spheres: the dead present and the living future. The dead present accounts for the circular accumulation of capital that makes the rich wealthy and politically powerful while holding the people in a stasis that inhibits any growth - be it economic, political, or social. Therefore, while the powerful thrive, people not only struggle to survive but are unable to benefit from their production. Occupy Wall Street1 and the subsequent Occupy movements

capture the potential of the living future fighting against the dead present. This framework is forwarded by Hardt and Negri who recognize the potential of such revolutionary movements in creating an alternative future. Occupy demonstrates the potential of our living future. Occupy named the economic and political system as a global issue of society, while activating a diversity of people to demonstrate a possible alternative. By naming the enemy Empire and the 1%,

Occupy was able to demonstrate “what they don’t want: their rejection of what they say is a corrupt political and financial system which rewards the rich and neglects the needy” (McVeigh,

2011). Occupy was successful because it recognized a flaw in society and proposed a collective solution: people looking after people. What remains to be done is to transform the common,

1Henceforth, Occupy Wall Street will be referred to as Occupy. 1

democratic, constitutive power of Occupy into a sustainable global commonwealth. I’ll unpack

this summary statement below:

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s trilogy Empire (2000), Multitude: War and

Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), and Commonwealth (2009) is a theorization of a global

social revolution led by the biopolitical subjects of today. Their biopolitical subject is defined by

its ability to construct itself through production, revolutionary will, and multiplicity. As such,

their biopolitical subject resists power and “strives toward an alternative existence” (Hardt and

Negri 2009, 57). Hardt and Negri identify the biopolitical subject as developing within contemporary global society because of the emergence of biopolitical production; as in the

“production of subjectivity itself” (Hardt and Negri 2009, x). As a result, contemporary global society and the subject are being redefined through the production of “social life itself, in which the economic, the political, and the cultural increasingly overlap and invest in one another”

(Hardt and Negri 2000, xiii). Through biopolitical production Hardt and Negri name two bodies that are constituted by the biopolitical subject, Empire and the Multitude. Empire, the dead

present, is the global power of contemporary society; it capitalizes on the biopolitical subjects’

productive power. Whereas the Multitude, the living future, is the common communicative

power and action of the biopolitical subject. Through their trilogy, they demonstrate how “the

passage to Empire and its processes of globalization offer new possibilities to the forces of

liberation” (Hardt and Negri 2000, xv). Hardt and Negri’s (2004, 358) biopolitical subject is a

representation of “the desire for democracy, the production of the common, and the rebellious

behaviors that express them from the global system of sovereignty.” The biopolitical subject is

the protestors of Occupy producing in common an alternative, democratic society. Ultimately,

Hardt and Negri develop the potential of the biopolitical subject creating a common, democratic,

global society. For it is the subject of contemporary global society that is capable of affecting

society to generate an alternative common society.

Circling back to my summation statement, Achieving Commonwealth: A Reformation of

Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject is an exploration of the potential production of an

alternative sustainable global society. The aim of this thesis is to better understand if Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject is capable of creating the imagined Commonwealth through their

affective production, collaboration, and communication. The Commonwealth is the result of the

biopolitical subject’s capacity to produce in common. The Commonwealth is Hardt and Negri’s

prized community and they argue that it is the ethical project of the Multitude. The Multitude is

tasked with redirecting their productive power from Empire to the Commonwealth. The issue for

Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is the influence of Empire. The biopolitical subject needs

to navigate through the established systems of control, capitalist interest and imperialist ideology

utilized by Empire to maintain its power. In the face of the tremendous power of Empire, the

biopolitical subject needs to reproduce joyful encounters in order to create the social flesh of the

Multitude (i.e., existing in the world).

However, Hardt and Negri argue that this can be accomplished by the Multitude taking

control of Empire’s forces through the production of the common. I think this is too simplistic. I

argue in this thesis that Hardt and Negri’s trilogy fails to fully examine how power and Empire

influence the functioning of the biopolitical subject. I question if the biopolitical subject can

escape the constraints and influence of Empire. Furthermore, I do not accept the power Hardt and Negri give the subject and as such I question the proposed actions derived from love and the recreation of joyful encounters. In sum, Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is not ready for the responsibility of creating the Commonwealth.

In contrast, Rosi Braidotti wants to rid society of Empire. She does not develop her

theory of subjectivity by accepting biopolitics as the only productive force. Instead, Braidotti

expands the definition of the subject by being attentive to Zoë as another generative force. In

order to rid society of Empire, she creates a subject that is sustainable, ethical and directs its

power towards life. Braidotti empowers the subject; however, not in the way Hardt and Negri

imagine (i.e., through the Multitude). She does not prize the subject for what it can achieve

through its productive potential. Braidotti’s Zoë-subject is not striving for an alternative

existence. Instead the Zoë-subject sustains all life in order to embody and embed itself within

this world and take responsibility for one’s actions and the world in which we live. Braidotti’s

Zoë-subject transforms society and breaks down Hardt and Negri’s Empire; she challenges the

dominant position of the subject by creating entirely new subjectivities. As such, with Braidotti

as my guide I am trying to uncover a form of subjectivity that considers how subjects interact

with one another: how they change and yet act in unity. Therefore, this thesis develops Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject through Braidotti’s affirmative Zoë in order to create a more robust understanding of the subject of contemporary global society. I intend to show how Zoë can re-

define the subject as a sustainable, responsible being in the world. This is the value of exploring

Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject.

To illustrate the problem further we need to return again to Hardt and Negri’s concepts of

Empire and the Multitude. Hardt and Negri begin their trilogy by naming the sovereign power of

contemporary global society as Empire2. Mainly, Empire is a totalizing power that “brings

2 I acknowledge that Hardt and Negri’s theory is limited by Empire. However, the focus of this thesis is not the subject of Empire, instead this thesis critiques Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject. My focus on the biopolitical subject does not necessarily translate into an acceptance of Empire, it is simply a focus on how Hardt and Negri conceptualize the productive power inherent to the subject as a biopolitical actor.

together an oligarchy of diverse political and economic bodies, including international

institutions, the dominant nation-states, multinational corporations, continental and regional

alliances, and so forth, which collaborate to create an open, constituent process” (Hardt and

Negri 2009, 226). Within such inclusion, Empire reorganizes all aspects of life, be it social,

economic, or political, through a capitalist, imperialist ideology. Characteristic of Empire’s rule

is the ability to maintain its power by “progressively expand[ing] its boundaries to envelop the

entire globe as its proper domain” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 31). Consequently, Empire co-opts the

subject’s production to sustain its dominant position. Nevertheless, as Occupy demonstrates, the

value and desire for democratic change are challenging the constructs of power. By naming

Empire, Hardt and Negri create a figure in which the biopolitical subject targets.

Although Hardt and Negri theorize Empire as transcendent they recognize the emergence

of places of resistance within Empire. These places create the foundation of what they call the

Multitude. The Multitude is Hardt and Negri’s (2004, 100) revolutionary subject; it is “an active

social subject” against the restrictive power of Empire. The Multitude is made up of all

biopolitical subjects and creates a “multiplicity of singular forms of life [that] at the same time

share a common global existence” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 127). The continual production of the

biopolitical subject acts against Empire by adopting Empire’s power to constitute an alternative.

The Multitude assumes Empire’s method of governance, undermines its imperialist ideology and

There is literature that critiques Hardt and Negri’s subject of Empire. For instance, within Empire’s New Clothes Kevin C. Dunn’s (2004) chapter Africa’s Ambiguous Relation to Empire and Empire critiques Hardt and Negri for not looking outside of Western, European conceptions in their development of Empire. Also, within Empire’s New Clothes Malcolm Bull’s (2004) chapter Smooth Politics theorizes the need for Hardt and Negri to recognize the fragmented world and issues of migration before developing the Multitude. For another direct commentary on Hardt and Negri’s subject of Empire I suggest Malini Johar Schueller’s (2009) Decolonizing Global Theories Today or Pal Ahluwalia’s (2004) Empire or Imperialism: Implications for a ‘New’ Politics of Resistance. Exterior to Hardt and Negri’s trilogy there is an expansive literature of decolonial or postcolonial subjectivity. For an exploration of the decolonial subject I suggest Walter Mignolo’s (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. All the suggested literature critiques Hardt and Negri’s Empire as limited. 5

recreates Empire “as a concept of democracy and revolution” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 372-373).

Ultimately, the Multitude is “capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges” (Hardt and Negri 2009, xv). For

Hardt and Negri, when subjects work together and utilize the places of resistance, they can create a global revolutionary body that can reconstitute contemporary global society into a democratic, common society. The Multitude’s potential to create an alternative world order sustained through democratic self-rule enables Hardt and Negri to name the Commonwealth as the future world order. What remains is “an event [that] will thrust us like an arrow into that living future” (Hardt

and Negri 2004, 358).

The Commonwealth is the culmination of the biopolitical subject’s utilization of “the

means and the opportunity to participate equally in the government of global society” (Hardt and

Negri 2009, 381). Through their immaterial and material production, they create instances of the

common, that in turn, act as “a process of liberation based on the free expression of difference”

(Hardt and Negri 2009, 224). The common is “those results of social production that are

necessary for social interaction and further production” (Hardt and Negri 2009, viii). The

continual production of the common by the biopolitical subject creates a society “like a

kaleidoscope in which the colors are constantly shifting to form new and more beautiful patterns,

even melding together to make new colors” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 112). As such, the

Commonwealth3 is Hardt and Negri’s perfected society; by means of the biopolitical subject and

3 Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth can be critiqued as problematically utopian, unfortunately such an exploration is outside of the scope of this thesis. However, criticism is forwarded by Malcolm Bull’s (2004) chapter Smooth Politics in Empire’s New Clothes in which Bull critiques Hardt and Negri for their acceptance of the smooth plane of global contemporary society to develop a basis for the development of a different utopia.

its common production coming together to re-create joyful encounters, interactions through love,

and the constitution of a global society through absolute democracy.

Occupy Wall Street is an excellent example of Hardt and Negri’s Multitude fighting

against Empire. Occupy was a revolutionary movement that called for people to “Exercise your

right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we

face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone” (Occupy Forum, 2011). Occupy and other

Occupy movements worldwide demonstrated the shared condemnation of the social inequality produced by economic and political powers. These movements highlighted the ability of protestors to act in unity and create a society in which individuals’ co-habit democratically.

Occupy was a temporary and as-yet fully unrealized glimpse of what is possible, and a demonstration of the potential production of the reformation of society in a more democratic manner.

On July 13th, 2011 the magazine Adbusters issued a call to action. They called for

“redeemers, rebels, and radicals … [to] flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens,

peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street” (Dauvergne and Lebaron 2014, 6). On September

17th, 2011, protestors answered the call in which approximately 1,000 people converged on

Zuccotti Park in the heart of New York’s financial district. The numbers quickly grew,

“organizers say 10,000 to 20,000 people marched; the media puts the number somewhere below

15,000” (The Week Staff, 2011). The sheer volume of protestors resulted in the complete

occupation of Zuccotti Park, which they renamed “Liberty Square” (Harden 2013, 51). Liberty

Square became the vocal and focal point of protest. At Liberty Square, protestors gave reasons

for their discontent and demonstrated the form of true democracy:

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and

upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. (Occupy Forum, 2011)

Within Liberty Square, protestors were able to voice their grievances while acknowledging

shared issues. By engaging with one other, protesters were creating instances of the common by

utilizing their differences to create demands and offer alternatives. The protestors acted “to push

the system to change, to remind governments that they are accountable to the people” (Stiglitz

2012, 3). Through the occupation and naming of Liberty Square, the protesters exercised the

power of the Multitude.

The Occupy movements were concerned with giving the people a voice and demonstrating the power of democracy. For too long, economic and political systems overlooked

the needs of the people. In light of this neglect, people gathered from “951 cities in 82 countries”

(Rogers, 2011). They gathered because they no longer accepted the “stark inequalities and crass

materialism of capitalist society” (Harden 2013, 51). They marched under the banners: “We are

the 99 percent” (Schiffrin and Kircher-Allen 2012, 179); “This is what democracy looks like”

(Samuels 2012); “We are unstoppable, another world is possible” (Pearlman 2013). They called for the modification of the economic and political system through the reduction of power wielded by major corporations and governments. Ultimately, they demanded power be put back into the hands of the people. Occupy was a fight for democracy, the protestors were attempting

“the challenge of the Multitude [which] is the challenge of democracy” (Hardt and Negri 2004,

100).

The Occupy movements were not only influential because of their revolutionary ideas,

but because of their revolutionary actions. Throughout Occupy, protestors utilized their diversity,

vast communication networks, and common will to sustain the movement. For example,

throughout the occupied spaces, kitchens, libraries, and educational workshops were all created

to sustain and enrich their revolutionary actions. Equally important, the protestors were open to

the ideas and needs of others, which enforced the ‘leaderful’ ideology of the movement. The

movements demonstrated the possibility a different kind of democracy:

This is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on principles of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus-democracy. (Taylor 2013, 738- 739)

As can be seen, the Occupy movements were powerful because of their demonstration that the

Multitude can constitute itself as a community.

Within Liberty Square, the protestors created the “people’s mic” (Waisbren 2012, 182) as a means of communication. They used the ‘people’s mic’ to ensure that everyone had a voice and an opportunity to participate in every aspect of the movement. To use the ‘people’s mic’ one

person would speak a few words, then those gathered would repeat back what the first speaker

said, they would continue this process until the message was conveyed (Garces 2013, 89). The

speaker’s message would echo throughout the crowd to ensure everyone heard. The ‘people’s

mic’ was not only a platform to convey a message but a means of discussion between the speaker

and the audience. Hand signals were also used by protestors to ensure participation; “The

listeners register their reactions silently, with their hands. Four fingers up, palm outward: Yay!

Four fingers down, palms inward: Boo! Both hands rolling: Wrap it up! Clenched fists crossed at

the wrists: No way, José!” (Garces 2013, 89). These hand signals were taught and shared

amongst protestors to ensure that everyone had the knowledge and means to participate. The

communicative action of the ‘people’s mic’ demonstrates the capacity of people to deliberate and

agree upon their actions. As a result, the ‘people’s mic’ was a successful tool of democratic

action that ensured every protestor had a voice and the means to be heard.

The construction of Occupy as a “leaderful … leaderless” (Naidu 2012, 204) movement

made the people solely responsible for the creation of constituent power and the necessities for

living. The protestors were able to converge around multiple issues, voice their opinions, and

come to a consensus. Most impressively, the constituent power of Occupy was demonstrated in the establishment of the general assembly; “Each night at 7 p.m., scores of people, known as the

Occupiers, gathered around the stairs on the East side of Zuccotti Park and engaged in intense discussion of internal affairs and current issues” (Min 2015, 74). The general assembly is where

protestors introduced their proposal to those who gathered to be considered, discussed, and

amended (Min 2015, 77). The protestors would use the ‘people’s mic’ and hand signals to ensure

equal opportunity for participation and deliberation on proposals. Before any proposal could be

accepted the general assembly would need to find consensus or accept a “‘modified consensus,’

which is actually a majority decision-making rule that required 95% yes votes to pass a proposal” (Min 2015, 77). Within the general assembly, protestors were able to discuss any issues and share their experience and knowledge with others. The general assembly was successful in demonstrating the potential of highly diverse people coming together peacefully and productively. Such people utilized their differences to produce in common, for the common.

Occupy demonstrated through the creation of common spaces, the ‘people’s mic,’ and the general assembly, that leaderless, leaderful democracy is possible of the Multitude4.

On November 15th, 2011, the protestors were evicted from Liberty Park (Leary 2015,

45). The eviction occurred during the night to not garner attention from the greater public; “City

authorities destroyed the encampment with police power in the middle of the night, with all news

media quarantined and no live coverage possible” (Leary 2015, 59). After the eviction, the

impact of the Occupy movements faltered. However, Occupy sparked movements that shared the

same rhetoric. For example, “the Rolling Jubilee, and Occupy Homes, Occupy Sandy’s mutual

aid practices [… highlight the] willingness to fight outside prescribed lines” (Jaffe 2013, 201-2).

These movements speak to the demands Occupy made for accountability and the production of a

different kind of democracy. Such movements are a result of the Multitude creating instances of

the common which can produce the Commonwealth. The Rolling Jubilee is a “bailout of the

people by the people” (The Rolling Jubilee, 2013), it is an acknowledgment of the issue of debt

and an act to free people from debt. Occupy Our Homes adopted the 99% mantra to stand against

“Wall Street banks and demanding they negotiate with homeowners instead of foreclosing on

them” (Occupy Your Homes, 2011). In the same way, Occupy Sandy emerged as a “grassroots

disaster relief network that emerged to provide mutual aid to communities affected by

Superstorm Sandy” (Occupy Sandy, 2012). These movements may not have been possible

without the experience and the recognition cultivated in Occupy that the people are powerful.

The issue that remains is acknowledging that even though real democracy is possible the lack of

4 Within this thesis, the evaluation of Occupy is examined within the context of Hardt and Negri’s trilogy. Therefore, this thesis does not aim to evaluate Occupy within democratic, populist or globalist theories expect in relation to the critique of the subject. For example, Occupy can be critiqued against other historical events that demonstrate the potential of a leaderless, leaderful democracy. However, the intent of this thesis is to acknowledge the emergence of the Multitude as capable of constituting the common action of the biopolitical subject. 11

sustainability of the Occupy movement weakens the impact of generating such democracy. In

2019 there are a few key participants that maintain the website for Occupy Wall Street, occupywallstreet.org. They use this platform as a space to call people into action in front of political offices, banks, and corporations to bring attention to the inequality of the political and economic system. The success of Occupy was demonstrated through the protesters standing together in the face of inequality and indifference.

Although the Occupy movement did not thrust us into the living future, the protestors

verified the possibility of a common, democratic society where material and immaterial goods

are shared and utilized for the benefit of society. Occupy was a successful movement because it

created a leaderless, open, micro-society through the power of everyday people and the shared

responsibility of the community. Moreover, it was powerful because of the acknowledgment

“that the system we live under is not the only possible one, that it is a system with a name and

with rules, and that those rules could be changed” (Jaffe 2013, 201). Similarly, Occupy thrived

from collaborative thoughts and actions that brought “people together to form functioning,

supportive, free, democratic communities” (Chomsky and Barsamian 2013, 67). Occupy created

a space where everyday people could express their discontent with society and engage in open

and free communication. Ultimately, those that participated experienced a community where

their presence and voice mattered; they experience a glimpse of the Commonwealth.

The micro-society created by Occupy illuminates the aspirations of Hardt and Negri’s

Commonwealth. Occupy was defined by the coming together of vastly different subjects,

rejecting the current system of power, while demanding the right to reconfigure the world in

which they live through a common objective and democratic decision making. Occupy

demonstrated the “need to institute and manage a world of common wealth, focusing on and

expanding our capacities for collective production and self-government” (Hardt and Negri 2009, xiii). The possibility of developing a society comparable to the micro-society of Occupy makes the Commonwealth one of the most compelling aspects of Hardt and Negri’s trilogy. They theorize the Multitude has holding the potential to transform the mirco-society of Occupy into the Commonwealth. Hardt and Negri’s capacity to theorize an alternative world, while capturing through the biopolitical subject the current and potential productive power is worth developing.

Ultimately, Hardt and Negri’s recognition of the potential of revolutionary movements, like

Occupy Wall Street, highlight how the reproduction of revolutionary, common actions strengthen the biopolitical subject’s fight against Empire.

The protestors of Occupy were applauded for their ability to act in common, use their established knowledge to construct alternatives, and create new ideologies representative of the vast differences within the movement. The capacities demonstrated by the protestors of Occupy illuminate the need to understand the individual through its position in society; how the individual is affected by society and how society affects individuals. What becomes clear, is the protestors of Occupy cannot be depicted through the term individual. Instead, protestors should be understood as subjects represented by their “position, movement, practices, encounters, visuality and aesthetics/ethics” (Pile and Thrift 1995, 12). The acknowledgement of the protestors as subjects, captures the way in which they are “detachable, reversible and changeable; in other ways fixed, solid and dependable; located in, with and by power, knowledge and social relationships” (Pile and Thrift 1995, 11). Each protestor would be conceived through their own subjectivity, power, and potential to resist. By conceiving the protestors as subjects, the experiences, positions, affects are not reduced but are prevalent in how the subject interacts

with society. In summation, the individual is reductive while the subject captures the diverse

productive potential that is characteristic of biopolitical subjectivity.

As depicted the attributes that define the subject of Occupy also depict Hardt and Negri’s

biopolitical subject of contemporary global society. Hardt and Negri theorize a subject that is

immensely powerful due to its actions through various means of communication, production, and

affect - all of which modify and develop society. Their biopolitical subject is powerful because it

not only produces through its actions but also internalizes the exterior world to create new forms

of production. Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject can transform contemporary global society

into a democratic society. Those who participated in Occupy demonstrate the expanse of Hardt

and Negri’s biopolitical subject in respect both its lack and potential. By utilizing the

revolutionary capacities, demonstrated in Occupy and countless other revolutions, they highlight

the subject’s productive power and its ability to create an absolute democratic global community.

Occupy was a remarkable revolutionary event that ultimately was unable to sustain its

revolutionary will to constitute an alternative society, Commonwealth. This thesis is an

examination of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject in order to understand if their biopolitical

subject can realize their productive potential and communal bonds. I argue that Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject is limited by their lack of inclusion of the affirmative force of Zoë

and transformative theories like Braidotti’s Nomadism. This thesis examines the subject of

contemporary global society in order to understand its affirmative productive potential.

Perspective

While Hardt and Negri’s analysis of contemporary global society (i.e., Empire) is seductive, the power they give to the biopolitical subject is the central problem of this thesis.

Hardt and Negri rely on biopolitics to depict the subject’s power and potential to create an alternative community. Biopolitics is the valuation of the subject through their biological capacity to be political; “the connection between the power of life and its political organization”

(Hardt and Negri 2000, 406). They classify the biopolitical subject’s social and communicative actions as places of exploitation and revolution. Hardt and Negri identify Empire as co-opting the biopolitical subjects’ productive power through capitalist production, horizontal networks and its permeation of global space. The biopolitical subject utilizes Empire’s imperial power to divert its productive power towards common, democratic ends. Hardt and Negri capture the potential of the biopolitical subject revolutionizing against Empire to produce the alternative society of the Commonwealth.

Nevertheless, Hardt and Negri’s reliance on biopolitics restricts their subject’s capacity to oppose power and construct an alternative society through established institutions. They construct Empire without exploring how capital affects the subject’s productive potential, or how the subject sustains itself within the biopolitical constructs of society. Instead of displacing the biopolitical subject within Empire, they affirm its power through the Multitude. As such, they develop the subject’s revolutionary will and the fluidity of relations to construct the common.

Their trilogy aims to understand “how to extend the event of insurrection in a process of liberation and transformation” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 362).

Hardt and Negri’s trilogy offers an excellent platform to question what the ‘subject’ means. They have produced an admirable project that utilizes the biopolitical subject’s promise to create an alternative global democratic world. Their biopolitical subject is a body that affects and produces life; it is always in a state of production, continually modifying itself and the world around it. Theoretically, their subject depends on biopower, in which “life is made to work for

production and production is made to work for life” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 32). Through the

notion of biopower, Hardt and Negri identify the power of contemporary global society, Empire

as targeting life. Hardt and Negri theorize the biopolitical subject’s resistance to this power

through the Multitude. Through resistance they are witnessing “the subversion of the existing

forms of power [and …] the constitution of alternative institutions of liberation” (Hardt and

Negri 2009, 31). Hardt and Negri use biopolitical production to create a subject capable of

transforming contemporary global society – leading towards a democratic future that holds all

subjects in common.

I argue that Hardt and Negri do not recognize the potential of Zoë, “the generative vitality

of non- or pre-human or animal life” (Braidotti 2006, 37), recognizing the subject “as a

generative force of becoming, of individuation and differentiation” (Braidotti 2008b, 22). The concept of Zoë focuses on the development of the subject and its relationship to the world. As such, the subject engages in various processes of ‘becoming’ that displaces the subject within society and resituates the subject as nomadic. What results is a subject who produces with consideration of all life. The Zoë-centric subject does not produce for the sole benefit of creating and sustaining community. Instead, the Zoë-subject produces to sustain all life (animal, earth, machine) (Braidotti 2011a). I argue, if Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is to achieve the

Commonwealth, then their subject needs to be reframed with Braidotti’s notion of Zoë-centric subjectivity. Braidotti’s Zoë-subject is an affirmative power that engages in processes of becoming to embody and embed itself within life. Once reframed through the addition of an affirmative theory of life as Zoë, nomadic ethics, and modes of becoming, the subject will be able to constitute itself within the world and produce to sustain life.

I contend Hardt and Negri need a broader understanding of the subject that is reframed by

Zoë. Their biopolitical subject does not address how the subject becomes capable of creating a

sustainable societal transformation and a transformation of the self. Nor does their biopolitical

subject address how the subject directs its productivity, even though they require the subject to

realize its capacity to produce and direct this power towards an alternative future. Their theory is

limited because they do not reconfigure the subject in society. Instead, they theorize the unification of the world under one power, Empire, as the potential for societal change. What is unclear is how the subject shifts away from Empire’s control when they rely heavily on its institutions? Hardt and Negri attribute immense power to the biopolitical subject without considering the sustainability of its productive power and the potential production of ends other than the Commonwealth. They do not question “the ‘cost’ of the capacity to be affected that allows us to be the vehicle of creation” (Braidotti 2011a, 231). As such, this thesis develops a reimagined subject, which moves from a biopolitical constitution to a Zoë-centric subject that includes a greater focus on the affirmative, vitality of a subject connected to all life. I argue that the subject needs to reorient itself within life, “the endless vitality of life as continuous becoming” (Braidotti 2006, 41). By doing so, the subject would not direct its production in opposition to Empire, but towards life as a nomadic actor. The Zoë-subject is an affirmative force that considers all forms of life while engaging in modes of becoming. What emerges from this reimagination of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is a Zoë-centric, nomadic subject “a nonunitary and multilayered vision, as a dynamic and changing entity” (Braidotti 2011b, 5).

Chapter Breakdown:

Chapter one, Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject, is an exploration of Hardt and

Negri’s trilogy, with attention paid to their biopolitical subject. I begin by illustrating the need to

understand the subject of contemporary global society through biopolitics. Hardt and Negri

identify contemporary global society as Empire to illustrate the depth of Empire’s power and influence over subjects. By the same token, they recognize the Multitude emerging from

Empire’s places of power and control. Once I establish a working knowledge of their concepts, I illustrate in Empire and the Potential of the Multitude Towards Commonwealth Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject: a subject not only capable of resisting the current system of power

but of producing an alternative society. I then develop in Modification of the Production of

Social Life Hardt and Negri’s use of biopolitics and biopower to illustrate the capabilities of their subject and how Empire affects their productive potential. The next section explores the biopolitical subject’s capacity for collective production and self-government through the production of the Commonwealth. Following, is an exploration of how Hardt and Negri illustrate the biopolitical subject’s ability to modify social life, those who are actively producing the common, and already present forms of the Commonwealth. The final section, Realization of the

Commonwealth, unpacks how Hardt and Negri’s theorize the Multitude’s ability to realize the

Commonwealth. In sum, this chapter outlines Hardt and Negri’s concept of contemporary global society, the biopolitical powers of the subject, and the Multitude’s capacity to produce the

Commonwealth.

Chapter two, Potential of Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject, questions the biopolitical subject’s ability to realize its productive power against Empire, while also forming a common bond with subjects globally. For Hardt and Negri, the biopolitical subject’s potential to

reject Empire is essential for the Multitude’s realization of the Commonwealth. I am cautious of

how Hardt and Negri develop Empire’s relation to the subject, and how the subject constitutes

itself as a productive power exterior from Empire. Is the subject capable of distinguishing itself

from Empire, while also mediating the demands of community? To address this concern, I

explore in Production without Empire? the subject’s ability to produce exterior from the

influence of Empire and the probability of misdirecting one’s production. What follows is an

exploration of the subject’s capacity to direct its power of production. Can the biopolitical

subject direct its productive power towards the Commonwealth? The remainder of this chapter

considers the required common. Specifically, by questioning the subject’s ability to act, produce,

and affect the common. Questions are raised regarding the biopolitical subject acting as a

singular body of the Multitude. Taking in consideration the demands of community to

understand if Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is apt to meet the demands of community

and mediate the Empire’s influence over the subject’s production. In sum, this chapter questions

the potential of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject regarding the ability to create the

alternative world of Commonwealth.

Chapter three, The Affirmative Zoë-subject, reframes Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject by introducing Braidotti’s Zoë-subject. To do so, I outline in What is Zoë? the prevailing notion of Zoë that reduces the subject to bare life through the theory of Giorgio Agamben. To contrast, I introduce Braidotti’s affirmative theory of Zoë which captures the generative life force of subjects through the notion that “we are in this together” (Braidotti 2006, 135; 2013a, 141;

2011, 121, 224). Through the exploration of Braidotti’s theory of Zoë, the subject learns through modes of becoming how to produce, sustain, and transform oneself into a nomadic subject. The final section, How to Realize Zoë through Nomadism, considers how the subject can realize this

affirmative notion of Zoë through nomadism. The Affirmative Zoë-subject highlights the potential of Braidotti’s theory of Zoë and the ability of Zoë to re-inscribe the subject within life to create a nomadic subject that is accountable, ethical and favors the subject’s self-expression.

To conclude, I theorize through Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject that the subject of contemporary global society can create a common, sustainable global society. Hardt and Negri’s trilogy is a powerful foundation to understand contemporary global society, Empire, and the biopolitical subject’s potential within the Multitude. Their recognition of the biopolitical subject’s potential and its capacity to cultivate the Commonwealth is worth holding onto. While their biopolitical subject is ultimately limiting, the activism of Aboriginal women and water advocate Autumn Peltier demonstrate the potential of embodying Zoë and becoming-nomadic.

With the addition of Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject, the potential of creating an alternative society is expanded to something like Hardt and Negri’s the Multitude aspires to achieve. By further developing Hardt and Negri’s subject through Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject, perhaps the subjects of contemporary global society can cultivate the common in a sustainable, vitalist manner that can generate an alternative society.

Chapter One

Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject

For all those who still hold passionately to the principles of freedom, equality, and the common, constituting a democratic society is the order of the day. -Hardt and Negri, Declaration

Hardt and Negri conceptualize the biopolitical subject as the subject of contemporary global society. The biopolitical subject represents the inherent potential of the subject’s power

and agency. They acknowledge the existence of the biopolitical subject to better understand the

potential of the subject’s productive power in contemporary global society. Through the

diversification of production Hardt and Negri theorize Empire as bypassing the nation-state’s

power; co-opting capital’s permeation of the market, and the creation of imperialist tendencies of

continual expansion and domination. The power of Empire directly affects how the biopolitical

subject produces within society. Empire operates through the biopolitical subject’s production

since “Production fills the surfaces of Empire; it is a machine that is full of life, an intelligent life

that by expressing itself in production and reproduction as well as in circulation (of labor,

affects, and languages) stamps society with a new collective meaning and recognizes virtue and

civilization in cooperation” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 365). The dominance of Empire creates a

smooth world that empowers the biopolitical subject’s communication, production, and

knowledge. The issue is that Empire co-opts the productive power of biopolitical subjects through its mechanisms of control. Although the biopolitical subject is immensely productive, it needs to direct its power to counteract the dominance of Empire and illuminate the biopolitical subject’s productive potential.

As previously shown through the example of Occupy, the collaborative democracy,

network communications, and communal care all demonstrate the power inherent to Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject. Occupy, like other revolutionary movements, provided Hardt and

Negri with an illustration of the power of contemporary global society’s subject. In the end,

Occupy was not successful in achieving the economic and political change it sought. Essentially,

Occupy was an unsustainable, it was unable to put “an end to the dynamic of constituent powers and establish a stable constituted power” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 164). However, if Occupy is considered for its economic, political, and social implications, the success of the movement becomes apparent. Occupy was a global movement with a shared philosophy against the inequality of the economic system and demanded democratic alternatives. The impact of Occupy was felt by those who marched, took part in social media, and those who simply listened. The protestors of Occupy engaged in a free, self-ruled democratic society that felt the power of their productive potential. Above all, Occupy impacted the value of resistance. Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject celebrates the impact of resistance against established powers and the potential such acts of resistance have in creating an alternative.

Hardt and Negri develop their biopolitical subject as empowering the resistance and revolutionary will of the Multitude. The power of the biopolitical subject is demonstrated through the resistance to Empire and the affirmative production of the common through

“knowledge, communication, and language” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 29). Hardt and Negri (2009,

174) recognize the power of the subject’s resistance and the implications it has on “economic production and political action.” They demonstrate the extent of these implications by referencing Hannah Arendt’s concept of singularity, that supports “the division between economic production and political action” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 174). Hardt and Negri contrast

22 their biopolitical subject with Arendt’s singularity to demonstrate how the political equally applies to the economic; “The cooperation of a wide plurality of singularities in a common world, the focus on speech and communication, and the interminable continuity of the process both based in the common and resulting in the common” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 174). For Hardt and Negri these characteristics capture how the biopolitical subject’s “productive activity is also a political act of self-making” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 174).

Hardt and Negri’s trilogy is the theorization of an alternative society constituted by the

Multitude’s cultivation of their common production. The Multitude is composed of the biopolitical subject of contemporary global society. The concept of the Multitude is indicative of the desire that the biopolitical subject holds to produce “a better, more democratic world, and to foster our desire for such a world” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 227). Through the Multitude, the biopolitical subject rejects the restrictive conditions of Empire to produce an alternative reflective of the subjects themselves. The Commonwealth is the result of the biopolitical subject’s realization of their productive potential and “share[d] common global existence” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 127). As such, the Commonwealth is the result of the Multitude’s continual production of the common, through the “biopolitical forms within its own context; production, exchange, and culture” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 344). Hardt and Negri’s illustration of the

Multitude as capable of developing an alternative contemporary global society through biopolitical power of subjects creates new avenues of collective production and self-government.

The creation of the Commonwealth depends on the productive capacity of biopolitical subjects and how the subject realizes this potential within oneself. The biopolitical subject of the

Multitude, as Hardt and Negri depict, is immensely powerful, which alone makes the

Commonwealth worth holding onto. This chapter begins to unpack the theoretical developments

required to realize Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject’s potential for creative resistance.

Empire and the Potential of the Multitude toward Commonwealth

Hardt and Negri begin by defining the power of contemporary global society as Empire.

Empire is a transcendent body that has a global reach, capitalist mentality, and imperialist

tendencies. As such, Empire attempts to restore order against the “immanent, constructive,

creative forces” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 76) of the Multitude that produce exterior to the

established powers of Empire. Empire directs its “power against an immanent constituent power,

[it is] order [Empire] against desire [the Multitude]” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 74). Instead of

targeting the social, economic, or political aspects of society, Empire directly targets the

biopolitical production of subjects. Empire obstructs the subject from realizing its productive

potential to preserve its capitalist, imperialist rule. To do so, Empire targets the “anxiety and fear

of the masses, their desire to reduce the uncertainty of life and increase security” (Hardt and

Negri 2000, 75). As such, Empire permeates every aspect of society, making everything from capital, sovereignty, and resistances respond to its command. Therefore, Empire’s primary concern is the absorption of the biopolitical subject’s productivity and will use any means necessary to absorb the subjects’ productive power.

Hardt and Negri illustrate Empire through historical events that opened the possibility of

Empire’s existence and dominance over global space. They explain that “over the past several

decades, as colonial regimes were overthrown and then precipitously after the Soviet barriers to

the capitalist world market finally collapsed, we have witnessed irresistible and irreversible

globalization of economic and cultural exchanges” (Hardt and Negri 2000, xi). Empire did not

simply appear; it has been built slowly through years of regulating subjects’ productive power. It

has risen, not by a singular power, but through the interlocking of mechanisms of control and

production. As such, Empire is “a series of national and supranational organisms united under a

single logic of rule” (Hardt and Negri 2000, xii). Empire is the sole power over contemporary

global society. It holds power, not only over the political and economic realm but also over life

itself. As in, Empire is a biopower because it “not only regulates human interactions but also

seeks directly to rule over human nature” (Hardt and Negri 2000, xv). Empire is the global system of power.

Empire bypasses the nation-state to influence biopolitical subjects through the world market. Empire oversteps the boundaries of the nation-state by responding to every subject and their differences as an opportunity to maintain its rule. The world market’s unrestricted access to biopolitical subjects creates a politics of difference in which the world market controls “… not by free play and equality, but by the imposition of new hierarchies” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 154).

Every difference is an opportunity for Empire to impose a new hierarchy, a new mechanism of

control, and the ability to maintain the order of capitalism. Empire attains its global reach

through the world market’s “organization of global production and exchange” (Hardt and Negri

2000, 150). As such, the world market continuously moves immaterial and material products

across borders, diversifying ideas, and mixing differences. By doing so, the world market

capitalizes on the interchange of highly diverse biopolitical subjects. Empire undermines the

power relation between biopolitical subjects and the nation-state. Therefore, the nation-state can

no longer shelter biopolitical subjects. Instead, the biopolitical subject is directly exposed to

contemporary global society.

Capital lends immense power to Empire. Capitalist production affects the “primary

factors of production and exchange – money, technology, people, and goods” (Hardt and Negri

2000, xi). The permeation of capital allows Empire to find value in every aspect of the biopolitical subject’s production; the nation-state does not limit it, nor is it restrictive in the value of products. The permeation of immaterial production creates what Hardt and Negri (2000, xiii) term as a “smooth world – or really, a world defined by new complex regimes of differentiation and homogenization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization.” The smooth world allows

Empire to create a power that “is both everywhere and nowhere” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 190).

Underwriting this permeation of global space is the capitalist mentality that aims to create a singular global consumer, which includes the modes of production and the interactions of biopolitical subjects. Immaterial production, as in “communication, cooperation, and the production and reproduction of affects,” has freed capital from the boundaries of production

(Hardt and Negri 2000, 53, 297). Empire sustains the capitalist mentality of the smooth world to maintain its influence over subjects.

Given Empire’s acquisitive relationship with capital, it has developed imperialist tendencies, but it is not an imperialist power. Imperialism is an extension of the nation-state’s power onto world space. Empire does not operate in the same manner; “Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers” (Hardt and Negri

2000, xii). Instead, Empire stands above nation-states and functions with disregard for difference or boundaries. It masters the balance between continual expansion and domination that imperial sovereignty was never able to. Empire can do so because it replaces “the modern dialectic of inside and outside … [with] a play of degrees and intensities, of hybridity and artificiality”

(Hardt and Negri 2000, 187-188). In this way, Empire has imperialist tendencies because it

26 spreads its authority with the intent to modify the subject’s behavior. However, Empire does not exert an absolute power; it allows the subject to produce. Empire only influences and directs the biopolitical subjects’ actions through the patrol of borders, divisions of labor and production, and the enforcement of differences (Hardt and Negri 2000, 399). The world market, capital, and imperialism all define and sustain Empire as the sole power of contemporary global society. By naming Empire, Hardt and Negri describe a “common enemy against which the struggles [of the

Multitude] are directed” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 56).

In Multitude, Hardt and Negri theorize the constitution and potential of the Multitude.

They define the Multitude as composed from “internally different, multiple social subjects whose constitution and action are based not on identity or unity (or, much less, indifference) but on what it has in common” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 100). The Multitude is in continuous development but never unifies itself through sameness. Instead, it remains plural and acts through the commonalities of biopolitical subjects. “The Multitude is a diffuse set of singularities that produce a common life; it is a kind of social flesh that organizes itself into a new social body,” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 349). Moreover, the Multitude is all biopolitical subjects forced into the interior of Empire; “In Empire, no subjectivity is outside, and all places have been subsumed in a general ‘non-place’” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 353). This non-place of Empire is an indefinite, single space that they characterize through the “universality of human creativity, the synthesis of freedom, desire, and living labor” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 210). Ultimately, the biopolitical subject has unlimited access to the non-place of Empire because the biopolitical subject composes and contributes to it through its productivity.

As a concept, the Multitude is a “double temporality always-already and not-yet” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 222). The Multitude is ‘always-already’ active because “throughout history

humans have refused authority and command, expressed the irreducible difference of singularity,

and sought freedom in innumerable revolts and revolutions” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 221).

Through Empire Hardt and Negri capture the biopolitical subject’s power to reject authority.

However, the Multitude is ‘not yet’ because biopolitical subjects have not realized their full

potential. Hardt and Negri (2004, 221) describe the Multitude as waiting for the “cultural, legal,

economic and political conditions” to align to constitute its political project of common production cultivated to create an alternative society. The Commonwealth has always been a

possibility for biopolitical subjects. The biopolitical subject must continue to act against the

constraints of Empire to cultivate the common production towards an alternative to Empire.

Through this description, Hardt and Negri conceive the Multitude as a unique body that differs from other historical bodies. They contrast the Multitude with the people, the masses, and the working class. The people represent a national identity that sovereignty protects, the masses appropriate difference to use it as a unitary force, regardless of divisions or disagreements and the working class creates two divides: first, between those who earn a wage and those who do not; second, between forms of labor (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiv). All three bodies reduce their subjects to singular identities. The Multitude is incapable of reducing biopolitical subjects to their individuality. The biopolitical subject of the Multitude can only sustain and define itself through interactions of difference. Not only do the multiplicities inherent to the Multitude allow biopolitical subjects to hold onto their differences, but also allows for further production. It is for such reasons that Hardt and Negri (2004, xv) theorize the Multitude as “composed potentially of all the diverse figures of social production.”

For Hardt and Negri, the Commonwealth is an imagined community produced by the

Multitude. The realization of Commonwealth depends on the cultivation of already present

forms of the Multitude, their continual resistance of Empire, and a foundation in love. The

cultivation of the Commonwealth is the ethical project of the Multitude. It is constructed through

the production, collaboration, and communication between biopolitical subjects and the

continuous production of the common. “The common is produced and is productive – the basis of understanding all social and economic activity” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 197). The common is

all immaterial products, knowledge, language, codes, information, and affects (Hardt and Negri

2009, viii) it is the wealth of all aspects of life, natural and artificial, acting in harmony.

In sum, Empire constitutes the power at the heart of contemporary global society, is

present within the immanence of biopolitical subjects, and controls and influences their

productive power. Hardt and Negri recognize the biopolitical subject’s ability to produce outside

of Empire’s control, which creates the possibility of separating Empire’s control from the

productive power of the Multitude. Through the cultivation of the Multitude’s biopolitical

subject, the common continuously appears. Nothing escapes the common, as Hardt and Negri

state, “There is no singularity, then, that is not itself established in the common; there is no

communication that does not have a common connection that sustains and puts it into action; and

there is no production that is not cooperation based on commonality” (Hardt and Negri 2004,

349). Only the Multitude can produce the common, and through its continued cultivation, can

produce the Commonwealth. Critical to the production of the Multitude and the potential

realization of the Commonwealth is the biopolitical subject, which is detailed in the next section.

Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject

For Hardt and Negri, the biopolitical subject is understood from two related perspectives:

its power relations with Empire and its revolutionary potential via the Multitude. Hence, their

biopolitical subject is more than just a product of Empire. The biopolitical subject has the power

to resist and the potential to create alternative forms of life. Hardt and Negri have identified

Empire as the body to fight against while demonstrating avenues in which biopolitical subjects are already escaping the grasp of Empire. They provide a means by which the biopolitical subject can actualize their being-against into a sustainable alternative world order. Ultimately, Hardt and

Negri’s subject is a biopolitical power possessing the capacity to produce the Commonwealth.

The biopolitical subject is in a constant battle with Empire, attempting to resist the power that aims to control it while also seeking autonomy from it (Hardt and Negri 2009, 56). To illustrate the biopolitical subject’s continual resistance, Hardt and Negri characterize the biopolitical subject as a singularity. Meaning the biopolitical subject is understood through the various stages of development and constitution, in its attempt to negate any reductive identity.

The shift from “identity to singularity clarifies the revolutionary moment of the process … since the nature of singularities is to become different” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 339). The biopolitical subject’s development enables the differences of subjects to be in constant flux, while simultaneously constituting the subject’s singularity. Hardt and Negri (2009, 338-339) use three notions to define singularity: (1) every singularity points towards and defines itself through a multiplicity outside of itself; (2) every singularity points toward a multiplicity within itself; (3) singularity is always engaged in the process of becoming different. The biopolitical subject is then understood through various characteristics at once, while not being permanently attached to such characteristics. They represent a constant metamorphosis held within the biopolitical subject and projected onto the Multitude. The singularity of the biopolitical subject makes the cultivation of the common possible since the diffuse mixture of subjects continuously produce new truths, knowledges and language.

Throughout Hardt and Negri’s trilogy, they highlight revolutionary identities to depict different types of singularities that are already resisting Empire. Barbarians, cyberpunks, and

guerilla fighters lay the foundation for the actualization of the Multitude. Respectively, they

explore new ways of thinking, self-government, and challenge established societal structures.

These singularities are an example of how subjects produce within and against Empire.

Ultimately, they exemplify the “power of life that strives toward an alternative existence” (Hardt and Negri 2013, 237). As will be shown, this productive power is at the core of Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject and is the source of the subject’s potential, struggle, and possibility.

Not only do these singularities represent the subject’s becoming, but also characterize the biopolitical becoming of the Multitude. For Hardt and Negri, it is only through biopolitics that the productive capacity of singularities can be actualized as common production.

Barbarians, cyberpunks, and guerilla fighters are Hardt and Negri’s already present forms of biopolitical subjectivity that are resisting the biopower of Empire. Such subjects break from the power of Empire by striving to achieve an alternative. They name barbarians as subjects who fight against the oppressive powers of contemporary global society (Hardt and Negri 2000, 215).

The barbarian recognizes alternatives everywhere, and by choosing to reject established powers, they open new pathways and continuously redefine their existence in opposition to power.

Cyberpunks possess the power to create a body capable of rejecting current societal norms. Hardt and Negri (2000, 216) theorize cyberpunks as rejecting traditional methods of subjectification; they are “incapable of adapting to family life, to factory discipline, to the regulations of a traditional sex life, and so forth.” Finally, they illustrate guerilla warfare as a possible tactic of all subjects, since it only requires knowledge of oppressive powers. Guerilla fighters use their knowledge to spread a message of oppression and illustrate an alternative. They are “creating

new hearts and minds through the construction of new circuits of communication, new forms of

social collaboration, and new modes of interaction” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 81). Each already-

present subject illustrates the will to fight against established forms of power and the capacity to create new subjectivities unconstrained by economic, social, or political divisions. They demonstrate the will to be against; they exercise a “subversion of the existing forms of power but also the constitution of alternative institutions of liberation” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 31). The creative ingenuity of the biopolitical subject creates a constant force of biopolitical production and illuminates the possibilities inherent to a subject living in common.

Hardt and Negri develop their theory of biopolitical subjectivity from Foucault’s theory of biopower. For Hardt and Negri, Foucault’s theory of biopower is “not merely an empirical description of how power works for and through subjects but also at the potential for the production of alternative subjectivities” (Hardt and Negri 2013, 239). Hardt and Negri derive their notion of biopower from Michel Foucault in which biopower references life as “an object of power … and its primary task is to administer life” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 24). According to

Hardt and Negri (2009, 57) there is a division “between biopower and biopolitics, whereby the former could be defined (rather crudely) as the power over life and the latter as the power of life to resist and determine an alternative production of subjectivity.” This division is best described through Hardt and Negri’s illustration of Empire as a biopower and the Multitude as a biopolitical power. Empire appears as “the most natural thing in the world, ... politically united, that the market is global, and that power is organized throughout this universality” (Hardt and

Negri 2000, 354). Empire’s use of capitalism and horizontal networks allows for the constant expansion of its global power, constitutional base, and use of police powers ensure its dominance. As Hardt and Negri (2000, 23-24) depict, “Biopower is a form of power that

regulates social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it, and rearticulating

it.” Therefore, Empire is a biopower because it directly targets life in its attempts to govern the

productive power of biopolitical subjects. The theoretical division between biopower and

biopolitics is essential for realizing the potential of the subject for resisting Empire and

cultivating its power to produce the Commonwealth.

Through the Multitude, Hardt and Negri recognize the potential of the subject’s

resistance and subjective development. Hardt and Negri’s use biopolitics to create an alternative society since biopolitics is the inherent power of the subject. Their biopolitical theory “not only

identifies biopolitics with the localized productive powers of life – that is, the production of

affects and languages through social cooperation and the interaction of bodies and desires, the

invention of new forms of the relation to the self and others, and so forth - but also affirms

biopolitics as the creation of new subjectivities that are presented at once as resistance and de-

subjectification” (Hardt and Negri’s 2009, 58-59). Through the emergence of biopolitics, they

recognize that it is no longer possible to understand the subject as an exclusive product of

political, or economic, or social theory. Instead, the subject must be understood biopolitically

through its capacity to produce, its potential to affect, and its undeniable will for change. Their

affirmative biopolitics aims to understand the subject as a citizen of contemporary global society

that is striving to achieve an alternative existence through their productivity (Hardt and Negri

2013, 237). For Hardt and Negri (2004, 109), “the term biopolitical thus indicates that the

traditional distinctions between the economic, the political, and the social, and the cultural

become increasingly blurred.”

Hardt and Negri (2009, 56) develop their theory of biopolitics “as an alternative

production of subjectivity, which not only resists power but also seeks autonomy from it.”

Through biopolitical reason and the biopolitical event, they illustrate how the subject constitutes

its subjectivity. To begin, biopolitical reason creates a rupture in Empires’ “norms of knowledge and power” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 316). Biopolitical reason is the subject’s means of creating new alternatives out of their existing knowledge. As in, biopolitical reason makes rationality, technology, and wealth work towards achieving and maintaining the common. The effect is for biopolitical subjects to question their known truths and re-establish their knowledge from the basis of the common; “It is an active engagement with the production of subjectivity in order to transform reality, which ultimately involves the production of new truths” (Hardt and Negri

2009, 128). The biopolitical subject then engages in community through their established history and knowledge to produce new truths. Ultimately, biopolitical reason is the kind of thinking that can lead to the biopolitical event.

They consider biopolitics as the ‘event’ that will break biopolitical subjects from the confines of Empire and push them to create an alternative production of subjectivity. These events create cracks in Empire’s ability to exert its control over biopolitical subjects: “The biopolitical event comes from the outside insofar as it ruptures the continuity of history and the existing order, … but also as innovation, which emerges so to speak, from the inside” (Hardt and

Negri 2009, 59). The biopolitical subject produces these events internally to disrupt how it interacts with the external world, which then ruptures how the biopolitical subject interacts with

Empire. The ‘event’ is synonymous with the biopolitical subject’s resistance to power and their attempt to achieve autonomy from it; it is such acts that create the event (Hardt and Negri 2009,

56). According to Hardt and Negri (2009, 316), “the biopolitical event exceeds the continuity of development, temporal routine, and the linear unfolding of history.” It is a rupture in the rule of

Empire that appears “as a tightly woven fabric of events of freedom” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 59).

As such, the biopolitical subject continuously creates the biopolitical events that Hardt and Negri

require for the realization of the Commonwealth.

Modification of the Production of Social life

For Hardt and Negri, one of the critical aspects in acknowledging the potential of the

biopolitical subject is the shift to immaterial labor and production. Immaterial labor, according to

Hardt and Negri (2004, 65) is influential over all sectors of labor, it “tends to transform the other

forms of labor and indeed society as a whole.” Immaterial labor “is not imposed or organized

from the outside, as it was in previous forms of labor, but rather, cooperation is completely

immanent to the laboring activity itself” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 294, original emphasis). Mainly,

“immaterial labor, that is, labor that produces immaterial products, such as information, knowledges, ideas, images, relationships, and affects” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 65). All of which affect the laboring process and products that are produced. Essentially, immaterial labor values the biopolitical subject’s affective production, “communication, social relations, and cooperation” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 113).

The affective production of the biopolitical subject spreads throughout contemporary global society to create an arena in which the Multitude fights against Empire. Immaterial labor decentralizes the production process and uses networks to organize and create new avenues of production (2000, 295). In turn, immaterial labor values everything the subject produces. Hardt and Negri (2000, 292-293) recognize two dominant forms of immaterial labor, abstract and affective that work to unhinge Empire’s dominance. Abstract labor refers to the production of services, while affective labor is the production of emotions (Hardt and Negri 2000, 292-293).

Hardt and Negri prize affective labor because it produces “social networks, forms of community,

[and] biopower” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 293). In this respect, biopower refers to the form of

power it represents, as in, “power that regulates social life from its interior, following it,

interpreting it, absorbing it, and rearticulating it” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 23-24). Therefore,

affective labor produces emotions that directly affect the production of life. Affective labor

unites economic production with communicative action while not impoverishing communication.

Affective labor is valued because it creates highly cooperative forms of labor. The inescapable

influence of immaterial labor opens new avenues of biopolitical resistance by decentralizing the

production process within the constructs of Empire.

Biopolitical production encompasses more than the products of immaterial goods. It is

characteristic of collaborative, communicative, and a common process of knowledge production.

It blurs “the traditional distinctions between the economic, the political, the social, and the

cultural” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 109). While it directly touches on life, transcending the

economic and the political, and at the same time intertwining them. Biopolitical production does

not operate with an overarching body. If it had one, it would not be able to function;

“Biopolitical production is an orchestra keeping the beat without a conductor, and it would fall

silent if anyone were to step onto the podium” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 173). As such, biopolitical

production is a part of every aspect of life; it engrains itself within every part of the social sphere. The biopolitical subject sustains biopolitical production through its free movement, production, modification, and growth (Hardt and Negri 2009, 152). Biopolitical production parallels the capitalist model, encouraging self-sufficiency and producing biopolitical subjects capable of self-rule. In essence, biopolitical production allows subjects to establish a foundation on which they can produce the Commonwealth.

Already-Present Subjects who Actively Produce the Commonwealth

Hardt and Negri develop their concept of the Multitude by drawing on already present biopolitical subjects within contemporary global society. The poor are the pinnacle of Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject because they embody the form of biopolitical production required to constitute the common. Hardt and Negri do not define their concept of the poor by describing biopolitical subjects living in poverty. Instead, for Hardt and Negri (2009, 40), “the poor, … refers not to those who have nothing but to the wide multiplicity of all those who are inserted in the mechanisms of social production regardless of social order or property.” Their concept includes all mobile, ingenious, creative subjects because they are already cultivating their biopolitical production as resistance. Empire excludes the poor from what is deemed as productive since they disregard the parameters of production set by capital. Hence, the poor can produce outside of capitals’ measure of value.

Hardt and Negri use migrants as an example of ‘the poor’: “each migrant brings with him or her an entire world” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 133). What this means is the migrant moves within the space of Empire, bringing with them their knowledge, traditions, skills, and languages.

Their history aids them in their resistance against Empire and enables them to develop new ways of production: “traveling and expressing itself through an apparatus of widespread, transversal territorial appropriation” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 398). Ultimately, Hardt and Negri’s illustration of the poor is a demonstration of the biopolitical subject’s productive power breaking from established boundaries of society to produce the common.

Since Hardt and Negri identify the poor as a foundational part of biopolitical power, they advocate for the redefinition of the poor’s role in society. The poor are an integral site of common production because they are “included in the circuits of production and full of

37 potential” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 212). They are mobile, singular, and ingenious and are the foundation of every society. The poor are already fighting against Empire, not through their production exterior from Empire’s definition of social value, but through their immaterial production. In this way, the poor are enormously wealthy and powerful (in an immaterial sense) because they produce knowledge, networks, and communication. The poor’s productive power develops not from their ‘having’ but from the simple fact that they are ‘here.’ Ultimately, Hardt and Negri recognize the poor as the embodiment of biopolitical power; they are “the ontological condition not only of resistance but also of productive life itself” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 133).

Hardt and Negri use love to illustrate how the poor interact with society and internalizes society within oneself. Love is a fundamental concept for Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject because love is a part of every subject. It runs through every singularity; “love composes singularities, like themes in a musical score, not in unity but as a network of social relations”

(Hardt and Negri 2009, 184). Hardt and Negri (2009, 184) define love “by the encounters and experimentation of singularities in the common, which in turn produce a new common and new singularities.” Love is not a unifying concept for Hardt and Negri (2009, xii) it does not correlate to escaping individualism through the creation of family. For them, love underwrites every social interaction to produce the common, love “is an action, a biopolitical event, planned and realized in common” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 180). Through love, the subject can escape the solitude of individualism through the creation of the common. Everything the biopolitical subject produces is part of the common, on account of this production as a process of growth and knowledge.

Hardt and Negri (2009, 188) use as an example Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s wasp and orchid fable from A Thousand Plateaus in order to demonstrate love as “a model of the production of subjectivity.” The wasp and orchid fable highlights the biological nature of the

interactions of each species; “The orchid is a becoming-wasp (becoming the wasp’s sexual

organ) and the wasp is a becoming-orchid (becoming part of the orchid’s system of reproduction)” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 187). Their encounter is not a means to create material goods but produces immaterially through interaction. The wasp and orchid fable characterizes

interactions not on the basis of meaning or morality, but on the ability to gather; “The fable thus

tells the story of wasp-orchid love, a love based on the encounter of alterity but also on a process

of becoming different” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 187). Hardt and Negri use the love of wasp-

orchid to demonstrate the biopolitical subject’s ability to produce immaterially through their

encounters with others. As in, the encounters between subjects do not always develop from

mutual benefit or productive potential. The biopolitical subjects’ social interactions continuously

produce instances of the common. They occur and create “new assemblages and constitute new

forms of the common” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 186). Subsequently, the poor’s collaborative

behavior demonstrates the potential of the biopolitical subject to utilize its production to achieve

the Multitude. Even though love is available to every biopolitical subject, they still need training-

in-love to recognize the power of immaterial, social production, and how to internalize

encounters.

For the biopolitical subject, training-in-love combats the unifying tendencies of Empire.

Hardt and Negri (2009, 357) illustrate training-in-love through the biopolitical subject’s

encounters since they attempt “to avoid the negative encounters, which diminish their strength, and prolong and repeat the joyful ones, which increase it.” Training-in-love is a process of learning how to garner one’s strength through the repetition of joyful encounters; as in “our

expansive encounters and continuous collaborations” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 351). Joyful encounters build the biopolitical subject’s capacity to fight against the corruption and dominance

of Empire. Training-in-love is a process the biopolitical subject engages it to manage their encounters. However, it is possible that the biopolitical subject is unable to reproduce joyful encounters. If this is the case, then Hardt and Negri classify this production as identarian or

unification love. They describe identarian love as instilling the “love of the same,” while

unification love is “becoming the same” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 183). Both identarian and

unification do not allow the biopolitical subject to produce outside what it already knows.

Instead, they recreate known encounters instead of creating new knowledges through their

difference. Through this theorization of training-in-love, Hardt and Negri aim to safeguard the

biopolitical subject from corrupted love in the production of the common.

Already-Present forms of the Commonwealth

Hardt and Negri identify spaces within Empire that already demonstrate the power of the

Multitude. As in, the Multitude is already producing the common within the space of Empire.

Hardt and Negri use the metropolis as their prime example of a space existing within Empire that enables the cultivation of the Commonwealth. They demonstrate this capacity through “the well-

established spaces of the common, the circuits of communication, and the social habits that form

the metropolis” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 211). The metropolis exhibits the uncontrollable

productivity of biopolitical subjects in close proximity. For Hardt and Negri (2009, 250), the metropolis is the foundation of biopolitical production; “the space of the common, of people living together, sharing resources, communicating, exchanging goods and ideas.” Through the regular contact and communication of biopolitical subjects’ common facets are created that demonstrate the capability of biopolitical subjects acting in common without limiting their differences. In this respect, Hardt and Negri (2009, 249) depict the metropolis as a place of

becoming: “The metropolis might be considered first the skeleton and spinal cord of the

Multitude, that is, the built environment that supports its activity, and the social environment that

constitutes a repository and skill set of affects, social relations, habits, desires, knowledges, and

cultural circuits”. The metropolis gives evidence to the existence of the common and its forms of

production and modification. It provides the Multitude with the heightened exposure needed to

interact and develop its foundation. To depict the creation of common forms, Hardt and Negri

turn to exodus.

The exodus of the Multitude represents both the reconstitution and refusal of biopolitical

subjects to submit to the control and limits of Empire. In Commonwealth, Hardt and Negri

(2009, 76) describe exodus through the “resistances of slaves themselves, who make it untenable

as a form of government and unprofitable as a form of production.” Their refusal to partake in

forced labor for the profit of others demonstrates how biopolitical subjects play a determining

role in their emancipation and ultimately, the creation of new societal structures. When an

exterior force tries to exert complete control over a biopolitical subject, the biopolitical subject is

free to create its liberation through exodus (and immaterial labor/biopolitics). Space may be

closed, but exodus is still possible because the population is still free (Hardt and Negri 2009, 77).

The ideologies of individuals do not fade away; instead, biopolitical subjects harbor them within

and await a space that allows them to express what they represent. If biopolitical subjects can

find this space, then they begin a process of redefinition that allows for the cohabitation of

individuals. For Hardt and Negri, exodus is not a concept solely concerned about finding a physical space but also includes the redefinition of the biopolitical subject. For exodus to be successful in its fullest sense, it needs to start in resistance, then develop a constituent power, and

finally create the social relations and institutions of society (Hardt and Negri 2004, 348). Exodus

41 moves “beyond the simple refusal … to construct a new mode of life, and above all, a new community” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 204). It is a process aimed at grounding the production of the common in the differences of biopolitical subjects to produce a common that is reflective of the Multitude. In the end, the Multitude is an example of exodus since it aims to achieve its liberation, but it “does not necessarily mean going elsewhere” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 152). The

Multitude utilizes its production of the common to transform the institutions and social organization of Empire.

Realization of the Commonwealth

Hardt and Negri are not blind to the struggles of the Multitude. They do not suggest the immediate realization of the Commonwealth because they recognize what hinders the Multitude.

The biopolitical subject must overcome the confines of work, money, and capital, each of which attempts to decrease the subjects’ access to the common. Nonetheless, biopolitical production defends the freedom of biopolitical labor against work, defends social life against wage, and defends democracy against capital (Hardt and Negri 2009, 289-290). Biopolitical production operates within every aspect of society; it overflows and exceeds prior measures of value. It creates the terrain on which the biopolitical subject can win the fight against Empire. Essentially, biopolitical production is foundational for the biopolitical subject to overcome the confines of

Empire.

One of the most significant issues the Multitude faces is constituting itself within the social fabric of Empire. The social exchanges of the Multitude both constitute and influence the institutional process to construct the foundation of society as “affective, cooperative, and communicative relationships of social production” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 350). The Multitude

is the only body capable of transforming Empire’s production and social institutions through

biopolitical production. As such, the biopolitical subject must recognize the corrupt forms of

Empire and alter them for the common. To conceptualize this alternative, Hardt and Negri (2009,

160) create a divide between beneficial and detrimental institutions; “Beneficial forms are

motors of generation, whereas detrimental forms spread corruption, blocking the networks of

social interactions and reducing the powers of social production.” Detrimental forms are

institutions that limit the biopolitical subject’s ability to produce common bonds. Hardt and

Negri designate the family, the corporation, and the nation as detrimental institutions; “All three mobilize and provide access to the common, but at the same time restrict and distort, and deform it” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 160). The Multitude must facilitate the production of new institutions by developing and upholding the openness of the common. If the common remains open, then the biopolitical subject can continuously reinvent themselves and the institutions in which they depend; “the Multitude, after all, is fundamentally engaged in the production of differences, inventions, and modes of life, and thus must give rise to an explosion of singularities” (Brown

and Szeman 2005, 378).

Hardt and Negri create an action plan for biopolitical subjects to thwart the hindrances

deployed by Empire. Revolutions provide Hardt and Negri with the common attributes capable

of targeting Empire: self-organized cooperation, communication across differences, and

democratic decision making. All of which, develop the Multitude’s political project of realizing

“another world is possible” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 353). To further this realization, Hardt and

Negri outline two sets of demands that will create a broader transformation. The first set of demands call for global citizenship, the right to control one’s movement, a social wage and guaranteed income for all, and the right to appropriation (Hardt and Negri 2000, 400-406). The

second set calls for representation, rights and justice, economic reforms, and biopolitical

demands (Hardt and Negri 2004, 270-285). Neither set of demands is in opposition to one

another; instead they both highlight the appeal to develop the common. The political demands of

the Multitude constitute the transformation to the common and consolidate the social rupture of

the creative forces of the Multitude.

The political project of the Multitude must develop through absolute democracy. Hardt

and Negri (2004, 311) use Spinoza’s concept of absolute democracy to illustrate how democratic

actions permeate through society in its entirety: “The vast majority of our political, economic, affective, linguistic, and productive interactions are always based on democratic relations.” The

Multitude can achieve absolute democracy because it forms the basis of every act and interaction of biopolitical production. The dependence of biopolitical production on the “communicative and collaborative networks that constantly produce and reproduce social life” (Hardt and Negri 2004,

355) constitute the democratic institutions of the Multitude. If the Multitude recognizes these democratic attributes, then they can continue their cultivation as part of the Multitude’s constitution. As the Multitude develops within the common, so will its knowledge and application of democracy. In the end, the political project of the Multitude requires democracy as its aims, but it does not end there.

Through the development of the Multitude, Hardt and Negri acknowledge the need to develop more than instances of common collaboration. For the Multitude to realize its

democratic project the biopolitical subject needs to cultivate a constituent, political power. The

realization of the constituent power of the Multitude requires a “political standpoint that is able

to put together in a determinate time and place the common power of the Multitude and its

decision-making capacity” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 351). The constituent power of the Multitude,

as Hardt and Negri (2004, 348-350) theorize, develops in two forms: ontological and

sociological. They admit the relationship between the common and Multitude in ontological

terms may seem paradoxical, but the sociological standpoint mediates such concerns (Hardt and

Negri 2004, 349). From the ontological standpoint, the constituent power moves through

biopolitical labor and production and operates to express the common in a more obvious way

(Hardt and Negri 2004, 349). It expresses the interaction of the Multitude and the production of

the common as subjective becoming instead of being interpreted as simple acts. Regarding the

sociological standpoint, the constituent power of the Multitude is both the place of interaction

and production. It appears in the cooperative and communicative networks of social labor (Hardt and Negri 2004, 349). Hardt and Negri use labor as an example of sociological constituent power because it creates a place of interaction. Both standpoints aim to understand the Multitude’s common production and the capacity to create the constituent power and institutional logic of society (Hardt and Negri 2004, 350). Ultimately, the social exchanges of the Multitude are the foundation of its constituent power.

The continual rejection and mediation of Empire and the constant production of the common is the foundation of the Multitude’s political power. As such, the Multitude is a political body: “Multitude should be understood, then, as not a being but a making – or rather a being that is not fixed or static but constantly transformed, enriched, constituted by a process of making”

(Hardt and Negri 2009, 173). The Multitude is the result of the biopolitical subject’s productive potential; it is the ability of biopolitical subjects to act in common, to construct a democratic society. The continual rejection and modification of Empire are foundational in the Multitude’s capacity to construct the Commonwealth.

Conclusion

Hardt and Negri’s characterization of contemporary global society as Empire and their recognition of the inherent biopolitical subject are their most valuable lessons. Their theorization of Empire’s unrestricted access to subjects, as characterized through capital and the world market, depicts the control Empire has over subjects while imposing its power on global society.

As described, Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is defined by its singularity, simultaneously

constructed by the economic, social, and political constructs of society, but is always producing

the common and fighting for its freedom from Empire. These attributes are revealed through

biopolitical production, the rupture of the biopolitical event, and the biopolitical reason that

establishes the basis of the common. Hardt and Negri’s use of the poor as an example of the

biopolitical subject to demonstrate the ingenuity, productive potential, and power to resist while

showcasing the love that underlies their actions. When this production is paired with the

permeation of immaterial labor throughout the production process, instances of the common are

emerging throughout Empire. Empire presents the biopolitical subject with the foundation

required to begin the reconstitution of contemporary global society towards the Commonwealth.

The salvation from Empire lies in the same biopolitical subjects that constitute it. Ultimately,

Hardt and Negri’s trilogy theorizes the struggle of the subject to constitute the Multitude within

Empire. They recognize the productive capacity of subjects continually escapes Empire’s control

and holds the capacity to produce an alternative society constituted by the common wealth of the

Multitude.

The next chapter is an exploration of the Multitude’s capacity to achieve Hardt and

Negri’s theorized Commonwealth. Can the biopolitical subject realize their productive power to

actualize the Commonwealth? By exploring the demands of capital, the effect of debt, and the

influence of Empire, a deeper understanding of the biopolitical subject’s ability to produce the

common develops. In addition, Hardt and Negri do not theorize the subject’s ability to direct its power, how subjects are bound to one another, and the obligations of community. This lack raises doubts about the subject’s capacity to produce the common. Can the subject’s opposition to Empire negatively affect the production of the common? Hardt and Negri do not explore the vulnerability of the subject. By exploring the above-mentioned issues, the biopolitical subject can mediate the effects of Empire against the Multitude’s realization of the Commonwealth. In the end, the Commonwealth requires a subject that is considerate of the interactions with one another, their becoming, and the ability of subjects to act in unity. Hardt and Negri’s imagined

Commonwealth is achievable only if subjects utilize their ability to continuously produce and solidify their democratic actions in the production of the common. By further exploring the biopolitical subject’s capacity to mediate the effects of Empire and the pitfalls of its own subjective development, we arrive at better understanding of the biopolitical subject’s potential to realize the Commonwealth. The next chapter considers the impediments that Hardt and Negri fail to explore, that if added would aid the Multitude’s realization of the Commonwealth.

Chapter Two

Potential of Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject

Nothing seems more appropriate today than thinking community; nothing more necessary, demanded and heralded by a situation that joins in a unique epochal knot the failure of all communisms with the misery of new individualisms. - Roberto Esposito, Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community

As shown in Chapter one, Empire is everywhere; it saturates every aspect of society.

Empire is a part of every communication, interaction, and production. Empire uses the subject to recreate the constructs of community that the subject depends through capital, network communications, and the world market. Ultimately, Empire is the overarching body of contemporary global society; it is in opposition to the Multitude. Therefore, the Multitude continuously produces the common in the hopes of escaping Empire’s mechanisms of control.

The biopolitical subject creates instances of the common, which act as the building blocks of

Commonwealth; these instances do not aim to appropriate the productive capacity of others but allows them to flourish. Through the continuous cultivation of the common, the Multitude strives to achieve the perfected community of Commonwealth. As previously shown in chapter one,

Hardt and Negri illustrate the conflict between the Multitude and Empire, by exploring the

Multitude’s capacity to reject Empire and produce the Commonwealth. Hardt and Negri recognize the development of the common within contemporary global society and recognize the subject’s capacity to push this potential further. The simple fact that the Multitude is already appearing despite the grasp of Empire means that the subject cannot fail in its production of the

Commonwealth. However, the potential of the subject does not translate into the full realization

of the Commonwealth as Hardt and Negri have depicted. This chapter critiques Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject; the potential the biopolitical subject holds to realize its productive

power; and the biopolitical subject’s ability to direct their productive power to achieve

Commonwealth.

For Hardt and Negri, the biopolitical subject’s capacity to create the Commonwealth develops through their unbridled creativity and resistance to control. The Multitude is theorized as an unquestionably powerful body that can create an absolute democratic society through

Empire’s mechanisms of control. However, the overthrow of Empire by the Multitude is not

guaranteed. To overcome Empire, the subject must recognize their ability to act by redirecting their ‘being-against.’ To do so, the subject needs to understand the inner-space of society to ensure it does not reproduce Empire’s characteristics. Hardt and Negri do not develop how the

subject internalizes and reproduces Empire. Nor do they theorize how the subject realizes that it is powerful while warding off doubt and inaction. What is clear, is the subject’s capacity to produce in common, as Hardt and Negri illustrate through revolutions, material and immaterial production and the community of the metropolis. Less clear is how Hardt and Negri theorize the

subject’s ability to bolsters the power to act in common. Even if the Multitude can surpass the

limitations imposed by Empire, there are still hurdles to overcome before achieving the

Commonwealth.

This chapter begins to examine these obstacles to understand what the subject faces and if

Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject can overcome such issues. The ethos of Empire is to

appropriate the productive potential of the Multitude. The subject is constrained by this power

not only as previously described in chapter one, but also through the demands of capitalism,

debt, and the reintroduction of transcendent power. Through this chapter, these constraints are

49 explored in their affect on the productive potential of subjects and their ability to misguide the subject in its development of the common. The biopolitical subject is endowed with productive potential before they understand how to direct it, which creates the need for the biopolitical subject to understand how to direct their power, to control its product and abstain from co-option from an external body. Hardt and Negri have shown the potential to produce the Commonwealth is within every subject and is illustrated through love. However, does love capture the root of the biopolitical subject’s productive potential? Hardt and Negri do not explore how biopolitical subjects are susceptible to internal constraints. Alternatively, the biopolitical subject has an inherent obligation to uphold community and direct its productive power against Empire. The biopolitical subject needs to understand how to work with this obligation while sustaining the production of the Commonwealth. These influences and obligations all affect the development of the subject and ultimately influence the production of the Commonwealth. By exploring such influences, the limits of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject are highlighted to demonstrate how Zoë is needed to achieve the Commonwealth. This chapter develops alternatives and augmentations of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject and the Multitude. The theories explored attempt to liberate the biopolitical subject from the limits of Empire. Admittingly, the following exploration attempts to address the limitations of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject with agreeable compatibility between Hardt and Negri’s theory of subjectivity and the other perspectives explored. The intent of this chapter is to attain through the following theories a comprehensive knowledge of the potential of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject.

Production without Empire?

Hardt and Negri’s (2000, xiv) illustration of Empire as a limitless power, permeating every aspect of society raises questions regarding the subject’s ability to produce without

Empire. As illustrated in the previous chapter, Empire did not merely appear but is the evolution of established centers of power. The nation-state provided Empire with the ability to protect the subject from the ‘outside.’ Capital’s synthesis of the material and immaterial laboring process allowed Empire to permeate its rule through every point of production. Can the biopolitical subject produce beyond the constructs of Empire? To do so, the subject needs to be aware of the unobserved capitalist tendencies that they have internalized from Empire and the potential they hold to reproduce these tendencies within the common. If they do not realize the constraints of

Empire, then they hold the potential of reproducing Empire or even reintroducing the transcendent nature of Empire into the Commonwealth. These constraints would thwart the biopolitical subject’s ability to realize its productive potential and capacity to produce the

Commonwealth. Hardt and Negri’s theory depends on the biopolitical subject’s capacity to realize the power it holds to break the constraints of Empire. Ultimately, the realization of the

Commonwealth hinges on the biopolitical subject’s ability to direct its productive power against

Empire, to realize their potential and actively redirect this productivity towards the common. By doing so, the biopolitical subject weakens the power that Empire holds. This section explores the implications of Empire’s limitless rule and the effects that this rule has over the subject’s ability to realize its productive potential. If the Multitude is unable to overcome its ‘being-against,’ then it will not be able to produce without recreating Empire.

Empire exerts its power over subjects through its biopower, that is adorned with its capitalist mentality, network power, and global reach. These mechanisms of power enable

Empire to target biopolitical subjects through the creation of norms, hierarchies, and the commodification of differences. Empire upholds this power over contemporary global society through the state of exception. As Kiersey (2009, 367) describes, Hardt and Negri suggest that

“global biopolitics … is beholden to an ‘imperial humanitarian’ ethic which frames its wars as

necessary in ‘the interests of humanity as a whole.’” This humanitarian ethic is depicted as “an imperial logic, which is not in the specific interest of any nation or people but rather by definition universal to humanity” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 60). This condition is employed as an extension of the global rhetoric of Empire’s biopower. Empire’s employment of the state of exception through the imperial ideology of human rights creates a constant obligation for biopolitical subjects to uphold its power. This obligation limits the biopolitical subject’s ability to overcome the constraints employed by Empire.

Through the constant state of exception, Empire creates the illusion of protection and nourishment for all. The biopolitical subject willingly accepts the rule of Empire since it both protects and sustains them. Empire’s constant state of exception influences the biopolitical subject’s actions by forcing the subject to produce in reaction to the inherent uncertainty of society. Part of the problem for the biopolitical subject is the lack of division between any power within Empire; “between knowledge and power, between politics and economics, the sovereign and non-sovereign, or the domestic and international” (Kiersey 2009, 385). The same can be argued for the biopolitical subject since it produces with no clear divisions. Therefore, Empire and the biopolitical subject are intertwined with one another; they produce, grow, and modify within one another. For Hardt and Negri (2004, 67) it is, “…when the state of exception has become permanent, then peace is elevated for the Multitude to the highest value, the necessary

52 condition for any liberation.” How then does the subject redirect its productive power when it is an integral part of Empire?

Empire’s capitalist mentality, imperial tendencies, and horizontal networks define the rules of contemporary global society. To adopt Kiersey’s (2009) terminology, it creates a single game that the biopolitical subject must play. Biopolitical subjects play the game through their

“wish to become an entrepreneur and the [the ability to] lead others to desire the consumption of certain goods and services” (Kiersey 2009, 384). The biopolitical subject may feel like they are self-governing, but they are not exterior from Empire. As such, it is “the subject whose active self-government guarantees the reproduction of power” (Kiersey 2009, 385). Part of the issue for

Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is the ability to redirect its productive potential away from

Empire. Empire capitalizes on the game through the biopolitical subject’s wish to improve their position in life; as Kiersey (2009, 385) states, “a subject who accepts that the “rules of the game” oblige him to commit forcefully to the improvement of his human capital and position in the market.” As a result, biopolitical subjects are responsible for their productive power, but Empire prizes that productive power in a manner that is not conducive to the creation of the

Commonwealth. How does a self-enterprising biopolitical subject reject the game of Empire to produce for the collective Commonwealth? Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is not able to detach itself from the game because their action depends on the constructs of Empire. Instead, the subject needs to be reimagined with Zoë to escape Empire’s control.

Hardt and Negri’s (2000, 196) illustration of the “social factory” is a prime example of how Empire exercises its control: “today the enclosures that used to define the limited space of the institutions have broken down so that the logic that once functioned primarily within the institutional walls now spreads across the entire social terrain.” Not only do these mechanisms of

53 control safeguard Empire’s power, but they also placate the biopolitical subject, since

“subjectivities are still produced in the social factory” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 196). Hardt and

Negri illustrate through the prominence of immaterial labor the reformation of control, which has blurred the division between labor and non-laboring hours. The biopolitical subject is no longer solely conditioned by work hours. Instead, institutions force a “reevaluation of the social value of the entire set of productive activities” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 273). This form of control permeates throughout society and blurs the division between laboring and non-laboring hours.

Ultimately, the biopolitical subject is constrained by Empire since “life is what infuses and dominates all production” (Kiersey 2009, 383) and Empire holds power over production. Kiersey explores the constraints employed by Empire through Foucault’s ‘consciousness of crisis.’ He deliberates how capitalist governmentality “has a consciousness of itself as a theory which seeks to incite entrepreneurialism to the point of crisis” (Keirsey 2009, 363). Therefore, ‘consciousness of crisis’ is an attempt to understand how neoliberalism, or any form of governmentality, creates norms or behaviors within a population. The biopolitical subject, when understood through the consciousness of crisis, is concerned with the productive potential of their actions and takes responsibility for their production and engagement with the world. As a result, their actions have meaning and respond to the exterior world. The issue for the realization of the Commonwealth is that Empire has conditioned the biopolitical subject to respond to the demands of capital, to produce in a manner that upholds the society in which one lives.

In the end, the demands of capitalism create a dynamic biopolitical subject “whose self- government guarantees the reproduction of power” (Kiersey 2009, 385). By accepting Kiersey’s interpretation of contemporary capitalism, as a global system of power that governs and sustains us, then it is possible that the biopolitical subject would sustain and renew Empire, instead of

directing its productive power towards the cultivation of the Commonwealth. Empire has conditioned the biopolitical subject to respond to the demands and rules of its game, which creates the possibility of the biopolitical subject, not recognizing the potential of their productive power. Ultimately, the biopolitical subject is a process; it is complex and varies, “according to prevailing conditions” (Kiersey 2009, 385). As such, there is no clear-cut distinction between the biopolitical subject and its productive power. The potential of the subject continuing to play

Empire’s game instead of producing for the Commonwealth is highly possible. To end Empire’s

game the biopolitical subject must become an affirmative Zoë-subject, which will be outlined in the next chapter.

The capitalist power dynamic aims to create biopolitical subjects that will reproduce and uphold capitalism. If the biopolitical subject reproduces capitalist tendencies, then it is considered as a productive member of society. To break from the capitalist mentality, the

biopolitical subject needs to understand how power operates through the body. Kiersey, very

interestingly, highlights how Foucault’s theory of power exercises through the subject; “for power to be exercised, the subject must be presented with a situation “in which several kinds of conduct, several ways of reacting and modes of behavior are available” (Kiersey 2009, 377). The subject can modify how it elicits power because it is not defined explicitly by power. Instead, it is a mechanism of power. As presented by Keirsey (2009, 377), Foucault’s power is only a part of the subject; it can never fully define the subject. Therefore, power is considered as a mechanism of control, not domination. In line with Kiersey’s reading, the subject would act within “a certain sense of what counts as responsible behavior in the marketplace of his life”

(Kiersey 2009, 365). Hardt and Negri do not delve into what counts as responsible behavior.

Instead, they focus on the biopolitical subject’s ability to constantly produce and attach to this

the desire to recreate joyful encounters. They theorize the biopolitical subject’s ability to cultivate their productive power towards the production of the Commonwealth. However, what counts as responsible behavior is yet to be seen.

Through the entanglement of Empire with the biopolitical subject, it is possible to recreate the transcendent tendencies of Empire within the Commonwealth. Peter Fitzpatrick considers the biopolitical subject’s powers in his critique, The Immanence of Empire, where he questions Hardt and Negri for their theoretical use of immanence as the ability to reject Empire to produce the Multitude. He contends, following Deleuze and Guattari, “whenever immanence is interpreted as immanent to Something, we can be sure that this Something reintroduces the transcendent” (Fitzpatrick 2004, 31). As such, “no matter how ‘relentless’ the struggle against a constraining transcendence, transcendence is for Deleuze and Guattari unavoidable” (Fitzpatrick

2004, 33). For Hardt and Negri the biopolitical subject through its constituent power can overcome the transcendence of Empire. As the Multitude’s continuous production creates a constituent power that is as “‘absolute and unlimited,’ ‘beyond measure,’ and expansive, ‘always open’ and flowing, completely revolutionary” (Fitzpatrick 2004, 33). However, Fitzpatrick’s critiques both the Multitude and Empire as being enthralled with the ‘Something’ of Deleuze and

Guattari’s theory. The Multitude’s ‘Something’ is demonstrated through “its various realizations and becomings” (Fitzpatrick 2004, 40). While, Empire’s ‘Something’ is its constituted power;

“constituent power and its commensurate immanence depend upon constituted power for a

‘defined’ existence” (Fitzpatrick 2004, 43). The Multitude is defined through its ‘being-against’ the power of Empire. As such, the biopolitical subject’s production is a response to the power, control, and society of Empire. The potential of the Multitude re-introducing transcendence in the development of the Commonwealth lies in its opposition to Empire. Especially since the

Multitude’s “journey out was, after all, undertaken with the incurious intention of a secure

return” (Fitzpatrick 2004, 32). There is no guarantee that the Multitude would diminish this

oppositional power through the production of new forms of the common.

Fitzpatrick (2004, 38) highlights the interdependence of the Multitude and Empire; “the

Multitude and Empire are each constituted and impelled by the other as its contrary.” The way

Hardt and Negri theorize Empire and the Multitude make them co-dependent on one another.

Empire feeds off the productivity of the Multitude, while the Multitude depends on the global network power of Empire. The Multitude requires the networks, mobility, and inclusion of

Empire, while Empire depends on the same attributes to sustain its power. The Multitude and

Empire are not only co-dependent on one another, but they also lack a full definition. Hardt and

Negri theorize both Empire and the Multitude in different modes of development, Empire is

“coming” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 271 and 384), and the Multitude is “always-already and not- yet” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 222). Each entity has not achieved its full stature, as Fitzpatrick

(2004, 39) describes they are “an alternation between a realized actuality and a formless, illimitable quality beyond.” It is unclear if the biopolitical subject can fully realize its productive potential outside of Empire. Especially in consideration of Empire’s continuous modification of itself to co-opt the productive power of the biopolitical subject. The co-constitution of Empire and the Multitude, paired with the malleable nature of Empire, a body not fully understood that defines society, creates a vast body that the biopolitical subject tries to target. The potential for the realization of the Commonwealth is present; the biopolitical subject could realize the

Commonwealth through the production of instances of the common, but the potential of continuing to play Empire’s game and recreating the transcendent power of Empire is also a possibility In the next chapter, The Affirmative Zoë-subject, the biopolitical subject is re-

imagined with Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject to mediate the potential of recreating the power of

Empire.

Power in Action?

In the previous section, the question of the subject’s ability to produce within Empire was explored. Both Kiersey and Fitzpatrick’s theories highlight the problematic terrain of production and how the subject attempts to navigate its production towards the Commonwealth. This section attempts to better understand the subject’s ability to realize its productive power under Empire.

Peter Sloterdijk’s spherological poetics of being, sphere theory, as explained by Erik Bordeleau,

is introduced to explore the constitution of a political subject and its capacity to endure global

community. Sloterdijk’s sphere theory is “a way to conceptualize social life as consisting of the

precarious building and break-down of spatial collectivities” (Schinkel and Noordegraaf-Eelens

2011, 13). Sloterdijk’s theories are concerned with the subject’s capacity to internalize and

interact with the external world. His theory contrasts that of Hardt and Negri’s because he does

not accept the idea of political totality. Instead, Sloterdijk questions if the subject can

“distinguish itself from the world it claims to resist” (Bordeleau 2011, 166)? What is different

here is that Sloterdijk questions the subject’s capacity to recognize its relationship to totality. He identifies the problem of “the constitution of a subject of action, or a way of ensuring that action is carried out” (Bordeleau 2011, 169). For Sloterdijk the subject may have power but does not know how to direct it; or how to operate within the new interior. Essentially, Sloterdijk’s sphere theory questions the possibility of the subject’s ‘pure’ ‘being-against’ since he understands the subject’s power as a response to the world in which it lives. Hardt and Negri do not question the biopolitical subject’s ability to act. They only recognize the subject as a biopolitical actor, as

capable of “feel[ing] within themselves a pure ‘being-against’ [… that] becomes the essential key to every active position in the world” (Bordeleau 2011, 167). They do not explore the biopolitical subject’s relationship to the totality of Empire.

Hardt and Negri or Sloterdijk do not question the subject's power; however, the way they understand how a subject learns to use its power differs. Hardt and Negri rely on the biopolitical subject’s desire to reproduce joyful encounters which directs the subject’s productive power

towards the production of the common. As such, Hardt and Negri develop the poor whose

actions are underlined by love to demonstrate the biopolitical subject’s continual production.

Consequently, Hardt and Negri miss the power in non-action that Sloterdijk develops. As illustrated by Bordeleau (2011, 170), Sloterdijk’s theory of power is “independent of individual will, that at a fundamental level power does not arise from will.” Therefore, the subject is endowed with power before it understands how to direct it; it is not dependent on action to elicit power. The subject understands how to direct its power when it “finds the motive that frees him from hesitation and takes away his inhibitions, allowing him to act” (Bordeleau 2011, 173).

Bordeleau does not explore how Sloterdijk’s subject would find its motive to act. The subject may acknowledge its power, but doubt can inhibit the subject’s ability to find their motive: “… knowledge may have promised power, but criticism reproduces absence” (Bordeleau 2011, 175).

Doubt is what hinders Sloterdijk’s subject from realizing how to direct its power within society.

If the subject doubts its power, then it does not act. Hardt and Negri do not explore how doubt affects the biopolitical subject because they focus on the affirmative power of biopolitics. For

Hardt and Negri, the absence of action creates a biopolitical subject who is willing to follow; a subject whose love has been corrupted by Empire. In the end, Hardt and Negri did not leave room for the biopolitical subject to doubt its productive potential. The biopolitical subject has no

option but to learn to cultivate its power without restrictions to harness its ability to act.

However, the direction of this power may not lead to the Commonwealth.

For Sloterdijk, when the subject finds its motive, they move from acknowledging their

power to directing its ends. Only when the subject finds its motive would society progress from

Empire to Commonwealth. Bordeleau (2011, 176) highlights the need for Sloterdijk’s subject to

“understand the inner space” that they comprise. How does the subject inherit the vastness of

society, while also taking responsibility for common space and at the same time being

considerate to the other subjects that occupy such space? The underlying issue is “the belief that

the empathy of human beings for other human beings is not exhaustible” (Bordeleau 2011, 176).

Hardt and Negri do not consider if Empire could exhaust the biopolitical subject’s productive

power. Hardt and Negri take the inner space of Empire for granted, by assuming the creation of democratic, communal living, without first understanding the individuality of biopolitical subjects and the intricacies of society.

The concern over the subject’s threshold of empathy derives from Sloterdijk’s examination of what he calls the “Chinese continuum” – “up until the threshold of our century

China was surely a monstrous artistic exercise on the theme of ‘existing in a space without an outside by walling oneself up’“ (Bordeleau 2011, 176). China is an example of bringing the exterior to its interior. However, China’s complete control over space did not create Hardt and

Negri’s Commonwealth. Democratic action, communal care, or productive freedoms were not established within the inner-space of China. Through Empire, Hardt and Negri theorize complete control over contemporary global society. Within Empire, the biopolitical subject can produce an absolute democratic society through the continual cultivation of the common. However, Hardt

and Negri’s theory lacks an exploration of how the biopolitical subject can create sustainable

impact against Empire. They accept the biopolitical subject’s potential as limitless and

unopposed, they do not consider how the subject is limited through its access to contemporary

global society.

Hardt and Negri turn to Marx to gain an understanding of labor as a producer of the

common (Hardt and Negri 2009, 287). They develop a measure of value, in economic and

capitalist terms, through social production and reproduction of the common. For Hardt and Negri

(2009, 289-290) value is measured through the defense of the freedom of biopolitical labor

(work), defense of social life (wage), and the defense of democracy (capital). From this concept

of value, Hardt and Negri (2009, 319) depict biopolitical society’s value; “A new theory of value

has to be based on the powers of economic, political, and social innovation that today are

expressions of the Multitude’s desire.” Through this new theory of value, they develop the

biopolitical subject’s control over its productive power. In contrast, Sloterdijk theorizes the

subject’s power of production “Subjectivity has been turned fully into praxis. … practical reason

could not see that the highest concept of behavior is not ‘doing’ but ‘letting things be’ … Those

who exercise the praxis of abstention do not get caught in the self-continuation mechanism of unleashed activities” (Bordeleau 2011, 181). In contrast to Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject,

Sloterdijk’s subject abstains from action to understand the exterior. As such, Sloterdijk’s subject

removes itself from the external world long enough to contemplate their interaction while also

ensuring within the process that the external world does not influence the decision. Through

abstention, the effects and demands placed on Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject by Empire

can be mediated.

Hardt and Negri’s subject is a powerful biopolitical actor; the productive potential is

undeniable. However, Hardt and Negri’s theoretical development of the biopolitical subject lacks

an exploration of Empire’s influence, everchanging nature and the demands it places on the

subject. Through the exploration of Sloterdijk’s theory, the capacity of Hardt and Negri’s

biopolitical subject to internalize and interact with Empire is explored. Instead of relying on

Hardt and Negri’s Multitude ‘‘being-against’’ Empire, Sloterdijk’s theory attempts to understand the subject without depending on a “renewed access to the world” (Bordeleau 2011, 171). For

Sloterdijk, the subject does not draw its power from realizing that Empire is its foe. Instead, the subject is always powerful, but the exterior can be influential. Therefore, the subject must refrain from action to elicit change instead of responding to the current world. The next section continues the exploration of the biopolitical subject’s capacity to mediate the external world and produce the Commonwealth.

Required Common: Another Multitude

The most appealing theory of Hardt and Negri’s trilogy is the capacity of the biopolitical subject to cultivate the Multitude. The power and potential that the Multitude holds for biopolitical subjects are endless, but the realization of the Multitude is not guaranteed. By turning to Paolo Virno’s theory of the Multitude, as developed in A Grammar of Hope, the necessity to understand the subject through more than its biopolitical production of the common is demonstrated. What happens if Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is unable to cultivate the common against Empire? If the biopolitical subject is not able to recognize the love underlying their actions, then they would not be able to cultivate their productive power against Empire, leaving the Commonwealth unrealized. To counteract this pitfall of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is Virno’s (2004, 32) “dialectic of dread/refuge” that mediates the subject’s

particular and absolute danger of being in the world. Virno’s theory of the Multitude is more

concerned with how the subject interacts with the world and the production of general intellect

than the common. This is due to Virno’s recognition that if the subject’s intellect “does not

become a republic, a public sphere, a political community, drastically increases forms of

submission” (Virno 2004, 41). By introducing these aspects to Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical

subject, the over-inflation of the Multitude’s ability to produce the common is mediated by dread

and general intellect. All of which, leads to a biopolitical subject who acts from the basis of the

subject’s singular interest of self-preservation instead of a ‘being-against’ Empire.

Virno’s Multitude develops through the notion of dread and refuge. He theorizes the connection between subjects as rooted in dread in which “the experience of dread [acts] as the grounds for solidarity” (Marasco 2006, 9). According to Virno, dread is capable of taking two forms, the first is fear and the second anguish; “Fear is always circumscribed and nameable; anguish is ubiquitous, not connected to distinctive causes, it can survive in any given moment or situation” (Virno 2004, 32). Within Virno’s Multitude, these two forms of dread overlap to create “the feeling of ‘not feeling at home’” (Virno 2004, 34). As such, the Multitude is fueled by the fear of the world and anguishes over the possibility of not being in the world. Through dread, Virno theorizes the Multitude as “united by the risk which derives from not feeling at home, from being exposed omnilaterally to the world” (Virno 2004, 34). The overlapping of fear and anguish paired with “the permanent mutability of the forms of life, and the training needed for confronting the unchecked uncertainty of life, lead us to a direct and continuous relation with the world” (Virno 2004, 33). Accordingly, the subject must deal with the continual battle between inclusion and exclusion and use these experiences a basis of action. The subject seeks refuge to “protect ourselves; then, when we are intent on protecting ourselves, we focus on identifying the dangers with which we may have to concern ourselves” (Virno 2004 34). In

opposition to Hardt and Negri’s love, dread forces the subject to face its being in the world and

develop itself to confront the world.

The potential of the subject is more critical for Virno than the creation of an alternative,

the Commonwealth, or the destruction of Empire. Virno focuses his theory of the Multitude on

its capacity to strengthen and mobilize itself as a revolutionary body while configuring how the

subject “bolster[s] one’s own power” (Lotringer 2005, 10). Virno is concerned with what the

subject can “find in themselves … their own fulfillment” (Lotringer 2005, 7). The potential of

Virno’s Multitude rests in general intellect, “the exterior, collective, social character which

belongs to intellectual activity when this activity becomes, according to Marx, the true

mainspring of the production of wealth” (Virno 2004, 37-38). General intellect is the collective,

public knowledge that flows through contemporary global society. The intent is to establish

general intellect as the foundation of the Multitude without co-option by political space.

Consequently, Virno develops “the Multitude [as] a force defined less by what it actually

produces than by its virtuality, its potential to produce and produce itself” (Lotringer 2005, 6). In

the end, Virno’s Multitude concerns the cultivation of the subject’s power; it is not an attempt to

destroy Empire.

Hardt and Negri use the transformation of labor and ultimately the rise of Empire to

define a new class; “a struggle looking for a class” (Lotringer 2005, 10). For Hardt and Negri, the transformation of labor is a “kind of exodus ‘a powerful form of class struggle’” (Lotringer

2005, 3). Virno does not attach the same prominence to the transformation of labor; he theorizes it as “a transitory phase” (Lotringer 2005, 3). As such, the potential of the subject lies not in the expression of protest, but in the expression of defection (Virno 2004, 69). Whereas defection

“modifies the context within which a problem has arisen, rather than facing this problem by

opting for one or the other of the provided alternatives” (Virno 2004, 70). As such, Virno

develops the subject’s potential through “the ambivalence which inheres in the Multitude and the

potentialities opened up by revolutionary defeat” (Marasco 2006, 11). By exploring Virno’s multitude and his emphasis on developing the subject’s power it is evident that Hardt and Negri

do not capture the full potential of the biopolitical subject. In the end, their biopolitical subject is

limited by the ‘being-against’ inherent to the Multitude’s fight against Empire.

The Gift Giver

Roberto Esposito’s project, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, Communitas: the Origin

and Destiny of Community, and Immunitas: the protection and Negation of life, is an exploration

of affirmative biopolitics through the relationship between community and immunity; having-in- common and not-having-in-common (Esposito 2008, 51). He discusses at length the demands of community and the detrimental effect community has on the subject’s capacity to act. Through the use of immunity, Esposito can theorize the mediation of these affects. Esposito’s concept of immunity, both “protects and promotes life while also limiting life’s expansive and productive power” (Lemke 2011, 90). For Esposito, the subject’s immunity mediates the demands and responsibilities of community. Within the origins of community, Esposito recognizes an obligatory relationship that distorts communication between subjects and, ultimately, what they hold in common. Hardt and Negri do not identify how community binds “its members to an obligation of reciprocal donation” (Esposito 2008, 50). This section explores the demands placed on the subject by community. Such demands are absent from Hardt and Negri’s trilogy, which with the inclusion of Esposito’s immunity the subject’s productive nature and the possibility of realizing the Commonwealth is expanded.

Esposito theorizes community through an evaluation of the dictionary meaning of the

word. Community, as communitas and communis “is what becomes meaningful from the

opposition to what is proper. … It is what belongs to more than one, to many or to everyone …”

(Esposito 2010, 3). Likewise, Esposito highlights the attachment of “munus” to community. He

conceives three meanings of munus: “onus [burden], officium [office], and donum [gift]”

(Esposito 2010, 4; original emphasis). Overarching, all connotations of munus is the creation of

an obligation of reciprocal relations between subjects. Particularly, Esposito finds interest in donum as an obligation of community. Subjects must continually engage in gift giving to uphold community; “… one gives because one must give and because one cannot give” (Esposito 2010,

5). The act of giving is merely an act; it does not translate into the subject having something.

Community does not aim to produce common interactions; “In the community, subjects do not find a principle of identification nor an aseptic enclosure within which they can establish transparent communication or even a content to be communicated” (Esposito 2010, 7). The problem underlining this notion of gift-giving is that it produces a false sense of production. As in, the subject produces through their obligation to other subjects, not to cultivate the common.

For the realization of Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth, the notion of gift-giving undermines the production of the common. Since the act of gift-giving is an obligation to counteract the biopolitical subject’s vulnerability.

For Esposito, subjects depend on community, they are vulnerable without it, but its inherent risks can be damaging. Hardt and Negri do not consider the obligation that the realization of the Commonwealth creates for the biopolitical subject. Instead, they advocate for the continuous and unmediated production of the common without considering the violence inherent to such action. Esposito introduces the concept of immunity to counter the demands of

community. Immunity is a form of protection for the subject, it functions by internalizing the

threat and producing the threat in a controlled form; “The body defeats a position not by

expelling it outside the organism, but by making it somehow part of the body” (Esposito 2011,

8). To illustrate the affirmative nature of immunity, Esposito depicts the mother and fetus. The

mother’s immunity operates in two manners; “on the one hand, it is directed toward controlling

the fetus, on the other hand, it is also controlling itself” (Esposito 2011, 170). The immune system accepts what is foreign to the subject, while also protecting the subject from what is foreign. Such duplicity allows Esposito to theorize how different subjects can interact with one another, process their interactions, and further constitute oneself.

The continual internalization of external forms allows Esposito’s subject to develop and

produce heightened immune capacities that allow for further exposure in community. Immunity

protects the subject by reducing the reach and influence that community holds against the

subject. Esposito (2011, 9) summarizes immunity as, “the internal limit which cuts across

community, folding it back on itself in a form that is both constitutive and deprivative: immunity

constitutes or reconstitutes community precisely by negating it.” Hardt and Negri do not develop

a theory of immunity for their Multitude. Instead, their biopolitical subject remains exposed to

the demands of Empire. If Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject was theorized with immunity

then the biopolitical subject would protect itself from its own deprivation; “It saves, insures, and

preserves the organism, either individual or collective, to which it pertains, but it does not do so

directly, immediately, or frontally; on the contrary, it subjects the organism to a condition that

simultaneously negates or reduces its power to expand” (Esposito 2008, 46). Through such

resistance, the biopolitical subject would develop its own constitution and limit the effects of

Empire, hampering Empire’s reproduction.

With the rise of Empire, Hardt and Negri theorize its expansive, global nature, which they partially illustrate through the diminishing powers of the nation-state. For Esposito (2008,

57), national sovereignty acted as an immunological body by mediating the interactions of subjects. The nation-state protected subjects by supporting the division of interior and exterior.

Before Empire brought everything to its interior, Empire created a smooth world that redirected the subject’s willingness to follow. Hardt and Negri do not theorize how the biopolitical subject supersedes their willingness to follow a power that provides security and freedom. For Esposito

(2008, 76), the lack of protection leads the subject to look for the protection from “the first master who appears.” Esposito (2008, 76) question if the subject can “defend the particular interests that move him.” What is at stake is how the biopolitical subject can sustain itself within

Empire to develop the common. Esposito highlights how the demands of community need to be adequately mediated by the subject. Otherwise, the Multitude may not be able to cultivate the

Commonwealth. In the next section, I explore how capital provides a sense of security to subjects, and how subjects act in the interest of capital to safeguard themselves from this unknown reality to demonstrate how debt affects the subject’s production.

Capitalist Freedom

Hardt and Negri theoretically limit the powers targeting the subject to Empire. They do not develop the intricacies of capital that direct and mold the subject’s production. Instead, they focus on the subject’s potential to produce without exploring how the directive power of capital limits the subject’s comprehension of Empire’s influence. To consider the influence of capital against Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject, I turn to Maurizio Lazzarato use of debt as a theoretical starting point in understanding the subject of contemporary society. The inequality,

inclusion, and targeting of morality by debt “reconfigures biopolitical power by demanding

production of subjectivity specific to the indebted man” (Lazzarato 2011, 104). Lazzarato uses

the power of debt in a manner that evades Hardt and Negri’s theory but lends to understanding

how the subject acts within society. With this inclusion, Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is

more apt to understand the power it is up against and how this power ultimately, affects its

constitution.

Maurizio Lazzarato explores the debtor-creditor relationship that permeates society and

the effects it has on subjectivity. His theories explore the production “of specific indebted

subjects following specific moral imperative functional to the reproduction of credit as key

paradigm of (uneven) social relations” (Di Feliciantonio 2016, 1209). Debt is engrained in all

social relations as a mechanism of control and reproduction since the subject continuously aims

to better oneself through the accumulation of goods. Debt not only modifies the way the subject

consumes, but it also creates a shift in the subject’s moral ideology through the promise the subject makes to repay their debt. Ultimately, debt “functions as a mechanism for the production and ‘government’ of collective and individual subjectivities” (Lazzarato 2011, 29). The relationship that ensues between the subject and society is one where the subject is free as long as they operate within the relationship that debt has created; “you are free insofar as you assume the way of life … compatible with reimbursement” (Lazzarato 2011, 31). They are free as long as they continue to indebt themselves. Therefore, every action the subject makes is decided based on the time it will take to repay one’s debt; the “subject is shaped by indebtedness” (Di

Feliciantonio 2016, 1210). Hardt and Negri’s theory does not explore how debt is an integral aspect of capital, even though according to Lazzarato’s theory, debt influences the subject’s

ability to produce. The biopolitical subject produces within the society that Empire created, one

that is affected by capital. There is no doubt that capital has influenced Empire and the

biopolitical subjects that comprise it. Debt is an integral aspect of capital’s economic, which

could affect the moral ideology and production of biopolitical subjects.

The debitor/creditor relationship, as explored by Lazzarato, creates an issue for Hardt and

Negri’s Multitude. The problem is that debit/credit “exploits the process of subjectivation by

affecting the individuation of existence itself” (Lazzarato 2011, 60). Debt affects the subject’s

moral ideology by connecting it to their economic situation; “In order to keep the promise to

repay the debt, the resulting subject is endowed with a specific memory and conscience linked to

debt obligations” (Di Feliciantonio 2016, 1210). If Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject adopts

Lazzarato’s notion of debt, then the biopolitical subject’s productivity is affected by the “logic of credit” (Lazzarato 2011, 130). The biopolitical subject would then act towards the maintenance of the economy since it is the only body that secures their way of life. If the economic system fails, if credit is not available, then the life that it guarantees is in question. The power dynamic that illuminates the subject as free depends on the subject operating within the constructs that capitalism created. Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject may still act with the common at the forefront, but the obligation of debt can color those actions.

Conclusion

Hardt and Negri’s theory of biopolitical subjectivity lacks an in-depth exploration of the extent of Empire’s power and the obligations created through the constitution of the

Commonwealth. By exploring Empire’s influence, the power in non-action, another Multitude, the demands of community, and debt, this chapter demonstrates how the subject’s biopolitical production does not ready them to mediate the demands of community. However, Hardt and

Negri’s theory of the biopolitical subject is limited. They do not theorize the subject’s potential

to become a sustainable, vital actor. To remedy this lack of theoretical development, I turn to

Braidotti’s theory of Zoë to mediate the effects of Empire and cultivate a subject more apt to

produce in common. Her theory of Zoë situates the subject as a nomad, who actively

reconfigures oneself within life and acts to sustain life itself. The subject is then more apt to

produce in common since they produce to sustain life, not community.

Contemporary global society creates a framework of production like no other. The

subject is, indeed, the most powerful being, if it can harness its capacity to produce, then

alternatives are possible. Hardt and Negri’s theory of biopolitical subject grasps not only the nature of contemporary global society but also the productive potential of the subject. However, they lack an in-depth exploration of how the biopolitical subject supersedes the influence of

Empire, to produce exterior from its influence while also mediating the constant demands of the

Commonwealth. Empire will not let the biopolitical subject go willingly, but as illustrated,

Commonwealth does not come easily. By reconfiguring Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject

through Zoë, the subject of contemporary global society can displace its constitution as

established in Empire and negotiate the obstacles depicted throughout this chapter. The Zoë-

subject is capable of transforming contemporary global society into an ethical and sustainable

common society.

Chapter Three

The Affirmative Zoë-subject

The vitalist notion of life as ‘Zoë’ is important here because it stresses that the life I inhabit is not mine, it does not bear my name – it is a generative force of becoming, of individuation and differentiation: apersonal, indifferent, and generative. -Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Theory

If the key to achieving Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth is the biopolitical subject, then the biopolitical subject itself must be reframed. Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject uses its productive potential to communicate, produce, and develop the common, all of which form the basis of the Commonwealth. However, I argue that Hardt and Negri’s reliance on life, as Bios, limits the productive dimensions of their proposed subject. The biopolitical subject is productive, but it is productive in a manner that allows appropriation by external bodies and the possible production of uncommon ends. The biopolitical subject produces in order to reject the power of

Empire; its actions are directed towards ‘being-against,’ its desire create an alternative, and requires the biopolitical event to break from the confines of Empire. Furthermore, the Multitude depends on the democratic diagonal to guide the constitution of the Commonwealth. However, the Multitude needs to overcome the learned behaviors of Empire, while depending on the biopolitical subject’s capacity to meet the demands of community. Ultimately, these issues demonstrate a lack in Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject that the prominence of Zoë-subject can address.

This chapter begins the modification of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject. The aim is to put Zoë at the core of life, by accepting Braidotti’s (2011a, 326) “distinction between ‘Zoë,’ as a vitalistic, prehuman, and generative life, to Bios, as a political discourse about social and

political life.” She builds from “Deleuze in affirming life as central, but this vital force is defined

within the older Greek notion of Zoë – Zoë (from ancient Greek ζωή, meaning spiritual life, in

contrast to Bios, meaning biological life): as a vital force that is non-human, impersonal,

generative, trans-individual, post-anthropocentric, and post-finitude dimension of subjectivity”

(Hickman, 2013). Therefore, her theory of Zoë is a generative force, that animates individuals,

and refers to “the endless vitality of life as a process of continuous becoming” (Braidotti 2008a,

182). She creates a Zoë-centric, posthuman, nomad that values all forms of life as equal, creates a planetary relationship, and resituates the subject within society. The Zoë-subject does not reproduce an established position in contemporary global society; on the contrary, its re-centers itself within the expanse of life, deconstructing the duality of the spirit/body: “‘life’ is Bios/Zoë combined in flows of becoming” (Braidotti 2006, 215). Braidotti’s (2002, 119) notion of becoming refers to “sequential modes of affirmative deconstruction of the dominant subject- position … as stepping stones to a complex and open-ended process of depersonalization of the subject.” Her Zoë-subject remains biopolitically productive (since the aim is not to remove Bios from the subject), but its biopolitical quality is always secondary to Zoë. In this new formulation,

I argue, Hardt and Negri’s Multitude could be a generative force, wedded to all life with Zoë at its core. In this way, the Zoë-subject would embed and embody all that is common to life at the

core of its self-organizing structure. The result would be truer to Hardt and Negri’s

Commonwealth.

What is Zoë?

Traditionally, Zoë is a theory of life that is most commonly associated with bare life.

Bare life reduces life to its most elementary and biological aspects; the subject is only a living

73 breathing animal. This notion derives from the Greek understanding of life, in which a division is created between Zoë and Bios; “zoë, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living animals (animals, man, or gods) and Bios, which indication the form or way of life proper to an individual or group” (Campbell 2011, 32). Essential to this definition is the distinction made between the two notions of the subject’s capacity to live properly within a group. Bios is valued as a proper form of life, while Zoë is improper (Campbell 2011, 32-33). Agamben accepts the distinction made between Zoë and Bios to theorize Zoë as bare life, which reduces the subject to a naturalist concept of life. He witnesses Zoë in contemporary society through “asylum seekers, refugees, and the brain dead [... since] they are excluded from the protection of the law”

(Lemke 2011, 55). Bare life is a connotation of the subject in which it can be reduced to a body that can be killed.

Hardt and Negri do not accept the separation of Zoë and Bios. Instead, Zoë needs to be raised up to the productive potential of Bios to account for contemporary society’s “dissolution of the boundaries between economy and politics, production and reproduction” (Lemke 2011, 6).

However, even with the dissolution of boundaries and boundless production, Hardt and Negri do not theorize the affirmative power of Zoë, nor do they contest the secondary characterization of

Zoë to Bios. Within their trilogy, Hardt and Negri discuss Agamben’s theory of naked life, which refers to “the negative limit of humanity and ... the (more or less heroic) conditions of human passivity” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 366). Through Agamben’s illustration of fascism and Nazism, they recognize the attempt to “destroy the enormous power that naked life could become” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 366). They suggest that “fascism and Nazism were unleashed when capital discovered that social cooperation was no longer the result of the investment of capital but rather an autonomous power” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 366). They recognize an immense power of

production within naked life; however, they contend it needs to be “raised up to the dignity of

productive power” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 366). Hardt and Negri (2009, 77) do not accept

naked life as empty; the subject cannot lose their “freedom and power to resist.” Therefore, the biopolitical subject will always be able to utilize its knowledge, history, and differences within its productive power.

The Multitude’s counter movement against Empire is the creation of “a new mode of life

and above all a new community” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 204; original emphasis). For this

reason, Hardt and Negri theorize a politics of liberation that aims to enrich and develop the

biopolitical subject’s productive abilities. Ultimately, the Multitude establishes the “production

of new identities, collectivities and radically democratic politics” (Hardt and Negri 2002, 184).

To capture the Multitude’s production Hardt and Negri theorize a new form of humanity that

“leads not toward the naked life of homo tantum but toward homohomo, humanity squared, enriched by the collective intelligence and love of the community” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 204; original emphasis). Hardt and Negri make an unnecessary move to enrich the collective intelligence and love of the community. Through their notion of humanity squared Hardt and

Negri (2002, 177; original emphasis) theorize that “a counter-Empire is necessary, even before considering how it is possible.” Their reliance on the counter movement of the Multitude only allows them to consider the biopolitical subject’s ability to resist. They illuminate the necessity of being-against before they consider how singularities can produce. If Hardt and Negri considered the generative capacity of Zoë, instead of simply capturing the productive power of the biopolitical subject, then their biopolitical subject could develop as a collectively minded power that sustains life.

Braidotti’s Theory of Zoë

Braidotti’s affirmation of Zoë as a generative force of life differs from the prevailing notion of Zoë associated with Giorgio Agamben. She contends “by identifying Zoë with death and the vulnerability of life, Agamben forecloses any possibility of transformation” (Tola 2016,

9). As a result, the subject is vulnerable to transcendent powers and can be reduced to “mortality, or finitude, as the trans-historical horizon for discussions of ‘Life’” (Braidotti 2013a, 120). In contrast to Agamben, Braidotti develops the affirmative nature of Zoë by rearranging the boundaries of life and death. Conceptually, Zoë does not suggest a meditation on death. Instead,

Zoë surpasses the binary created between life and death. For the Zoë-subject death has already occurred. As such, death “structures our becoming-subjects, our capacity and powers of relation and the process of acquiring ethical awareness” (Braidotti 2013a, 132).

Consequently, the Zoë-subject moves from sustaining one life to understanding itself as

“‘just a life,’ here and now for as long as we can and as much as we can take” (Braidotti

2013a,132). That being the case, the Zoë-subject lives through the “vital powers of healing and compassion” (Braidotti 2013a, 132). The Zoë-subject acts to sustain life; it carries on regardless of the individual’s life, it is the “affirmation of this kind of multiplicity and the relational connection with an ‘outside’ that is cosmic and infinite” (Braidotti 2013a, 138). Braidotti’s Zoë- subject is productive without relying on a notion of being-against, as demonstrated in Hardt and

Negri’s Multitude’s opposition to Empire. The critical difference is that Hardt and Negri’s

Multitude aims to achieve an alternative society, while Braidotti’s Zoë-subject acts to sustain life. Hardt and Negri rearranged the boundaries of life through the recognition of the affirmative biopolitical subject; while Braidotti’s Zoë-subject conceives life as a totality, in which the Zoë- subject is a generative force that contributes to the totality of life.

The Zoë-subject is concerned with the generation of life itself. Zoë is not concerned about the revolutionary will or the cultivation of the subject as an actor of the Multitude. Instead, the Zoë-subject considers itself within the perpetuation of all living organisms. External bodies are not its concern since they constrain life in ways that are destructive to the production of the totality of life. When considered through Zoë, life includes every living organism and regards its self-perpetuation because “Zoë as a life-force aims to reach its own fulfillment” (Braidotti 2006,

248). In addition, the Zoë-subject “craft[s] both my life and my death in a mode, at a speed and fashion which are sustainable and adequate” (Braidotti 2006, 249). The self-perpetuation of life does not mean the Zoë-subject directs its productive power towards the attainment of the

Commonwealth. In this reading, production is the fullest expression of life itself; it is inclusive of all forms and creates a subject that is ethical and sustainable.

Braidotti has reformulated the concept of Zoë through her theory of nomadic subjectivity as an affirmative, productive force that is common to all life. Zoë is a derivative of a monist universe -- only life exists. Braidotti (2013a, 56) builds from Baruch Spinoza’s monist universe to create a singular life force: “that matter, the world, and humans are not dualistic entities structured according to principles of internal or external opposition.” In relation to Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject, they should have never been conceived as opposed, since they have never been apart. The monist universe does not create a singular subjectivity; instead, it creates a singular goal of sustaining the life that animates all subjects. In effect, Zoë binds subjects to one another to enforce the idea that “we are in this together” (Braidotti 2006, 135; 2013a, 141; 2011,

121, 224). The term “we” is reference to all humanity, while “this” is life in all of its intricacies and variables: “‘We’ are in this together, in fact, enlarges the sense of collectively bound subjectivity to non-human agents, from our genetic neighbors the animals to the earth as

Biosphere” (Braidotti 2011a, 121-122). The phrase “we are in this together” is the foundation of

Braidotti’s Zoë. It opens new avenues to achieving the Commonwealth by capturing the

generative, sustainable force of Zoë. The prominence of Zoë reduces the need for Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject to form a being-against Empire.

Hardt and Negri task the Multitude with the responsibility of sustaining revolutionary

movements to cultivate democratic alternatives that coincide in the Commonwealth. However, as

shown through the illustration of Occupy, revolutions have an issue with sustainability. By using

Zoë, the subject would not falter, since life carries “on independently and regardless of rational

control” (Braidotti 2006, 37). The Zoë-subject acts regarding “the sensibility to and availability for changes or transformation [that] are directly proportional to the subject’s ability to sustain the shifts without cracking” (Braidotti 2011a, 310). Underlying the Zoë-subject’s sustainability is the fundamental idea of vitalism as the “affinity among different forces, in a set of connective disjunctions which are not a synthesis, but a recomposition” (Braidotti 2006, 126). By engaging in various modes of becoming the Zoë-subject recomposes oneself, but it “does not equate self- destruction [since] the project of finding and sustaining one’s limits … requires priority, attention and critical scrutiny” (Braidotti 2006, 215). This results in a sustainable Zoë-subject that deepens its connection to life through its modes of becoming. The Zoë-subject is “Not bound together by the guilt of shared violence, or irreparable loss, or unpayable ontological debts – but rather by the compassionate acknowledgement of our common need to negotiate thresholds on sustainability with and alongside the relentless and monstrous energy of a ‘life’ that does not responds to our names” (Braidotti 2006, 270). These thresholds of sustainability act for the Zoë- subject as “the containment of the intensities or enfleshed passions, so as to ensure their

duration” (Braidotti 2011a, 307), which bypasses the being-against inherent to Hardt and Negri’s

Multitude.

Braidotti develops various modes of becoming to recognize how the Zoë-subject

embodies and embeds itself with the world. Becoming signifies a process internal to the Zoë-

subject, it parallels the mental, physical, and/or emotional development. Specifically, Braidotti

(2006, 214) illustrates becoming as, “a trip across different fields of perception, different spatio-

temporal coordinates; mostly, it transforms negativity into affirmative affects: pain into

compassion, loss into a sense of bonding, isolation into care. It is simultaneously a slowing down

of the rhythm of daily frenzy and an acceleration of awareness, connection to others, self-

knowledge, and sensory perception.” Each mode is specific to the Zoë-subject, they are

instances of reflection, renegotiation and acknowledgement of the external world. Braidotti’s

modes of becoming are integral to the transformation of Zoë-subjects and their ability to harness

their immanent potential -- they “rest on the idea of sustainability as a principle of containment

and tolerable development of a subject’s resources” (Braidotti 2008a, 186). She develops modes of becoming from Deleuze’s theory of the embodied subject. The embodied subject is “a term in a process of intersecting forces (affects), spatiotemporal variables that are characterized by their mobility, changeability, and transitory nature” (Braidotti 2011b, 247). The embodied subject engages in various modes of becoming to embed itself within society. Throughout Braidotti’s works, she offers numerous modes of becoming that develops the Zoë-subjects being in the world while being mindful of the co-presence and collective consciousness.

If Hardt and Negri’s conceptualization of contemporary global society is accepted, that the subject of contemporary global society lives in Empire and dreams of a Multitude, then the following question must be answered: How can the individual subject recognize the vitalist, self-

organizing force, Zoë, that is already operating within? To reveal the Zoë, Braidotti (2013a, 66-

67) theorizes three modes of becoming: becoming animal, becoming earth, and becoming

machine. Each mode of becoming reframes the Zoë-subject as a posthuman actor. These modes

of becoming shift how the subject understands itself in respect to all life. As such, they enable

the subject to overcome the being-against that is characteristic of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical

subject and reveal itself as a “transversal force that cuts across and reconnects previously

segregated species, categories and domains” (Braidotti 2013a, 60). Each mode of becoming aims

to situate the subject as a sustainable, planetary actor. Primarily, becoming-animal, earth and

machine produce a subject that is aware of its relationship to all beings, technology, and the earth

in which they share. Each becoming situates the subject as a part of the ‘we’ and cognitive of

‘this’ in life. Without these modes of becoming the subject would not be able to recognize the

affirmative power of Zoë.

As an illustration, becoming-animal counters the use-value placed on animals that are

exemplified by the capitalist system. Within this notion, humans are “granted free access to and

the consumption of the bodies of others” (Braidotti 2013a, 68), while attributing worth to

animals through their “entertainment value” (Braidotti 2013a, 69). Instead, through becoming-

animal, the equality of being is recognized. Becoming-animal reconceptualizes the relationship

the Zoë-subject holds with animals; “animals are no longer the signifying system that props up the humans’ self-projections and moral aspirations” (Braidotti 2013a, 70). Rather, their relationship is transformed through equality “based on sharing this planet, territory or environment on terms that are no longer so clearly hierarchical, nor self-evident” (Braidotti

2013a, 71). Through the privileged relationship of companion animals, the oncomouse, and the

80 cloned sheep Dolly, Braidotti (2013a, 72-75) illustrates the becoming between animals and humans. As a result, new forms of community and compassion can emerge (Braidotti 2013a, 69).

Becoming-earth is the modification of the Zoë-subject’s relationship with the planet through the creation of a comprehensive notion of “this.” Particularly, two dominant shifts are required within becoming-earth. The first is conceptualizing the earth as “immanent to all others, in so far as the earth is our middle and common ground” (Braidotti 2013a, 81). The second shift changes “the location of humans from mere biological to geological agents [and] calls for the recompositions of both subjectivity and community” (Braidotti 2013a, 83). The result is a Zoë- subject that moves beyond acting as the saviors of earth and rejects “the need to reinstate universal humanist values” (Braidotti 2013a, 87). The Zoë-subject would denounce “familiar habits of thought and representation in order to pave the way for creative alternatives” (Braidotti

2013a, 88-89). Above all, the Zoë-subject develops through a common earth and is cognisant of its geological power.

The final mode of becoming required to recognize Zoë is becoming-machine. Through this mode of becoming the Zoë-subject recognizes the key role of technology, instead of conceiving it as a by-product of human production. Becoming-machine qualifies technology as a part of the individual subject by recognizing the connection between “the organic and the inorganic, the born and the manufactured, flesh and metal, electronic circuits and organic nervous systems” (Braidotti 2013a, 89). Accordingly, machines would be understood as “both intelligent and generative … they contain their own virtuality and futurity” (Braidotti 2013a, 94).

By recognizing these attributes, the subject’s relation to technology shifts from use-value to sustainability and expands the notion of subjectivity. Through becoming-machine the

“transversal connections among material and symbolic, concrete and discursive lines of relation

or forces” (Braidotti 2013a, 95) develop to account for all forms of subjectivity. As a final point,

becoming-machine attempts to rethink the progress of subjectivity to realize another possible

world.

Through Braidotti’s becoming-animal, earth and machine, the Zoë-subject resituates

itself within life. These modes of becoming counter Hardt and Negri’s Empire by opposing the

unification of “all species under the imperative of the market and its excesses threaten the

sustainability of our planet as a whole” (Braidotti 2013a, 63). These notions experiment “with what contemporary, bio-technological mediated bodies are capable of doing” (Braidotti 2013a,

61). Once the subject recognizes the equality of being, the common ground, and modes of becoming then Braidotti’s notion of “we are in this together” becomes clearer. Becoming-animal, earth and machine are the building blocks required to successfully animate Zoë. However, Zoë is more than these three modes of becoming; it also depends on ethics.

Equally important to realizing Braidotti’s Zoë is the ethics that underly it. Theoretically,

Braidotti establishes her ethics through the three modes of becoming-animal, -machine, and - earth, as shown above, but also through the Zoë-subject’s dual commitment of co-presence and of collective consciousness. “Co-presence, that is to say, the simultaneity of being in the world together, defines the ethics of interaction with both human and non-human others. A collectively distributed consciousness emerges from this, a transversal form of non-synthetic understanding of the relational bond that connects us” (Braidotti 2013a, 169). Co-presence situates the Zoë- subject’s productive potential within the shared, common condition of being in the world. It structures the Zoë-subject interactions by underlining them with mutual ethics of being while affirming the collective consciousness and the relation to one another. Through Braidotti’s Zoë- centric ethics, she aims to counter the embedded capitalist tendencies within subjects. The Zoë-

subject has prized individualism, capitalist accumulation, and unlimited production and

consumption of goods since it is a product of a “historically and culturally discursive formation”

(Braidotti 2013a, 24). Altogether, the realization of Zoë requires becoming-animal, earth and

machine, and an ethics of co-presence and collective consciousness.

Specifically, Braidotti develops her notion of ethics from Spinoza as an “ethics of

affirmation, the ethics of actualization” (Braidotti 2016). Her ethic derives from the idea that

“one is the effect of irrepressible flows of encounters, interactions, affectivity and desire, which one is not in charge of” (Braidotti 2013a, 100). At the same time, it is an ethics of affirmation because it aims to sustain the collective life in which the Zoë-subject shares. The ethics of

Braidotti’s Zoë-subject reacts to metamorphosis of subjects and the ever-changing world that one aims to preserve. As such, the Zoë-subject develops through an “embedded sense of

responsibility and ethical accountability for the environment s/he inhabits” (Braidotti 2011a,

122). To develop an ethics of sustainability, Braidotti references Deleuze and Guattari

affirmative illustration of the house as the Zoë-subject’s limit; “The house is … a complex and interactive mutual nestling by subjects who practice nomadic ethics and thus need limits, framing and nurturing” (Braidotti 2006, 218). As such, the Zoë-subject develops through the affirmation of ‘we are in this together’ and sustainability of one’s actions. These developments further empower and affirm the Zoë-subject’s connection to life and ultimately, the realization of Zoë.

How to Realize Zoë through Nomadism

Braidotti’s becoming-nomadic refers to the Zoë-subject’s desire for change and self-

modification while creating an ethical and sustainable foundation. Becoming-nomadic is

comparable to the second step in realizing the Zoë-subject; as the knowledge established through

becoming animal, earth, and machine are foundational to becoming-nomadic. As developed in

the prior section, these modes of becoming resituate the subject within “Zoë as the dynamic, self-

organizing structure of life itself” (Braidotti 2013a, 60; original emphasis). The nomadic subject continually transforms oneself; “Becoming-nomadic means that one learns to reinvent oneself, and one desires the self as a process of transformation” (Braidotti 2011a, 41). Such nomadic subjects are globally disposed, aware, and responsible. Ultimately, nomadism creates a shift in the subject that; “amounts to turning the thinking subject into the threshold of gratuitous

(principle of non-profit), aimless (principle of mobility or flow) acts which express the vital energy of transformative becoming (principle of non-linearity)” (Braidotti 2013a, 166-167).

Consequently, through Braidotti’s (2011a, 43) nomadism, emerges a Zoë-subject that continuously engages in modes of becoming since “You can never be a nomad; you can only go on trying to become nomadic.” This section outlines Braidotti’s nomadic subject to demonstrate the capacity and potential of the Zoë-centric subject. Through a multiplicity of becoming, the

Zoë-subject “learns to re-invent oneself and one’s desires the self as a process of transformation”

(Braidotti 2002, 84). These various becomings develop from the Zoë-subject’s location since

“the process of becoming-nomad … is internally differentiated and depends largely on where one starts from” (Braidotti 2002, 84). Besides, they are underlined by nomadic ethics that enables the Zoë-subjects to recognize the forms of domination at play and take responsibility for the current situation in a sustainable manner. In the end, nomadism ensures the accountability of the subject to oneself, others, and the earth, while also celebrating the differences that comprise it. Nomadism is the Zoë-subject engaging with the fluidity of becoming and the generative force of life.

To return to Hardt and Negri, they theorize the nomadic subject as a constitutive body in

the creation of the Multitude. They derive their concept of nomadism from Deleuze and

Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus and with reference to Donna Haraway’s Simians, Cyborgs and

Women. Hardt and Negri do not capture the affirmative nature of nomadism because they disregard how nomadism aids in the development of the subject’s becoming and ethical grounding. Instead, for Hardt and Negri the nomadic subject is revolutionary because it breaks down borders (2011, 244) and has the capacity for liberation (2000, 363). Moreover, their nomadism develops as “a feature of advanced capitalism” (Braidotti 2011b, 5) that is illustrated through the liberation of the Third World. According to Hardt and Negri (2000, 363), the end of the Third World occurred through emigrants and population flows that rejected colonial boundaries to “destroy particularisms and points toward a common civilization.” Hardt and

Negri’s characterization of nomadism fails to recognize the forms of domination still at play since “they believe we now all live in a ‘smooth world’” (Bull 2004, 221). They do not engage with the hierarchies and fragmentations of society, the underdeveloped forms of labor, or the biopolitical subject’s democratic production. In the end, Hardt and Negri lack an exploration of nomadic becoming that allow subjects, whom Empire took the most advantage, to overcome such domination. “The exodus from localism, the transgressions of customs and boundaries, and the desertion from sovereignty” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 134) may have been influential forces in displacing traditional forms of control, but only external bodies can achieve liberation. The subject became a global citizen through Empire, but Empire did not make them equal, only included. As a result, Hardt and Negri are unable to capture how nomadism can engage the biopolitical subject in modes of becoming through its interactions with the world and develop its singularity through these instances. The theoretical lack of nomadism inhibits Hardt and Negri

from dislodging the biopolitical subject from Empire as a priority over the acknowledgment of the subject’s ability to produce the common.

Through Braidotti’s nomadism, the Zoë-subject begins to scrutinize the transcendence of

Empire while negotiating new singularities to overcome Empire’s established values. Braidotti develops the singularity of the nomadic subjectivity as “rest[ing] in the project that animates one’s becoming in the minoritarian consciousness that unfolds and expresses itself through multiple becomings” (Braidotti 2006, 236). The minoritarian consciousness of the Zoë-subject develops through “becoming-minoritarian as in woman/child/animal/imperceptible” (Braidotti

2011a, 42). The minoritarian consciousness intends to aid in becoming-nomadic by “giving priority to the undoing of the dominant model of subjectivity” (Braidotti 2011a, 34), which critiques established identities in favor of the complex expression of subjectivity. In other words, through becoming-nomadic the Zoë-subject’s “becomings are minoritarian” (Braidotti 2011a,

33). The Zoë-subject engages in “an active experiment with different ways of inhabiting this social space” (Braidotti 2006, 87). Furthermore, the Zoë-subject needs to “activate different counter memories and actualize multiple ecologies of belonging” (Braidotti 2011a, 41). The minoritarian consciousness is a process specific to each Zoë-subject; it is the active situation of the Zoë-subject in life. This process will never be complete; the Zoë-subject is always engaging in becoming-minoritarian to account for the ebb and flow of life.

The focus of Braidotti’s Zoë-subject on nomadism highlights a lack of Hardt and Negri’s mediation of difference. As described in Chapter One, Hardt and Negri theorize the subject as being indifferently included under the command of Empire. Empire relies on the production of a humanistic understanding of the biopolitical subject, and it proliferates this understanding of society to ensure differences are continually engulfed. The inclusion of biopolitical subjects does

not eradicate difference. Instead, such a form of inclusion utilizes biopolitical subjects for their

differences while heightening their interactions. Becoming-nomadic re-centers the biopolitical

subject in society and acts against the re-establishment of divisions. As a movement,

“Nomadology stresses the need for a change of conceptual schemes altogether, an overcoming of the dialectic of majority/minority or master/slave” (Braidotti 2002, 84). The process of becoming-nomadic does not “stop at the dialectical role reversal that usually sees the former slaves in the position of new masters or the former mistress in the position of dominatrix”

(Braidotti 2011a, 43). Instead, what emerges is the creation of new singularities through nomadic modes of becoming.

Through becoming-nomadic, the Zoë-subject engages in multiple becomings at any given time. For instance, in Transpositions Braidotti describes, becoming-other, -woman, -world, - ethical, -revolutionary, and -political as a few modes of becoming for the Zoë-subject. The various modes of becoming depict how the Zoë-subject engages as a “collectively-oriented, externally-bound, multiple subjects whose singularity is the result of constant re-negotiations with a variety of forces” (Braidotti 2002, 260). The intent of becoming is to “go beyond the logic of reversibility” (Braidotti 2006, 43). Through becoming the Zoë-subject continuously dislodges and affirms new subjectivities (Braidotti 2006, 76-78). Essentially, every mode of becoming is the Zoë-subject re-inventing oneself through its location, nomadic ethics, and sustainability.

Location is an integral aspect of the nomadic subject’s modes of becoming. Location is both an embedded and embodied memory and the expression of singularity. Consequently, location creates a subject with a double commitment “to the processes of change and, … to a strong ethics of the ecophilosophical sense of community” (Braidotti 2011a, 210). According to

Braidotti (2006, 90) nomadism “produces an alternative relational geography which assumes as

its starting position the diasporic identity of a multi-located subject and attempts to articulate it

across the many variables that compose it.” The new geography of power relations considers the

‘multi-located subject’ and furthers the politics of location by giving nomadic subjects the merit of accountability. What emerges is a subject that has “a higher degree of consciousness and

hence increased self-reflexivity” (Braidotti 2011b, 16). As Braidotti highlights, Haraway defines

the complexity of location.

Location is not a listing of adjectives or assigning of labels such as race, sex, and class. Location is not the concrete to the abstract of decontextualization. Location is the always partial, always finite, always fraught play of foreground and background, text and context that constitutes critical inquiry. Above all, location is not self-evident or transparent. Location is also partial in the sense of being for some worlds and not others. (Braidotti 2006, 93)

By giving merit to the subject’s locations, the inherent hierarchy of location can be displaced.

Location has a similar constitution to the Zoë-subject because it is capable of the same transformations and production. Therefore, locations can mediate through contemporary society by breaking away from identity and the universalizing effects of Empire to aid in the Zoë- subject’s continual mode of becoming.

Underlying becoming-nomadic is an ethics of non-profit, as in “a stand against individualism and exploitation, in favor of self-expression and communally held property rights over both biological and cultural artefacts” (Braidotti 2006, 110). The ethics of non-profit emphasizes life and the collective by making the Zoë-subject responsible for “the mess we made” (Braidotti 2006, 278). The nomadic subject engages in a discourse with the world, acknowledging and accepting the present while actively criticizing and developing alternative figurations. The ethics of the nomadic subject are “based on the shared capacity of humans to feel empathy for, develop affinity with and hence enter in relation with other forces entities,

88 beings, waves of intensity” (Braidotti 2006, 217). Essentially, the ethics of nomadism is “a way of living up to the intensities of life, to be worthy of all that happens to us – to live fully the capacity to affect and to be affected” (Braidotti 2006, 271). Not only does non-profit ethics respect the diversity of subjects, but also it shifts the Zoë-subject’s mode of becoming towards sustainability.

The nomadic subject is one of sustainability. Through becoming-nomadic the Zoë-subject negotiates an understanding of its boundaries while accepting the limits of other subjects. The

Zoë-subject engages in this process through the experimentation with others to understand the

“rate and speed of change … that will allow each subject to endure” (Braidotti 2011a, 323). In particular, the notion of sustainability develops in a rate specific to the Zoë-subject because it is part of the process of becoming. The negotiation of sustainability aims to acknowledge the shared “commitment to duration and conversely a rejection of self-destruction” (Braidotti 2006,

157). Ultimately, the Zoë-subject affirms its connection to life through the creation of sustainable modes of becoming.

Conclusion

Hardt and Negri do not theorize a way in which the biopolitical subject can resist the appropriation of its productivity by Empire; it is not sustainable. They value the unrestrained productivity of subjects, but they do not consider the possibility of appropriation by external forces. Braidotti’s Zoë-subject removes the being-against narrative between Empire and the

Multitude by situating the subject through its modes of becoming as a generative force of life. If the subject of contemporary global society can realize the power of Zoë, then it begins to conceptualize that ‘we are in this together.’ Through becoming animal, earth, and machine, the

Zoë-subject acts as a ‘we’ and embodies and embeds itself within the ‘this’ life. Through these modes of becoming the Zoë-subject disengages from the recreating the power of Empire within

the common. As such, Braidotti’s becoming-nomadic emphasizes the subject acting with Zoë at

its core. The Zoë-subject is in “active resistance against being subsumed in the commodification of their own diversity” (Braidotti 2011a, 122). Through these processes, the Zoë-subject

develops its modes of becoming and sustainability. In the end, the Zoë-subject attempts to

understand “the ways in which power - positive as well as negative - stimulates one’s existence”

(Braidotti 2006, 251-252). By giving prominence to Zoë, the subject is an affirmative force of life capable of producing an alternative global society.

Conclusion

“‘Life’ is bios/Zoë combined in flows of becoming”

-Braidotti, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics

The ability of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject to produce the Commonwealth

arrives at an impasse. The biopolitical subject is restricted by its being-against Empire, which

limits the subject’s production to establishing another dominating power. Since Hardt and Negri

neither explore how the biopolitical subject actively subverts Empire’s mechanisms of control

nor mediate the demands of community, their biopolitical subject is unable to cultivate the

common as they have depicted. Instead, what the biopolitical subject produces is new forms of

common that can reproduce established powers and subjectivities. Even though Hardt and Negri

theorize means to eradicate corrupt forms of the common, the biopolitical subject still needs Zoë

to direct its productive potential towards life. To achieve Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth the

communal bonds of the biopolitical subject need to be displaced. The Zoë-subject engages in

nomadism that creates an embodied, embedded, ethical, and sustainable subject. If the subject of

contemporary global society is theorized as a subject of Zoë then Bios, then the potential of sustaining revolutionary movements like Occupy is expanded.

The being-against created by Hardt and Negri between Empire and the Multitude, as explored in Chapter Two, depends on the opposition of the Multitude against the established power of Empire. Only through this dynamic can Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject root its

resistance and develop an alternative, the Commonwealth. Through resistance, their biopolitical

subject produces the common; “that despite being decentralized, spontaneous, and free-flowing,

a radical movement can self-organize, self-regulate, and self-govern” (AEJMC, 2011). As a

result, the biopolitical subject’s revolutionary potential emerges through its will to produce

against the constraints of Empire. As demonstrated, Braidotti’s Zoë-subject does not depend on this “being-against” to create an alternative or understand the current order. Instead, the Zoë- subject moves beyond creating another body in which the subject depends on for development

(Braidotti 2006, 83). Braidotti’s Zoë-subject counters Hardt and Negri’s being-against dynamic by developing its being-in-the-world. The intent is to develop the Zoë-subject as a sustainable actor that strives to sustain life. The reconfiguration of the Zoë-subject depends on the immanent connection with the “human and non-human others” (Braidotti 2013a, 169), through Braidotti’s notion of ‘we are in this together.’ As will be shown, the relationship between Aboriginal women and water exemplify becoming-nomadic and the Zoë-subject’s philosophy of ‘we are in this together’. Aboriginal women and water affirm the vital, sustainable nature of the Zoë-subject and the potential of becoming by embodying and embedding the self within Life. By orienting oneself towards the prominence of life over the individual life, the Zoë-subject modifies the direction of its productive potential. Such production no longer regards democratic cohabitation; rather it develops shared responsibility for the world and the desire to sustain life.

Zoë-subject’s Deviations from Hardt and Negri’s Biopolitical Subject

By conceptualizing the subject of contemporary global society through Zoë, the way the subject approaches its productive power changes. Braidotti’s focus on modes of becoming reveals how the subject responds, internalizes, and reproduces. Through these various modes of becoming the Zoë-subject expands its location, ethics, and sustainability. All of which cultivates the tools the Zoë-subject requires to disengage from the established powers, consumption, and production to reorient their engagement towards sustainability. By reframing the subject through

Zoë, the biopolitical subject rejects the internalized subjectivities of dominant positions, Empire, to engage in becoming-nomadic. Through the subject’s continuous engagement in modes of becoming, it actively situates itself within life. These attributes make possible the production of an alternative society that is ethical, sustainable, and common to all life.

‘We are in this together’ is the defining feature of Braidotti’s Zoë-subject. This notion depicts a subject that gathers to disengage from the established powers to create new singularities. Hardt and Negri describe Empire as creating a ‘smooth world,’ as developed in

Chapter One, that profits from the production of all biopolitical subjects regardless of their situation in society. To escape Empire, the Zoë-subject needs to modify its ideology to root itself based on being in this together. The Zoë-subject can move beyond the being-against dynamic of

Empire and the Multitude because it operates from the common interest of life. Due to this, the subject “engag[es] with the complexity of our own interaction with human and non-human elements, and our own multiple layers of belonging as subjects-in-process” (Braidotti and Regan

2017, 176). Braidotti’s theory is concerned with how the Zoë-subject becomes; how it embodies and embeds itself in the world. The Zoë-subject is about “acknowledg[ing] that you’re part of the problem, and then read the situation from there to become part of the solution” (Braidotti and

Regan 2017, 191-192) as opposed to “a subject that knows exactly where history is going, waiting for the revolutionary break” (Braidotti and Regan 2017, 192). In the end, the Zoë-subject produces for the continuation of life through the notion that ‘we are in this together.’

Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is susceptible to Empire. They do not address “the divide of nature and culture … they envision a wildly autopoietic human Multitude engaged in the reproduction and management of nature” (Tola 2016, 14). This is due to their theorization of nature as consumable to capital, or at least has become subject to capital” (Hardt and Negri 2000,

32). Braidotti’s notion of Zoë does not submit to Hardt and Negri’s concept of biopolitics; life is not capital. Rather, she understands life through its vitalization, through the Zoë-subject’s ability

“to think across previously segregated species, categories and domains” (Braidotti 2018, 12).

Through Zoë, the subject aims to comprehend “the present while resisting it, being oppositional

without being negative” (Braidotti 2015, 240). Braidotti’s (2011a, 122) Zoë-subject “does not

accept the path of capitalism but engages in its own path.” This addition bypasses Hardt and

Negri’s classification of the biopolitical subject of Empire, to create a subject that becomes

through its embodiment and embedding of life. Hardt and Negri focus on understanding how the

subject is represented in contemporary global society, which limits their theory of subjectivity to

the power of resistance. While Braidotti disregards the classification of subjects as productive

actors to understand how to sustain life in which all Zoë-subject’s share.

To be capable of achieving an alternative society, the biopolitical subject needs to orient

itself in the world by displacing the established connection to Empire in favor of nomadism. The

biopolitical subject is not capable of producing the Commonwealth through the recognition of

the common and productive power. As demonstrated in Chapter 3, the Zoë-subject requires an

ethics of sustainability and to embody and embed itself in life. The development of Zoë as an

affirmative power cultivates an ethics that constructs “sustainable futures [… as] a basic and

rather humble act of faith in the possibility of endurance, as duration or continuity, which

honours our obligation to the generations to come” (Braidotti 2008c, 18). The Zoë-subject is also

creating through these becomings new subjectivities that move beyond the rejection of Empire.

In contrast, Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject does not aim to re-orient the subject within

life; they only reconfigure of the economic and political powers of Empire. Their biopolitical

94 subject does not disengage from its relationship with Empire; it only aims to produce in opposition to Empire.

By diverging from Hardt and Negri’s (2009, 241) anthropological exodus (production of a new form of humanity separate from the dominance of capital) to Braidotti’s (2013a, 65) post- anthropological exodus, (“deconstructs species supremacy” in favor of nomadism), the way the subject produces changes. Hardt and Negri’s anthropological exodus aims to create “a body that is completely incapable of submitting to command” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 216). Hardt and

Negri reference the barbarian, cyber-punk, and migrant, as explored in Chapter One, as an already existing form of subjectivity fighting against Empire. These subjects are using their biopolitical subjectivity to construct new forms of the common; they are attempting to realize their productive power, only to redirect it towards another end, the Commonwealth. However,

Braidotti is not concerned with the configuration of subjects within the established order.

Instead, Braidotti’s (2013a, 65) post-anthropological exodus conceives “human nature [as] not distinct from the life of animals and non-humans, or Zoë.” As illustrated in Chapter Three, the subject engages in this reconfiguration through becoming-animal, -earth, and -machine. By doing so, the Zoë-subject produces with respect to sustaining all forms of life.

In consideration of Occupy, protestors gathered due to their shared interest: the economic inequality, lack of political representation, and disproportionate representation that defines contemporary global society. They fought against the injustices of the current system of power and called “for a deep renewal of community life” (Goretti 2011). However, the Occupy movements were unable to conjure any substantive changes in community; they were not sustainable. Consequently, this is where Hardt and Negri’s theory is limited, due to their exploration of the transformative capacities of the biopolitical subject to resist Empire and

produce an alternative, the Commonwealth. Hardt and Negri applaud Occupy as a step towards

the type of revolution needed to break from the constraints of Empire. Through the creation of

the Multitude, Hardt and Negri demonstrate the productive potential of acts of resistance and

revolution. However, Braidotti does not share the same enthusiasm for Occupy. Instead, she

recognizes a significant flaw: “What I’ve seen from Occupy Utrecht and Occupy Amsterdam

came down to the girls mending the socks and making the coffee” (Braidotti 2013b). The

transformation of the subject and society, for Braidotti, is more than the rejection of the

established system and a call for democracy; it requires the Zoë-subject to become-nomadic.

The subject needs to actively engage in developing its understanding of self and all matter that makes up life; “in the specific locations of one’s own carnal, psychic and social existence, in our immanent intellectual and social practices” (Braidotti 2015, 240). By engaging in various modes of becoming the subject can understand how it is inscribed into the power of Empire and begin to restructure its singularity. Through the reformation of Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject by giving prominence to Zoë over Bios, the Zoë-subject can disengage from

Empire to create an ethical, sustainable common wealth of life.

Modes of becoming are central to Braidotti’s Zoë-subject because they are how the Zoë- subject realizes they are part of the problem and begin to negotiate new ways of being.

Braidotti’s preferred method of becoming is through “active activism, a collective commitment to creating affirmative values” (Braidotti 2019). Affirmative values do not develop from an

“optimist attitude of denying problems [but from the] need to discuss the problems together”

(Braidotti 2019). Autumn Peltier is an Anishinaabe youth from Wikwemikong First Nations, she is a water activist that shares her cultures knowledge of water. Peltier embodies Braidotti’s

(2013a, 190) notion of active activism because her actions are derived from “an enlarged sense

of inter-connection between self and others, including the non-human or ‘earth’ others”. Peltier

advocates for a deeper connection to water by “rethinking the parameters of our humanity”

(Braidotti 2019). On March 22nd, 2018 Peltier lent her “voice to speak up for water and Mother

Earth” by advocating to United Nations General Assembly to “warrior up” (Kent 2018). To question, “where are we at with various issues surrounding our water?” (Kent 2018). She called for people to empower each other and stand together for sustainability. In the end, Peltier’s advocacy demonstrates ‘we are in this together’, and “we are not doing enough to reflect together on what is happening to us” (Braidotti 2019).

Peltier was taught by her Grandmothers the spirit of water. Grandmothers teach their knowledge of the spirit of the water to other women so they can respect and protect water.

Aboriginal women “have a distinct spiritual connection to water because of their ability to carry the waters of new life” (Anderson et al 2010, 31). The relationship Aboriginal women have with water captures how the Zoë-subject engages in becoming-nomadic. Water warriors like Peltier develop a sacred relationship with water. They understand “water is alive. Water can hear you.

Water can sense what you are saying and what you are feeling” (Anderson et al 2010, 24). As

Peltier expresses “all the original water flows through us from the beginning and all around us”

(Kent 2018). Aboriginal women embody the theory that every aspect of life is connected to water. They acknowledge and care for the spirit of water. For instance, Josephine Mandamin is an Ojibway Grandmother of North Shore Lake Superior who cares for the water; “There’s been a place where I put tobacco in the water, where the water is so still. It was dead. I prayed for it. I put my tobacco in the water and my tobacco started floating around. So the water came alive. It heard my prayers. It heard the song. So I know it listens, and it can come alive if you pay attention to it” (Anderson et al 2010, 24). Aboriginal women have a reciprocal relationship with

water, they know that “Water will agree to help you with anything you ask of it” (Anderson et al

2010, 21).

The subject begins to realize Zoë when they disassociate themselves with dominant

ideologies. To engage in “new way of combining ethical values with the well-being of an enlarged sense of community” (Braidotti 2013a, 190). When the subject begins to understand the vital relationship with the earth, animal, and machine they become aware of their responsibility’s. Aboriginal women are aware of their relationship to all beings. They embody the ‘we’ and produce for the ‘this’ of Braidotti’s ‘we are in this together’. Water warriors like

Peltier capture the affirmative power of Zoë by changing the very structure of subjectivity. They create an affirmative relationship with water that captures the vitalist energy of Zoë. Aboriginal women are taught through water songs that “water is ever flowing forward” (Anderson et al

2010, 24). Water is a vital force of life “that does not respond to our names” (Braidotti 2006,

270), but is a generative force of becoming. The intent of this exploration is to demonstrate that

the subject can move away from the dominance of biopolitics and turn to the vital energy of Zoë.

The subject is capable of constituting itself as a subject of Zoë first then Bios.

Achievements

Even though Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject is limited by its opposition to Empire,

there is still value in the subject as a biopolitical actor. Through Hardt and Negri’s

characterization of the biopolitical subject, they illuminate the Multitude’s productive potential

through the creation of new forms of collaboration, communication, and common. These new

forms of production all contribute to the constitution of an alternative society by recognizing the

constraints of Empire and the desire for change. Occupy is a compelling example of Hardt and

Negri’s biopolitical subject. The movement acted against the current political and economic

system and demonstrated through their revolutionary actions the desire for an alternative. The

potential that Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject holds in recognizing the negative attributes

of contemporary global society is a promising feature when applied with Braidotti’s modes of

becoming. The affirmative relationship Aboriginal women hold with water demonstrates how the

Zoë-subject engages in modes of becoming to disengage from dominant positions. Profound transformations can occur that sustain life, instead of opposing the established power of

contemporary global society, Empire5.

Most urgent for the subject of contemporary global society is to identify its Zoë. By

doing so, the subject begins to understand its connection to animals, earth, and machine. Through

this recognition, the subject can overcome the valuation of life based on production. Further, Zoë

is integral for the creation of the common because it creates new subjectivities exterior from the

constraints of Empire and the demands of community. For the subject, Zoë creates sustainable

transformations that respect all life. Similar to Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject, the Zoë-

subject engages in subjective transformations that aim to produce an alternative. As shown,

Hardt and Negri’s subject aims to recreate joyful encounters through unmediated interactions

with a multiplicity of others. Braidotti’s Zoë-subject engages in similar transformations through modes of becoming. However, they differ because the Zoë-subject creates an ethics of sustainability. With such an addition, the subject can develop its productive limits, to not falter in the face of Empire and maintain its transformative power to create an alternative.

5 Even with the addition of Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject and nomadic theory I am hesitant of the subject being able to rid itself of the influence of Empire. However, I do merit Braidotti for her recognition of becoming- nomadic as a journey with no destination. 99

There will always be limitations when attempting to conceptualize the productive potential of the contemporary global subject. To understand the transformation of the subject as becoming-nomadic is highly individualistic, which creates difficulties when attempting to capture the subject’s potential, transformations, and development. Through Braidotti’s (2011a,

33) nomadism, the Zoë-subject is recognized for its ability “to create sustainable lines and productive planes of transversal interconnection among entities and subjects that are related by empathy and affective affinity, not by some generic moral model or idealized paradigm.”

Becoming-nomadic can mediate the limitations of the biopolitical subject by acknowledging individual history, location, and capacity to produce. Ultimately, through the productive power of the biopolitical subject and the ethical sustainability of the Zoë-subject, the potential to produce an alternative society characteristic of Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth is more apt to emerge.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have explored Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject regarding its subversive relationship with Empire and the productive potential of the Multitude. This exploration demonstrated the biopolitical subject’s potential of producing the Commonwealth.

Since the revolutionary actions of biopolitical subjects foreshadow the creation of a democratic community; it is essential to explore the constitution of such an alternative. The constraints of

Empire, the demands of capital, debt, and the possible reintroduction of Empire all act against the realization of Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth. They impede the biopolitical subject’s ability to produce within the Multitude. However, the biopolitical subject can impede its development by being unable to direct its productive power, or by undervaluing the obligations

100

of community. In the hope of overcoming the hurdles of biopolitical subjectivity, I introduced

Braidotti’s Zoë-subject as an affirmative, generative force that reveals the vitalist power of Zoë.

The Zoë-subject is in a constant process of becoming-nomadic, acting to embody and embed

itself while developing an ethics of sustainability. All of which, provide the Zoë-subject with a greater opportunity of realizing a true Commonwealth.

In the end, I am trying to uncover a form of subjectivity that considers how subjects6

interact with one another, how they become, and act in unity. Braidotti’s Zoë-subject can

reformulate Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject to create a subject that can sustain its

singularity, embody and embed itself in life, and engage in multiple forms of becoming. Zoë can

re-define the subject by not overvaluing the productive power and use-value of the subject’s production, but by its transformation and development of a sustainable, responsible being in the world. Aboriginal women demonstrate the potential transformations the Zoë-subject is capable of. The immanent interconnection that Zoë creates between all subjects widens the possibility of producing an alternative society because it creates a subject connected to and constituted by all living and non-living beings. With the addition of Braidotti’s Zoë-subject to Hardt and Negri’s biopolitical subject, a subject capable of creating sustainable forms of becoming against Empire is formed. Braidotti’s Zoë-centric subject deepens the subject’s potential of bringing about the

Commonwealth. A true Commonwealth of embodied and embedded, nomadic subjects, who become through various modes of becoming specific in form and degree to the Zoë-subject while directing its affirmative vitality towards sustaining life.

6 The major challenge of this work, which I have not been able to overcome, is leaving the notion of the individual to accept the subject. This challenge will remain for future work. 101

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