The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

150 Coda
To understand the concept of the multitude in its most general and
abstract form, let us contrast it first with that of the people. The
people is one....The people synthesizes or reduces these social dif -
ferences into one identity. The multitude, by contrast, is not unified
but remains plural and multiple. This is why, according to the domi -
nant tradition of political philosophy, the people can rule as a
sovereign power and the multitude cannot. The multitude is com -
posed of a set of singularities—and by singularity here we mean a
social subject whose difference cannot be reduced to sameness, a
difference that remains different....The plural singularities of the
multitude thus stand in contrast to the undifferentiated unity of
the people. 2
These terms—the one and the many, sovereignty and multitude—are
at once ultracontemporary and at the same time resolutely historical.
Paolo Virno, for instance, notes that such debates have evoked a “new
seventeenth century,” in which the face - off between Hobbes and Spinoza
comes into the foreground. 3 Virno nuances the opposition between
the one and the many and suggests that the contemporary multitude
is opposed to the very opposition itself of the one and the many:
And it is precisely because of the dissolution of the coupling of these
terms, for so long held to be obvious, that one can no longer speak
of a people converging into the unity of the state. While one does
not wish to sing out - of - tune melodies in the post - modern style
(“multiplicity is good, unity is the disaster to beware of ”), it is
necessary, however, to recognize that the multitude does not clash
with the One; rather, it redefines it. Even the many need a form of
unity, of being a One. But here is the point: this unity is no longer
the State; rather, it is language, intellect, the communal faculties of
the human race. The One is no longer a promise, it is a premise. 4
The multitude has a focus, a direction, but its actions and decisions
are highly distributed. The “One” of the multitude is less a transcendent
“One,” serving to homogenize a collectivity, and more like an
immanent “One” (we would do better to say a “univocity”) that is
the very possibility of collective organization.
Gone are the days of centralized, uniform mass protests; instead
one witnesses highly distributed, tactical modes of dissent that often
use high and low forms of technology. The very fact that the multitude
is not “One” is its greatest strength; the multitude’s inherently
decentralized and even distributed character gives it a flexibility and