The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

Notes 179
6. Ibid., 2.
7. Ibid., 20.
8. “Afterword (September 2001): The Sharpening Fight for the Future,”
in Networks and Netwars, 314.
9. Ibid., 317.
10. In the earlier text, they write that empire is “a dynamic and flexible
systemic structure that is articulated horizontally,” and in the later text they
describe the multitude in similar language: “The global cycle of struggles
develops in the form of a distributed network. Each local struggle functions
as a node that communicates with all the other nodes without any hub or
center of intelligence.” Hardt and Negri, Empire, 13; and Hardt and Negri,
Multitude, 217. The following from Empire is also indicative: “In contrast to
imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not
rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus
of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within
its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies,
and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command”
(xii– xiii). In Multitude they write that “the new global cycle of struggles is a
mobilization of the common that takes the form of an open, distributed network,
in which no center exerts control and all nodes express themselves
freely” (218). The minichapter on the White Overalls ends with strong confirmation
of the design, shape, and characteristics of the distributed network
form: “What may have been most valuable in the experience of the White
Overalls was that they managed to create a form of expression for the new
forms of labor—their networked organization, their spatial mobility, and temporal
flexibility—and organize them as a coherent political force against the
new global system of power” (267). As we have noted, flexibility and increased
mobility are both important qualities of distributed networks. Further, they
describe how the “magic of Seattle” was realized in a “network structure.
The network defines both their singularity and their commonality....The
various groups involved in the protests [are linked] in an enormous open
network” (288).
11. “The fact that a movement is organized as a network or swarm does
not guarantee that it is peaceful or democratic.” Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 93.
12. Ibid., 68, 87. In fact, Hardt and Negri suggest that there must be
some sort of formal harmony between the two historical actors, writing that
resistance is to have the “same form” as the dominant and that the two
should “correspond.”
13. Hardt and Negri recognize this as “a sort of abyss, a strategic unknown”
in their own work: “All notions that pose the power of resistance as homologous
to even similar to the power that oppresses us are of no more use” (Multitude,
90). This is what terrorism has done to U.S. foreign policy, driving the
government to revolutionize rapidly from a model of neoliberalism and engagement
to a model of global networked sovereignty. The suicide bomber does