Michael Hardt | |
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![]() Michael Hardt speaking at the Seminário Internacional Mundo. 2008
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Born | 1960 Bethesda, Maryland[1] or Washington, D.C.[2] |
Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western Philosophy |
School | Continental philosophy Autonomist thought Queer theory |
Main interests
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Political philosophy Literary theory |
Notable ideas
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Theory of Empire |
Influences
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![](https://web.archive.org/web/20160415140338im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Michael_Hardt_on_Subversive_Festival.jpg/220px-Michael_Hardt_on_Subversive_Festival.jpg)
Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American literary theorist and political philosopher. Hardt is best known for his book Empire, which was co-written with Antonio Negri. It has been praised by some as the "Communist Manifesto of the 21st Century".[3]
Hardt and Negri suggest that several forces which they see as dominating contemporary life, such as class oppression, globalization and the commodification of services (or production of affects), have the potential to spark social change of unprecedented dimensions. A sequel, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire was published in August 2004. It outlines an idea first propounded in Empire, which is that of the multitude as possible locus of a democratic movement of global proportions. The third and final part of the trilogy, Commonwealth, was published in 2009.
Contents
Early life and education
Hardt attended Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland. He studied engineering at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania from 1978 to 1983. In college during the 1970s energy crisis, he began to take an interest in alternative energy sources.[2] Talking about his college politics, he said, "I thought that doing alternative energy engineering for third world countries would be a way of doing politics that would get out of all this campus political posing that I hated."[this quote needs a citation]
During college, he worked for various solar energy companies.[2] Hardt also participated, after college, in the Sanctuary Movement[2] and later helped establish a project to bring donated computers from the United States and put them together for the University of El Salvador. Yet, he says that this political activity did more for him than it did for the Salvadorans.[2]
In 1983, he moved to Seattle to study comparative literature at the University of Washington.[2] While there, he received an M.A. in 1986 and his PhD in 1990.[4] From there he went to Paris where he met Negri.[citation needed]
Hardt speaks fluent French, Spanish and Italian and is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University.
Thought
Hardt is concerned with the joy of political life, and has stated, "One has to expand the concept of love beyond the limits of the couple."[5] The politics of the multitude is not solely about controlling the means of productivity or liberating one's own subjectivity. These two are also linked to love and joy of political life and realizing political goals.[citation needed]
Hardt does not consider teaching a revolutionary occupation, nor does he think the college is a particularly political institution. "But thinking of politics now as a project of social transformation on a large scale, I'm not at all convinced that political activity can come from the university."[6]
Hardt says visions of a public education and equal and open access to the university are gradually disappearing: the "war on terror" has promoted only limited military and technological knowledges, while the required skills of the biopolitical economy, "the creation of ideas, images, code, affects, and other immaterial goods" are not yet recognized as the primary key to economic innovation. Many of Hardt's works have been co-written with Antonio Negri.
Occupation movements of 2011–2012
In May 2012 Hardt and Negri self-published an electronic pamphlet on the occupation and encampment movements of 2011-2012 called Declaration that argues the movement explores new forms of democracy.[citation needed]
Publications
- Books
- Gilles Deleuze: an Apprenticeship in Philosophy, ISBN 0-8166-2161-6, 1993
- Labor of Dionysus: a Critique of the State-form, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-8166-2086-5, 1994
- Empire, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-674-00671-2, 2000
- Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 1-59420-024-6, 2004
- Commonwealth, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-674-03511-9, 2009
- Declaration, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-786-75290-4, 2012
- Articles
- "The Withering of Civil Society". Social Text (Duke University Press) (45): 27–44. 1995. doi:10.2307/466673.
- "Prison Time". Yale French Studies (Yale University Press) (91): 64–79. 1997. doi:10.2307/2930374.
- "Affective Labor". boundary 2 (Duke University Press) 26 (2): 89–100. 1999.
- "Jefferson and Democracy". American Quarterly (Johns Hopkins University Press) 59 (1): 41–78. 2007.
- "How to Write with Four Hands". Genre (Duke University Press) 46 (2): 175–182. 2013. doi:10.1215/00166928-2088007.
Film appearances
- Marx Reloaded, Arte, April 2011.
- Examined Life, Sphinx Productions, 87 min., 2008.
References
- ^ Conversations with History(globetrotter.berkeley.edu) – Conversation with Michael Hardt
- ^ a b c d e f Vulliamy, Ed (2001-07-15). "Empire hits back". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-05-12.
- ^ http://www.lacan.com/zizek-empire.htm "Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto For the Twenty-First Century?]. Lacan. Retrieved on 2015-04-03.
- ^ "Michael Hardt faculty page at Duke University". Retrieved 2007-09-01.
- ^ Michael Hardt. Identity and Difference. Lecture at European Graduate School. 2005
- ^ Michael Hardt, Caleb Smith, and Enrico Minardi. "The Collaborator and the Multitude: An Interview with Michael Hardt." The Minnesota Review. no. 61-62. 2004.
External links
- Michael Hardt – Personal webpage
- Michael Hardt at Duke University
- Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2001). Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674006713. Full text pdf.
- Žižek, Slavoj (September 2001). "Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the twenty-first century?". Rethinking Marxism (Taylor and Francis) 13 (3–4): 190–198. doi:10.1080/089356901101241875. Full text.
- Hardt, Michael (2001). "Sovereignty". Theory and Event (Johns Hopkins University Press) 5 (4). doi:10.1353/tae.2001.0040.
- Hardt, Michael (Winter 1995). "The withering of civil society". Social Text (Duke University Press) 45: 27–44. doi:10.2307/466673. JSTOR 466673.
- Hardt, Michael (March–April 2002). "Porto Alegre – Today's Bandung?". New Left Review (New Left Review) II (14).
- Vulliamy, Ed (July 15, 2010). "Empire hits back (profile of Hardt)". The Guardian (Guardian Media Group).
- Interview/podcast with Michael Hardt about what role revolutions have today as spaces for new social creation Radio Web MACBA, 2014.
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