Michael Hardt interview

A quote from a (very interesting) interview with Michael Hardt in US academic literary theory journal Minnesota Review (Issue 61-62 2004) - time to get Multitude read.

"My feeling is that September 11, and then the war on terrorism afterwards has been very comforting to a certain style of left theorists, or even left political thinkers. Prior to that it seemed like the old concepts didn't work and things were changing in the world, forming new kinds of power, and the old forms of political resistance didn't work. Then, post-September 11 and through Afghanistan and particularly with Iraq, it's as if all the old categories work again. What we have is U.S. imperialism, what we need is a national liberation struggle, etc. Which leads to a quite active debate: Should the anti-war movement be explicitly in support of the Iraqi national resistance? Of course, if it's imperialism, that's what you should do. That's what we did throughout the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. The response to imperialism is national liberation struggle.

"I'm quite skeptical about the efficacy of Iraqi national liberation struggle against the U.S. imperialist invader. If in fact we are within something new, we can recognize, not necessarily in an abject way, the novelty of our situation and its implications, the kinds of intellectual and political practices that have become habits that are no longer possible or useful or productive. That's the first moment. On that basis, then, one can construct a project. "