Crisso and Odoteo: Barbarians - Disordered Insurgence

Venomous Butterfly Publications

It is particularly useful that, as Italians, Crisso and Odoteo are familiar with the various movements that have been influenced by Negri, as well as with recent works of his that are not available in English. This allows them to place Empire in a context that further exposes its recuperative significance.
Crisso and Odoteo clearly expose the love Hardt and Negri actually have for the Empire and its methods of homogenizing the world. It, in fact, reaches the point of support for the European Union. Negri recently co-edited a collection of texts by leftists in praise of the political unification of Europe (choosing however to ignore the fact that this unification is a reality mainly in terms of the needs of the ruling class: a free flow of capital, the unification of policing networks and so on).
More frightening is their unquestioning support of the totality of technological development – proclaimed to be expressions of the desires of “the multitude” – going so far as to call for the “recognition […] that there are no boundaries between […] the human and the machine” (Empire, p. 215) and, thus, the acceptance of ourselves as cyborgs (see for example, Empire, p.92). For them the project of technologizing life – i.e., biotechnology integrated with cybernetics – is desirable and necessary, simply because it exists.




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