Empire (25 page)

bogged down in ‘‘realism,’’ and modernization ends up lost in

hierarchies ofthe world market. Is not the control exerted by the

world market, however, the opposite ofthe nationalist dream of

an autonomous, self-centered development? The nationalism of

anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles effectively functions in

reverse, and the liberated countries find themselves subordinated

in the international economic order.

The very concept ofa liberatory national sovereignty is ambig-

uous ifnot completely contradictory. While this nationalism seeks

to liberate the multitude from
foreign
domination, it erects
domestic
structures ofdomination that are equally severe. The position of

the newly sovereign nation-state cannot be understood when it is

viewed in terms ofthe rosy U.N. imaginary ofa harmonious concert

ofequal and autonomous national subjects. The postcolonial nation-

state functions as an essential and subordinated element in the global

organization ofthe capitalist market. As Partha Chatterjee argues,

national liberation and national sovereignty are not just powerless

against this global capitalist hierarchy but themselves contribute to

its organization and functioning:

Nowhere in the world has nationalism qua nationalism chal-

lenged the legitimacy ofthe marriage between Reason and

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capital. Nationalist thought . . . does not possess the ideologi-

cal means to make this challenge. The conflict between metro-

politain capital and the people-nation it resolves by absorbing

the political lif

e ofthe nation into the body ofthe state.

Conservatory ofthe passive revolution, the national state now

proceeds to find for ‘‘the nation’’ a place in the global order

ofcapital, while striving to keep the contradictions between

capital and the people in perpetual suspension. All politics is

now sought to be subsumed under the overwhelming require-

ments ofthe state-representing-the-nation.36

The entire logical chain ofrepresentation might be summarized

like this: the people representing the multitude, the nation repre-

senting the people, and the state representing the nation. Each

link is an attempt to hold in suspension the crisis ofmodernity.

Representation in each case means a further step of abstraction and

control. From India to Algeria and Cuba to Vietnam,
the state is

the poisoned gift of national liberation.

The final link that explains the necessary subordination ofthe

postcolonial nation-state, however, is the global order ofcapital. The

global capitalist hierarchy that subordinates the formally sovereign

nation-states within its order is fundamentally different from the

colonialist and imperialist circuits ofinternational domination. The

end ofcolonialism is also the end ofthe modern world and modern

regimes ofrule. The end ofmodern colonialisms, ofcourse, has

not really opened an age ofunqualified freedom but rather yielded

to new forms of rule that operate on a global scale. Here we have

our first real glimpse ofthe passage to Empire.

C ONTAGION

When Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (Ceĺine) went to Africa, what he found

was disease. In the unforgettable African passage of
Journey to the End ofthe Night,
the narrator, through the deliriums of his own fever, saw

a population permeated through and through with disease: ‘‘The natives

in those parts suffered horribly from every communicable disease
[toutes les maladies attrapables].
’’1 Perhaps this is exactly what we should expect
T H E D I A L E C T I C S O F C O L O N I A L S O V E R E I G N T Y

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from Doctor Destouches, given that he was sent to Africa by the League

of Nations to work as a hygienist, but of course Ceĺine was also working
with a commonplace of colonial consciousness.

There are two sides to the connection between colonialism and disease.

First of all, simply the fact that the indigenous population is disease-ridden
is itself a justification for the colonial project: ‘‘These niggers are sick! You’ll
see! They’re completely corrupt
[tout creveś et tout pourris]!
. . .

They’re degenerates!’’ (p. 142). Disease is a sign of physical and moral
corruption, a sign of a lack of civilization. Colonialism’s civilizing project,
then, is justified by the hygiene it brings. On the other side of the coin,
however, from the European perspective, the primary danger of colonialism
is disease—or really contagion. In Africa, Louis-Ferdinand finds ‘‘every
communicable
disease.’’ Physical contamination, moral corruption, madness: the darkness of the colonial territories and populations is contagious,
and Europeans are always at risk. (This is essentially the same truth that
Kurtzrecognizes in Conrad’s
Heart ofDarkness.
) Once there is established
the differential between the pure, civilized European and the corrupt, barbarous Other, there is possible not only a civilizing process from disease to
health, but also ineluctably the reverse process, from health to disease.

Contagion is the constant and present danger, the dark underside of the
civilizing mission.

It is interesting in Ceĺine’s
Journey
that the disease of colonial
territories is a sign not really of death, but of an overabundance of life. The
narrator, Louis-Ferdinand, finds that not only the population but moreover
the African terrain itself is ‘‘monstrous’’ (p. 140). The disease of the jungle
is that life springs up everywhere, everything grows, without bounds. What
a horror for a hygienist! The disease that the colony lets loose is the lack
of boundaries on life, an unlimited contagion. If one looks back, Europe
appears reassuringly sterile. (Remember in
Heart ofDarkness
the deathly
pallor of Brussels that Marlow finds on his return from the Belgian Congo,
but with respect to the monstrous, unbounded overabundance of life in the
colony, the sterile environment of Europe seems comforting.) The standpoint
of the hygienist may in fact be the privileged position for recognizing the
anxieties of colonialist consciousness. The horror released by European
conquest and colonialism is a horror of unlimited contact, flow, and ex-136

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change—or really the horror of contagion, miscegenation, and unbounded

life. Hygiene requires protective barriers. European colonialism was continually plagued by contradictions between virtuous exchange and the danger
of contagion, and hence it was characterized by a complex play of flows
and hygienic boundaries between metropole and colony and among colonial territories.

The contemporary processes of globalization have torn down many of

the boundaries of the colonial world. Along with the common celebrations
of the unbounded flows in our new global village, one can still sense also
an anxiety about increased contact and a certain nostalgia for colonialist
hygiene. The dark side of the consciousness of globalization is the fear of
contagion. If we break down global boundaries and open universal contact
in our global village, how will we prevent the spread of disease and corruption?

This anxiety is most clearly revealed with respect to the AIDS pandemic.2

The lightning speed of the spread of AIDS in the Americas, Europe, Africa,
and Asia demonstrated the new dangers of global contagion. As AIDS has

been recognized first as a disease and then as a global pandemic, there have
developed maps of its sources and spread that often focus on central Africa
and Haiti, in terms reminiscent of the colonialist imaginary: unrestrained
sexuality, moral corruption, and lack of hygiene. Indeed, the dominant

discourses of AIDS prevention have been all about hygiene: We must avoid
contact and use protection. The medical and humanitarian workers have to
throw up their hands in frustration working with these infected populations
who have so little respect for hygiene! (Think of what Doctor Destouches
would say!) International and supranational projects to stop the spread of
AIDS have tried to establish protective boundaries at another level by

requiring HIV tests in order to cross national boundaries. The boundaries
of nation-states, however, are increasingly permeable by all kinds of flows.

Nothing can bring back the hygienic shields of colonial boundaries. The
age of globalization is the age of universal contagion.

2.4

S Y M P T O M S O F P A S S A G E

Here then is the man outside our people, outside our humanity.

He is continually starving, nothing belongs to him but the instant,

the prolonged instant oftorture . . . He always has only one thing:

his suffering, but there is nothing on the entire face of the earth

that could serve as a remedy for him, there is no ground on which

to plant his two feet, no support for his two hands to grasp, and

thus there is so much less for him than there is for the music-hall

trapeze artist who is at least hanging by a thread.

Franz Kafka

The end ofcolonialism and the declining powers ofthe

nation are indicative ofa general passage from the paradigm of

modern sovereignty toward the paradigm ofimperial sovereignty.

The various postmodernist and postcolonialist theories that have

emerged since the 1980s give us a first view ofthis passage, but

the perspective they offer proves to be quite limited. As the prefix

‘‘post-’’ should indicate, postmodernist and postcolonialist theorists

never tire of critiquing and seeking liberation from the past forms

ofrule and their legacies in the present. Postmodernists continually

return to the lingering influence ofthe Enlightenment as the source

ofdomination; postcolonialist theorists combat the remnants of

colonialist thinking.

We suspect that postmodernist and postcolonialist theories

may end up in a dead end because they fail to recognize adequately

the contemporary object ofcritique, that is, they mistake today’s

real enemy. What ifthe modern form ofpower these critics (and

we ourselves) have taken such pains to describe and contest no

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longer holds sway in our society? What ifthese theorists are so

intent on combating the remnants ofa past form ofdomination

that they fail to recognize the new form that is looming over them

in the present? What ifthe dominating powers that are the intended

object ofcritique have mutated in such a way as to depotentialize

any such postmodernist challenge? In short, what ifa new paradigm

ofpower, a postmodern sovereignty, has come to replace the mod-

ern paradigm and rule through differential hierarchies of the hybrid

and fragmentary subjectivities that these theorists celebrate? In this

case, modern forms of sovereignty would no longer be at issue,

and the postmodernist and postcolonialist strategies that appear to

be liberatory would not challenge but in fact coincide with and

even unwittingly reinforce the new strategies of rule!

When we begin to consider the ideologies ofcorporate capital

and the world market, it certainly appears that the postmodernist

and postcolonialist theorists who advocate a politics of difference,

fluidity, and hybridity in order to challenge the binaries and essen-

tialism ofmodern sovereignty have been outflanked by the strategies

ofpower. Power has evacuated the bastion they are attacking and

has circled around to their rear to join them in the assault in the

name of difference. These theorists thus find themselves pushing

against an open door. We do not mean to suggest that postmodernist

and/or postcolonialist theorists are somehow the lackeys ofglobal

capital and the world market. Anthony Appiah and ArifDirlik are

ungenerous when they cast these authors in the position of‘‘a

comprador intelligentsia’’ and ‘‘the intelligentsia ofglobal capital-

ism.’’1 There is no need to doubt the democratic, egalitarian, and

even at times anticapitalist desires that motivate large segments of

these fields ofwork, but it is important to investigate the utility of

these theories in the context ofthe new paradigm ofpower. This

new enemy not only is resistant to the old weapons but actually

thrives on them, and thus joins its would-be antagonists in applying

them to the fullest. Long live difference! Down with essentialist bi-

naries!

To a certain extent postmodernist and postcolonialist theories

are important
effects
that reflect or trace the expansion ofthe world S Y M P T O M S O F P A S S A G E

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market and the passage ofthe form ofsovereignty. These theories

point toward Empire, but in a vague and confused way, with no

awareness ofthe paradigmatic leap that this passage constitutes. We

have to delve deep into this passage, elaborate its terms, and make

clear the lineaments that constitute the new Empire. Recognizing