Multitude

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Multitude is a term from political philosophy . In the current discussion, it plays an important role , especially in postoperaism .

The term became known through the book Empire - the new world order by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2000; German: 2002). The meaning space of multitude - in the German translation of "Empire" as "crowd" - can also include "multiplicity", "diversity" (of persons, subjects, "singularities"). In Hardt and Negri the term goes back to the philosophy of Spinoza ( Multitudo ).

Concept history

In the ancient Roman Republic, Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term in de re publica (54–51 BC). Here Cicero explains the “multitudo” as the origin of society or the republic: So the republic is a matter for the population, a population but not every gathering that is somehow huddled together, but the gathering of a crowd (“multitudo”) that is recognized of right and common use is united. But your first motivation to get together is (...) a kind of natural sociability of people.

The term “multitudo” is being revived in early modern philosophy. For Spinoza, the sovereignty of a state establishes “the power, no longer of an individual, but of the multitude guided by a spirit”. He avoids (contrary to Negri's interpretation ) to attribute the power of the multitudes ( multitudinis potentia ) to that of the individuals (cf. Spinoza: Politischer Traktat III, § 2).

In Thomas Hobbes' work Vom Bürger it is said that the multitude rises up against aristocratic rule as well as against the people (which means something like: the unity of the people). In Hobbes' Leviathan , the overpowering sovereign on the title page appears to be made up of countless individuals who consent to the social contract and thus form a unity. The multitude is seen as a danger to the Leviathan because it is multiplicity.

And with William Shakespeare "the monster of the multitude" appears in various dramas in the imagination of the aristocrats as well as the bourgeois, most impressively formulated in The Tragedy of Coriolanus (2nd act, 3rd scene), where the presence of the crowd as " the many headed multitude ”.

Current discussion

Probably the shortest definition by Hardt and Negri themselves is as follows: This is the definition of the multitude (...): singularities that act together. Negri describes their reality as immanence (against the transcendence of the “people”), as a class (insofar as the social cooperation of the multitude is exploited) and as potentiality. Paolo Virno speaks of the “many as many” to characterize the multitude. The multitude is a network , an open network of relationships, a field of singularities that is not homogeneous or identical with itself. It is to be distinguished from the “ people ” and the working class , each of which is subject to a uniform will, and from the formless, malleable mass . It should definitely not be a "new revolutionary subject" that opposes the rule of the Empire. Following Marx , the multitude is nevertheless a political class that becomes a collective whole by fighting together. The aim of the struggle is, roughly speaking, the complete democratization of world society . Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri believe that every epoch is characterized by a form: In contrast to Foucault's disciplinary paradigm , we encounter the form of the network everywhere today - this characterizes linguistic relationships, military units, patterns of migration , social movements , companies, physiological ones Structures and even personal relationships.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Virno, Paolo: Grammar of the Multitude. ID Verlag, Berlin 2005; P. 8
  2. ^ Hardt / Negri 2004, 123
  3. ^ Negri 2003
  4. ↑ Virno, Paolo: Grammar of the Multitude. ID Verlag, Berlin 2005
  5. ^ Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, But Distinct Dominions. Legal transfer, state formation and governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630 - 1769. LIT Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 609. [1]

literature

See also

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