Through a dual focus on the means of material and symbolic production, this book challenges conventional wisdom about world politics and war since September 11, 2001. Through an analysis of capital and spectacle, imperialism, and the image world, the authors rethink left politics and discover common ground for a multitude that would be an alternative to US empire and an antithesis to al Qaeda. While they paint a grim picture of the present, their message is that resistance is possible, and it might be more effective if it were framed as a movement against the tyranny of military neoliberalism.
The authors begin by arguing that both the US empire’s power and the power of resistance to it are “afflicted” in different ways. By invading and occupying Iraq, the US is on the verge of a strategic failure worse than Vietnam, while the antiwar movement in particular, and the left in...
