I read this chapter last weekend and so I don't remember everything about it but I will share the thoughts that are lurking. I was sceptical that resistance was primary, in the sense of setting the global agenda. I think this is a useful way of thinking about things. I just don't know if the resistance to empire is really calling all of the shots and setting the playing field and forcing the hand of empires to change forms to a network. I think this goes more in hand with the dual-function of an increasingly networked society. The war in Iraq also shows how resistance is insurmountable by military when a part of the cultural identity of the people. I really enjoyed the coverage of anarchism in North America as a new assertion of people who want to have decentralized, autonomous organizing strategies, and I think that this can share a lot with people who are trying to coordinate with-out entrenching themselves in a hierarchical struggle. The term horizontalism grew out of the struggle in Argentina and was a cooperation between anarchists and the unemployed and disgruntled middle-class housewives who rose up and toppled 3-4 governments in a row. They also seized factories and the like. This is the kind of resistance I think is useful to play out in terms of organizing. When I saw Michael Hardt speak at OSU he was talking about Love & the Multitude. I took some notes, if I can find them scrawled onto a envelope, I think I might also have some video. I think the concepts of resistance that are being played out are an attempt to bring into philosophical understanding the networks that are being built up to coordinate mutual aid, and the like of a social process that has rejected and kind of transcended the concept of the left. This is what I think the multitude means. The other part I just remembered was the discussion of the evolutions of resistance from people's army's to guerrila struggles, to decentralized resistance that doesn't turn hierarchical. What is being communicated is how the decentralized form of struggle with-out attempting to co-opt state power has now become the means of coordination. I think that this makes sense in terms of how I view the world.

Before I go back and look at my notes on the chapter I want to write a quick response. As a veteran of the old punk movement one of the things I have been pondering in my old age (ha ha) is how punk was the last rebellion of the industrial age. By that I don't mean the last rebellion, but that the world of industrial thinking produced certain kinds of rebellion and the idea of the "avant-gard" art movement based on individualism and genius. The way that cool is instantly commodified and regurgitated makes style an obsolete kind of opposition (Gert Lovink has written some good stuff about this and tactical media in Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture). The interesting think about the Zapatistas was their "anonymity" and use of media and ideas as the core of their rebellion. Were they successful? I'm not sure. More later.

I just watched this great interview with Zizek in Democracy Now, talking about his new book "In Defense of Lost Causes" , which includes a small critique of Negri and Hardt (it comes about 45 minutes into it). I recommend watching/listening to the whole interview. It is very relevant. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/12/world_renowned_philosopher_slavoj_...

I watched the interview as well. It didn't seem to be an indepth criticism, but it kind of turned around what I was thinking as well, about how they are so convinced that resistance is primary. But I am again reading Multitude and I think there is a lot of interesting ideas here that aren't just idealism and hope, but instead an attempt to rethink the stasis of marxism and other leftist thought into a new inclusive revolutionary theory.