“Empire:  A Retrospective”

The Second Biannual Faculty and Graduate Students Colloquium

Organized by

The Graduate Program for Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh

November 18-21 2010

 This conference will address the 10th anniversary of the publication of  Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s seminal book Empire, the first volume of a trilogy that saw its completion in October 2009 with the publication of the third volume, Commonwealth.  The second volume, Multitudes, came out in 2004.

However, we are not italicizing the word “Empire” in the conference title because we want to address the questions raised by the books much more than glossing the texts themselves.  The response in the academic world to the trilogy has been extremely fertile, causing, among other things, a rediscovery of Italian political thought, a questioning of historical and cultural categories related to postmodernity, and the reframing of the political stakes implicit in theoretical interventions. The dialogue that other critics have opened with Negri and Hardt – sometimes sympathetic, sometimes skeptical or outright polemical – will also be a fundamental part of the conference.  Figures such as Jameson and Zizek are only the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, current historical developments in the international arena, also directly  addressed in the trilogy, have pushed us in the last decade us to reflect once  more on the political and cultural form “empire”, and  we feel there is no better moment for this discussion to take place.

We are looking for graduate student papers that will address the following topics:

• How have the categories developed by Hardt and Negri inflected the critical approach to specific fields of study, such as cultural analysis, political theory or anthropological reflection?
• What traditions of thought are mobilized anew in Hardt and Negri’s discourse?  How does this new reading of past texts generate new insights in current debates?
• What are the blind spots in the trilogy, in terms both of theory and of political commentary?  How can one deconstruct Hardt and Negri’s discourse, and what is the advantage of engaging in this kind of critical dialogue with it?
• Are the international exempla of political engagement and struggle mentioned in Hardt and Negri’s trilogy considered in a historically and theoretically useful manner?  How can specialists of each regional history benefit from the book’s intervention?

We need to receive 500- words abstracts by April 20, 2010.  All submissions should be attached via e-mail to the following address cultural@pitt.edu, with names and university affiliations.  The papers will be rendered anonymous for the review process.

We will give our responses by May 10.  Those graduate student participants chosen from outside the University of Pittsburgh will receive a $300 scholarship from the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh in order to help defray traveling costs. 

Both Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have agreed to give the final keynote address. 

The format of the conference will include 4 panels, each anchored by an external, invited scholar able to address authoritatively the issues at hand.

We are looking forward to receive graduate student submissions at your earliest convenience.