Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt speaking at the Seminário Internacional Mundo. 2008
Born	1960 Washington, D.C.
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Continental philosophy, Autonomist thought, Queer theory
Main interests	Political philosophy, literature
Influenced by Antonio Negri

Michael Hardt at Subversive Film Festival

Michael Hardt (born 1960)^[1] is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000.^[2] It has been praised as the "Communist Manifesto of the 21st Century."^[3]

Hardt and his co-author suggest that what they view as forces of contemporary class oppression, globalization and the commodification of services (or production of affects), have the potential to spark social change of unprecedented dimensions. A sequel, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, published in August 2004, details the notion, first propounded in Empire, of the multitude as possible locus of a democratic movement of global proportions.

The third and final part of the trilogy, Commonwealth, appeared in the Fall of 2009.

Biography [link]

Born in Washington, D.C., Hardt attended Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland. He studied engineering at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania from 1978 to 1983. In college during the 1970s energy crisis, he began to take an interest in alternative energy sources.^[1] Talking about his college politics, he said, "I thought that doing alternative energy engineering for third world countries would be a way of doing politics that would get out of all this campus political posing that I hated."

After college, he worked for various solar energy companies.^[2] Hardt also worked with non-governmental organizations in Central America on tasks like bringing donated computers from the United States and putting them together for the University of El Salvador. Yet, he says that this political activity did more for him than it did for the Salvadorans.

In 1983, he moved to Seattle to study comparative literature at the University of Washington.^[1] While there, he received an M.A. in 1986 and his PhD in 1990.^[4] From there he went to Paris where he would meet Negri.

Hardt speaks fluent French, Spanish and Italian and is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University and a Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.^[2]

Ideas [link]

Hardt is concerned with the joy of political life, and has stated, "One has to expand the concept of love beyond the limits of the couple."^[5] The politics of the multitude is not solely about controlling the means of productivity or liberating one's own subjectivity. These two are also linked to love and joy of political life and realizing political goals.

Hardt does not consider teaching a revolutionary occupation, nor does he think the college is a particularly political institution. "But thinking of politics now as a project of social transformation on a large scale, I'm not at all convinced that political activity can come from the university."^[6]

Hardt says visions of a public education and equal and open access to the university are gradually disappearing: the "war on terror" has promoted only limited military and technological knowledges, while the required skills of the biopolitical economy, "the creation of ideas, images, code, affects, and other immaterial goods" are not yet recognized as the primary key to economic innovation.^[7]

Duke Lacrosse Controversy [link]

During the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case, he was one of the so-called Group of 88 professors who, shortly after members of the university's lacrosse team were accused of rape, signed a controversial letter attacking the players and thanking protesters for "making a collective noise" on "what happened to this young woman."^[8] After a year-long ordeal that is now widely viewed as one of the most conspicuous miscarriages of justices by a prosecutor in modern American history, the lacrosse players were found innocent of the rape charges. The "Group of 88" letter has since come to be regarded as a notorious example of unfair prejudgment.^[9]

Co-authorship with Antonio Negri [link]

Most of Hardt's works have been co-written with Antonio Negri, who was in prison for most of his career.

Occupation movements of 2011-2012 [link]

In May 2012 Hardt and Negri self-published an electronic pamphlet on the occupation and encampment movements of 2011-2012 called Declaration that argues the movement explores new forms of democracy. The introduction was published at Jacobin under the title "Take Up the Baton."

Bibliography [link]

Books [link]

• Gilles Deleuze: an Apprenticeship in Philosophy, ISBN 0-8166-2161-6, 1993
• Labor of Dionysus: a Critique of the State-form, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-8166-2086-5, 1994
• Empire, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-674-00671-2, 2000
• Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 1-59420-024-6, 2004
• Commonwealth, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-674-03511-9, 2009

Electronic Pamphlet / Kindle single [link]

• Declaration, with Antonio Negri, ASIN: B00816QAFY

Articles [link]

• "The Withering of Civil Society". Social Text (Duke University Press) (45): 27–44. 1995. 
• "Prison Time". Yale French Studies (Yale University Press) (91): 64–79. 1997. 
• "Affective Labor". boundary 2 (Duke University Press) 26 (2): 89–100. 1999. 
• Hardt, Michael; Antonio Negri (1999). "Value and Affect". boundary 2 (Duke University Press) 26 (2): 77–88. 
• Hardt, Michael; Antonio Negri (2003). "The Rod of the Forest Warden: A Response to Timothy Brennan". Critical Inquiry (The University of Chicago Press) 29 (2): 368–373. 
• "Take Up the Baton."

Film appearances [link]

• Marx Reloaded, Arte, April 2011.
• Examined Life, Sphinx Productions, 87 min., 2008.
• Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends, ZDF/Arte, 52 min., 2004.

References [link]

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

• Michael Hardt @ European Graduate School. Faculty Page with Biography, Bibliography and Video Lectures.
• Michael Hardt @ Duke University
• Full text of Empire [1]
• Slavoj Žižek. "Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto For the Twenty-First Century?" European Graduate School. (2001)
• Michael Hardt. "Sovereignty" Theory & Event. Volume 5, Issue 4, 2001
• Michael Hardt. "The Withering of Civil Society" Social Text. No. 45 Winter, 1995. pp. 27–44
• Michael Hardt. "Porto Alegre – Today's Bandung?" New Left Review. No. 14, March–April 2002
• Ed Vulliamy. "Empire hits back" The Guardian. July 15, 2010. Profile of Hardt in the Guardian.

Interviews

• Real Democracy: An interview with Michael Hardt Michael Hardt talks to Shift Magazine about the global democracy movement.
• Astra Taylor's 2008 film Examined Life features Hardt rowing a boat in Central Park and ruminating on revolution.
• "For the Love of the Multitude" a conversation with Michael Hardt on The T-Machine
• "The Collaborator and the Multitude: An Interview with Michael Hardt" Hardt talks about Multitude, the sequel to Empire. (2004)
• "An Interview with Michael Hardt" (March 27–28, 2004) Hardt talks about the Free Trade Area of the Americas with dissidentvoice.org.
• "Conversation with Michael Hardt" Part of the 'Conversations with History' series organized by Harry Kreisler.
• Croatian Radio Interview
• "Power Within a Global Paradigm: Prof Michael Hardt Speaks in Olin"
• "Interview with Aut-Op-Sy" Interview conducted by the autonomist email list "Aut-Op-Sy".