Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt speaking at the Seminário Internacional Mundo. 2008
Born	1960 Bethesda, Maryland or Washington, D.C.
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Autonomist thought Queer theory
Main interests	Political philosophy Literary theory
Notable ideas	Theory of Empire
Influences Antonio Negri, Antonio Gramsci Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari

Michael Hardt speaking at Subversive Festival

Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American literary theorist and political philosopher. Hardt is best known for his book Empire, which was co-written with Antonio Negri. It has been praised by some as the "Communist Manifesto of the 21st Century".

Hardt and Negri suggest that several forces which they see as dominating contemporary life, such as 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 was published in August 2004. It outlines an idea first propounded in Empire, which is that of the multitude as possible locus of a democratic movement of global proportions. The third and final part of the trilogy, Commonwealth, was published in 2009.

Early life and education

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. 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."

During college, he worked for various solar energy companies. Hardt also participated, after college, in the Sanctuary Movement and later helped establish a project to bring donated computers from the United States and put 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. While there, he received an M.A. in 1986 and his PhD in 1990. From there he went to Paris where he met 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.

Thought

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." 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."

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.

Many of Hardt's works have been co-written with Antonio Negri.

Occupation movements of 2011–2012

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.

Publications

Books

• 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
• Declaration, with Antonio Negri, ISBN 0-786-75290-4, 2012

Articles

Film appearances

• Marx Reloaded, Arte, April 2011.
• Examined Life, Sphinx Productions, 87 min., 2008.

External links

• Michael Hardt – Personal webpage
• Michael Hardt at European Graduate School – Faculty page with Biography, Bibliography and Video Lectures.
• Michael Hardt at Duke University
• Full text pdf.
• Full text.
• Interview/podcast with Michael Hardt about what role revolutions have today as spaces for new social creation Radio Web MACBA, 2014.