摘要：Using Foucault’s analyses as their starting point, Hardt and Negri recognize Empire as the political subject that regulates global exchanges not only in the form of the material constitution of the new planetary order, but also in the form of creating a new social life. Its target are all forms of human interactions, which makes Empire the paradigmatic form of biopower. The paradigm shift that is taking place in the world’s economic and political order announces the decline of the modern theories of power, i.e. what was in Modernity considered as transcendent regarding the production and social relations is now being formed within and immanent to these processes. The binary structure of power can no longer exist in the reality of multiple and interconnected networks that support the political synthesis of social space in the field of virtual communication. The project of Empire, a global project of network power, is entirely virtual, boundless and flexible, and its identities are hybrid and fluid. The author suggests that, by bringing the crisis of capitalism to its apex, the global project ultimately reduces the “Self” to the “Voice”, which results in a call to act. The environment in which the Self realizes itself in the information society are the global networks and computer-mediated communication, creating a wide range of virtual communities imposing a new type of logic – the network logic. In the new network landscape, information technologies, including the Internet, provide a technical support for a greater justice and equality on virtual highways, thus bringing recognition to the voice of the individual.
关键词：Empire; network power; virtual community; information technologies; global project
