Monologue of Empire Versus Global Dialogue of Cultures: The Branding of “American Values”

Abstract

In recent years, the number of publications focusing on “Empire” has been skyrocketing. Since the arrival of the “unipolar moment” following the fall of the “Evil Empire” in 1991, the term has been usually associated with the United States and its expanding sphere of influence. One notable exception, of course, is Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s much publicized perspective on Empire as a radically new paradigm of authority and control that cannot be reduced to American power—a “new global order” composed of a series of national and supranational organisms that supersede old, nation-state-centered forms of sovereignty.’ But the enormity of the Al-Qaeda attacks and the ensuing belligerent response that the Bush administration was bent on waging, what former Central Command’s General John Abizaid calls, the “long war on global terror,” brought the public discourse on Empire back to the role of America in the world— sparking the process over whether the world’s irate “hyper-power” had embarked on a “new imperialism.” Soon, the post-September 11 cacophony over American Empire merged with long-standing high-profile debates on “globalization” toform narratives that explored the meanings and normative implications of what I have referred to else-where as “imperial globalism.”³