INTRODUCING MICHAEL HARDT AND ANTONIO NEGRI’S newest publication, Commonwealth—two extended selections from which make their debut in this issue—curator Okwui Enwezor looks back at the cultural context surrounding the arrival of the theorists’ earlier philosophical disquisition Empire and recalls that volume’s (and the day’s) somewhat paradoxical quality. Published in 2000, the book ostensibly set out to describe a political and social logic emerging as the binary codes of the cold war finally gave way to decentralized networks forged by capital and marked by regional conflict—in short, a dawning paradigm of globalization. “And yet, appearing at the beginning of the twenty-first century,” Enwezor writes, “Empire was nonetheless imbued with a sense . . . of taking stock, of reflecting on the aftermath.” In other words: The future was indeed very much at hand, but
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