Progress

tom and martin have either of you read EMPIRE by michael hardt and antonio negri? i am 3/4s of the way thruogh it and i think it is TERRIFIC despite occasional walks through fields of pomo buzzwords which i HATE and ph34r (oh no!! deterritorialization!! OH NO!!)

The first book I ever read where I thought (for more than a page at a time): this is in the same space politically as me.... k-blimey-o!!

I've not read that. Has it made it to remaindered bookshops yet, because I almost never buy full-price new books? (Yesterday I bought a complete collection of Sophocles' plays (7) for £1.99: I am not interested in anything that is less good value than that.) I'll try to remember to seek it out at a library (East Ham is a bit rub, but UCL might have it.)

In the case of Rome, having Goths, Vandals and whatnot harrying at/steadily eroding their frontiers surely didn't encourage a 'narrative' of progress. Having said that, Mark S will probably pop up shortly and tell me that there were no such thing as Barbarians.

b-b-but the barbarians are on TV on channel 4 as we speak, so they must exist!! (except it's on monday not tonight)

i think the romans had stopped writing histories of themselves by the time the goths and vandals swept into town: earlier barbarians were not just part of the narrative, but proof of the progress (one of them even got quoted as saying THEY MAKE A DESOLATION AND CALL IT PEACE, which is one of the all-time great critiques of the concept of imperialism-as-progress)