Abstract

September 11 has uncovered those aspects of globalization that current optimistic and apologetial interpretations had concealed, bringing back the focus on the next "glocal" scenarios. Are we witnessing a "new imperial order" as Hardt and Negri assert? Or are we living in a "suspended time" in need of constructive and significant cartographies that enable us to disclose a "new beginning" for human history, as Bolaffi and Marramao have recently suggested? While attempting to give an answer to these questions, one should always beware of the risk of proposing, times and again, the same paradigms and categories that have informed the modern horizon, along with its specific notion of political space. The issue of an alternative to Empire - in a world-balance doomed to depend on 'infinte war' - is mostly exposed to such a dangerous risk.