As is well known, the period since the early 1970s has been one of massive historical structural transformations of the global order, frequently referred to as the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism (or, better, from Fordism to post-Fordism to neoliberal global capitalism).

In August 2004, a short film was broadcast on Dutch television that dealt with the theme of violence against women in Islamic societies. The key scene showed four topless women in transparent clothing; their bodies had been covered with calligraphically inscribed verses from the Koran that legitimate the subjection of women.

"Empire"¹ is a watchword of the times and, in the corridors of Washington, D.C., "suddenly hot intellectual property."² The assertion of temporal immediacy and of real-world value prompts questions about what new political interests make empire "hot" today, what forms of knowledge are staked out as credible, what accrues to those with proprietary claims on how empires once o