The empire never ended
RIS ID
77481
Additional Publication Information
ISBN: 9780199296101
Abstract
This chapter analyses the use of the Roman empire as a metaphor or analogy for global sovereignty, and compares the ways in which imperial sovereignty was conceptualised in Latin literature with modern global formulations. It discusses how modes of historicisation of the Roman empire have made it synonymous with history itself, and develops an analogy with the trans-temporal force of modern telecommunications technology, against which all resistance might be equally impossible. Since ‘empire’ connects political sovereignty, cultural continuity, and information technology, this chapter explains how this connection has begun to be thought about in the work of Jacques Derrida.
Publication Details
Willis, I (2007). The empire never ended. In L. Hardwick and C. Gillespie (Eds.), Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds (pp. 329-348). Oxford: Oxford University Press.