An interview with Michael Hardt.

Adbusters Contributing Editor Micah White asked Michael Hardt whether he thinks Generation O has revolutionary potential…

Of course!

I’ve been really impressed by the activists in North America, the US in particular, in the last ten years. I think this younger generation’s ability to dispense with notions of purity – moral and political purity – is one element that marks an advance with respect to the activists of the ’60s. Contemporary activists have been able to recognize how political struggle has to be a joyful operation. Their actions involve a new kind of relationship to pleasure and desire by translating them into events that are sometimes carnivalesque and sometimes theatrical. There has also been significant decentralization and democratization within the movements themselves.

It seems to me that the young activists that I’ve met in North America, Europe and elsewhere all understand the important relationship between affect and activism. In other words, the young activists of today have completely dispelled an older notion of the serious and suffering, ascetic and often sad concept of political militancy. They recognize that an important aspect of political activism is the joy of struggle itself, the joy of political activism and the joy of communities that are constructed through political activism.

Read the entire thing here.