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Remembering the Future — Utopia, Empire, and Harmony in 21st-Century International Theory

Using a comparative approach to international relations theory, this article examines how ancient ideas are being recycled to describe world order in the 21st century. In particular, it provides a thick description of three models of utopia in global politics — Great Harmony and Harmony with difference from China, and Empire from Hardt and Negri. Using an unexplored set of Chinese-language texts, the article first excavates how Communist Party intellectuals in China have been writing about the ancient Confucian ideal of Great Harmony as a way of promoting the People’s Republic of China’s role as a Great Power in the 21st century. Second, it uses Hardt and Negri’s deterritorialized concept of Empire to criticize Great Harmony discourse as a transcendent and state-centric model of world order. Hardt and Negri’s notion of immanent utopia is elaborated in the third section using another set of Chinese texts that describe the flexible methodology of ‘Harmony-with-difference’. The article concludes that Harmony-with-difference provides a practical logic for achieving Hardt and Negri’s immanent utopia. The article contributes two things to international relations theory — (1) using Chineselanguage texts, it broadens the reach of comparative international relations theory and (2) it uses the concept of Empire to challenge Chinese concepts of harmony, while using Chinese theory to elaborate on Hardt and Negri’s utopia. In this way, the article shows how key texts have productively recycled the classical concepts of utopia, empire, and harmony as a way of remembering the future for the 21st century.