Here we see once again the republican principle in the very
first instance: desertion, exodus, and nomadism. Whereas in the
disciplinary era sabotage was the fundamental notion of resistance,
in the era ofimperial control it may be desertion. Whereas being against
in modernity often meant a direct and/or dialectical opposition
off orces, in postmodernity being-against might well be most
effective in an oblique or diagonal stance. Battles against the Empire
might be won through subtraction and defection. This desertion
does not have a place; it is the evacuation of the places of power.
Throughout the history ofmodernity, the mobility and migration
ofthe labor force have disrupted the disciplinary conditions
to which workers are constrained. And power has wielded the most
extreme violence against this mobility. In this respect slavery can
be considered on a continuum with the various wage labor regimes
as the most extreme repressive apparatus to block the mobility
ofthe labor force. The history ofblack slavery in the Americas
demonstrates both the vital need to control the mobility oflabor
and the irrepressible desire to flee on the part ofthe slaves: from
the closed ships ofthe Middle Passage to the elaborate repressive
techniques employed against escaped slaves. Mobility and mass
worker nomadism always express a refusal and a search for liberation:
the resistance against the horrible conditions ofexploitation and
the search for freedom and new conditions of life.