ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, I introduced some themes, the subject, law and empire, and reflected upon their interactive natures. Empire as an impulse represents, I suspect, an always unsuccessful striving for certainty by the subject. How does s/he know what s/he knows, or even that s/he is? The 1999 Wachowski brothers film, The Matrix, in which the hero is “chosen” to release dormant humans from the illusion that is only a dream of living, is merely a modern version of the nightmare. The Matrix began implausibly with a plausible question – how can we know? – but quickly descended into bathos, its ill-advised sequels rendering the question apparently pointless.
