Imperial power is today, at its historical peak. The term Imperial is rooted in the verb imperō which means I command, give orders to, impose, demand. It is also composed of the Latin im and parō, which means to arrange, order, contrive, and design. Parō comes from the indo-european root per, as to be in front, to come before, to produce, procure, bring forward, bring forth. Im means inside, within, into, upon, but also against, relating to the prefix in. Therefore Imperial power should be understood, and evidently so, as that which both comes in front of or wants to produce a specific order, but also and in doing so, constantly acts against the coming into being of other orders.
Imperialism's history has been one of, on the one hand, shutting down lines of flight from its vision of coming into being. On the other hand, it has been one of redirecting the wild, uncontrollable adaptability, power and new lines of flight released when it destroys or shuts down the free coming into being of other orders. Its symbolic and objective structural machinery evolves to harness and capture those very lines of flight as the primary source of power for the engines of accumulation. Therefore its 'cage' has come to resemble the opposite, a mirage of liberation, whose image and glow ease the fact of its distance, or whose potential existence elicits our desperate pursuit.
