Post by Walker on Jun 13, 2012 2:51:17 GMT
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In a previous post, I started to outline my thoughts on Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee. Here, I would like to begin develop those thoughts, somewhat, by focusing on the commune and processes of communization.
Proposition VI of The Invisible Committee’s The Call refers to these processes directly: “On the one hand, we want to live communism; on the other, to spread anarchy” (33).
Here, for The Invisible Committee, “the communist question is about figuring out our relation to the world, to other beings, to ourselves. It concerns the elaboration of the interplay between different worlds, about the communication between them. Not about the unification of global space, but about the institution of what is perceptible, that is to say the plurality of worlds” (34). Further, “the overthrowing of capitalism will come from those who are able to create the conditions for other types of relations . . . Communism is not made through the expansion of new relations of production, but rather in their abolition” (36). Here, communism, for The Invisible Committee is unlike what has historically been called communism. It is also unlike the formation of a state apparatus. Communism is not, then, a political party competing for power amongst others or a plan for social unification. It is on this point that they pick up on in The Coming Insurrection. Here, communism—the process of communization—is fomented by the formation of a radical solidarity exhibited in the commune. “Communes come into being when people find each other, get on with each other, and decide on a common path. The commune is perhaps what gets decided at the moment when we would normally part ways. It’s the joy of an encounter that survives its expected end. It’s what makes us say ‘we,’ and makes that an event” (101). Further, The Invisible Committee positions the commune, or what they call the multiplicity of communes, as what “will displace the institutions of society: family, school, union, sports club, etc.” (102). Thus, the continuous formation and interrelation of communes is the simultaneous play and joining together of groups and bodies and the acting out of those groups and bodies. “The commune is the basic unit of partisan reality. An insurrectional surge may be nothing more than a multiplication of communes, their coming to contact and forming ties” (117).
In the concluding propositions of Tiqqun’s Introduction to Civil War, the process of communization—the commune as a movement of radical solidarity—is imagined as the formation of an ‘Us.’ For Tiqqun, “All those who cannot conjure away the forms-of-life that move them must come to grips with the following fact: they are, we are, the pariahs of Empire” (174). Thus, the excesses of Empire, for Tiqqun, are those with whom solidarity can be formed and shared: “Us—it is neither a subject, nor something formed, nor a multitude. Us—it is a heap of worlds, of sub-spectacular and interstitial worlds, whose existence is umentionable, woven together with a kind of solidarity and dissent that power cannot penetrate; and there are the strays, the poor, the prisoners, the thieves, the criminals, the crazy, the perverts, the corrupted, the overly alive, the overflowing, the rebellious corporalities. In short, all those who, following their own line of flight, do not fit Empire’s stale, air-conditioned paradise” (174).
It is through these processes, then, that I am reading acts of secession in both The Invisible Committee and Tiqqun. In other words, dropping out or seceding does not refer to an apathetic life style or a simple choice, the choice to play anarchist dress up or to simply try on radical politics. For The Invisible Committee and Tiqqun secession seems to already require certain reductions and exclusions by the state, empire, and capital and concomitant acts of resistance resulting from multiple oppressions. Processes of communization, formations of an ‘Us,’ and the heap of multiple, interstitial worlds whose existence is one of oppression and resistance, then, offer a practice of solidarity that, for those that comprise it, cannot be avoided but also refuses to be reduced to the status of excess.
What is interesting, and, on my part still requires much more thought, is the way in which this kind of solidarity also resists the multitude. Proposition 63 from Introduction to Civil War does give us some hints, however: “Empire is scarcely thought, and perhaps hardly thinkable, within the western tradition, that is, within the limits of the metaphysics of subjectivity. The best THEY have been able to do is think the surpassing of the modern state on its own grounds. This has spawned a number of unsustainable projects for a universal State, whether in the form of the speculations on cosmopolitan right that would establish perpetual peace, or as the ridiculous hope for a global democratic state, which is the ultimate goal of Negriism” (159). However, even as I am trying to work out The Invisible Committee and Tiqqun’s writings in relation to discourses on cosmopolitanism in a current conference paper, further thinking on this point will have to wait for another post.
In a previous post, I started to outline my thoughts on Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee. Here, I would like to begin develop those thoughts, somewhat, by focusing on the commune and processes of communization.
Proposition VI of The Invisible Committee’s The Call refers to these processes directly: “On the one hand, we want to live communism; on the other, to spread anarchy” (33).
Here, for The Invisible Committee, “the communist question is about figuring out our relation to the world, to other beings, to ourselves. It concerns the elaboration of the interplay between different worlds, about the communication between them. Not about the unification of global space, but about the institution of what is perceptible, that is to say the plurality of worlds” (34). Further, “the overthrowing of capitalism will come from those who are able to create the conditions for other types of relations . . . Communism is not made through the expansion of new relations of production, but rather in their abolition” (36). Here, communism, for The Invisible Committee is unlike what has historically been called communism. It is also unlike the formation of a state apparatus. Communism is not, then, a political party competing for power amongst others or a plan for social unification. It is on this point that they pick up on in The Coming Insurrection. Here, communism—the process of communization—is fomented by the formation of a radical solidarity exhibited in the commune. “Communes come into being when people find each other, get on with each other, and decide on a common path. The commune is perhaps what gets decided at the moment when we would normally part ways. It’s the joy of an encounter that survives its expected end. It’s what makes us say ‘we,’ and makes that an event” (101). Further, The Invisible Committee positions the commune, or what they call the multiplicity of communes, as what “will displace the institutions of society: family, school, union, sports club, etc.” (102). Thus, the continuous formation and interrelation of communes is the simultaneous play and joining together of groups and bodies and the acting out of those groups and bodies. “The commune is the basic unit of partisan reality. An insurrectional surge may be nothing more than a multiplication of communes, their coming to contact and forming ties” (117).
In the concluding propositions of Tiqqun’s Introduction to Civil War, the process of communization—the commune as a movement of radical solidarity—is imagined as the formation of an ‘Us.’ For Tiqqun, “All those who cannot conjure away the forms-of-life that move them must come to grips with the following fact: they are, we are, the pariahs of Empire” (174). Thus, the excesses of Empire, for Tiqqun, are those with whom solidarity can be formed and shared: “Us—it is neither a subject, nor something formed, nor a multitude. Us—it is a heap of worlds, of sub-spectacular and interstitial worlds, whose existence is umentionable, woven together with a kind of solidarity and dissent that power cannot penetrate; and there are the strays, the poor, the prisoners, the thieves, the criminals, the crazy, the perverts, the corrupted, the overly alive, the overflowing, the rebellious corporalities. In short, all those who, following their own line of flight, do not fit Empire’s stale, air-conditioned paradise” (174).
It is through these processes, then, that I am reading acts of secession in both The Invisible Committee and Tiqqun. In other words, dropping out or seceding does not refer to an apathetic life style or a simple choice, the choice to play anarchist dress up or to simply try on radical politics. For The Invisible Committee and Tiqqun secession seems to already require certain reductions and exclusions by the state, empire, and capital and concomitant acts of resistance resulting from multiple oppressions. Processes of communization, formations of an ‘Us,’ and the heap of multiple, interstitial worlds whose existence is one of oppression and resistance, then, offer a practice of solidarity that, for those that comprise it, cannot be avoided but also refuses to be reduced to the status of excess.
What is interesting, and, on my part still requires much more thought, is the way in which this kind of solidarity also resists the multitude. Proposition 63 from Introduction to Civil War does give us some hints, however: “Empire is scarcely thought, and perhaps hardly thinkable, within the western tradition, that is, within the limits of the metaphysics of subjectivity. The best THEY have been able to do is think the surpassing of the modern state on its own grounds. This has spawned a number of unsustainable projects for a universal State, whether in the form of the speculations on cosmopolitan right that would establish perpetual peace, or as the ridiculous hope for a global democratic state, which is the ultimate goal of Negriism” (159). However, even as I am trying to work out The Invisible Committee and Tiqqun’s writings in relation to discourses on cosmopolitanism in a current conference paper, further thinking on this point will have to wait for another post.