tiqqun ("introduction to civil-war" e.a.)

[Sasha]

anyone read any of the works of Tiqqun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiqqun)? beyond "the coming insurection" (that is widly atribituted to them) that is...

i'm now halfway in "introduction to civilwar", and just finished "how is it to be done?". While esp "introduction to civilwar" is sometimes tough going due to my only fleeting familarity with nietsche, kant and hobbes and never having read any heidegger and agamben (luckily i did read some negri and debord before) i'm deeply intrueged and gripped by it (and at all not bother by the fact i often have to read pages several times over to get a basic grasp of what the author(s) are on about.)
as soon as i'm done with intro i'm planning to immerse myself in other work of them like "the call" and "theory of bloom)

anyways, just looking for (opinons of) others who read it (and encourage those who didnt yet)...

here are some reviews/scholary commentaries and links to their texts (liften from the wiki page):


Scholarly Commentary



Ceccaldi, Jérôme. "Rions un peu avec Tiqqun (http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=MULT_008_0239)." Multitudes 8 (2002): pp. 239-242.
Culp, Andrew. "Insurrectionary Foucault: Tiqqun, The Coming Insurrection, and Beyond (http://osu.academia.edu/AndrewCulp/Papers/340841/Insurrectionary_Foucault_Tiqqun_The_Coming_Insurre ction_and_Beyond)." Academia.edu.
Smith, Jason E. "The Politics of Incivility: Autonomia and Tiqqun (http://minnesotareview.dukejournals.org/content/2010/75/119.citation)." The Minnesota Review 75 (Fall 2010): pp. 119-132.
Read, Jason. "From Restricted to General Antagonism: Tiqqun’s Introduction to Civil War (http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2010/05/from-restricted-to-general-antagonism.html)" Unemployed Negativity. Blogger May 27, 2010. Web.
Read, Jason. "A Million Blooms: Tiqqun and Negri on the Actualization of Ontology (http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2011/07/million-blooms-tiqqun-and-negri-on.html)." Unemployed Negativity. Blogger July 7, 2011. Web.

External links



bloom0101.org (http://www.bloom0101.org) is dedicated to the free diffusion of Tiqqun texts, as well as their translations in a variety of languages (http://www.bloom0101.org/translations.html).
tiqqun.info (http://www.tiqqun.info/)
clairefontaine.ws (http://www.clairefontaine.ws/)
tiqqunista.jottit.com (http://tiqqunista.jottit.com/) is the work of an anonymous translator, providing texts from "Tiqqun" magazine in English.

[Ravachol]

Introduction to Civil war was the 2nd thing I read by Tiqqun, right after The Coming Insurrection (officially not by them but blabla) both of which I bought at the Waterstones in London (I was really surprised a major commercial chain like that stocked this kind of stuff) a few years back.

Their observations about the modern state and the extension and diffusion of the police apparatus throughout society (echoing Foucault) are particularly astute (for the Dutch people, think burgernet :p). I also like how they conceive of communism as an expression of particular social relationships which, through their mode of confrontation, spread themselves, akin to (but not fully identical, see the reflections on Call in Sic (http://libcom.org/library/reflections-call-l%C3%A9-de-mattis)) the concept of Communization.

The philosophical premises of different, hostile forms-of-life as the basis for particular social structures is interesting, but presents a problematic theory of revolution later on. First of all, their ontology often borders on the idealist and their proposals of certain 'ethics' as the point of departure can lead to the logic of the isolated armed group which sees society and it's participants as it's enemies or at least as 'voluntary slaves' or 'sheeple', something that seeps through in the writings of Nihilist groupings like CCoF. The biggest danger of reading Tiqqun through the wrong lense is voluntarist (dare I say, 'activist' :p) isolationism of the 'solo contra todos' type.

This isn't intrinsic to the work but it really depends on through what lens you read it. 'This is not a Program', which I really recommend as well, makes this even more clear, almost negating the idea of the existence of 'classes' (in a rather weak analysis, I must say) in favour of a polarization of society around those who 'would prefer not to parttake in it' versus those who are 'complicit'.

Tiqqun's work has been a major influence on me in the past few years but I tend to read them like I read Foucault which he recommended himself:



[I want my books] to be a kind of tool-box others can rummage through to find a tool they can use however they wish in their own area...I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.


My recommendations (from what I've read, I don't know what their other texts are like) would be:

Tiqqun:

- This is not a program
- The theory of bloom
- The problem of the head
- Raw materials for a theory of the young girl

Thematically related:

- Discipline & Punish, Michel Foucault

- A thousand Plateaus, Deleuze & Guattari (their treatise on nomadology is the base for the Tiqqunist conception of the war machine, very valuable)

- Archeology of Violence, Pierre Clastres (anthropological study of hunter-gatherer societies and the notion of centrifugal violence to 'ward off the state')

- 20 Theses on the subversion of the metropolis, Plan B Bureau
- Call, Invisible Committee
- We Demand Nothing, Johan Kaspar (from Fire To The Prisons #9 I believe)
- Barbarians, the disordered insurgence, Chrisso & Odoteo (great critique of the post-autonomia Negri btw)

The first 2 (Foucault, Deleuze) are a bit theory-heavy I guess but they contain very lucid insights now and then. Clastres' work is mainly an account of his time with indigenous tribes in the Amazon and their social structures from which he drew theories about the state & warding off the state.

The other pamphlets can be found here (http://burntbookmobile.wordpress.com/zine-archive/) and here (http://schriftzine.wordpress.com/distro/).

I'd also recommend the various works from the 'communisation' milieu (Theorie Communiste, TPTG, Blaumachen, Troploin, Riff-Raff, SIC, etc.):

http://libcom.org/tags/communisation

Worth checking out as well (as a depressing counterweight perhaps) is the Nihilist Communism (http://libcom.org/tags/monsieur-dupont) of Monsieus & Frere Dupont (two former members of the AFED and Communication Workers' Group), who drift the other way and get stuck in the quagmire of economist determinism, but have some very valuable insights about the revolutionary milieu, in the vain of 'Give up Activism' (http://libcom.org/library/give-up-activism) by Andrew X and 'On Organisation' (http://libcom.org/library/on-organisation-jacques-camatte) by Camatte & Collu.

Dupont critiqued Tiqqun in an article for Metamute called 'release us to the field' but I can't find it online anymore, only a discussion of said article: http://crashcourse666.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/does-monsieur-dupont-think-about-tiqqun/

Hope this provides some interesting reading material.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I have read The Call, The Coming Insurrection (both by the IC, but related to Tiqqun), Introduction to Civil War and This Is Not A Program.

Most of it isn't particularly interesting in my opinion, although their whole deal about the "invisible party" is pretty fun. The left obviously will vehemently disagree with the concept of course, particularly the bit about the labor movement basically ceasing to be revolutionary and is at this point entirely co-opted. The concept of "invisible party" has led to some interesting writings about it's supposed activities...one I remember recently involved a "party member" setting a gas station on fire, killing a cop and escaping from police custody, and eventually dying in a shootout with police.

Needless to say I don't think many on the left want to interact with such people at all, let alone consider the possibility that a would-be arsonist represents the cutting edge of insurrection. :lol: Not that the whole idea of the "invisible party" even contains the possibility of consciously executed campaign for revolution within it's ranks.

[The Douche]

Tagged to participate and send the link to another poster who knows tiqqun.

[Ravachol]

The left obviously will vehemently disagree with the concept of course, particularly the bit about the labor movement basically ceasing to be revolutionary and is at this point entirely co-opted.


I always found the concept of the 'labour movement' to be very confusing. What does it refer to? The movement rallying around demands made by workers vis-a-vis Capital but still firmly within the wage-relation? Or the workers' movement as a class movement, ie. the workers-movement-against-work?

I don't think the latter exists visibly as a mass movement today (though it sometimes shows it's face through the cracks of society's surface) while the former, mainly in the form of the labour parties and unions, is just another institution within capitalism, acting at best as a mediator between non-transcendent demands from (sections of) the working class and at worst as a safety-valve or counter-revolutionary institution at the service of the bosses.



Needless to say I don't think many on the left want to interact with such people at all, let alone consider the possibility that a would-be arsonist represents the cutting edge of insurrection. :lol: Not that the whole idea of the "invisible party" even contains the possibility of consciously executed campaign for revolution within it's ranks.

I always read this whole thing about the imaginary party as a more general breakdown of society without a conscious orientation towards communism or transcendence in general. The guy who drowns his lost potential and disillusion in booze binges, meaningless sex and an ever-increasing rate of identity changes before he slits his wrists in his lonely perfectly furnished condo is the mirror-image of the guy who bottles up all his rage and is unable to express any of it, to pinpoint the precise cause and who one day arrives smartly dressed at his office and shoots up the entire workfloor. The alienated, neurotic, schizophrenic tension that undercuts the 'Western' (perhaps I should say 'Occidental' at the risk of sounding like some conservative douche) part of Capitalism manifests itself as 'lashing out'.

This is the imaginary party, the whole diffuse spectrum of those who break under the crushing weight of being forced to wear masks, to be foreign to themselves. They don't represent a positive project to be emulated, much like how terrible acts like the Columbine shooting are disgusting manifestations of alienation but alienation still. Fucked up societies produce fucked up people and events. What is needed is a way beyond self-denying schizophrenia on prozac or anti-social death instincts, the crystallization would be the 'invisible committee', which is the 'conscious arm' of the 'imaginary party' (almost a Bordigist-type relationship) that seeks to spread a certain ethical perspective through praxis as a way of engaging with all those who feel this fundamental antagonism. I'ts quite close to what Bonanno observes in 'From Riot to insurrection' (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Alfredo_M._Bonanno__From_Riot_to_Insurrection__Ana lysis_for_an_anarchist_perspective_against_post-industrial_capitalism.html) (ignore his analysis of 'post-industrial capitalism', it's sloppy and incorrect imo) where he touches upon the differences between wild urban riots as an unconscious expression of class antagonisms versus insurrection as the proposed alternative. You should read Blaumachen's 'The era of Riots' (http://libcom.org/library/era-riots-update) next to it.

This analysis of 'The theory of bloom' (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10696) explains the concept pretty well.

Remaining this vague, I don't consider it a very fruitful perspective but their analysis of the bloom phenomenon is spot on.

[Art Vandelay]

I read the coming insurrection and from what I got out of it I liked and was interested; however I am getting the feeling I did not grasp the full scope of the work.

[The Douche]

So I PMed my friend, hopefully he'll get the chance to participate.

I would like to second Ravachol's recommendation of "A Thousand Plateaus". I got to be present in a quick study group for it, by people with a much deeper base in philosophy than I have. I was only exposed to it for a little while, and while a lot of what we were reading was to dense for me, I could see the connections to Tiqqun, and now intend to give it a shot.

I also suggest reading The Call, I have to re-read Bloom, and pick up some other stuff. I've been trying to read Civil War off and on for a few months now, but am having a hard time committing to it, so my personal plan is to re-read Bloom and some of the stuff which influenced Tiqqun before I get back into it so that hopefully I can read it more fluidly.

[StalinFanboy]

Ive been reading tiqqun and similar "philosophers" for over a year, since i meat some of them last april. Im on my phone and at work so i cant make a real post. But i am looking forward to the discussion that could come out of this thread.

Just a note: there is a brand new english translation of Bloom available from little black cart. They did a shoddy job putting the book together but the translation is spot on. It was done by a close comrade who has translated major thinkers like deleuze & guattari and foucault.

[StalinFanboy]

Most of it isn't particularly interesting in my opinion, although their whole deal about the "invisible party" is pretty fun. The left obviously will vehemently disagree with the concept of course, particularly the bit about the labor movement basically ceasing to be revolutionary and is at this point entirely co-opted. The concept of "invisible party" has led to some interesting writings about it's supposed activities...one I remember recently involved a "party member" setting a gas station on fire, killing a cop and escaping from police custody, and eventually dying in a shootout with police.

Needless to say I don't think many on the left want to interact with such people at all, let alone consider the possibility that a would-be arsonist represents the cutting edge of insurrection. :lol: Not that the whole idea of the "invisible party" even contains the possibility of consciously executed campaign for revolution within it's ranks.

The Imaginary Party isn't a homogeneous body, it doesn't merely replace the concept of the class or party in the marxist or anarchist sense. Any body or any collection of bodies that takes a position is a part of the Imaginary Party. Communists, Anarchists, Fascists, the State, etc. This does not mean that we are some how allied, we have enemies within the Imaginary Party.

So to talk about "the possibility of consciously executed campaign for revolution" from within the Imaginary Party is not only wrong, but a misunderstanding of what it is.

It is important to understand that what is at stake in civil war isn't a new world with a new order and a new morality, as is the intended program of marxists and anarchists of various stripes and colors. An insurrection is an explosion of all the various ethical intensities and the conflicts and solidarity that arise out of them. While the classic concept of political conflict (2 molar opposing forces) is entirely scrapped in Tiqqun, it is helpful to use it as an analogy: There is, on the one hand, Empire, which is the totalization of the commodity, spectacle and biopower, which seeks above all social peace through increasing subtle and diffuse forms of domination; and on the other there is the Imaginary Party, which as I have said already is actually a completely heterogeneous multiplicity of ethical formations, and for each of the singularities composing it there is a certain coincidence of living and fighting such that what is at stake is the way life is lived.

What is being attacked isnt the "ruling class" nor is it the state, but the social order that comes out of commodity domination.

Anyway, I dont get the tone of your post, especially your last couple sentences. Are you trying to imply that the "working class" and/or pro-revolutionaries do have the possibility for revolution? Because I have yet to see it.




And I'm going to add to the list that Ravachol started.

-Cybernetic Hypothesis This is an important one, because it examines how they think the forms of domination will unfold (which are pretty spot on).
-What is an Apparatus by Giorgio Agamben
-Deleuze on Spinoza (as well as actual Spinoza) The concept of ethics in the way that Tiqqun uses stems from Spinoza's work The Ethics
-What is Critical Metaphysics?
-The Economy as Black Magic
-Forms-of-Life by Giorgio Agamben

titles without authors are from Tiqqun


I feel like this was a sort of sloppy post, but I'm out of it today. Hope people continue posting here. Every other thread is boring.

[bots]

I really like Tiqqun and a lot of other post-left writings but probably for the wrong reasons. I find it all appeals to the nihilistic, fight club, fuck my ignorant deluded coworkers kind of mood I get into every once in a while. I guess the problem is after I read it I never do start a fight club or drop out of the system. I dunno, is all this post-left stuff just the lashing out of declassed petit-bourgeois and disappointed proletarians?

[black magick hustla]

i read the call in a reading circle. i like how it sounds a bit contemporary. beyond that, i don't know, i think it seems to me an attempt to give some sort of theoretical formalism to the aesthetic of revolt. you know, all the talk about leaving the world and fighting the global civil war etc. but seems pretty empty to me. you know the whole cliche idea that we are all crushed by alienation and we will lash out by burning down the world and shit. i mean its pretty cool and all, but doesn't seems very useful to me beyond conning younger kids who like that aesthetic into becoming moonbats. i also think that even when tiqqunistas rail on about activists they are the quintessential activists.

[black magick hustla]

anyway tiqqun is so 2010 lol

[Sasha]

Better 2010 than all this people here stuck in the late 18th century or in 1917 or 1936

[bots]

Really I guess the question I have as far as Tiqqun and most other post-left stuff goes is: where does it lead? What's the practical application for making revolution? It honestly strikes me as a kind of defeatist position not incredibly different from apocalyptic Christian eschatology. When I read this stuff the initial rush inevitably turns into a deep depression when I realize that I'm not going to be able to pursue the creed in the real world. It's a nice fantasy but...?

[black magick hustla]

Really I guess the question I have as far as Tiqqun and most other post-left stuff goes is: where does it lead? What's the practical application for making revolution? It honestly strikes me as a kind of defeatist position not incredibly different from apocalyptic Christian eschatology. When I read this stuff the initial rush inevitably turns into a deep depression when I realize that I'm not going to be able to pursue the creed in the real world. It's a nice fantasy but...?

it does have some practical applications. the coming insurrection is basically some sort of strategy manual. a lot of it is about "desertion" and forming "communes" (they have a very flexible concept of what a commune is, etc). honestly, nothing new under the sun to me. i think if you like collective living kudos for you, and there are some satisfying things about it but i don't think it is really a "strategy" and more so a lifestyle choice.

[black magick hustla]

Better 2010 than all this people here stuck in the late 18th century or in 1917 or 1936

i hope that doesn't refer to me because tbh i am probably one of the least dogmatic people you will ever meet

[Sasha]

Far from it... more the radical left in general...

[Ravachol]

Species Being's recommendation of Tiqqun's "The Cybernetic Hypothesis" (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Tiqqun__The_Cybernetic_Hypothesis.html) is great. I found the following summary/notes (joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2010/07/Notes-on-The-Cybernetic-Hypothesis.pdf) on it which are pretty helpful.

I also recommend reading Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics", written in 1948, from which Tiqqun (as well as the discipline of cybernetics in general) draw heavily.

The discipline of cybernetics is roughly the rationalisation of systems of control and power. Mainly productive power (that is, in the Foucauldian sense, Power as a force which produces certain behaviors, tastes and subjectivities as opposed to being merely repressive).

[Os Cangaceiros]

The Imaginary Party isn't a homogeneous body, it doesn't merely replace the concept of the class or party in the marxist or anarchist sense. Any body or any collection of bodies that takes a position is a part of the Imaginary Party. Communists, Anarchists, Fascists, the State, etc. This does not mean that we are some how allied, we have enemies within the Imaginary Party.

So to talk about "the possibility of consciously executed campaign for revolution" from within the Imaginary Party is not only wrong, but a misunderstanding of what it is.

I know that the Invisible Party isn't homogenous brosenstein, I remember that being mentioned in This Is Not A Program, in which they mention the "right-wing of the Invisible Party" (ie lone wolf fascists, militiamen, Islamic jihadists, etc.)

I'm not even going to read the rest of your post, as I feel I probably won't understand it. It's that time of the night ifyaknowwhatimean

[StalinFanboy]

i read the call in a reading circle. i like how it sounds a bit contemporary. beyond that, i don't know, i think it seems to me an attempt to give some sort of theoretical formalism to the aesthetic of revolt. you know, all the talk about leaving the world and fighting the global civil war etc. but seems pretty empty to me. you know the whole cliche idea that we are all crushed by alienation and we will lash out by burning down the world and shit. i mean its pretty cool and all, but doesn't seems very useful to me beyond conning younger kids who like that aesthetic into becoming moonbats. i also think that even when tiqqunistas rail on about activists they are the quintessential activists.

Yeah, I mean, in North America the only thing from Tiqqun that has been adopted is some of the language without anyone ever taking seriously the actual implications of what Tiqqun as a project that encompasses and surpasses what is said in TIC and Call is coming at. This is why tiqqun is associated with hipster insurrectos.

But I seriously think there are some extremely important things in Call that pro-revolutionaries should be taking seriously.

For example:
"WE HAVE KNOWN, we still know, the temptation of activism. The
counter-summits, the No-Border camps, the occupations,
and the campaigns against evictions, new security laws, the build-
ing of new prisons; the succession of all of this. The ever-increas-
ing dispersion of collectives responding to the same dispersion of
activity.

Running after the movements.

Feeling our power on an ad hoc basis, only at the price of
returning each time to an underlying powerlessness.

Paying the high price for each campaign. Letting it consume
all the energy that we have. Then moving to the next one, each time
more out of breath, more exhausted, more desolated"

"In running away from conditions of existence that mutilate
us, we found squats; or rather, the international squat scene.
In this constellation of occupied spaces where, despite many
limits, it is possible to experiment with forms of collective aggregation outside of control, we have known an increase of power.
We have organised ourselves for elementary survival – skipping,
theft, collective work, common meals, sharing of skills, of equip-
ment, of loving inclinations – and we have found forms of political expression – concerts, leaflets, demos, direct actions, sabotage. Then, little by little, we have seen our surroundings turn into a milieu and from a milieu into a scene. We have seen the enactment of a moral code replace the working out of a strategy. We have seen norms solidify, reputations
built, ideas begin to function; and everything become so predict-
able. The collective adventure turned into a dull cohabitation. A
hostile tolerance grasped all the relations. We adapted. And in the
end what was believed to be a counter-world amounted to nothing
but a reflection of the prevailing world: the same games of personal
valorisation as regards theft, fights, political correction, or radical-
ism – the same sordid liberalism in affective life, the same scraps
over access and territory, the same scission between everyday life
and political activity, the same identity paranoia."

"Our strategy is therefore the following: to immediately es-
tablish a series of foci of desertion, of secession poles, of rallying
points. For the runaways. For those who leave. A set of places to
take shelter from the control of a civilisation that is headed for the
abyss. It is a matter of giving ourselves the means, of finding the
scale in which all those questions, which when addressed sepa-
rately can drive one to depression, can be resolved. How to get rid
of all the dependencies that weaken us? How to get organised so
as to no longer have to work? How to settle beyond the toxicity of
the metropole without “leaving for the countryside”? How to shut
down the nuclear plants? How to not be forced, when a friend
goes mad, to resort to psychiatric pulverisation; or to the acerbic
remedies of mechanistic medicine when he falls ill? How to live
together without mutually dominating each other? How to react to
the death of a comrade? How to ruin empire?"

What is being elaborated in Call isnt just some hipification of old ideas, but a very real attempt at a new direction in revoluationary thought and praxis.


you know the whole cliche idea that we are all crushed by alienation and we will lash out by burning down the world and shit. i mean its pretty cool and all, but doesn't seems very useful to me beyond conning younger kids who like that aesthetic into becoming moonbats.

Remember that shit in Tunisia where homeboy lit himself on fire and people went in the streets? And then how that spread to other countries like Egypt? What happened in Tunisia was exactly what you are saying is cliche. That people were dominated, and there was a catalyst, and shit exploded. Obviously shit got recuperated pretty quick, but my point stands.

[StalinFanboy]

Really I guess the question I have as far as Tiqqun and most other post-left stuff goes is: where does it lead? What's the practical application for making revolution? It honestly strikes me as a kind of defeatist position not incredibly different from apocalyptic Christian eschatology. When I read this stuff the initial rush inevitably turns into a deep depression when I realize that I'm not going to be able to pursue the creed in the real world. It's a nice fantasy but...?
It's quite the opposite of defeatist. But its not prefigurative by any means. The question of "where does it lead?" is the question. The conclusion that Tiqqun comes to (or at least one of the conclusions) is to experiment with the way we live. To find new ways to relate to each other, to attempt to escape together from the domination of the commodity. But also to find new ways to attack, ways to free up our time from work, and new ways of finding friends.

This shit's only depressing when you're alone.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Remember that shit in Tunisia where homeboy lit himself on fire and people went in the streets? And then how that spread to other countries like Egypt? What happened in Tunisia was exactly what you are saying is cliche. That people were dominated, and there was a catalyst, and shit exploded. Obviously shit got recuperated pretty quick, but my point stands.

Also, other tiny incidents (in the grand scheme of things) in England 2011, Greece 2008 and France 2005 were the catalysts for some dramatic turns of events...

[bots]

It's quite the opposite of defeatist. But its not prefigurative by any means. The question of "where does it lead?" is the question. The conclusion that Tiqqun comes to (or at least one of the conclusions) is to experiment with the way we live. To find new ways to relate to each other, to attempt to escape together from the domination of the commodity. But also to find new ways to attack, ways to free up our time from work, and new ways of finding friends.

Didn't the hippies already do this?

Can't escape from the commodity, it always gets you in the end. The new ways to attack part I can get into.

[Ravachol]

Didn't the hippies already do this?

Can't escape from the commodity, it always gets you in the end. The new ways to attack part I can get into.

That is why the proposal is directed at a coincidence of living and struggeling, the materialization of the 'war machine':



The return to war demands a new conception of these.
We have to invent a form of war such that the defeat of Empire will no longer be a task which kills us, but which lets us know how to live, to be more and more ALIVE.

What we are talking about here is simply the constitution of war machines. By war machine, it is necessary to understand a certain coincidence of living and struggling, coincidence which does not present itself without simultaneously demanding to be built.
Because each time one of these terms finds itself in some way separated from the other, the war machine degenerates, goes off track. If it is the moment of living that is unilateralized, it becomes ghetto. It is in here that we bear witness to the sinister quagmire of “the alternative,” in which the purpose seems without ambiguity to be the commodification of the Self under the envelope of difference. The majority of occupied social centers in Germany, Italy or Spain, demonstrate how simulated exteriority to Empire can be a precious resource in capitalist valorization. “The Ghetto, the justifying of “difference,” the privilege given to all introspective and moral aspects, the tendency to consitute oneself as a separate society renouncing assault on the capitalist machine, on the “social factory,” is all of this perhaps a result of the vague and gushing rhapsodic “theories” of Valcarenghi [the director of the counter-cultural publication Re Nudo] and his consorts? Isn’t it strange that they accuse us of being a “sub-culture” precisely now when all of the flowery shit and non-violence that accompanies it is in crisis?” the autonomists of Senza Tregua already wrote in 1976.

On the other hand, if it is the moment of struggling that is isolated, the war machine degenerates into army. All of the militant formations, all of the terrible communities are war machines that have survived their own extinction in this petrified form.

(..)

War can’t be allowed to be put away as an isolated moment from our existence, as the decisive confrontation; from now on, it is our existence itself, in all of its aspects, that is war. That is to say that the first movement of this war is reappropriation. Reappropriation of means to live-and-struggle. Reappropriation, then, of spaces: squat, occupation or collectivizing private spaces. Reappropriation of what’s in common: constitution of languages, syntaxes, means of communication, of an autonomous culture –snatching the transmission of experience from the hands of the State. Reappropriation of violence: communizing fighting techniques, forming self-defense forces, arms. Lastly, reappropriation of basic survival: diffusion of medical knowledge-ability, progressive organization of a network of autonomous resupply.


In a sense, it means that the construction of communism, ie. our 'positive project' ought to be constructed in a fashion that is antagonistic with the totality of Capitalism and hampers the latter's reproduction through the construction the means of reproduction for communism. In a crude sense we could say that it's the 'primitive accumulation' of Communism where the kickstarting process spreads like a series of inkblots which act as a feedback loop back into the process, adding to it's spread,etc.

Though they're not completely on the same line, Theorie Communiste put the concept of communization (of which Tiqqun has it's own interpretation) nicely as follows:



the destruction of exchange: this means the workers attacking the banks which hold their accounts and those of other workers, thus making it necessary to manage without; this means the workers communicating their ‘products’ to themselves and the community directly and without market; this means the homeless occupying homes, thus ‘obliging’ construction workers to produce freely, the construction workers taking from the shops at liberty, obliging the whole class to organise to seek food in the sectors to be collectivized, etc. Let’s be clear about this. There is no measure which, in itself, taken separately, is ‘communism.’ To distribute goods, to directly circulate means of production and raw materials, to use violence against the existing state: fractions of capital can achieve some of these things in certain circumstances. That which is communist is not ‘violence’ in itself, nor ‘distribution’ of the shit that we inherit from class society, nor ‘collectivization’ of surplus-value sucking machines: it is the nature of the movement which connects these actions and underlies them, renders them the moments of a process which can only communize even further, or be crushed

[The Douche]

Didn't the hippies already do this?

Can't escape from the commodity, it always gets you in the end. The new ways to attack part I can get into.

Without the resources and spaces it is impossible to sustain attack. And I mean that physically, mentally, and emotionally.

[Art Vandelay]

If I wanted to get into tiqquin and the invisible committee where would I start? And would it be better to start with stuff by other authors that tic and tiqquin draw heavily on?

[The Douche]

If I wanted to get into tiqquin and the invisible committee where would I start? And would it be better to start with stuff by other authors that tic and tiqquin draw heavily on?

*If somebody else's advice is different than mine, they very well may be correct, I'm still learning tiqqun.


I started with TCI, it doesn't really matter what you start with in my mind, because there are parts in all their work that is easy to understand, and there are parts that are confusing and require other knowledge in order to grasp.

That said, of what I've read/attempted to read from them so far, intro to civil war has been the most troublesome.

I assume you've seen these:

http://tiqqunista.jottit.com/
http://www.bloom0101.org/translations.html

[bcbm]

Dupont critiqued Tiqqun in an article for Metamute called 'release us to the field' but I can't find it online anymore, only a discussion of said article: http://crashcourse666.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/does-monsieur-dupont-think-about-tiqqun/

is this the whole text here (http://burntbookmobile.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/release-us-to-the-field/)?



This shit's only depressing when you're alone.

ah but so many of us today are. i really like (or perhaps that should be past tense) a lot of what tiqqun brings to the table, but my efforts to find accomplices have always been rather unsuccessful. and i agree with some of the others here that what they are saying isn't necessarily new, it is just wrapped in a different cloth. i mean the 'war machine:'


In a sense, it means that the construction of communism, ie. our 'positive project' ought to be constructed in a fashion that is antagonistic with the totality of Capitalism and hampers the latter's reproduction through the construction the means of reproduction for communism.

this is an idea that has been a part of anarchism, for one, since the late 1890s (give or take a decade) and similar ideas have been constructed by other socialists around the same time. its just a modern take on an old idea, though one that needed to be rediscovered and put out there.

[StalinFanboy]

ah but so many of us today are.
absolutely. i mean only fairly recently have I actually been able to find true friends. but the key is what you already said, that one of the things we ALL have in common in late capitalism is that we are all always alone.


i really like (or perhaps that should be past tense) a lot of what tiqqun brings to the table, but my efforts to find accomplices have always been rather unsuccessful. and i agree with some of the others here that what they are saying isn't necessarily new, it is just wrapped in a different cloth. i mean the 'war machine:' Not all of their ideas are new in the sense that they are created or invented by the people involved in tiqqun. Most of their ideas are pulled from elsewhere. What is new entirely is the examination of these ideas within an explicitly revolutionary framework.

But the way that tiqqun wraps these ideas "in a different cloth" is still important, despite the fact that so many of burnout hipster commies (<3) brush it off. the affective tonality cant be ignored.




this is an idea that has been a part of anarchism, for one, since the late 1890s (give or take a decade) and similar ideas have been constructed by other socialists around the same time. its just a modern take on an old idea, though one that needed to be rediscovered and put out there.
again, what is 'new' about tiqqun is the manner in which these ideas, many of them like youve said arent new, are examined. i mean really, tiqqun isnt even really that new anymore. the first issue of the journal was realised in the 90s.

[StalinFanboy]

If I wanted to get into tiqquin and the invisible committee where would I start? And would it be better to start with stuff by other authors that tic and tiqquin draw heavily on?
I think it would be best to mix in a bit of the thinkers that tiqqun are influenced by but honestly the best thing to do is pick a piece that might sound interesting. i would start with Theory of Bloom or This is not a program. Bloom is a difficult piece to read, but its a crucial aspect of their theory.


honestly the best thing to do is find something that sounds interesting and read it. it probably will be hard at first, and you might come out of it more confused than ever, but you just read it again, or read something else before coming back to it.

[bcbm]

Not all of their ideas are new in the sense that they are created or invented by the people involved in tiqqun. Most of their ideas are pulled from elsewhere. What is new entirely is the examination of these ideas within an explicitly revolutionary framework.

most of their theory on conditions, etc i think is perhaps the first time put within a revolutionary framework, sure, but i think their suggestions for 'what is to be done' are basically what the socialist movements of the late 19th and early 20th century were doing, establishing a combative cultural formation with communist methods.

of course that was also the most successful period for those movements which is why i think it is a good thing to be 'revisited.'


But the way that tiqqun wraps these ideas "in a different cloth" is still important, despite the fact that so many of burnout hipster commies (<3) brush it off. the affective tonality cant be ignored.

the burnout hipster commies are the ones not brushing it off ;) but also probably the least well situated to put anything into action on a meaningful scale.

[Ravachol]

honestly the best thing to do is find something that sounds interesting and read it. it probably will be hard at first, and you might come out of it more confused than ever, but you just read it again, or read something else before coming back to it.

This.

That goes for everything, not only dense political theory. It goes for learning a craft, mastering the natural sciences or refining an art.

I recall 'Introduction to Civil War' being the first piece of Tiqqun I ready in full (I had only read fragments of TCI before that) and having to read pieces of it over and over again. The thesis-format (akin to Debord's Society of the Spectacle), though at first confusing, helped in this regard. I also admit that being familiar with Foucault's Discipline & Punish was very, very helpful.

[Comrade Jandar]

This.

That goes for everything, not only dense political theory. It goes for learning a craft, mastering the natural sciences or refining an art.

I recall 'Introduction to Civil War' being the first piece of Tiqqun I ready in full (I had only read fragments of TCI before that) and having to read pieces of it over and over again. The thesis-format (akin to Debord's Society of the Spectacle), though at first confusing, helped in this regard. I also admit that being familiar with Foucault's Discipline & Punish was very, very helpful.

Would you say being familiar with Foucault is useful for reading Tiqqun in general?

[Sasha]

feel free to join: http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=993

[The Douche]

feel free to join: http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=993

Seriously people, let's join and use this group!