💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › machete-the-insurrection-and-its-double.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:53:20. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: The Insurrection and Its Double
Author: Machete
Language: en
Source: Retrieved on 23 January 2011, from http://sites.google.com/site/anarchyinitaly/machete/the-insurrection-and-its-double

Machete

The Insurrection and Its Double

In distinguishing true romanticism from sham, Victor Hugo observed how

all authentic thought had a disquieting double on the watch for it,

always lying in wait, always quick to interpose itself for the original.

A character of astounding plasticity that plays on similarities in order

to gather some applause on the stage, this double has the specific

ability to transform sulfur into holy water and to make the most

reluctant public accept it. Modern insurrection, the one that is glad to

do without Central Committees and the Sun of the Future, also finds

itself reckoning with its shadow, with its parasite, with its classic

that imitates it, that wears its colors and clothes, that sweeps up its

crumbs.

On the wave of the media clamor that made it a best-seller in France,

The Coming Insurrection is now also available in an Italian version.

Published in March 2007, under the signature of the Invisible Committee,

this text has risen into the limelight of transalpine news thanks to a

judiciary investigation that led to the arrest on November 11, 2008 in

the little village of Tarnac, of nine subversives, accused of

involvement in an act of sabotage against the high speed railroad line.

As often happens in these cases, the investigating judge sought to

strengthen his theorem from a “theoretical” point of view as well, by

attributing the authorship of the book in question to one of those

arrested. Printed by a small commercial leftist publishing house and

distributed throughout the national territory, already well received by

the establishment[1] at the time of its publication — The Coming

Insurrection has become by a decision of the Prosecutor’s Office a

dangerous and frightening “manual of sabotage”[2]. From this comes its

success, fed by the fact that a few priests of the intelligentsia

(French as well as others) came out in its favor, concerned with the

undue police intrusion into the sphere of political philosophy. If one

can imagine the bewilderment of those who have suddenly discovered that

the Party can be Imaginary, but the police much less so, it is even

easier to imagine the satisfaction of the editor of this little book,

who had never thought of finding such an efficient advertising agent in

the Ministry of the Interior. In any case, all those arrested were out

of prison after a few months and it is hoped that they avoid it for a

long time. Here we can end all references to this event, which has taken

on ridiculous connotations, since the mixing of The Coming Insurrection

with those arrested in Tarnac, in the end, is the work of the French

magistrature. There is thus no reason to concern ourselves with it for

now.

Deserving of warning instead is the brief introductory note in the

Italian edition, in which the “Invisible Translators” (talk about the

franchising[3] of politics...) don’t hesitate to use the judiciary

investigation referred to above as a practical demonstration of the

value of this text. After having given word to its alleged author,

according to whom “The scandal of this book is that all that appears

there is rigorously and catastrophically true, and it doesn’t stop

coming true more every day.” (quotation drawn from an interview released

in the well-known subversive newspaper Le Monde), the Invisible

Translators reach the bizarre conclusion that he was arrested only

because he was suspected of having written “the book that you hold in

your hands”. Seized with excitement, they write of having translated it

“because what it says is true, and, above all, it says so”. The reason

why “ we would almost have to thank the sorry puppet theater of

anti-terrorism laws for having allowed this book to be read on such a

vast scale, in a collective manner, and often from a practical point of

view. If it hadn’t been for them, probably the joy propagated by this

book would not have reached so many people.” What do you say in the

presence of such considerations that compete in devotion with other

salivations of prositu memory? Perhaps it would be enough to recall that

this certainly isn’t the first time that a subversive writing was used

as supporting piece in a judicial inquiry, without for this reason

becoming Gospel. It would be like claiming that the arrest of certain

stalinists proves the truth of marxist-leninist publications, or that of

certain anarchists proves the truth of anti-authoritarian books. That

those in power in France don’t feel a jolt at the riots that inflame the

banlieu, at the periodic social movements, at direct actions spreading

across the territory, nor so much the less at a possible encounter

between these events — of course not! — so much as at a commentary on

them that can be acquired for 7 euros in any bookstore... it is a

question of a consolation typical of certain armchair revolutionaries.

The fact the Translators, Invisible, but above all Self-Interested,

transform repression into an advertising spot says nothing about this

book. But it says a lot about them.

This dreariness banished, The Coming Insurrection doesn’t wait.

But what is the coming insurrection that we need to examine? The

original one that departed from France, or the one that landed elsewhere

preceded by trumpet blasts? Let’s not get fooled by appearances, since

it is not, in fact, a question of the same one. The first is the

expression of a milieu that, in a world of zombies, points directly

toward the success at reviving the corpse of the vanguard, and to do

this, it leans on the culture industry. The second, which has the bad

luck of being shown off in a country where for now the revolution isn’t

for sale, is forced to cover the glitter of the merchandise with the

cloak of conspiracy. The Italic readers that will avidly read this text,

drunk on the subversive perfume sprayed on it by the pigs; would they

have done the same if they had found it on a bookshelf at Feltrinelli’s

with the sole recommendation of some authorized personnel? Permit us to

doubt it. But however it may be, it’s useless to go into it too much. So

let’s start by taking this text literally, outside of its specific

context to which we will return briefly at the end. It goes without

saying that disagreements, more than agreements, are what attracted our

attention.

Apart from a prologue, the book is composed of seven circles and four

chapters. In the first part, the Invisible Committee, in Dantesque

guise, take us through the hell of the current society, illustrating it

with numerous examples. In the second part, we are introduced into the

paradise of insurrection, to be attained through a multiplication of

communes. If the first part has an easy time winning a certain approval,

with a panoramic view of the world that offers us a glimpse of the

continuous devastation, the second part limps, and not just a little.

Still, they both share a common characteristic: a certain vagueness,

well concealed by the dry and peremptory style. But are we sure that

this is a defect and not, rather, a basic ingredient for the success of

the book?

As writers of an essay of political philosophy, the Invisible Committee

affects a strong contempt for speculation and a marked penchant for

practice. And this is good, above all because it allows them to rake in

the applause both of the erudite in withdrawal from vitamins and of the

activists thirsty for knowledge. Distinguishing themselves from the many

marxist sects, the Invisible Committee has no love for the great

analyses that subsume and explain, explain and subsume everything.

Intelligent analyses if you will, for goodness sake, but that after a

century and a half they have been a bit of a pain in the ass. They are

uncertain, disputable, at times even pathetic. The critique of the

existent, taken in its totality, doesn’t interest the Committee.

Nonetheless, precisely like the various marxist sects, the I.C. has the

lust to impose its vision. But since today a discourse that demands to

be taken seriously because it is based on “scientific” presuppositions

would provoke a certain hilarity, better to bet on something else,

better to peddle it as true insofar as it is based on observation.

There’s been enough analysis, enough critique, enough research, make way

for the evidence and its rock-hard objectivity that hits you suddenly

right in the eye. Thus, with contrived humility, the Invisible Committee

states from the start that they are content to “introduce a little order

into the common-places of our time, collecting some of the murmurings

around barroom tables and behind closed bedroom doors”, in other words,

“to lay down a few necessary truths” [The Coming Insurrection —

hereafter TCI — , p. 28, Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, 2009]. Its members

don’t even consider themselves the authors of this book; simply,

“They’ve made themselves scribes of the situation. It’s the privileged

feature of radical circumstances that a rigorous application of logic

leads to revolution. It is enough just to say what is before our eyes

and not to shrink from the conclusions” [TCI, p. 28].[4] We bet that you

had never thought of this: commonplaces are the necessary truths to

transcribe in order to awaken the sense of rigor that leads logically to

revolution. It’s obvious, isn’t it?

Dive into the seven circles that subdivide the contemporary social hell

and you will find very few ideas on which to reflect, but many states of

mind to share. As we’ve said already, the authors/writers of this text

avoid basing their discourse on any theory. In order not to incur the

risk of seeming old-fashioned, the scribes prefer to register the lived

in its ordinariness, where everything becomes familiar, precisely as a

common-place. In this clear and well-articulated flow of everyday

banalities — made of anecdotes, witticisms, advertising slogans, surveys

and pining away — each one finds something of himself there and

recognizes it. In taking note, in apocalyptic tones, of the impending

end of the world, in reviewing the various social spheres in which it is

consuming, the Invisible Committee lingers over the most immediately

perceivable effects, saying nothing about the possible causes. Indeed,

it informs us, “the general misery becomes intolerable the moment it is

shown for what it is, a thing without cause or reason” [TCI, p. 65].

Without cause or reason? Don’t expect radical critiques of the existent,

even if it means mixing the communist ones of capitalism and the

anarchist ones of the state: these are out-dated things to be avoided,

if one wants to appear original. From this civilization, political

powerlessness, economic bankruptcy, social decline get confirmed, but

always seen from the inside. Without illusions about what is, but also

without an impulse for what could be. This is because The Coming

Insurrection, after being born in the form of editorial merchandise, is

thought and written to reach the “great public”. And the “great public”

is composed of spectators greedy for emotions to consume in the moment,

in the course of situations, and is insensitive to ideas that might give

meaning to a whole life. To the “great public”, if one wants to seduce

it, it is necessary to palm off easy images in which one knows how to

reflect oneself without too much effort (as the Italian translators

smugly declare, “with no promise of understandings to be achieved in

terms of who knows what interpretations”).

It is almost banal to observe how Guy Debords ghost haunts this text

that sometimes recalls The Fight Club. Yes, precisely the famous film

taken from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, known for the “hard and innovative

style, with nihilistic contents”. The Invisible Committee brings to mind

the dressed-up Edward Norton seated on the john with the Ikea catalog in

hand, on the point of exploding and transforming into a wild Brad Pitt.

Same “schizophrenia”, same phrases for a point-blank effect.

— “This is your life, and it is ending one minute at a time.”

— “After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned

down.. You could deal with anything.”

— “It was right in every everyone’s face. Tyler and I just made it

visible. It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Tyler and I just gave

it a name.”

— “ Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns

me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s

name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

— “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do

anything.”

— “We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We

have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual

war... our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on

television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie

gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.

And we’re very, very pissed off.”

— “ You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank.

You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.

You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap

of the world.”

— “Why these buildings? Why credit card companies?” — “If you erase the

debt record, we all go back to zero. It’ll create total chaos.” [5]

...and so on until the collapse of the metropolises.

In this same nihil-aestheticist air, in The Coming Insurrection the end

of civil life together is depicted with the distance that separates the

sentimentalism of pop songs from the warnongering of the most militant

rap. The end of the family is inferred from the climate of boredom and

embarrassment that looms over the ritual common meal. The end of the

economy is readable in the jokes that circulate among the managers

themselves. The end of the city materializes in the form of advertising

posters. Having reached the end of the seventh circle, the conclusion is

predictable: like the Norton/Pitt due, the Invisible Committee deserves

applause. That it isn’t so difficult to sound convincing when one limits

oneself to describing the daily horrors of which we are all victims is

of little importance. That later, here and there, this long series of

objective observations allows some subjective tic to leak through, who

cares? Come on don’t be pedantic. Don’t growl in the face of the

collective We accompanied by the insistent contempt for the individual

I. Already sold off as the inspiration of Reebok, the individual later

finds itself again passed off as a synonym for “identity”, “problem”,

“straightjacket”. Aspiring shepherds like to wallow in the stench of the

flock. All that is needed to make them happy is the evocation of a

street gang or a political collective, with their respective followers

to fight and make processions for the racketistic control of the

“territory”. Uniqueness is fought off because it doesn’t create a mass

to manipulate. Level zero of consciousness is the silence in which

slogans echo the strongest, the blank sheet on which the Calls to

enlistment are printed.

In the same way don’t frown at the sight of the Byzantine distinction

between politics and the political[6], of the frantic attempt to save

the savable after having taken note of the shipwreck that is going on.

The fire that burns all demands to ashes, like the fury that escapes all

civil confrontation, certainly has a political meaning. But for whom?

Not for the anonymous insurgents who want to make a blank slate of what

surrounds them, to whom it is enough to give free rein to their desires.

Every political concern belongs only to the “state’s tentacles” [TCI, p.

95]. And don’t snort at the reproposition of the dialectical nursery

rhymes, inevitable jigsaw puzzles that transform the following of one

event after the other into a well-oiled mechanism (if for Marx and

Engels “ the bourgeoisie has not only manufactured the weapons the bring

its death”, for the Invisible Committee “the metropolis also produces

the means of its own destruction” [TCI, p. 61]). If this all reminds you

of something old and dismal, it is only because you are absorbed with

old and dismal ideological prejudices.

Dramatically aware that “We can’t rid ourselves of what binds us without

at the same time losing the very thing to which our forces would be

applied” [TCI, p. 32], the Invisible Committee keeps all irreducible

otherness at a safe distance. Best not to go too far into

“disaffiliation”, best that it remains “political”. This society has

become unlivable, it is said repeatedly, but only after having observed

its failure to keep its promises. One comes to ask oneself: if it had

not failed? Who knows, maybe if we hadn’t “been expropriated from our

own language by education, from our songs by reality TV contests, [...]

of our city by the police” [TCI, p. 36]... we might even be happy living

in our world. In expectation of reappropriating something that we have

never possessed, we can get by and struggle by exploiting out parents

(“We count making that which is unconditional in relationships the armor

of a political solidarity as impenetrable to state interference as a

gypsy camp. There is no reason that the interminable subsidies that

numerous relatives are compelled to offload onto their proletarianized

progeny can’t become a form of patronage in favor of social subversion”

[TCI, p. 42][7]) or perhaps by participating in the electoral show

(“Those who still vote seem to have no other intention than to desecrate

the ballot box by voting as a pure act of protest. We’re beginning to

suspect that it’s only against voting itself that people continue to

vote” [TCI, p. 23]). These radical philosophers, what jokers! So much

for maltreating/misusing the most conformist among their readers,

frightening them with evocations of the fires of the winter of 2005,

threatening them with the defense of the riffraff of the urban

outskirts, surprising them with the affirmation of the practical

uselessness of the state, reaching the point of accusing them of envying

the life of the poor.

All this to get where? For the Invisible Committee, this civilization no

longer has anything to offer. Only it’s a dusk that doesn’t forecast any

dawn. As in all forms of nihilism — and it is well-known that nothing

excites philosophers more than nihilism — it is the utopian tension that

gets lost. Beyond this world, there is only this world. All that is left

is a present that is rapidly disintegrating, inside of which to survive

as best one can under the circumstances. It is therefore not surprising

that for the scribes “Becoming autonomous” means merely “learning to

fight in the streets, to occupy empty houses, to love each other madly,

and to shoplift” [TCI, p. 42]: surviving as best one can under the

circumstances, precisely.

But then, what about the insurrection? What the heck, here we are. After

having described a social misery without cause or reason, here we have

reached the second part, that in which an insurrection without content

is announced. Here as well, from the start, a good approximation for

satisfying all palates stands out. “We can no longer even see,” the

Invisible Committee begins, “ how an insurrection might begin”. From an

uprising — someone has noted with irritation. Naaah, too precise. Best

to leave the question unresolved, so as to appeal to as many of the

curious as possible, and to jump from subject to subject in order to

dodge the points on which minds are usually divided. Do you think

relationships between subversives should be based on affinity (i.e., on

a firm sharing of general perspectives and ideas) or rather on

affectivity (i.e., on a temporary sharing of particular situations and

feelings)? Never fear, to the Invisible Committee an acrobatic leap is

enough to nonchalantly overcome the obstacle and swing on a sensational

overlap (“We have been given a neutral idea of friendship, understood as

a pure fondness without consequence. But all affinity is affinity within

a common truth” [TCI, p.98]). It’s a simple trick. Instead of starting

from individual desires, by force of things, multiple and divergent, it

is enough to start from social contexts that are easily perceived as

common. The Invisible Committee doesn’t like ideas that we possess; they

prefer truths that possess us: “A truth isn’t a view on the world but

what binds us to it in an irreducible way. A truth isn’t something we

hold but something that carries us” [TCI, p.97]. Truth is external and

objective, single-voiced, beyond discussion. The imminence of the end of

the world that surrounds us, for example (thus ignoring a possible

extension of this agony). It is sufficient to share the feeling of this

truth in order to find oneself again in cahoots about banalities of the

“we need to get organized” type. Don’t break the spell. Take this truth,

according to which the dead end in which the social order finds itself

is transformed into a superhighway toward the insurrection, on trust and

don’t dare to ask: organize how? for what? with whom? and why?

Are you one of those who holds that the destruction of the old world is

an unavoidable and preliminary moment in an authentic social

transformation? Or perhaps you are convinced that the immediate birth of

new forms will manage to divest the old authoritarian models of their

power, rendering all direct conflict with power superfluous? No problem.

Once again the Invisible Committee, with a finger in every pie, is able

to reconcile tensions that have always been opposed. While it hopes for

“a multiplicity of communes that will displace the institutions of

society: family, school, union, sports club, etc.”[ TCI, p. 102], it

theorizes about “Not making ourselves visible, but instead turning the

invisibility to which we have been relegated to our advantage, and

through conspiracy, nocturnal or faceless actions, creating an

invulnerable position of attack” [TCI, p. 113]. The lack of

embarrassment of the scribes-who-make-note-of-the-evidence is

embarrassing. It is true that the history of the revolutionary movement

is a huge theoretical and practical arsenal to loot. But the ease with

which they untie centuries old knots, the fruit of a crude manipulation,

leaves us astounded. Let’s observe how they transform the concept of the

“Commune” into an ideological master key able to fling open all their

doors. Still scraping together consent throughout the varied field of

the dissatisfied, among the enemies of this world (for whom the Commune

is synonymous with the insurgent Paris of 1871) as among the

alternatives to this world (for whom the Commune is the happy oasis in

the desert of capitalism), they become the bards of a “Commune” that

they see everywhere: “Every wildcat strike is a commune; every building

occupied collectively and on a clear basis is a commune. The action

committees of 1968 were communes, as were the slave maroons in the

United States, or Radio Alice in Bologna in 1977” [TCI, p. 102]. And

then what else? “The commune is the basic unit of partisan reality. An

insurrectional surge may be nothing more than a multiplication of

communes, their coming into contact and forming of ties. As events

unfold, communes will either merge into larger entities or fragment. The

difference between a band of brothers and sisters bound ‘for life’ and

the gathering of many groups, committees and gangs for organizing the

supply and self-defense of a neighborhood or even a region in revolt, is

only a difference of scale, they are all communes” [TCI, p. 117].[8] Of

course, the cows are all herds, without distinctions.

It is incredible to have to recall that the debate over the relationship

between the revolutionary rupture and experimentation with ways of life

that offer an alternative to the single model imposed by the ruling

social relationships goes back at least to the end of the nineteenth

century. In Italy it was manifested above all in the discussions around

the Cecilia Community, while in France it was embodies in the choices of

two brothers, Emile and Fortuné Henry (pardon, but everyone has a

History of his own to pass on. Unlike the Invisible Committee, for us,

anarchists come to mind). The first of the brothers, subscribing to the

words of Alexander Herzen according to whom “We do not build, we

demolish; we do not announce new revelations, we destroy old lies”, went

up on the gallows after having carries out some dynamite attacks; the

second founded the community of Aiglemont. The terms of the question

from that time have remained more or less the same: can a new form of

life be revealed only in the course of an insurrectional break, or can

it be realized also outside of this? Do the barricades make the

impossible possible through the suspension of centuries-old habits,

prejudices and prohibitions, or can this impossible be relished and

nourished daily at the margins of the ruling alienation?

The Invisible Committee is like virtue: it always stays in the middle.

Like today’s supporters of the “non-state public sphere” (from the

flabbiest anarchist militants to the slickest negrian “disobbedienti”),

it maintains that “Local self-organization superimposes its own

geography over the state cartography, scrambling and blurring it: it

produces its own secession” [TCI, p. 108–9]. But whereas the former see

in the progressive spread of experiments in self-organization an

alternative to the insurrectional idea, the Invisible Committee proposes

a strategic integration of ways judged separate up to now. No longer

sabotage or the garden, but rather sabotage and the garden. During the

day planting potatoes, during the night knocking down trellises. The

daytime activity is justified by the need not to be dependent on the

services now provided by the market and the state and to guarantee

oneself in this way a certain material autonomy. (“How will we feed

ourselves once everything is paralyzed? Looting stores, as in Argentina,

has its limits” [TCI, p. 125]), the nighttime activity by the need to

interrupt the flows of power (“In order for something to rise up in the

midst of the metropolis and open up other possibilities the first act

must be to interrupt its perpetuum mobile” [TCI, p. 61]). Driven by

enthusiasm for this brilliant combination that had never poked its head

up in the mind of any revolutionary, after having prescribed that “The

expansive movement of commune formation should surreptitiously overtake

the movement of the metropolis” [TCI, p. 109], the scribes ask

themselves: “Why shouldn’t communes proliferate everywhere? In every

factory, every street, every village, every school. At long last, the

reign of the base committees!” [TCI, p. 101].The answer to this question

is something obvious, observable in Tarnac on November 11, 2008: the

coming police. Without any originality, the Invisible Committee broods

over the old illusion active in the 1970s of an “Armed Commune”, of a

commune that is that doesn’t retreat in defense of its liberated space

but goes to attack other spaces that remain in the hands of power. It’s

just that this cannot be realized for two types of reasons.

The first is that, outside of an insurrectional context, a commune

exists in one of the gaps left empty by the ruling order. Its survival

is linked to its innocuousness. As long as it is a matter of cultivating

zucchini in organic gardens, of churning out food in people’s dining

halls, of healing sick people in self-managed clinics, it all goes well.

At times, someone is needed to remedy the lack of social services. At

bottom it provides a convenient place to park the marginalized far from

the glittering showcases of the city centers. But as soon as one goes

out in search of the enemy, things change. Sooner or later, the police

come knocking on the door and the commune is finished, or at least

trimmed down. Something other than “surreptitiously overtaking” the

metropolis. Every commune that has attacked the existent has had a short

life.

The other reason why the attempt to generalize the “Armed Commune”

outside of an insurrection is thwarted springs from the material

difficulty in which such experiments flounder, since they generally see

rising before them a myriad of problems accompanied by a chronic lack of

resources. Since only a privileged few are able to resolve every

annoyance with the speed with which one signs a check (or gets it sign

by mamma and papa, patrons of subversion), commune participants are

almost always forced to dedicate all their time and energies to internal

“functioning”. In short, sticking with the metaphor, on the one hand,

the daytime activity with its needs tends to absorb all strength at the

expense of the nighttime activity; on the other hand, the nighttime

activity with its consequences tends to endanger the daytime activity.

In the end, these two tensions clash. Fortuné Henry, at the time when he

started an intense propaganda activity that led him to go away from

Aiglemont, saw his social experiment overturning in a very short time

(and no one missed it). The French illegalist anarchists at the start of

the 20^(th) century had lived together in the community at Romanville,

but it was only after the collapse of this communitarian endeavor and

their return to Paris that they became the “automobile bandits”.

Let’s be clear. This doesn’t mean to deny the importance and value of

such experiments. It only means not overburdening them with a meaning

and an importance that they cannot have. As Malatesta said in 1913, “We

have no objection to the fact that some comrades seek to organized their

life in the way the intend it and draw the best solution that they can

from the circumstances in which they find themselves. But we protest

when they want to present ways of life, which are and can only be

adaptations to the current system, as anarchist things, or worse still,

as means for transforming society without having recourse to

revolution”. A limited and circumscribed in vitro experiment is

certainly able to furnish good indications and become more than useful

in specific circumstances, but it isn’t, by itself, liberation.

Extending the concept of the commune to all rebellious manifestation and

equating their sum to an Insurrection, as the Invisible Committee does,

is an instrumental gimmick for evading the question and causing one’s

advertising slogan to be welcomed everywhere. If the totality of

subversive practices is the insurrection, then this is not at all

arriving: it is already here, it always has been. Haven’t you noticed it

there? More than an observation that spreads joy, it seems to us to be a

consolation that spreads complacency. In rhetorical jargon one might

perhaps describe it, excusing us for the triviality, as a metonymy.

Speaking plainly, an exchange of terms of the sort in which the name of

the cause is used for that of the effect, the name of the container is

used for what is contained, the name of the material is used for the

object... It is a question of a tendency towards confusion that is

useful to the Invisible Committee, which allows them to pander to both

those who aim for the satisfaction of daily needs and those who point

toward the realization of utopian desires (besides, “rage and politics

should never have been separated” [TCI, p. 111]), to entertain both

those who are dedicated to understanding “plankton biology” [TCI, p.

107] and those who pose questions such as “How can a TGV line or an

electrical network be rendered useless? How does one find the weak

points in computer networks or scramble radio waves and fill screens

with white noise?” [TCI, p. 112]. Through the show of its being

practical — a noble intent that no one would dare to oppose — the

Invisible Committee skirts over every question that might stir up

discord, rubbing their hands for the “political richness” [TCI, p. 120]

achieved in this way. It roars loudly against this civilization and

doesn’t say a word about what it is fighting for. The practical result

of this attitude? “We have our hostility to this civilization for

drawing lines of solidarity and of battle on a global scale” [TCI, p.99]

In fact, if hostility to this civilization is accompanied by a passion

for an existence without any form of domination, all these common

fronts[9] would not be possible: who would form an alliance with a

contender for power?

Since they don’ say anything about Why and What, obviously, they don’t

say anything about How. Here as well avoidance is dressed up with the

fabric of style: “As for deciding on actions, the principle could be as

follows: each person should do their own reconnaissance, the information

would then be put together, and the decision will occur to us rather

than being made by us” [TCI, p.124].[10] It’s useless, therefore, to

lose time in tedious debates on what method to adopt and on the aim to

pursue, which mostly have the disgraceful consequence of producing

misunderstandings: let’s all go on a stroll and the decisions will come

by themselves. Beautiful, brilliant and valid for all. If you then have

need of some precision, take a look at their historical references and

strain your imagination a bit. Although in words “The fires of November

2005 offer a model for this” [TCI, p.113], the action that the scribes

have in mind seems to more closely resemble that of a Black Panther

Party led by Blanqui. If you think that it resembles an authoritarian

hodgepodge of a vanguardist type, then it is necessary to see that you

are irreversibly old and surpassed. Unable to satisfy yourself with the

elusive gifts of relational “density” or the communitarian “spirit”,

perhaps you are still able to find the literary description of what

might happen in an insurrection, with which this book concludes,

sickening! We have already mentioned the lack of precision with which

this text is put together, which is not at all its greatest defect, its

weak side, as some have maintained in reviewing it. On the contrary, it

seems to be its strong point. The Coming Insurrection is in step with

the times, perfectly in fashion. It possesses the characteristics most

required at the moment, it is flexible and elastic, it adapts itself to

all circumstances (in the subversive sphere). It is well presented, has

style and ends up being liked by everyone because it gives a bit of

reason to all, without disaffecting anyone in the end. From this

standpoint, it is a decidedly political book.

We’ll end with a couple of words on the context from which this book

comes. France is notoriously the fatherland of revolution and of love,

but also of cultural avant-gardes. That is where the Futurist Manifesto,

considered the father of the avant-garde, was published[11], that is

where the Situationist International, considered its final expression,

was active. The Invisible Committee is the necromancer of this rotting

tradition that would like to combine revolutionary tensions and

grocery[12] sales (generally putting the former in the service of the

latter). Like its predecessors, it does nothing more than publicize

problems that have always been faced as individuals and groups struggle,

sheltered from the cultural and political stage. After drawing from the

most varied sources of the revolutionary heritage, after having

thoroughly mixed single, pre-selected elements, it arrogantly presents

this brisk subversive mix to a public of consumers of radical thrills,

boasting about its originality. Even though instructed about the

contradiction into which its fathers/godfathers had fallen, the

Invisible Committee follows them in deeds as well as words. The result

is a text that gets published by a commercial publishing house, but

that, at the same time, warns against “cultural circles” whose task is

“to spot nascent intensities and to explain away the sense of whatever

it is you’re doing” [TCI, p.100]. On the one hand, it is chosen as book

of the month by the FNAC[13], but on the other hand, it admonishes us

that “In France, literature is the prescribed space for the amusement of

the castrated. It is the formal freedom conceded to those who cannot

accommodate themselves to the nothingness of their real freedom” [TCI,

p.87]. But as has already been noted, a revolutionary movement animated

by a desire to achieve a rupture with the existent has no need of

confirmation from the social order that it criticizes. Let’s leave to

the opportunists of every stripe the hypocrisy of passing off as a

daring incursion into enemy territory what is, in reality,

collaborationism. It is a strange idea of secession and autonomy from

the institutions that advises setting it up and participating in it

without hesitation.

Let’s keep in mind that the fans of this book have good reason to be

happy: after the American edition published by Semiotext(e), which

specializes in post-structuralist French theory, is distributed by

M.I.T. Press (at only $12.95), its planetary success is preannounced.

And to what is this success due? Despite the assonance that can be found

there, The Coming Insurrection — coming into all bookstore windows, that

is — is that it is the caricature and the commodification of the

insurrection that might break them all.

[1] In English in the original — translator.

[2] In the material I have read in English, the French Minister of the

Interior went so far as to call it a “manual of terrorism” — translator.

[3] In English in the original — translator.

[4] The original in the French actually reads: “c’est le privilege des

circonstances radicals que la justesse y mène en bonne logique à la

revolution”. In the English, the word “justesse” (accuracy or

correctness) disappears within the “rigorous application of good logic”.

I have therefore taken some liberties with the next sentence, replacing

the Italian word “giusto” (rightness, correctness, accuracy) with

“rigor” in order to parallel the English translation.

[5] All quotes from the movie The Fight Club

[6] See page 25 of TCI, among other places.

[7] One has to wonder why the explicit references to family

relationships and parents found in the passage in both the Italian and

in the original French are dropped in the English version. The passage

is about depending on one’s parents for cash as a path to autonomy...

The assumption is that one’s parents have cash and will give it with no

strings attached. — translator.

[8] In the original: “elles sont indistinctement des communes”,

literally “they are communes without distinction”.

[9] In the quote from TCI above, in the Italian version, the phrase

“fronti comuni” (common fronts) was used to translate the original

French phrase “fronts à l’échelle mondiale”, which would basically mean

“global fronts”. In the Semiotext(e)/MIT Press English translation, the

phrase “battle” is used, even though I could find nothing to indicate

that this is a legitimate translation for the phrase “fronts à l’échelle

mondiale”. But it is more exciting than “common front” or “global

front”. — (translator’s note)

[10] The last clause in both the French and the Italian is a word play

of some significance (French: “et la décision viendra d’ellemême, elle

nous prendra plus que nous ne la prendrons”: “and the decision comes by

itself, it takes us rather than we taking it”, the point being our

relative passivity in the face of the force of circumstance. —

translator.

[11] Though the Futurist Movement was founded by Italians, the manifesto

was first published, in French, in Le Figaro (a French newspaper) on

February 20, 1909. — translator.

[12] A reference to the fact that one of the Tarnac 9 bought (with those

subversive parental “subsidies”) and runs the local grocery store. In an

interview he is reported to have said: “I’m just a shopkeeper with a

historical passion for revolutionary movements.”

[13] Fédération nationale d’achats des cadres, or National Purchasing

Federation for Cadres (literally “managers”, but in this case apparently

a reference to “cadres” in the leftist political sense), an

“international entertainment retail chain”, centered in France, offering

“cultural and electronic products”, started by two members of France’s

Young Socialists movement in 1954, one of whom was Trotsky’s bodyguard

for a while.