Comité Invisible > Quotes

“The world would not be moving so fast if it didn't have to constantly outrun it's own collapse.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“It’s useless to wait-for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides.”
― Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection

“I am what I am.' Never has domination found such an innocent-sounding slogan. The maintenance of the self in a permanent state of deterioration, in a chronic state of near-collapse, is the best-kept secret of the present order of things. The weak, depressed, self-critical, virtual self is essentially that endlessly adaptable subject required by the ceaseless innovation of production, the accelerated obsolescence of technologies, the constant overturning of social norms, and generalized flexibility. It is at the same time the most voracious consumer and, paradoxically, the *most productive self*, the one that will most eagerly and energetically throw itself into the slightest *project*, only to return later to its original larval state.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“Crisis is a mode of government.”
― Comité invisible

“There is no “clash of civilizations.” There is a clinically dead civilization kept alive by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet’s atmosphere. At this point it can no longer believe in a single one of its own “values,” and any affirmation of them is considered an impudent act, a provocation that should and must be taken apart, deconstructed, and returned to a state of doubt. Today Western imperialism is the imperialism of relativism, of the “it all depends on your point of view”; it’s the eye-rolling or the wounded indignation at anyone who’s stupid, primitive, or presumptuous enough to still believe in something, to affirm anything at all. You can see the dogmatism of constant questioning give its complicit wink of the eye everywhere in the universities and among the literary intelligentsias. No critique is too radical among postmodernist thinkers, as long as it maintains this total absence of certitude. A century ago, scandal was identified with any particularly unruly and raucous negation, while today it’s found in any affirmation that fails to tremble.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“You have to admit: this whole “catastrophe,” which they so noisily inform us about, it doesn’t really touch us. At least not until we are hit by one of its foreseeable consequences. It may concern us, but it doesn’t touch us. And that is the real catastrophe.

There is no “environmental catastrophe.” The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what’s left to man after he’s lost everything. Those who live in a neighborhood, a street, a valley, a war zone, a workshop — they don’t have an “environment;” they move through a world peopled by presences, dangers, friends, enemies, moments of life and death, all kinds of beings. Such a world has its own consistency, which varies according to the intensity and quality of the ties attaching us to all of these beings, to all of these places. It’s only us, the children of the final dispossession, exiles of the final hour — the ones who come into the world in concrete cubes, pick our fruits at the supermarket, and watch for an echo of the world on television — only we get to have an environment.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“I am what I am.' Never has domination found such an innocent-sounding slogan. The maintenance of the self in a permanent state of deterioration, in a chronic state of near-collapse, is the best-kept secret of the present order of things. The weak, depressed, self-critical, virtual self is essentially that endlessly adaptable subject required by the ceaseless innovation of production, the accelerated obsolescence of technologies, the constant overturning of social norms, and generalized flexibility.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“There are plenty of hustles. Aside from welfare, there are various benefits, disability money, accumulated student aid, subsidies drawn off fictitious childbirths, all kinds of trafficking, and so many other means that arise with every mutation of control. It's not for us to defend them, or to install ourselves in these temporary shelters or to preserve them as a privilege for those in the know. The important thing is to cultivate and spread this necessary disposition towards fraud, and to share its innovations.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“L’État est la mafia qui a vaincu toutes les autres, et qui a gagné en retour le droit de les traiter en criminelles.”
― Comité invisible, To Our Friends

“The maintenance of the self in a permanent state of deterioration, in a chronic state of near-collapse, is the best-kept secret of the present order of things. The weak, depressed, self-critical, virtual self is essentially that endlessly adaptable subject required by the ceaseless innovation of production, the accelerated obsolescence of technologies, the constant overturning of social norms, and generalized flexibility.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“Depresyonda falan değiliz; grevdeyiz. Kendi kendilerini idare etmeyi reddedenler için "depresyon" bir hal değil, politik ayrışmaya doğru giden bir geçit, vazgeçme, dışarı adım atmadır.”
― Comité invisible

“Un monde dont la positivité s'élève sur tant de ravages mérite bien que ce qui s'y affirme de vivant prenne d'abord la forme du saccage, de la casse, de l'émeute. On ne manquera pas de nous faire passer pour des désespérés au motif que nous agissons, nous bâtissons, nous attaquons sans espoir. L'espoir, voilà au moins une maladie dont cette civilisation ne nous aura pas infectés. Nous ne sommes pas désespérés pour autant. Nul n'a jamais agi par espoir. L'espoir a partie liée à l'attente, au refus de voir ce qui est là, à la crainte de faire effraction dans le présent, bref : à la crainte de vivre.”
― Comité Invisible, Now (Semiotext

“La situation est la suivante : on a employé nos pères à détruire ce monde, on voudrait maintenant nous faire travailler à sa reconstruction et que celle-ci soit, pour comble, rentable.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“Ceux qui ont trouvé dans les voies criminelles moins d'humiliation et plus de bénéfices que dans l'entretien de surfaces ne rendront pas leurs armes, et la prison ne leur inculquera pas l'amour de la société.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“You have to admit: this whole “catastrophe,” which they so noisily inform us about, it doesn’t really touch us. At least not until we are hit by one of its foreseeable consequences. It may concern us, but it doesn’t touch us. And that is the real catastrophe. There is no “environmental catastrophe.” The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what’s left to man after he’s lost everything.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“«CE QUE JE SUIS», alors ? Traversé depuis l’enfance de flux de lait, d’odeurs, d’histoires, de sons, d’affections, de comptines, de substances, de gestes, d’idées, d’impressions, de regards, de chants et de bouffe. Ce que je suis ? Lié de toutes parts à des lieux, des souffrances, des ancêtres, des amis, des amours, des événements, des langues, des souvenirs, à toutes sortes de choses qui, de toute évidence, ne sont pas moi. Tout ce qui m’attache au monde, tous les liens qui me constituent, toutes les forces qui me peuplent ne tissent pas une identité, comme on m’incite à la brandir, mais une existence, singulière, commune, vivante, et d’où émerge par endroits, par moments, cet être qui dit « je ». Notre sentiment d’inconsistance n’est que l’effet de cette bête croyance dans la permanence du Moi, et du peu de soin que nous accordons à ce qui nous fait.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“Since the autumn of 2008, never has it made more sense, and such a widely-shared sense, to smash banks, but precisely for that reason, so little sense to do it in a small group of professional rioters.”
― Comité invisible, To Our Friends

“I am what I am.' Never has domination found such an innocent-sounding slogan. The maintenance of the self in a permanent state of deterioration, in a chronic state of near-collapse, is the best-kept secret of the present order of things.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“There is no “environmental catastrophe.” The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what’s left to man after he’s lost everything. Those who live in a neighborhood, a street, a valley, a war zone, a workshop — they don’t have an “environment;” they move through a world peopled by presences, dangers, friends, enemies, moments of life and death, all kinds of beings.”
― Comité invisible, The Coming Insurrection

“Breaking is understandable, among other things, as an open debate in public on the question of property.”
― Comité invisible, Now (Semiotext

“You have to admit: this whole “catastrophe,” which they so noisily inform us about, it doesn’t really touch us. At least not until we are hit by one of its foreseeable consequences. It may concern us, but it doesn’t touch us. And that is the real catastrophe.

There is no “environmental catastrophe.” The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what’s left to man after he’s lost everything. Those who live in a neighborhood, a street, a valley, a war zone, a workshop — they don’t have an “environment;” they move through a world peopled by presences, dangers, friends, enemies, moments of life and death, all kinds of beings.”
― Comité invisible