This is Not a Program

by Tiqqun, Joshua David Jordan (Translator)

An urgent critique of the biopolitical subject and omnipresent Empire.

Historical conflict no longer opposes two massive molar heaps, two classes—the exploited and the exploiters, the dominant and dominated, managers and workers—between which, in each individual case, it would be possible to differentiate. The front line no longer cuts through the middle of society; it now runs through each one of us... “ — from This Is Not a Program

Traditional lines of revolutionary struggle no longer hold. Rather, it is ubiquitous cybernetics, surveillance, and terror that create the illusion of difference within hegemony. Configurations of dissent and the rhetoric of revolution are merely the other face of capital, conforming identities to empty predicates, ensuring that even “thieves,” “saboteurs,” and “terrorists” no longer exceed the totalizing space of Empire. This Is Not a Program offers two texts, both originally published in French by Tiqqun with Introduction to Civil War in 2001. In This Is Not a Program, Tiqqun outlines a new path for resistance and struggle in the age of Empire, one that eschews the worn-out example of France's May '68 in favor of what they consider to be the still fruitful and contemporary insurrectionary movements in Italy of the 1970s. “As a Science of Apparatuses” examines the way Empire has enforced on the subject a veritable metaphysics of isolation and pacification, “apparatuses” that include chairs, desks, computers; surveillance (security guards, cameras); disease (depression); crutch (cell phone, lover, sedative); and authority. Tiqqun's critique of the biopolitical subject and omnipresent Empire is all the more urgent as we become inured to the permanent state of exception that is the War on Terror and to other, no less intimate forms of pacification. But all is not lost. In its unrelenting production of the Same, Empire itself creates the conditions necessary for the insurrection to come.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Nonfiction, French Literature

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tiqqun is a French collective of authors and activists formed in 1999. Their journal was the first to publish the collective author “The Invisible Committee.” Tiqqun's books include Introduction to Civil War, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, and This Is Not a Program (all published by Semiotext(e)).

Reviews

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Si se quiere ver así, tres libros en uno.-

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Esto no es un programa (publicación original: Ceci n’est pas un programme, 2009) es un trabajo escrito por un colectivo activista, intelectual, militante y artístico francés de carácter antisistema en varios niveles no siempre simultáneos que, muy a su manera, trata de redefinir el concepto de conflictividad sociopolítica a nivel histórico con intenciones orgánicas y, quizá, hasta ejecutivas.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[6655321 · Rating 3 out of 5]

you know when you read something, and you are young and you are like THIS IS THE BEST EVER? thats sort of how i feel about my relationship to Tiqqun 3 years after i first read TCI? like, i'm probably better off being like "woo thanks for the memories lets never call each other"

[izaya · Rating 1 out of 5]

crackerbabble

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

you’re already a criminal in their eyes so might as well act like one. and you’ll never win, but if you can’t beat em at least make them bleed like pigs. throw your copies of Toward the Critique of Violence out. although i’m gonna be honest, not sure i prescribe to a revolutionary program built around idk reading more Carl Schmitt (though often times here i found i would rather be reading Schmitt). also a lot more of this tract is recycled Deleuze + Guattari than probably any of us would like to admit.

i don’t want to quibble too much with the nuts and bolts though, Tiqqun is there to provoke and that’s what they do here. will be reading The Invisible Committee stuff soon, updating my personal policy to “willing to negotiate with terrorists”.

[Rafael Tsukamoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entre os textos que li, é o que melhor dá a entender o que seria o Partido Imaginário, o que me fez, talvez, desacreditar dele um tanto, mas ter fé que haja a possibilidade dele (acho que é melhor assim, até pra eles)
discutindo o maio de 68, da frança e o maio de 77, da italia, criticando negri a todo momento e com a empresa de defesa da autonomia (com algumas cringices próprias da parte patética do tiqqun, principalmente na discussão acerca da categoria do guerreiro, específica de um capítulo), tiqqun tenta traçar um ''programa'' revolucionário que dita tanto a partir do problema que nos trás maio de 68 (um movimento completamente capturado, um movimento que "deu certo", e por isso mesmo deu errado), sem potência, como tenta extrair de 77 o que há de potencialidade.
Voltando ao começo, talvez não haja o que acreditar também, até porque acredito que não seja possível dizer que ele É. Ele está para além disso. A questão é sobre formas-de-vida que estão em guerra, em combate, contra outras, mas também em alguma forma de convivência entre si. Só assim para reviver alguma possibilidade de movimento revolucionário que não seja fagocitada pelas forças do Império, ou do Capital. Não há alguém que componha o Partido Imaginário, mas qualquer um pode compô-lo : "Aqui, as ações de guerra são ou anônimas ou assinadas por pseudônimos que mudam a cada ocasião, sempre indetermináveis, solúveis no mar da Autonomia."
Enfim, terei que ler os autores da Autonomia e os Situacionistas.

[Jack Kelley]

tiqqun is so hatervision

[Fabiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The so-called 'socialist' regimes have carried out its program perfectly: integrating everyone into capitalist relations of production and incorporating each person into the process of valorization. Their collapse, conversely, has but shown the impossibility of a total capitalist system. It has
thus been by way of social struggles and not against them that Capital has taken hold of humanity, that humanity has in fact reappropriated it to become, strictly speaking, the people of Capital." (30)

"Separ/azione means: we have nothing to do with this world. We have nothing to say to it nor anything to make it understand. Our acts of destruction, of sabotage: we have no reason to follow them up with an explanation duly guided by human Reason. We are not working for a better, alternative world to come, but in virtue of what we have already confirmed through experimentation, in virtue of the radical irreconcilability between Empire and this experimentation, of which war is a part." (61)

"In essence, then, ours will be a silent war; it will be evasive, avoid direct confrontation, declare little. In so doing it will impose its own temporality. Just as we are identified we will give the notice to disperse, never allowing ourselves to be suppressed, already reuniting in some unsuspected place." (71)

"There will be more and more psychologists, even psychoanalysts, in the police department,· there will be more community therapy available; the problems of the individual and of the couple will be talked about everywhere; repression will be more psychologically comprehensive. The work of prostitutes will have to be recognized, there will be a drug advisor on the radio-in short, there will be a general climate of understanding acceptance. But if there are categories and individuals who escape this inclusion, if people attempt to question the general system of confinement, then they will be exterminated like the Black Panthers in the US., or their personalities exterminated as it happened with the Red Army Faction in Germany. -Felix Guattari, 'Why Italy?' 42" (101)


During my reading, two stark images were evoked in my mind: that of Barbara Kruger's "Your Body is a Battle Ground," and season 2 episode 29 of The Twilight Zone, "The Obsolete Man." The figures these images represent seem to fall somewhere in line with "This is Not a Program." The war-machine body and the silhouette of a man deemed "obsolete." The previous functions of the state apparatus (though this word has been absolutely exhausted in this work) were to render useless, exclude, demolish. But the workaround was found at the center of this exclusion. This, we know.

There's not much else I can say that I haven't said before, the fault of the repetitive nature of this book and perhaps my own tiredness. The mythology of The Imaginary Party, one that simultaneously exists and does not. To the untrained eye, I feel their work could easily be dismissed. As logically inconsistent, static rambling. To all at once deny and edify. But the movement has been camouflaged. The movement is behind curtains. The movement is known by the curiosity to shift one's eye into a key hole and know something in you is about to change.

I said it in a previous review, but they seriously underplay their strongest concepts (intentional or not). But I'm starting to believe that is the beauty here. That what is explicitly said is what is already known or inferred. It is the weaponizing of silence. Silence as a tactic. What goes beyond saying lacks the words and resources that enable its ability to be viewed. A grimace, a willed flat affect. The power-knowledge reciprocity forgoes the prison of language. Evasion is the weapon of mass destruction. To be so inconspicuous you are nothing but a waft in the air under the nose of tyranny. You are not apart of norm, nor the abnormal, you simply aren't there. There is no name for you, no denomination. Its another, might I add imperative, focal point of these works. No specific 'plan of action' is provided. It would be completely counter-intuitive. There are suggestions, ways, methods, but no solutions. To add a period at the end of a sentence is to decapitate it. To end the line of function. Defunct, done, over. The predicates of government are TO make decision. Decision to suspend to norm only for its 'preservation,' decision to mark territories, decision to push economic incentives, decision to make revolutionary acts appear inconsequential. To decide is not to cure, it is to compensate. The solution here is in dialogue. It is in absorbing all ways, all the 'words,' and making them work. if this makes no sense then uhhh whatever man its 130 am and I had some questionably aged wine earlier (which might as well have been absinthe).

[Renzo Rivera · Rating 5 out of 5]

«”clase contra clase” significa en realidad “clases contra no-clase”, traiciona la determinación de absorber, de liquidar ese resto siempre más compacto, ese elemento flotante y sin asignación social que amenaza con llevarse por delante toda interpretación sustancialista de la sociedad, tanto burguesa como marxista […] el Partido Imaginario no es sustancialmente un resto de la totalidad social, sino el hecho de que exista un resto, de que lo representado exceda siempre a su representación, de que eso sobre lo que se ejerce el poder se le escape de continuo. […] el Partido Imaginario no es uno de los términos para expresar la contradicción social, sino el hecho de que existe esa contradicción, la irresoluble alteridad de lo determinado frente a la universalidad omnívora del Imperio. y es solo mediante el Imperio, es decir, mediante la representación, como el Partido Imaginario existe como tal, es decir, en tanto que negación»

«lo que los distintos devenires del Autonomismo tienen en común es la reivindicación de un movimiento de separación en relación a la sociedad, en relación a la totalidad. secesión que no supone la afirmación de una diferencia estática, de una alteridad esencial, como una nueva casilla en el tablero de esas identidades cuya gestión garantiza el Imperio, sino fuga, línea de fuga. […] este movimiento de deserción interior, de sustracción brutal, de fuga incesantemente renovada, esta irreductibilidad crónica al mundo de la dominación, es lo más temido por el Imperio.»

[Kavya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not remember the first time I read this pamphlet-like book but I am glad I finished the tour de force of continental radicalism while living in India. The last section on “Apparatus” and the questioning of their functions in capitalist society seems to be most coherent to me, at least in terms of relating Foucault, analyzing colonial occupation of Empire and digesting architectural structures of oppression together. Examples of apparatus abound in my surroundings of Mumbai, India. Yet people defy them at will, or at whim.
Youngsters jumping around walls just for the sake of jumping; men jumping across a garden fence to get to the masjid.
Hawkers selling food at the beach right next to the “No Hawkers” sign; a random passerby’s warning of the police near the vicinity of the writer.
People hanging out of the doors of the local trains just to show off or get some breeze in their faces despite clear signs saying “No Hanging from the doors.” Rickshaws of Mumbai which once only accepted masked customers now do not bother to erase off the English sign of “No mask, no entry” despite the virtual end of the practice.

I also unwittingly broke the rules by sitting in the “First Class Ladies Section“ of the local train despite having a non-first class ticket on my way to the beach destination of Virar. The loose enforcement also seems part of the societal disregard for colonial and postcolonial rules. The seller, a first class lady herself, did not ask me whether or not I wanted a first class ticket. Perhaps she knew I would get on which ever section I pleased. The fact that roughly 75% of people around greater Mumbai take the metro also corresponds to the Paris Metro section of the book, in which workers assert their bodily presence either as living labor force-as-able-bodied-muscles; or as the daily tiffin deliveries, which link the gendered domestic labor that sustains the city’s other social segments, such as office workers. Although this city has rarely experienced the Nazi-Vichy occupation, the defiance of colonial hierarchies of work takes place on the metro, beyond texts.
Yet texts and words clearly have a function in Eurocentric capitalist society, which the book is aware of in its discussion of Latin-influenced European language statements. The examples the book uses, such as “The man is white” or “The woman is a slut” also has troubled me in my journey of becoming a social scientist in the English language. The identification of perception becomes almost incriminating in many instances despite appearing neutral. I have tried to study this impact in my own art projects of compiling a German-Arabic dictionary on Instagram (@deutschbilarabi). Situating the reader of my dictionary as the post-Arab revolution emigre-refugee to Germany, internalizing some of the vocabulary and statements depend on the reader’s conscious disavowal of an incriminating logic embedded in contemporary European (in this case, German) language while learning it. In this process, the dictionary brings her attention to the functioning of Eurocentricity in differentiating or marginalizing non-Europeans from a supposed center of Europe.
Reading this book also helps ward off common tactics employed by f***boys in this day and age which use capital to express their misogyny against women of all classes. Yet the discussion of drugs perhaps is a bit lacking in data, since not all systems of medicine correspond neatly under the rubric proposed by the book: while COVID vaccines may have been dominated by a patent-driven Global North, the shadow distribution of hard drugs does not follow a neat pattern of “more drugs at capitalist center of Empire” due to many technical, agriculture, and historical reasons.
.
June 5th Mumbai

[joseph m · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Thus the highway: the concrete utopia of cybernetic Empire.”

[Rui Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may not be a program, but it is worth your time. Unlike most Tiqqun texts which focus on a specific concept (civil war, terrible community, young-girl), this book provides a relatively comprehensive overview of the authors' worldview. It covers the key concepts (empire, invisible party, social war...) and the relations among them.
It is also Tiqqun's most focused on apparatus text. It is really helpful to read it alongside Agamben's "what is an apparatus?".
Italian Autonomy makes many appearances throughout the book. It's nice how they manage to ground their theory with an historic example, but (despite the authors ending up dismissing it) their enthusiasm with the Red Brigades is unsettling at times.

[aa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tiqqun's text titled "A Critical Metaphysics Could Be Born as a Science of Apparatuses" is actually the clearest and most understandable introduction to their ideas. Who woulda thunk?!

[melancholinary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little shock yet inevitable for Tiqqun to deliver a jab on Negri immaterial labour and Marx commodity fetishism... and they end everything with a borderline promotion of violence. Great read.

[Amar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Us vs them mentality. Their blaming of the problem on some mysterious and powerful 'other' can make the work seem fascistic at times--this lends itself to the form of their writing style, not the ideas themself. Unfortunately Tiqqun has a tendency toward the form of the text, rather than actual sound and well-held together theories (similar to Object-Oriented Philosophy, which invests itself in the form of its texts, rather than the actual ideas themself).

[Adelina Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

insane

[Silas Hedman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the part where he italicized every single word

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this text, Tiqqun critique the politics of May '68, operaismo, and the workers' movement in general, whilst appraising and reimagining autonomia and the movement of '77 in Italy. Whilst I found it quite interesting, particularly with its integration into a framework based upon a 'science of apparatuses', and agreed with a large number of its critiques of May '68 and the 'official' workers' movement, I did think the text gave an unfair historical representation of operaismo, and was flawed in its analytical basis in that we have gone past a point in history in which the working-class is a revolutionary subjectivity. Fundamentally, I believe that Tiqqun fail to properly locate an ultra-left politics within a concrete understanding of the wage-relation and the domination of commodity exchange within our society, and therefore fail to account for the importance of the refusal of work as a strategy for revolutionary transformation. Nonetheless though, still an enjoyable and interesting read!

[Sean A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is technically like two separate texts in one. These are called 'This is Not a Program' and 'A Science of Apparatuses'. I've only read the first text out of this book so far, so, obviously, that is what I will address here.
'This is Not a Program' uses a lot of the theory heavy quasi-militant language of the other tiqqun works 'theory of bloom', 'intro to civil war' and the tiqqun related but invisible committee credited and glen beck shouted-out 'the coming insurrection', but this time especially informed by a historical context. It does this with the mention of the french worker-student uprising/general strike which took place in may '68 in contrast with a movement known as the Italian Autonomia, a diverse wave of subversive uprising which we are told crested in 1977. Tiqqun tend to champion Italian Autonomia with a lot of attention paid to the actions of The Red Brigades, a militant hyper-communist armed struggle group which took place somewhat within the framework of the Autonomia movement but in an uncertain shaky relation to how much they were helping a movement which was much more diffuse and disparate in intention and organization than the The Red Brigades ever were.
Tiqqun elaborate on their concept of warfare (against the state/empire) first primarily introduced in 'intro to civil war'. However, this concept is not as simple and flatly militant as the term might indicate and they seem to think what they call 'civil war' can take the form of all sorts of subversive subtleties. This concept is one of contesting the fabric of empire at every possible opportunity while still being strategic about such contestation and operating with methods of hiding-in-plain-site as championed in 'theory of bloom'. While this did manage to resonate with me personally as a person fed up with a lot of how capitolism and thusly what they call empire operates as well as with at least a bit of fore-knowledge regarding militant anti-state theory, I realize what an obscure and impenetrable audience this constitutes. Tiqqun's books presuppose a lot both in terms of philosophical references to Foucoult and Debord among others that they automatically introduce with not much explanation as well a passionate hatred of capitalism (or as they coin it 'empire') so while I personally give the book a high rating, it's a bit hard to imagine it transcending the territory of a fierce history-informed polemic. But maybe that's alright...

[Sylvain Bérubé · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Il n'y a pas d'"identité révolutionnaire". Sous l'Empire, c'est au contraire la non-identité, le fait de trahir constamment les prédicats qu'on nous colle, qui est révolutionnaire. Des "sujets révolutionnaires", il n'y en a plus depuis longtemps que pour le pouvoir, Devenir quelconques, devenir imperceptibles, conspirer, cela veut dire distinguer entre notre présence et ce que nous sommes pour la représentation, afin d'en jouer. Dans la mesure exacte où l'Empire s'unifie, où la nouvelle configuration des hostilités acquiert un caractère objectif, il y a une nécessité stratégique de savoir ce que l'on est pour lui, mais nous prendre pour cela, un "Black Bloc", un "Parti imaginaire" ou autre chose, serait notre perte»

[Mari]

Great read. A tad sophisticated, though I feel I got most of what it was conveying as a message. I would try and share my pece, though sometimes one must keep their tongue silenced from Empire. This would be more of a conversation amongst friends and family that one would consider allies and open minded of what needs to be done to go against the norm or to be with the flow of the norm yet still fight against it without making one be noticed. If anyone gets this, well awesome, we are all not suppressed by the apparatuses of Empire. :)

[Roger Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains two powerful essays. The first relies quite a bit on political and historical knowledge of Italy in the 1970s and to a lesser extent France in the 1960s. Nevertheless, the language resonates even for the situation in the United States in 2017. This is particularly a powerful comparative critique in the second essay, which was the founding act for the Society for the Advancement of Criminal Science.

[McKenzie Wark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flirts dangerously with the idea of violence. Contains caustic remarks on Negri and the Multitudes group in Paris. I actually thought the second, shorter text was more interesting. A critique of Marx on fetishism, towards a practice of the invention of forms of life.

[Rhys · Rating 2 out of 5]

You are so sly, Tiqqun ... that was a program.

“All armed prophets have conquered, and unarmed ones fail.” [Gopal Balakrishnan] (p.121) ... "On the contrary, we have to start from the simple fact that our struggle is criminal from the outset and behave accordingly" (p.131).

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES

[Tida Wilson]

This is not a review.

[Kimberly Curette]

nice word play

[River · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first essay "This is not a Program" is a good introduction to Tiqqun and their perspective.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

no one tell the MLs in my eviction defense group abt this

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué potencia. Negri tuvo que leer este libro y sentirse realmente devastado. De lo mejor que he leído en mucho tiempo.