Theses On the Terrible Community

by Tiqqun

Everyone knows the terrible communities, having spent time in them or being within them still because they are always stronger than the others. And because of that one always stays, in part – and parts at the same time. Family, school, work, and prison are the classic faces of this form of contemporary hell. But they are less interesting as they belong to an old form of market evolution and only presently survive. On the contrary, there are the terrible communities which struggle against the existing state of things that are at one and the same time attractive and better than “this world.” And at the same time their way of being closer to the truth - and therefore to joy – moves them away from freedom more than anything else.

The question we must answer in a final manner is of a more ethical than political nature because the classic political forms and their categories fit us like our childhood clothing. The question is to know if we prefer the possibility of an unknown danger to the certainty of a present pain. That is to say if we want to continue to live and speak in agreement (dissident perhaps, but always in agreement) with what has been done so far – and thus with the terrible communities – or, if we want to question that small portion of our desire that the culture has not already infested in its mess, to try – in the name of an original happiness – a different path.

This text was conceived as a contribution to that other voyage.

Genres: Philosophy

41 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2001

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

[Frances]

Kind of interesting, some good points about toxicity in communities but ultimately no real point beyond polemics. there's some startlingly good writing and also some of the worst k-speak this side of deleuze, anyway, not enough intelligent critique to justify the "wow, so crazy, can't take her anywhere" post-modern unseriousness

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

i enjoyed the dialectics of biopolitical democracy and terrible community, very relevant to community organizers