Τώρα

by Comité Invisible

Ας μην περιμένουμε πια.
Ας μην ελπίζουμε.
Ας μην αφαιρεθούμε, παροπλιστούμε.
Να κάνουμε εισβολή.
Να στείλουμε το ψέμα στα σχοινιά.
Να πιστέψουμε σ' αυτό που νιώθουμε.
Να πράξουμε αναλόγως.
Να σπρώξουμε την πόρτα του παρόντος.
Να προσπαθήσουμε. Να χάσουμε. Να προσπαθήσουμε ξανά. Να χάσουμε καλύτερα.
Να πεισμώσουμε. Να επιτεθούμε. Να χτίσουμε.
Να κινήσουμε ίσως.
Όπως και να 'χει, να ανασηκωθούμε.
Να πάρουμε τον δρόμο μας.
Να ζήσουμε, άρα.
Τώρα.

(Από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου)

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, Essays, Activism, France

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2017

About the author

The Invisible Committee is the nom de plume of an anonymous author or authors who have written French works of literature based on far-left politics, and anarchism. The identity of the Invisible Committee has been associated with the Tarnac Nine, a group of people including Julien Coupat who were arrested "on the grounds that they were to have participated in the sabotage of overhead electrical lines on France's national railways." Common topics addressed in works by the Invisible Committee include anarchism, anti-capitalism, anti-statism, communism, French culture, global protest movements, and 21st-century civilization.

Reviews

[s. · Rating 5 out of 5]

these mfs spittin fr

[tout · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for the second time for a reading group on the book. The first time I plowed through it hoping for the same wonder that I felt when first reading Call or The Coming Insurrection, but with each new book I feel that wonder less. There are a number of possible reasons for this. Maybe there’s a slight switch up in the anonymous collective that wrote the previous, maybe I’ve become used to the language, maybe they’re not saying anything particularly new. Maybe all are true, but I don’t think this necessarily detracts from the importance of what is being written, though maybe it calls for a change of focus or format. The film Get Rid of Yourself was conceived as a new form of the journal made by some of the collective authors after the journal broke up following 9/11.

Now feels a little more clunky in it’s language at some points, more so than the previous texts by The Invisible Committee (TIC). Who knows if they sounded like platitudes in the French or if what was written merely translates, sadly, as such. A lot of negative reviews or ways of dismissing the ideas of TIC, whether especially well written or not as much, focus far too greatly on their rhetorical style and language, not that this isn’t important to discuss, but it’s often used to dismiss the rest of the content. This was especially true of Tiqqun and it continues with everything they write. When people say the appelist language merely a different way of saying the same thing anarchists have been saying they’re simply wrong. Despite the disappointments of this text and the general discourse I know of nothing else that is coming out that offers such a powerful strategic and ontological vision. Merely talking about the language is a way of choosing to not take any of this insight seriously.

There’s also an urge by readers to label some of the language “new age.” With the idea of being present, being here, is it that we’re so distrusting and foreign to the idea or the experience that we don’t trust any language?

“Hell is really the place where all speech is rendered meaningless.”

Given the intimate connection of place and language, a language that lacks meaning is reflective of a an inability to claim a relationship to place—to lack a world.

Much of the book focuses a lot on the French Struggles as a way of generalizing their lessons. This could have perhaps been more useful if the text would have done this even more so, explaining the struggles of the ZAD and Loi Travail in greater depth rather than expecting the reader to be familiar. The same way that This is Not a Program offered an analysis of Autonomia this could have done for those struggles (which could have also used more depth, but was nonetheless great).

As the book goes on it gets better. The last chapter, For the Ones to Come being by far my favorite, fleshes out in more depth a vision of communism that I’ve felt but has rarely been articulated. Previous chapters and previous books had fragments that pointed toward it, but just often only a few sentences at a time. It’s a conception of communism at odds with the marxist conception, not necessarily Marx always, but with Marxism.

“…the real communist question is not “how to produce”, but “how to live.” Communism is the centrality of the old ethical question, the very one that historical socialism had always judged to be “metaphysical,” “premature,” or "petty-bourgeois”—and not the question of labor. Communism is the general detotalization, and not the socialization of everything.”

“The communist question was badly formulated, because, to start with, it was framed as a social question, that is, as a strictly human question.”

It’s a communism reflective in a profound sense, having a world—where in all seriousness, stars and trees and cats, and literally everything are potential comrades, where the common runs through all of this.

There’s an increased presence of Cammate in these pages as well, which isn’t entirely unwelcome, but this perhaps contrasts with a certain Agambenian influence. Or maybe it doesn’t. Anyone have thoughts on this?

[Sceox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sweeping, grandiloquent vagary. Now is a right bundle of absolutist language: words like 'always,' 'everywhere,' and 'everyone,' abound, along with 'anything whatsoever' and a fabulously loose application of the first person plural (which slips in meaning between their anonymous committee, their friends, their milieu, their vaguely-defined party, and everyone at all), and the pattern continues from the word/phase level up to the big ideas. If you cannot find a question mark in these 150 pages that is sincere, you are forced to conclude it is because no question or doubt has managed to interrupt its authors' thoughts (even though they proclaim that the self is composed of diverse and antagonistic elements, and even though their professed ideas are rife with glossed-over contradictions and sticky bits). Andrés' review nails it: this is philosophy as war drum (and as in beating one's own drum). Onward, soldiers! Or maybe, also following Andrés, the work of those delighted by their own prophetic voice.

Of course, the IC has been like this from day one, and I've had nicer things to say in the past. Am I slow on the uptake, or has it just now grown old on me? Or is it that in the past I was able to take what was useful and burn (/forgot) the rest, and now there's little of use? On that note, I love this little gem: "We should stop saying, 'Young people don't believe in anything any more.' And say instead: 'Damn! They're not swallowing our lies any more.'" Now there's a tool the IC should worry about being turned against them...

[Andrés · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been reading everything I can found from Tiqqun/Comité Invisible since 2008 ("Teoría del Bloom" and "Introducción a la guerra civil" ed. by Melusina[sic] in the Kingdom of Spain).
Think it's no necessary to say that I had a profound interest in this group necause I never read philosphy as a war drum, or a molotov, or gunpowder like this. The group catched all the academic-systemic avanced cultural knowledge, as Law, Philosophy, Sociology, Art and throw back as something new and embraced the old fashion mesianic manner of writing. You know, This is the Lying Kingdom where we living and false prophets are butter and bread BUT this group were on spot for a decade. Then, 'The Coming Insurrection' happended. And the real insurrection happened. And then a massive defeat happended. And the "A nuestros amigos" was written, and you can see the first failures, and the this disoriented tantrum.
I find it awful mostly because it's the first time the Comité has to write about past facts instead make a eagle-eyed analysis and be delighted in their prophet talent. So, to make this sohrt,IMHO, this was:
--80% of misleading, snobbing, insufferable, chouvinist incoherent speech.
--15% delirious new age speech.
--5% honest and good phrases.
I know I'm been too hard, maybe, but I think their actual fall it's proportional to the their past dazzling and true writting and living. Well, maybe this world has been ashses for too long and the time of prophets it's gone.

[Black Spring · Rating 4 out of 5]

i saw someone recently post an update about this book saying something about being disappointed that these authors are still using phrases like "everybody knows..." and "everybody can see..." ... but i just finished this and they really didn't use these phrases very many times (maybe 2 or 3) and when they did, it was in instances where their statements were basically true. I know the Invisible Committee isn't infallible, but after reading all of their offerings ("Call," "The Coming Insurrection," "To Our Friends," and "Now") as well as a grip of their prior work with Tiqqun, I have to say that all the complaints that they are "all style, no substance" seem transparently to be bullshit. I'd love to get my hands on a copy of the Invisible Committee critique, "To the Customers" (without giving any money to LBC) because i am totally open toward and curious about critiques of them, but if reading heady anarchist or communist writing is your thing there is no reason not to give them a shot yourself. This is miles beyond most of what passes for radicalism in the US with its civil society coddling enclaves of loyal opposition. A destituent power that completely overcomes and undoes the trajectory of western civilization, that is based in presence, sensitivity, and animism, seems like the way to go for me. ok gotta go. just got curious to google image search the floating continent of trash in the pacific.

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and incendiary anarchist critique of modern capitalism and the tech-driven social atomization of our societies. The thing that was most appealing was their condemnation of the present without a corresponding (and unjustified) lionization of the past. The writing is powerful and urgent, but also really gets to the core of the psychic distress that naturally stems from living in a modern society where everything is quantified, social bonds have been ripped apart in the name of economics and there is a pervasive sense of looming disaster on the part of nearly everyone. As the authors argue this sense of constant anxiety engendered in the populace, of "a thousand conspiracies averted" is part of the nature of capitalist social control. As we are driven to measure everything, we're unable to even enjoy what we actually have, including our relationships with others which are always measured in terms of opportunity cost. The entire world has been "commodified" by capitalism, including the people in it.

The solution to a fragmenting social body is to come together as human beings in forms of solidarity that tear a hole in the economy. Seems like a simple idea but is radically and powerfully expressed here, within an anarchist framework.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to get out of the circle of killers. This book crystallizes the grinding suspicion that I am being relentlessly and insidiously creeped upon and duped on all fronts by the dying throes of capitalism. And offers clear ways out of the mess. Endlessly quotable. E.g., "In response to what is killing us, to our failures in love, to what makes us such strangers to each other that by way of an explanation for all the world's ills, we're satisfied with the foolish idea that 'People are assholes.'"

[Harry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, maybe it was 2017?

[Marlene]

höchst interessant

[Andrew Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible how we identify almost the exact same symptoms but we are virtually opposites in diagnosing the disease.

[Roger Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the Invisible Committee, like many people, ought to spend more time thinking about indigenous peoples of the world and how they've been dealing with the forces discussed here, this is by far the Committee's most coherent statement to date. Destituons Le Monde.

[Fabiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

“To call for justice in the face of this world is to ask a monster to babysit your children. Anyone who knows the underside of power immediately ceases to respect it. Deep down, the masters have always been anarchists.” (38)

“The fiction of constituent power suits monarchy as well as it suits dictatorship.” (78)

“The only gauge of the state of crisis of capital is the degree of organization of those aiming to destroy it.” (111)

“Being with a particular person is an unbearable sacrifice of all the other persons with whom one could just as well be with. Every love is vitiated in advance by all the other possible loves. Hence the impassibility of being there, the ineptitude for being-with. Universal unhappiness. Torture by possibilities. Sickness unto death. ‘Despair,’ Kierkegaard diagnosed it.” (105-106)

it’s works like these that remind me of my integrity: that I don’t vote, will never vote, and will never bother to register. The mendacity of politics in general has haunted me since adolescence, and to use laws “against” itself only strengthens its self-legitimizing power. To divest oneself from meaningless & garrulous rambling is something I am grateful to have learned very early on in life (why I do not engage in common internet “Marxist” nonsense on which ‘character’ did it best. I’ve won my peace of mind after endless fights with the resident Ushanka-wearing teenage cafeteria communist against my blatantly anarchistic position, as we both hate the government but in fundamentally different ways).

Right.

That being said, I don’t think this work is enough. There are incredible points that are drowned out by cushioning statements. The call to action has been lost to time, though I firmly believe we are contemporarily past the point of ebullition and at any moment salt will form.
Particularly their concept of destituting institutions felt weak in the same way that socialism carries the “stain” of capitalism. An intermediary so that life is no longer treated as an expense or capital. This was brushed on in the end where they state communism isn’t necessarily an “end,” but one that lives and thrives by the fluxes and flows of human connection and desire.

The overarching message of essentially deserting preexisting institutions holds true, but is frankly lacking. Vacating the institutions reassigns its meaning to something neutral, but it’s vices will remain. Either that or have a new name for the emancipated entity. It’s not the institution itself that is being abandoned, but its foundation (every norm, milieu, nomos, even physis) that is left behind. The institution, much like greed/glory/and other “bad” behavior, is a symptom of the disease of capitalism. But the idea of vacancy without replacement is what needs to be addressed the most, it is the most crucial point. not a transfer of power, but a relinquishing. it’s more profound than it lets on, but leaning into the forms aspect is a start (though needs an insane amount of attention to detail). It’s not just the act of destituting, but of a total disengagement.

also after a long winded discursive conversation about practical anarchy/“terrorism”/ and vagabondage my dad called me… “based.” #wewon rlly want to go on those abysmal speed-debate things and go totally schizophrenic on live tv.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This resonated with me on so many levels and I hope all my friends and neighbors and acquaintances read this , especially those feeling powerless or hopeless with current state of things. This gives such a good read and materializes and organizes thoughts and feelings I’ve felt so frustrated not knowing where to begin to communicate. Written with such clarity and urgency, without being alarmist or victimizing.

Everything benefits from our disempowerment, disenfranchisement, hoplessness and exhaustion. Our daily lives are filled with distractions and illusions, creating complexities, “In this way the unshakeable routine of capitalist normality is perpetuated.” ..”The big lie is refusing to see certain things that one does see, and refusing to see them just as one sees them. The real lie is all the screens, all the images, all the explanations that are allowed to stand between oneself and the world. It’s how regularly we dismiss our own perceptions.” Things are actually quite simple and we are all born with the same capability for understanding truth….remember?

I loved this book so much because it acknowledges our agency and empowers. Recenters politics to here and now, reality and truth. So refreshing. Felt like waking up after years of desensitization. “… we’re satisfied with the foolish idea that ‘People are assholes.’” We suffer so much trying to be individuals, because thats the precondition for survival in our economy. “What within us is so anxious to protect the inner chains that bind us?”

“There is no myself and the world, myself and the others, there is me and my kindred, directly in touch with this little piece of the world that I love, irreducibly. There is ample beauty in the fact of being here and nowhere else.”

Such a beautiful, spiritualist approach to communism. “Force never has anything respectable about it.” Advocates rather for a destituent process that refuses, deserts, and silences the powers that be. Mwuah.

[Pepe Del Amo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es, quizá, uno de los mejores libros de Comité Invisible. Sus algunas caricaturas o rimbombancias se excusan por leer un libro plagado de lucidez.

Y con partes tan bonitas como esta:
«No hay jamás continuidad como entidad, solo como experiencia. En el amor, en la amistad experimentamos esa continuidad. [...] En el motín en el que nos mantenemos juntos en el plan que nos hemos fijado, en el que los cánticos de los camaradas nos dan valor, en el que un street medic saca del apuro a un desconocido herido en la cabeza, experimento esa continuidad. [...] No hay yo y el mundo, yo y los demás, hay yo, con los míos, en este pequeño pedazo de mundo que amo, irreductiblemente. Ya hay bastantes belleza en el hecho de estar aquí y en ningún otro lugar. [...]. Sin la experiencia aunque sea puntual, de la comunidad, nos morimos, nos desecamos, nos volvemos cínicos, duros, desérticos».

[Anton Relin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything is absurd and should be destituted except for the forms that our friendships, bonds, etc inhabit. A powerful book that just flows forward

[Andrew Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on the bus ride to and from a hike in upstate NY. So, now.
You know, after reading The Invisible Committee's "The Coming Insurrection", I was a little convinced by the common criticism that they're a little pretentious and French. I'll have to take this back. Great read.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe the Invisible Committee always had a New Age streak and I had previously missed it, but what struck me most about Now (2017) is its outright adoption of terms, concepts, and themes which, if read in almost any other contemporary book, one would have to assume were meant in an unorthodox New Age sense. Ten years ago, 2007’s The Coming Insurrection contained ridiculing passages like, “…It’s the cyberneticist who’s found a realistic theory of consciousness in Buddhism and the quantum physicist who’s hoping that dabbling in Hindu metaphysics will inspire new scientific discoveries” (p. 91). Now it’s the Invisible Committee itself — by way of all the “here, now”s and “different planes” and “seers” employed throughout Now — that has become the dabbler in Eastern metaphysics. (Just a sampling: “Truth is a complete presence to oneself and to the world, a vital contact with the real, an acute perception of the givens of existence”; “Opening ourselves to the world is opening ourselves to its presence here and now”; “Organizing ourselves has never been anything else than loving each other”; “…it’s always from the here and now that the far away is given”; “It’s clear that attacks not inspired by a different heartfelt idea of the world would have no real reach…”; “Each being is irreducibly singular, if only from the fact of being here now”; “In my calm presence, here, now…”; “There is ample beauty in the fact of being here and nowhere else,” etc., etc.)

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” but it leaves the specific connection between quasi-mystical talk and politics very undeveloped — except, perhaps, for some very briefs hints within the final pages, by way of a comparison with Christian theology’s sanction of the metaphysical distinction between being and acting. Unaddressed, though, are the histories of how even “Eastern” traditions have also been adapted toward militaristic and identitarian ends (for example: the American, post-1960s version of Zen Buddhism tends to stress peace and love, or at least a vague-but-implicitly-ethical “mindfulness,” whereas the Japanese version in WWII was the rationale for kamikaze pilots; cf. Brian Daizen Victoria’s study Zen at War).

Of course, these are especially tough and insane times, so who can blame the authors for seeking some solace in a “different plane”’s here-and-now? It’s just that the connection between here-and-now-ness and the implied, necessary reconfiguration of humanity’s institutions (even communes are institutions) is not developed in this book, for better or worse. A frank aside in To Our Friends had stated, “…without a concrete idea of what victory would be, we can’t but be defeated” (p. 135); in Now one reads, “…communism is not a finality. There is no ‘transition’ towards it. It is the transition entirely: it is en chemin, in transit. The different ways of living will never cease to chafe and move against each other, to clash and occasionally combat each other. Everything will always have to be rethought” (pp. 154–55) — Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of “comparution/compearance” came close to saying exactly this in 1991. So, the IC is now explicitly “Zen of the riot,” not First Measures….

Now can still be worthwhile reading, though, if read primarily as a lament highlighting some of the limits of our times.

[melancholinary · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to not like this beautifully written proposal to destitute the world. It's time to start manifesting all of their theories in here as an actual praxis. In Now, The Invisible Committee proposes to reinvent the word 'communism' which I think important in the age of ubiquitous screen that makes us glued to the fake reality inside it. Many texts dissecting the notion of fragmentation from either positive and negative side. The last chapter, especially the critique towards the convergent of the jargon 'collective' and capitalism, is penned brilliantly. Superb.

[Muad'dib · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read " L'insurrection qui vient " yet, so this was my first book by Le Comité Invisible. A lot of ideas were really interesting, especially now as I'm looking for new ways to think our society but it sometimes feels a little too vague or broad. I wasn't in agreement with everything they said and felt like the author was often condescending towards people who had different way of lives than his ( theirs ?)
Still, they make very deep and essential points, so I'd recommend it.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Organizing ourselves has never been anything else than loving each other."

Does the Invisible Committee's spiraling poetic prose ever quite build up to a full and cogent argument? Not exactly. But their series of quick critical incisions and ideological inversions are joyful and necessary interventions against the self-satisfied stylings of so many serious activists. Always provocative and pleasurable to read.

[laila* · Rating 5 out of 5]

radicalized me. god the writing is so hot!

[Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Read My Desire, Joan Copjec writes:

Counterbalancing America's love for Reagan was its often-noted lack of regard for the news media. It has also been noted that 'liberal bourgeois states' (states with long-standing democracies) such as Britain, France, and America do not regard the police very favorably. These observations may not be unrelated, for it might be supposed that it is precisely because the news acts like the police that it meets with such disfavor.

The Invisible Committee would likely agree with Copjec's observation about the coincidence of the function of the police and the news media, and likewise they explicitly endorse Copjec's observation about the disposition of liberal bourgeois states toward the police in their chapter "Everyone Hates the Police."

But this difference in how the point is articulated, Copjec with her verbose expression and subsequent explication of what, exactly it would mean to "act like the police" set against the more direct prose style of the Committee, characterizes in large part what makes Now different from other theoretical and 'political' (they would chafe against such a categorization) texts. The Committee covers a lot of ground in their brief book, arguing against temporality, history, politics, economy, and positing as an alternative self-determination without a self. The Committee mocks the reformist orientation of most political projects today, the projects that beg for protection from precisely the same individuals that exploit them. Of this, the Committee writes, "To call for Justice in the face of this world is to ask a monster to babysit your children" (38).

The Committee's obvious resemblance to the, as an example, Black liberation politics of Malcolm X, Black Panther Party, or other Black nationalist orientations distinguishes itself precisely on the point of 'self-determination.' While there is a functional resemblance, the Committee rails against the idea of a 'self.' They write:

The fantasy of the 'sovereignty of the Assembly' only repeats on the collective plane the sovereignty of the Self. When one knows all that monarchy owes to the development of the notion of 'sovereignty,' one is sometimes led to wonder if the myth of the Self is not simply the theory of the subject that royalty imposed wherever it prevailed in practice. (58)

This is not the Committee's most original theoretical invention (that would be their articulation of the riot and the dialectical function of kettling) but it is the most incisive when paired with their treatment of temporality ("But there isn't, there's never been, and there never will be anything but a now." [17]).

Now is full of aphoristic gems. Whether it is "The relationship with society and its hypocrisy can only be one of warfare, whether open or not" (39), "Political is that which bursts forth, which forms an event, which punches a hole in the orderly progression of the disaster" (61), or "The purpose of the medical institution is not to care for people's health, but to produce the patients that justify its existence and a corresponding definition of health" (73), what one observes is each idea the Committee contends with seems to be speaking coincidently with another unacknowledged interlocutor, whether it is Gilles Dauvé on protest movements, Lee Edelman on social organization, or Michel Foucault on biopower. But the lack of acknowledgement, the abandonment of the weight of copious citations and footnotes, makes this pamphlet altogether more readable. Now isn't (just) a work of theory, it is for all of us and all the parts of us.

While Now is a work produced in the contemporary moment, it shares the eerie feeling of prescience that Read My Desire evoked in 1994. The feeling that Copjec's opus would remain meaningful and incisive for years to come, and perhaps become even more topical than in its moment of publication, rang true. The same will be the case, I think, for Now. For better or for worse.

[sadeleuze · Rating 5 out of 5]

The organized riot is capable of producing what this society cannot create: lively and irreversible bonds. Those who dwell on images of violence miss everything that’s involved in the fact of taking the risk together of breaking, of tagging, of confronting the cops. One never comes out of one’s first riot unchanged. It’s this positivity of the riot that the spectators prefer not to see and that frightens them more deeply than the damage, the charges and counter-charges.

Being on the left or on the right is to choose among one of the countless ways afforded to humans to be imbeciles.

Communism is the real movement that destitutes the existing state of things.

because if money and control are to infiltrate everywhere, it’s necessary for money to be lacking everywhere
 
Henceforth everything must enter into the sphere of profitability. Everything in life becomes valorizable, even its trash

Capitalism is the universal expansion of measurement.

our social value will become a major indicator of our economic value.

The only gauge of the state of crisis of capital is the degree of organization of those aiming to destroy it.

It’s never a good sign when a democratic regime takes up the habit of having its population fired upon.

The promise to reestablish order only adds to the chaos.

The police are a target and not an objective, an obstacle and not an opponent. Whoever takes the cops for an opponent prevents themselves from breaking through the obstacle the police constitute. To successfully sweep them aside, we must aim beyond them. Against the police, the only victory is political.

We have to accept that our struggle is essentially criminal, since in this world everything has become criminalizable

For what is friendship if not equality between friends?

Society is always a society of individuals

To love is never to be together but to become together.

how to live?

Communism is a general detotalization, and not the socialization of everything.

We’re talking about addressing bodies and not just the head.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong book theorizing action against capital and the totalizing state. Still the grand statements and flourishes we expect from The Invisible Committee, but sometimes this allows for a more free flow of ideas that might otherwise drift in the periphery of ideology.

"Destituere in Latin means: to place standing separate, raise up in isolation; to abandon; put aside, let drop, knock down; to let down, deceive. Whereas constituent logic crashes against the power apparatus it means to take control of, a destituent potential is concerned instead with escaping from it, with removing any hold on it which the apparatus might have, as it increases its hold on the world in the separate spaces that it forms. Its characteristic gesture is exiting, just as the typical constituent gesture is taking by storm. In terms of destituent logic, the struggle against state and capital is valuable first of all for the exit from capitalist normality that is experienced therein, for the desertion from the crappy relations with oneself, others, and the world under capitalism. Thus, where the “constituents” place themselves in a dialectical relation of struggle with the ruling authority in order to take possession of it, destituent logic obeys the vital need to disengage from it. It doesn’t abandon the struggle, it fastens on to the struggle’s positivity. It doesn’t adjust itself to the movements of the adversary but to what is required for the increase of its own potential." (p.78).

[Matthew Lowery · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, powerful, and highly persuasive call for a radical destitution - exit - from capitalism and the state. Drawing on thinkers like Deleuze, Schmitt, Agamben and Lyotard, what we find here is a text of surprising depth given its polemical style. I'm still mulling over and processing much of what this book has to say, but I appreciate the way in which it ties these theorists together and gives them a coherent praxis: pursuing lines of flight, of escape, of building communism here and now between each other, of uniting with others in friendship, as well as against the enemy. Conflict is at the heart of this work: the necessity of it, the inevitability of it, but also its productive potential. Beyond this, there are touching observations about the debasement of language itself, the disrepute of politics, the power of individuals to come together in assemblages which are more than the sum of their parts, the latent violence all around us, our entrapment within the false rhizome of an increasingly monopolised internet, and the vitality of forms of life and affect in producing radical change.

(My only small criticism is their unnecessarily antagonistic relation to Marxists. For example, they briefly criticise Marxists for failing to appreciate Capitalism's capacity to valorize and commodify even the human subject. This is something Marxists have been talking about for many decades already, as have Anarchists of course. It's not really a fair criticism.)

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ya know, I keep trying to finish this, but it feels too much like work. Ultimately, if you already like the Invisible Committee/Tiquun stuff, you'll probably like this. I disliked it as much as I disliked (what I read of) The Coming Insurrection, Call, and To Our Friends. I haven't finished a single one of them. In sum, probably 50% of this I think is just factually wrong ("The Mexican state no longer controls anything."..."Everyone can see that this civilization is like a train rolling toward the abyss..." No, not even close to everyone. Also, all the shit about the State of Exception, which they seem to think is some sort of new situation. As if there hasn't been a State of Exception since the advent of Law), or I disagree with. Some portion of the other 50% I basically agree with, though have seen it said more convincingly elsewhere, though I really didn't need some dense ass French jargon to tell me that meetings/assemblies are boring and work sucks. Some other portion is just impenetrable (for me) jargon. I read this in a reading group, and I was kind of amazed at how much good faith was required for people to agree with statements that to me seemed to say the literal opposite of how people interpreted them. But whatever, I'm sure some people get good stuff out of this tendency, turns out it's just not for me. Shrug.

[Nikita · Rating 3 out of 5]

My preferred way of reading things like this one is to approach them as poetry. I hope I won’t be hated by (French) communists for it, for I think you guys are for real and true. I only mean to say that stuff like this, manifesto-like, or educational, I guess, in the plane of ideas, really affects me only if I read it like a poem, not a toilet cleaning liquid manual. In that way, it seems universal, like a samurai wisdom. You don’t have to be of specific mindset or background to get something from it. I think, if everyone would read it and other similar works that way, we would live in a better place: more calm and less dogmatic, appreciated for what it is, capitalism or not, and among friends.

[Solar Anus]

"... καπιταλισμός δεν είναι τόσο το να πωλούνται προιόντα, όσο το να γίνει δυνατή η αξιολόγηση των προιόντων αυτών που δεν έχουν ακομή παραχθεί, να γίνει δυνατή η εκτίμηση αυτού που μέχρι χθες έμοιαζε αναξιοποίητο, να δημιουργούνται νέες αγορές: εκεί βρίσκονται ωκεανοί πόρων συσσώρευσης. Καπιταλισμός είναι η παγκόσμια προέκταση της μέτρησης."

"Σπάω είναι λοιπόν θέση, είναι ιδιοποίηση. Δηλώνει τον προβληματικό χαρακτήρα του ιδιοκτησιακού καθεστώτος, το οποίο πλέον διαχειρίζεται τα πάντα. Ή τουλάχιστον ανοίγει έναν διάλογο επάνω στο ακανθώδες αυτό θέμα."

[Yamir · Rating 4 out of 5]

it feels good to reach a point in learning where i can start to read something and stop to question it, or feel like i disagree with it and not just be in a state of absorption. happened a few times on this but maybe thats because im not crazy about anarchists and their sometimes condescending tone. but i do like the invisible committee's writings especially their urgency and their discussion of current events. some of the talks about individuality and 'community' were very revealing for me and will make me think for some time

[Emilie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to rate because on one hand it's really thoughts provoking and interesting with some stuff that stick with you. On the other hand, I'm not really on board with everything, and it can be a little pretentious in the way it's written... That being said, I really wanna pick up the other books, and I'll recommend it to my friends.