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Introduction to Civil War
Activists explore the possibility that a new practice of communism may emerge from the end of society as we know it.
Society no longer exists, at least in the sense of a differentiated whole. There is only a tangle of norms and mechanisms through which THEY hold together the scattered tatters of the global biopolitical fabric, through which THEY prevent its violent disintegration. Empire is the administrator of this desolation, the supreme manager of a process of listless implosion.—from Introduction to Civil War Society is not in crisis, society is at an end. The things we used to take for granted have all been vaporized. Politics was one of these things, a Greek invention that condenses around an equation: to hold a position means to take sides, and to take sides means to unleash civil war. Civil war, position, sides—these were all one word in the Greek: stasis. If the history of the modern state in all its forms—absolute, liberal, welfare—has been the continuous attempt to ward off this stasis, the great novelty of contemporary imperial power is its embrace of civil war as a technique of governance and disorder as a means of maintaining control. Where the modern state was founded on the institution of the law and its constellation of divisions, exclusions, and repressions, imperial power has replaced them with a network of norms and apparatuses that conspire in the production of the biopolitical citizens of Empire. In their first book available in English, Tiqqun explores the possibility of a new practice of communism, finding a foundation for an ontology of the common in the politics of friendship and the free play of forms-of-life. They see the ruins of society as the ideal setting for the construction of the community to come. In other words: the situation is excellent. Now is not the time to lose courage.
Society no longer exists, at least in the sense of a differentiated whole. There is only a tangle of norms and mechanisms through which THEY hold together the scattered tatters of the global biopolitical fabric, through which THEY prevent its violent disintegration. Empire is the administrator of this desolation, the supreme manager of a process of listless implosion.—from Introduction to Civil War Society is not in crisis, society is at an end. The things we used to take for granted have all been vaporized. Politics was one of these things, a Greek invention that condenses around an equation: to hold a position means to take sides, and to take sides means to unleash civil war. Civil war, position, sides—these were all one word in the Greek: stasis. If the history of the modern state in all its forms—absolute, liberal, welfare—has been the continuous attempt to ward off this stasis, the great novelty of contemporary imperial power is its embrace of civil war as a technique of governance and disorder as a means of maintaining control. Where the modern state was founded on the institution of the law and its constellation of divisions, exclusions, and repressions, imperial power has replaced them with a network of norms and apparatuses that conspire in the production of the biopolitical citizens of Empire. In their first book available in English, Tiqqun explores the possibility of a new practice of communism, finding a foundation for an ontology of the common in the politics of friendship and the free play of forms-of-life. They see the ruins of society as the ideal setting for the construction of the community to come. In other words: the situation is excellent. Now is not the time to lose courage.
232 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2010
29 people are currently reading
955 people want to read
About the author
Tiqqun
25 books161 followersTiqqun 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)).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
May 16, 2010
This book is beautifully written at times, and the text is presented nicely. Unfortunately, the content is bullshit. I may expand on that at some point.
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Okay, I will expand a little. This book is a series of theses rooted primarily in Foucault, Schmidtt, and Agamben (with a little bit of Debord). It is also a polemic against the critical theorists of social democracy (Negri, etcetera) and liberalism. The world is viewed primarily as a series of repressive norms that obstruct intensity and "the free play of forms-of-life". Large chunks of the book were immediately falsifiable (their ideas about borders, for example).
A racist/nationalist redefinition of the concept "form-of-life", and this book could be read as fascist high theory... like Robert D. Kaplan through the lens of Continental philosophy? That characterization is unfair, but it is not terribly unfair.
--
Okay, I will expand a little. This book is a series of theses rooted primarily in Foucault, Schmidtt, and Agamben (with a little bit of Debord). It is also a polemic against the critical theorists of social democracy (Negri, etcetera) and liberalism. The world is viewed primarily as a series of repressive norms that obstruct intensity and "the free play of forms-of-life". Large chunks of the book were immediately falsifiable (their ideas about borders, for example).
A racist/nationalist redefinition of the concept "form-of-life", and this book could be read as fascist high theory... like Robert D. Kaplan through the lens of Continental philosophy? That characterization is unfair, but it is not terribly unfair.
December 13, 2018
The preface positions this text (a virus, as per Bloom?) as against “positive anthropology,” which “narcosis” is identified with our “innermost intimacy” (11); “we need a radically negative anthropology” (12). The term civil war is used because “there is nothing we can say about men, that is, about their coexistence, that would not immediately act as a tranquilizer” (12); because all statements are identical, there is a “relentless freedom” here to use an “undefined term” that is normally used “to name whatever one knows nothing about, because one does not want to understand it, or understand that the world cannot do without us” (13). From there, it is almost a collection of gnomics.
Builds from an agambenian point, from the Stasis volume, quoting Solon for the proposition that those who do not participate in civil war are stripped of civil rights in the polis (15).
Radically anti-individualist in declaring that the atom of analysis is not the body or the individual, but the eidos zoe (16). From there, “civil war is the free play of forms-of-life; it is the principle of their coexistence” (32). Forms of life “confront each other as partisan war machines” (33). The principle of community is when “two bodies affected by the same form of life meet, they experience an objective pact” (37), as described by Agamben in his text on monastic rules. By contrast, hostility arises when “absolutely foreign” forms of life meet: “the hostis can be identified and its situation can be known, but it itself cannot be known for what it is, that is, in its singularity. Hostility is therefore the impossibility for bodies that don’t go together to know one another” (46). Between community and hostility is “friendship and enmity” (53). Plenty of elaboration of these points. We see that not all forms of life are equal: “just as this ethics, the ethics of equivalence, is the most worthless ethics that men have ever shared, the forms of life that correspond to it—the entrepreneur and the consumer—have distinguished themselves by a worthlessness that has become ever more pronounced with each passing century” (97).
Communism is however what “elaborates, everywhere and at every moment, civil war” (63). We know that the level of abstraction here is expert when we get a gloss such as “The continuity of the modern state—from absolutism to the welfare state—shall be that of an endlessly unfinished war, waged against civil war” (73). Further, “the specific character and obstacle of the modern state” is that “it persists through the practice of the very thing it wants to ward off” (80), a perfectly familiar point from State of Exception, the ‘Critique of Violence,’ and Force of Law.
As to this last point: “the history of the modern state is the history of its struggle against its own impossibility” (116). Empire is what arises from the techniques that the state develops. And so on. “The enemy of empire is within. The enemy is the event. It is everything that might happen” (153). The imperial goal is “tranquility, security, and order” (162), a “neotaoist” imperial domination (164). And, like a post-apocalyptic novel, wherein the entire setting is the enemy (and unlike a dystopian novel, wherein the protaginist’s polity is the enemy), “Empire does not confront us like a subject, facing us, but like an environment that is hostile to us” (171).
Much involvement with Foucault (quoting with approval the notion that “the panopticon is the very formula of liberal government” (108). Also works with Schmitt, Baudrillard (“empire is the free play of simulacra,” or so (140)), derridean deconstruction (“a militancy of absence” (147), Negri (though only to mock as naive the goal of global democracy).
The way forward? “an agent of an imaginary party is someone who, wherever he is, from his own position, triggers or pursues the process of ethical polarization, the differential assumption of forms-of-life. This process is nothing other than tiqqun. Part of this will involve the invention of a “political medicine” based on forms of life (185). Part also will be a deleuzean war machine (186). NB: “the Empire is not the enemy, it is the hostis. It is not a matter of defeating Empire, it has to be annihilated” (191).
Overall, authors are simply out of patience: “we no longer need critical theory. We no longer need teachers. From now on, critique works for domination. Even the critique of domination” (216). What is needed apparently is a “new luddism against the human gears that turn the wheels of capital” (221). Charming!
Builds from an agambenian point, from the Stasis volume, quoting Solon for the proposition that those who do not participate in civil war are stripped of civil rights in the polis (15).
Radically anti-individualist in declaring that the atom of analysis is not the body or the individual, but the eidos zoe (16). From there, “civil war is the free play of forms-of-life; it is the principle of their coexistence” (32). Forms of life “confront each other as partisan war machines” (33). The principle of community is when “two bodies affected by the same form of life meet, they experience an objective pact” (37), as described by Agamben in his text on monastic rules. By contrast, hostility arises when “absolutely foreign” forms of life meet: “the hostis can be identified and its situation can be known, but it itself cannot be known for what it is, that is, in its singularity. Hostility is therefore the impossibility for bodies that don’t go together to know one another” (46). Between community and hostility is “friendship and enmity” (53). Plenty of elaboration of these points. We see that not all forms of life are equal: “just as this ethics, the ethics of equivalence, is the most worthless ethics that men have ever shared, the forms of life that correspond to it—the entrepreneur and the consumer—have distinguished themselves by a worthlessness that has become ever more pronounced with each passing century” (97).
Communism is however what “elaborates, everywhere and at every moment, civil war” (63). We know that the level of abstraction here is expert when we get a gloss such as “The continuity of the modern state—from absolutism to the welfare state—shall be that of an endlessly unfinished war, waged against civil war” (73). Further, “the specific character and obstacle of the modern state” is that “it persists through the practice of the very thing it wants to ward off” (80), a perfectly familiar point from State of Exception, the ‘Critique of Violence,’ and Force of Law.
As to this last point: “the history of the modern state is the history of its struggle against its own impossibility” (116). Empire is what arises from the techniques that the state develops. And so on. “The enemy of empire is within. The enemy is the event. It is everything that might happen” (153). The imperial goal is “tranquility, security, and order” (162), a “neotaoist” imperial domination (164). And, like a post-apocalyptic novel, wherein the entire setting is the enemy (and unlike a dystopian novel, wherein the protaginist’s polity is the enemy), “Empire does not confront us like a subject, facing us, but like an environment that is hostile to us” (171).
Much involvement with Foucault (quoting with approval the notion that “the panopticon is the very formula of liberal government” (108). Also works with Schmitt, Baudrillard (“empire is the free play of simulacra,” or so (140)), derridean deconstruction (“a militancy of absence” (147), Negri (though only to mock as naive the goal of global democracy).
The way forward? “an agent of an imaginary party is someone who, wherever he is, from his own position, triggers or pursues the process of ethical polarization, the differential assumption of forms-of-life. This process is nothing other than tiqqun. Part of this will involve the invention of a “political medicine” based on forms of life (185). Part also will be a deleuzean war machine (186). NB: “the Empire is not the enemy, it is the hostis. It is not a matter of defeating Empire, it has to be annihilated” (191).
Overall, authors are simply out of patience: “we no longer need critical theory. We no longer need teachers. From now on, critique works for domination. Even the critique of domination” (216). What is needed apparently is a “new luddism against the human gears that turn the wheels of capital” (221). Charming!
January 25, 2011
Ok, at the risk of sounding self indulgent... I don't get the fuss... but the kids these days (and I guess Glenn Beck if that counts for you) certainly seem to love Tiqqun/The Invisible Committee. I was naturally excited to pick up a copy, and honestly, I found it sort of tedious. The aphoristic writing style (combined with glosses) evokes Walter Benjamin but without his ability to use aphorisms in such an evocative way that glosses would impede your reading. Additionally, Introduction to Civil War just doesn't seem particularly fresh to me, it seems to have a strong resonance with pretty standard Italian Autonomist texts, only its been written more recently. Beyond that (which I guess adds or subtracts a star depending on your perspective), there are some interesting critiques of Negri (but there are plenty of those) and some work that feels like a re-tread of what has already been said (replace "invisible party" with "Marxist tradition" or "non-unified strains of Anarchism" and basically the point of the text is global organizations are no longer the answer and we have to look to the variety of methods of resistance [none of which really want to assume the rule of the panopticon or empire or whatnot, at least in theory]). Also, some parts feel sloppy, like the conflation of Legalism (a pretty brutal political philosophy) and Taoism (a religious philosophy that is very similar to the ideas espoused by Tiqqun, replace "becoming-something" with "being useless" and "proliferating the insurrection" with "spreading the virtue of uselessness" or "living out ones days"). I feel like I may be being a bit harsh, pretty much this text is the sort of post-Marxist ideology that is popular these days, whether or not it is useful is basically relegated to whether or not it accomplishes its aims, which is sort of something unresolved.
December 6, 2014
Want to join Fight Club?
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2013 posted revenues for $74 billion and $274 million profits. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites].
Pseudo-Schmitt for secondary schools, Agamben fan-lit, Foucault Cliffs Notes (Part I). And then confused celebration of Italy's number one cultural export product, Autonomia (Part II). The result is fascist contempt for democracy and a mystique of violence (Part I), plus a comic retreat to armchair in Part II where the coming insurrection is supposed to get down to 'practice'.
"73: An agent of the Imaginary Party is someone who, wherever he is, from his own position, triggers or pursues the process of ethical polarization, the differential assumption of forms-of-life. This process is nothing other than tiqqun."
The first rule of the Imaginary Party is: you talk a lot about the Imaginary Party.
Probably, seminal in popularizing the misleading idea of Empire as network, as this pre-dates Hardt-Negri.
For innocents, not equipped with the antibodies to fascism, seeking shelter in cozy subcultures.
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2013 posted revenues for $74 billion and $274 million profits. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites].
Pseudo-Schmitt for secondary schools, Agamben fan-lit, Foucault Cliffs Notes (Part I). And then confused celebration of Italy's number one cultural export product, Autonomia (Part II). The result is fascist contempt for democracy and a mystique of violence (Part I), plus a comic retreat to armchair in Part II where the coming insurrection is supposed to get down to 'practice'.
"73: An agent of the Imaginary Party is someone who, wherever he is, from his own position, triggers or pursues the process of ethical polarization, the differential assumption of forms-of-life. This process is nothing other than tiqqun."
The first rule of the Imaginary Party is: you talk a lot about the Imaginary Party.
Probably, seminal in popularizing the misleading idea of Empire as network, as this pre-dates Hardt-Negri.
For innocents, not equipped with the antibodies to fascism, seeking shelter in cozy subcultures.
April 21, 2024
36. El Estado moderno puso fin a la perturbación que primero había traído el protestantismo al mundo, reapropiándose de ka operación de este. La falla acusada por la Reforma entre el fuero interno y las obras externas es aquello por lo cual el Estado, instituyéndola, llegó a asfixiar las guerras civiles "de religión", y con ellas, las propias religiones.
May 9, 2022
Poesía políticofilosófica. Tan inmamable como hermosa. Para mí son como un Deleuze anarquista, páginas enteras de trabalenguas que de pronto dejan asomar párrafos de lucidez para volvernos a sumergir en el caos teórico.
"Nosotros, que no es ni un sujeto, ni una entidad formada, como tampoco una multitud. Nosotros, es una masa de mundos, de mundos infra-espectaculares, intersticiales, de existencia inconfesable, tejidos de solidaridades y de disensiones impenetrables al poder; y también son los desviados, los pobres, los prisioneros, los ladrones, los criminales, los locos, los perversos, los corrompidos, los demasiado-vivos, los desbordantes, las corporeidades rebeldes. En resumen: todos los que, siguiendo su línea de fuga, no se reencuentran en la tibieza climatizada del paraíso imperial. Nosotros, éste es el plan de consistencia fragmentado del Partido Imaginario".
"Nosotros, que no es ni un sujeto, ni una entidad formada, como tampoco una multitud. Nosotros, es una masa de mundos, de mundos infra-espectaculares, intersticiales, de existencia inconfesable, tejidos de solidaridades y de disensiones impenetrables al poder; y también son los desviados, los pobres, los prisioneros, los ladrones, los criminales, los locos, los perversos, los corrompidos, los demasiado-vivos, los desbordantes, las corporeidades rebeldes. En resumen: todos los que, siguiendo su línea de fuga, no se reencuentran en la tibieza climatizada del paraíso imperial. Nosotros, éste es el plan de consistencia fragmentado del Partido Imaginario".
Read
May 7, 2025Another frustrating work from the so-called "Imaginary Party". A lot of interesting little nuggets here, and maybe there is a thread of validity running through the text - I'm trying to be generous here - but it's so laden with the dubious if not blatantly false that I'm tempted to discard it entirely. And especially frustrating because it inclines towards the right questions with a few correct answers. But it's so taken with itself, its own idiosyncrasies and shock value, that it fails to make clear its own value. Part of this obscurity is, I think, because so many of the ideas presented here are so ridiculous if not downright offensive. There is a more-than-vaguely fascistic undercurrent running throughout - admiration of conflict for its own sake, anti-intellectualism, disdain for frailty - along with an openly antisociality that seems more like an intellectualized expression of oppositional defiant disorder than a real political agenda. Some choice quotes:
"For modernity peace is the normal state of affairs, which warfare happens to interrupt; for the ancients, warfare is normal, which peace happens to bring to an end." (quoting linguist Emile Benveniste)
"The resentful ones, the intellectual, the immunodeficient, the humanist, the transplant patient, the neurotic are Empire's model citizens...Given their circumstances, these citizens are lashed to a set of artificial conditions of existence, such that only Empire can guarantee their survival; any dramatic shift in their conditions of existence and they die."
"Everything THEY - fiancé, family, environment, business, the State, public opinion - recognize in me, THEY use to seize hold of me...THEY expect that I should act as a man, as an employee, as an unemployed person, as an activist, or as a philosopher."
"We consider ourselves absolutely unbound to any obligation, to any prerogative, to any belonging that is social."
Notice the paranoid and diffuse "THEY" which includes everyone from the cop to the nagging wife, or even the progressive activist insisting upon some sort of common program. There's a similar strain running through The Coming Insurrection, complaining about environmental regulation and scolding experts that sounds almost like an "Agenda 21" type conspiracy theorist - ironic that this was so picked up by Tea Party-era Fox News as something to scaremonger. In retrospect it's not surprising that Agamben turned into a COVID crank, although in the case of the actual paranoiac, there is at least some genuine concern. In contrast it's hard to gauge any real priorities here: while the "free play" of "forms-of-life" may reflect something genuine, it comes across as ultimately superficial when it fails to triage what is ACTUALLY restricting people's freedom. For all its talk about "Empire", the stakes of it are totally ignored. To claim that "all death is violent" under Empire in a way belittles the actual violence people suffer at its hands: for all its talk of "biopolitics" there is not much interest in the real flesh-and-blood of power, the stuff of politics that is not so sleek as our James Bond villain's sovereignty. And in the end they actually declare: "Empire is not the enemy."
What I do like here - the broadening of the political sphere, the focus on social reproduction (odd that they never explicitly draw upon this concept), the left-Nietzschean or Stirneresque realignment - thus seems insufficiently serious. Oh, they take THEMSELVES very seriously, but they are not serious people. It has me thinking, boy, I wish somebody else wrote it. Fuck this shit. Most of what's worthwhile here is just stolen from their influences anyway.
"For modernity peace is the normal state of affairs, which warfare happens to interrupt; for the ancients, warfare is normal, which peace happens to bring to an end." (quoting linguist Emile Benveniste)
"The resentful ones, the intellectual, the immunodeficient, the humanist, the transplant patient, the neurotic are Empire's model citizens...Given their circumstances, these citizens are lashed to a set of artificial conditions of existence, such that only Empire can guarantee their survival; any dramatic shift in their conditions of existence and they die."
"Everything THEY - fiancé, family, environment, business, the State, public opinion - recognize in me, THEY use to seize hold of me...THEY expect that I should act as a man, as an employee, as an unemployed person, as an activist, or as a philosopher."
"We consider ourselves absolutely unbound to any obligation, to any prerogative, to any belonging that is social."
Notice the paranoid and diffuse "THEY" which includes everyone from the cop to the nagging wife, or even the progressive activist insisting upon some sort of common program. There's a similar strain running through The Coming Insurrection, complaining about environmental regulation and scolding experts that sounds almost like an "Agenda 21" type conspiracy theorist - ironic that this was so picked up by Tea Party-era Fox News as something to scaremonger. In retrospect it's not surprising that Agamben turned into a COVID crank, although in the case of the actual paranoiac, there is at least some genuine concern. In contrast it's hard to gauge any real priorities here: while the "free play" of "forms-of-life" may reflect something genuine, it comes across as ultimately superficial when it fails to triage what is ACTUALLY restricting people's freedom. For all its talk about "Empire", the stakes of it are totally ignored. To claim that "all death is violent" under Empire in a way belittles the actual violence people suffer at its hands: for all its talk of "biopolitics" there is not much interest in the real flesh-and-blood of power, the stuff of politics that is not so sleek as our James Bond villain's sovereignty. And in the end they actually declare: "Empire is not the enemy."
What I do like here - the broadening of the political sphere, the focus on social reproduction (odd that they never explicitly draw upon this concept), the left-Nietzschean or Stirneresque realignment - thus seems insufficiently serious. Oh, they take THEMSELVES very seriously, but they are not serious people. It has me thinking, boy, I wish somebody else wrote it. Fuck this shit. Most of what's worthwhile here is just stolen from their influences anyway.
July 22, 2022
Vojna, vojna nikdy nekončí, len sa jej forma pretvorí do štátov, tiel, myslí, spoločnosti, ale aj tak je to jedno, lebo impérium pohltí všetko, aj najsilnejší odpor starej doby bude pohltený, treba vziať vlastné telo do vlastných rúk bez prikrývok starého myslenia
May 23, 2019
Rather than a summary of the text, I'd like to bring up a few issues I see:
1. Introduction to Civil War starts with a fundamental concept: the form-of-life. If I understand correctly, the form-of-life (Lebensform) is a term derived from the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It has something to do with meaning -- when two people agree on truth, on meaning, on language, it is because, according to Wittgenstein, they share a form-of-life. Giorgio Agamben, probably the biggest influence on the text, developed this term in his study of monasticism in High Medieval Europe. What it means concretely.... I have not the foggiest idea. This is a major problem: the form-of-life is kind of the keystone of Introduction to Civil War. All of the rest of the concepts are dependent on the form-of-life. The titular "civil war" is defined as "the free play of forms-of-life," and then communism becomes defined as "the real movement that elaborates, everywhere and at every moment, civil war [that is to say, free play of forms-of-life]." Without a clear foundation as to what forms-of-life are, the whole text crumbles.
2. Tiqqun have an extremely uncharitable view of democracy. In discussing the Modern State, they see a fundamental continuity between the absolutist ancien régime in France and the liberal state that replaced it. In fact, the authors see in the liberal state an intensification of disciplinary power compared to the ancien régime. Very well and good (we've all read Foucault's theses on the birth of biopolitics after all....), but the authors go so far to declare that "Empire can legitimately claim to be democratic, insofar as it neither banishes nor privileges a priori any form-of-life." They see in democracy a method of controlling civil war (the free play of forms-of-life) by forcing an imposed, negative equivalency between different forms-of-life, stifling political conflict between them so as to maintain a "smooth space of demokratic [sic] society." Democracy (and Empire) offer a modicum of free play -- "normalized differences" -- in order to stifle demand for civil war (uninhibited free play) -- "Under Empire, nothing forbids you from being a little bit punk, slightly cynical, or moderately S&M." As such, they skewer Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt's political conclusions in Empire, which they see as an attempt to found a "global democratic state." Maybe I'm an optimist or a romantic, but I see democracy as essential for any emancipatory political project. After all, liberalism is not synonymous with democracy (as Chantal Mouffe argues). The most vibrant revolutionary projects in the world right now, from the EZLN in Mexico to the KCK in Kurdistan, demonstrate the revolutionary power of democracy taken to its own radical (anti-state) conclusions.
3. The absolute rejection of democracy takes us to an uncomfortable undercurrent in Introduction to Civil War: the ease with which the text lends itself to a reactionary reading. There is a glorification of war, of violence in Introduction to Civil War: "For us, ultimately, violence is what has been taken from us, and today we need to take it back." The authors compared modern society favorably with ancient society, in which "warfare is normal." Beginning with the High Middle Ages, there has been a "process of pacification," epitomized by the transformation of the warrior class of Early Medieval Europe into a pacified courtly class. As such, Tiqqun glorifies the wild passions, the "free play" of the early medieval knights, the "organic unity of traditional societies." Here we are very close to fascism, to slogans like "Revolt Against the Modern World," etc. Is it any surprise that we have therefore seen develop so-called "national anarchists", epitomized by Casa Pound, an Italian network of squats and mutual aid networks (for whites only)? It seems pretty clear that Tiqqun are not fascists, that they are on the left (sort of), etc. But this is a danger of the text.
1. Introduction to Civil War starts with a fundamental concept: the form-of-life. If I understand correctly, the form-of-life (Lebensform) is a term derived from the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It has something to do with meaning -- when two people agree on truth, on meaning, on language, it is because, according to Wittgenstein, they share a form-of-life. Giorgio Agamben, probably the biggest influence on the text, developed this term in his study of monasticism in High Medieval Europe. What it means concretely.... I have not the foggiest idea. This is a major problem: the form-of-life is kind of the keystone of Introduction to Civil War. All of the rest of the concepts are dependent on the form-of-life. The titular "civil war" is defined as "the free play of forms-of-life," and then communism becomes defined as "the real movement that elaborates, everywhere and at every moment, civil war [that is to say, free play of forms-of-life]." Without a clear foundation as to what forms-of-life are, the whole text crumbles.
2. Tiqqun have an extremely uncharitable view of democracy. In discussing the Modern State, they see a fundamental continuity between the absolutist ancien régime in France and the liberal state that replaced it. In fact, the authors see in the liberal state an intensification of disciplinary power compared to the ancien régime. Very well and good (we've all read Foucault's theses on the birth of biopolitics after all....), but the authors go so far to declare that "Empire can legitimately claim to be democratic, insofar as it neither banishes nor privileges a priori any form-of-life." They see in democracy a method of controlling civil war (the free play of forms-of-life) by forcing an imposed, negative equivalency between different forms-of-life, stifling political conflict between them so as to maintain a "smooth space of demokratic [sic] society." Democracy (and Empire) offer a modicum of free play -- "normalized differences" -- in order to stifle demand for civil war (uninhibited free play) -- "Under Empire, nothing forbids you from being a little bit punk, slightly cynical, or moderately S&M." As such, they skewer Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt's political conclusions in Empire, which they see as an attempt to found a "global democratic state." Maybe I'm an optimist or a romantic, but I see democracy as essential for any emancipatory political project. After all, liberalism is not synonymous with democracy (as Chantal Mouffe argues). The most vibrant revolutionary projects in the world right now, from the EZLN in Mexico to the KCK in Kurdistan, demonstrate the revolutionary power of democracy taken to its own radical (anti-state) conclusions.
3. The absolute rejection of democracy takes us to an uncomfortable undercurrent in Introduction to Civil War: the ease with which the text lends itself to a reactionary reading. There is a glorification of war, of violence in Introduction to Civil War: "For us, ultimately, violence is what has been taken from us, and today we need to take it back." The authors compared modern society favorably with ancient society, in which "warfare is normal." Beginning with the High Middle Ages, there has been a "process of pacification," epitomized by the transformation of the warrior class of Early Medieval Europe into a pacified courtly class. As such, Tiqqun glorifies the wild passions, the "free play" of the early medieval knights, the "organic unity of traditional societies." Here we are very close to fascism, to slogans like "Revolt Against the Modern World," etc. Is it any surprise that we have therefore seen develop so-called "national anarchists", epitomized by Casa Pound, an Italian network of squats and mutual aid networks (for whites only)? It seems pretty clear that Tiqqun are not fascists, that they are on the left (sort of), etc. But this is a danger of the text.
September 19, 2018
Someone else put it quite well:
But why would we want to extract ourselves from 'them' in the first place? As if in answer, Tiqqun exult in themselves as 'us':
'Us - it is neither a subject, nor something formed, nor a multitude. Us - it is a heap of worlds, of sub-spectacular and interstitial worlds, whose existence is unmentionable, woven together with the kind of solidarity and dissent that power cannot penetrate; and there are the strays, the poor, the prisoners, etc., etc.. In short all those who, following their own line of flight, do not fit into Empire's stale, air-conditioned paradise. Us - this is the fragmented plane of consistency of the Imaginary Party.'
But this is not a community. It is a gang. Or a congregation: ‘When I encounter a body affected by the same form-of-life as I am, this is community, and it puts me in contact with my own power.' Community is not electively asserted from the compatibility of its parts. Instead, the always secondary recognition of an ‘us' emerging in common struggle with similar others is just one formation amongst numerous other subject-fragments which, aggregated together, presuppose an earlier process. Always, just before the appearance of a recognisable community, the cumulative laying down and part-forgetting of earlier conflicts reaches a critical mass only to be dispersed by a representation of an ‘us', by the very ideology of community which Tiqqun affirm in this book. Community never exceeds the ideological representation of itself wherever it is proposed as people agreeing with each other.
In reality, any community is the unlooked for, accidental and arbitrarily accumulated depositing of long histories of different human traffics which have all passed through this same narrowing in the river. Tiqqun's urgent need for group consummation inhibits their grasp of the essential truth of community, which is that it is never achieved. Every subject-fragment which sticks to this place rather than another, proceeds to disrupt the ‘us' which might just then have been about to formalise. The presence of the new arrival causes the community as an aggregate to reorient towards a deferred and greater ‘us', the conditions for which are still not present and are always deferred. In short, a community is a positive representation of the binding together of conflicting interests in close proximity over long periods of time but it is never a community as such.
Whenever a ‘we group' such as Tiqqun condenses itself in the field, becoming the spectral embodiment of the project named ‘how is it to be done?', anti-political communists are made to feel uneasy.x ‘Tiqqun is, [...] the action that restores to each fact its how, of holding this how to be the only real there is.' But how can it be, anti-political communists ask, that this group is not only capable of locating the errors of all history as it manifests itself as Tiqqun in its field, but that the truth of the world is also already in its grasp? What likelihood is there, anti-political communists ask, given the expanse of what is and what has been, that the awareness of both error and truth should converge at the same moment in the same location and identify itself as that which could be?
But why would we want to extract ourselves from 'them' in the first place? As if in answer, Tiqqun exult in themselves as 'us':
'Us - it is neither a subject, nor something formed, nor a multitude. Us - it is a heap of worlds, of sub-spectacular and interstitial worlds, whose existence is unmentionable, woven together with the kind of solidarity and dissent that power cannot penetrate; and there are the strays, the poor, the prisoners, etc., etc.. In short all those who, following their own line of flight, do not fit into Empire's stale, air-conditioned paradise. Us - this is the fragmented plane of consistency of the Imaginary Party.'
But this is not a community. It is a gang. Or a congregation: ‘When I encounter a body affected by the same form-of-life as I am, this is community, and it puts me in contact with my own power.' Community is not electively asserted from the compatibility of its parts. Instead, the always secondary recognition of an ‘us' emerging in common struggle with similar others is just one formation amongst numerous other subject-fragments which, aggregated together, presuppose an earlier process. Always, just before the appearance of a recognisable community, the cumulative laying down and part-forgetting of earlier conflicts reaches a critical mass only to be dispersed by a representation of an ‘us', by the very ideology of community which Tiqqun affirm in this book. Community never exceeds the ideological representation of itself wherever it is proposed as people agreeing with each other.
In reality, any community is the unlooked for, accidental and arbitrarily accumulated depositing of long histories of different human traffics which have all passed through this same narrowing in the river. Tiqqun's urgent need for group consummation inhibits their grasp of the essential truth of community, which is that it is never achieved. Every subject-fragment which sticks to this place rather than another, proceeds to disrupt the ‘us' which might just then have been about to formalise. The presence of the new arrival causes the community as an aggregate to reorient towards a deferred and greater ‘us', the conditions for which are still not present and are always deferred. In short, a community is a positive representation of the binding together of conflicting interests in close proximity over long periods of time but it is never a community as such.
Whenever a ‘we group' such as Tiqqun condenses itself in the field, becoming the spectral embodiment of the project named ‘how is it to be done?', anti-political communists are made to feel uneasy.x ‘Tiqqun is, [...] the action that restores to each fact its how, of holding this how to be the only real there is.' But how can it be, anti-political communists ask, that this group is not only capable of locating the errors of all history as it manifests itself as Tiqqun in its field, but that the truth of the world is also already in its grasp? What likelihood is there, anti-political communists ask, given the expanse of what is and what has been, that the awareness of both error and truth should converge at the same moment in the same location and identify itself as that which could be?
September 7, 2010
A radical political philosophy text that is surprisingly lucid, systematic, and in dialogue with classical philosophy texts. They assume the reader is on board with a radical agenda, so they don't try to argue that we are in an age of Empire, that everything is controlled by Capital, etc. They presuppose the veracity of these statements. What they do is provide a compelling set of metaphors for looking at our current situation, drawing on Deleuze, Foucault, and (strangely) Heidegger. The development of their picture - that is, the development of the metaphors they group together in an ensemble - is in the form of theses, numbered and short, followed by "glosses," which are relate their though to current events, history, literary and philosophical texts, etc. A fun, useful example of radical philosophy.
March 14, 2021
Forms-of-life. Hostis. Empire. Biopower. The neotaoist state. A waste of time
Don't let the title deceive you: the writing of the French radical collective Tiqqun is a tedious exercise in sophistry. While poetically written at certain points, one cannot shake the feeling that they are getting duped with the outrageous purple-prose that adorns much of the text, and the philosophical navel-gazing that goes alongside it. To be blunt: if you are looking for a program of action, this is not the text. There is minimal material basis for what is presented compared to the reams of metaphysical hypothesizing that is going on, and not in a fun way.
The only things that are really keeping this from sinking into 1-star territory is the discussions of atomization and individuation. These are the parts where Tiqqun is at their height, and when reading those passages it is hard not to get swept up in the ideas presented. But considering the ending, it is hard not to feel enormously cheated of the answer that was being built towards (or seemed to, at the very least).
Don't let the title deceive you: the writing of the French radical collective Tiqqun is a tedious exercise in sophistry. While poetically written at certain points, one cannot shake the feeling that they are getting duped with the outrageous purple-prose that adorns much of the text, and the philosophical navel-gazing that goes alongside it. To be blunt: if you are looking for a program of action, this is not the text. There is minimal material basis for what is presented compared to the reams of metaphysical hypothesizing that is going on, and not in a fun way.
The only things that are really keeping this from sinking into 1-star territory is the discussions of atomization and individuation. These are the parts where Tiqqun is at their height, and when reading those passages it is hard not to get swept up in the ideas presented. But considering the ending, it is hard not to feel enormously cheated of the answer that was being built towards (or seemed to, at the very least).
November 13, 2019
at once capturing the necessity (or rather inevitability) of conflict (class, social etc), tiqqun recognizes that the body is not our own and that it is the process (through conflict) of reclaiming ones' body and self that parameters freedom. nonetheless what it fails to capture is the necessary (inevitable) ambiguity of these battles. society might be dead but fascism is necrophiliac, it seeks to preserve, and thus society's corpse will always continue to haunt us. what's even more doubtful is whether society was alive in the first place, that it was not a puppet to its puppeteers. it is not merely a battle of "emasculation", it is a battle of preservation, of freezing, blocking and occupying. surrender either to formaldehyde or pay your respect to the vultures.
September 9, 2023
Put Marx’s polemic style in a blender with some Debord, Foucault, Agamben, Deleuze and some political philosophy with a dash of creativity and top it off with that pretentious, often circular and hard to make sense of French philosophical style we all know and love. The result would be Tiqqun. If that sounds interesting, this is worth a read. It is a small, short book and while sometimes dense, the sardonic polemic style makes it much more readable then some of the authors Tiqqun borrow from. Not sure how this holds up upon a close reading (not well if I had to guess) but it’s continental philosophy, not chemistry.
October 14, 2022
There’s so much in this book that is compelling and illuminating and so much that’s just inscrutable to me. I don’t know what it is about anarchist writing but I find myself fascinated by the underlying political and social theory. I just wish it went somewhere concrete.
Phenomenal style, anarchists understand how to be compelling in a way that other political theorists couldn’t dream of.
Phenomenal style, anarchists understand how to be compelling in a way that other political theorists couldn’t dream of.
August 23, 2022
Трактат о борьбе со Спектаклем и Биовластью, не во всём для меня ясный, т.к. кроме растолкованных и объяснённых отсылок к другим мыслителям и их терминологии, "Тиккун" вводят ещё и свою собственную. Армитедж или Каливас для моих целей полезнее, если честно.
November 13, 2021
for as short as this is the midsection still feels incredibly meandering and masturbatory with an understanding of their previous works. first and last dozen pages good
Read
December 21, 2021difficult to 'rate' tiqqun... difficult to read tiqqun also lmao
Read
January 31, 2022Many passages here that gave me life
February 6, 2022
Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee have the exact same project as Berardi, however, Berardi wins out as the proponent of Autonomism.
Berardi and Tiqqun essentially advocate for the same theoretical concepts, except Berardi explicates them with *slightly* more rigour, and way less unneeded verbiage.
Ultimately, the Autonomist Marxist tradition/project lacks what's needed to establish itself as a project which could be viewed as a forefront for leftism. With a lack of systemization, and certain naiveties--to the point where you wonder if a 15 year old wrote them.
Berardi and Tiqqun essentially advocate for the same theoretical concepts, except Berardi explicates them with *slightly* more rigour, and way less unneeded verbiage.
Ultimately, the Autonomist Marxist tradition/project lacks what's needed to establish itself as a project which could be viewed as a forefront for leftism. With a lack of systemization, and certain naiveties--to the point where you wonder if a 15 year old wrote them.
February 16, 2022
Read Tiqqun.
May 4, 2024
Bombastic
November 24, 2024
An interesting call to violence or “what’s been taken from us.” Really engaging dialogue with Hobbes, Foucault, Agamben, and even reminiscent of Fanon.
February 24, 2025
de món tgré! libugu edega
Read
May 18, 2025<3
December 30, 2022
It’s funny Tiqqun is starting a revolution, while making fun of postmodernism for sitting on its ass…and yet they are Hegelians, pacifists..situationists…which is the most nihilistic hippie thing you can be! Nihilistic in the optics sense, not in the late stage banal existential sense. Anyway, their solution is to slow down bureaucracy, even further! Let’s get lazy people, and don’t guilt trip yourself in the process!
Tiqqun discusses “civil war” as a mental splitting of the individual in two by government. Very Hegelian. It’s funny that they are probably considered far leftist even though they could just as easily be called far to the right.
Tiqqun’s take on biopoltics builds well on Agamben’s Homo Sacer, especially with their better understanding of Hegel than the stoic and poised Agamben. Even less like Agamben, Tiqqun is one of those cults of personality no one actually understands and is so far outside the system that they must be the dreaded and stigmatized “liberal”. If the right would call them anti-fascist, the left might call them an anti-communist. Whatever can distance their views from their political conservatism and the status quo. Only by using Hegelian logic is it easier to see that it’s not Tiqqun scrambling our brains, it’s also more so the political paradigm itself, and the biopoltics of late stage. This is feminism at its most brilliant, realistic, and motivated.
Tiqqun’s form of revolution is slowing down and removing communication. They talk about how all hegemony relies on surveillance. So the way to fight back is to slow down the process of carrying out that surveillance, and not to volunteer an explanation as to why you are doing it. Collaborating without becoming an ideology that can be dissolved by social media. If you can’t be defined by the media, and ostracized into submission, then you have an underground movement that can finally do something. Revolutions used to happen, with or without being televised. Today you have to literally hide in order to avoid getting media hijacked.
A slowdown of bureaucracy. Not just a strategic push of capitalism to its own demise, like many postmodernists complain about for ten yurs without really doing anything. Tiqqun believes in a culture of slowing down business so much that new business ethics are necessary. Perhaps the only way to dissolve something like corporate socialism. Breaking bureaucracy by exposing its sloth. So the cultural change can occur, and without all the needless flag waving.
You see what happens to something like BLM. Which stands for Black Lives Matter not Blue Lives Matter! Not everything is a political bifurcation! Movements get stolen by the limelight, then made into a false narrative, thereby disrespecting the sacred nature of the original movement. This is why Tiqqun’s logic makes sense.
You can also push manufactured consent to its limits, but it’s already at its limits. It’s at its limits by virtue of us never reading the shit we sign our lives away to on our phones. Should we update this app? Blah blah blah…yes, yes, agree…why is this taking so long? Slowing down bureaucracy is successful because it causes pencil pushers to not be able to ignore the necessity of invention that used to fuel a sustainable capitalism. The ghost of capitalism no longer incentivizes progress by way of hard work. It’s now progress by way of deception!
When people sell their souls for a living, and are like wtf is going on I have to think about ethics? Then change occurs. Capitalism is moving so fast at this point. It takes strategic drop outs. That or at the least a slowing down of bureaucracy for any ethical reasons to rise to the surface. Motivated not for what it will say about the movement in the media, and not in order to get some political change to occur. Literally just to change the minds of the people who depend on your local environment. On the level where change can still meaningfully occur. Change in real people’s lives who suddenly have to reconsider why they push pencils around.
Tiqqun discusses “civil war” as a mental splitting of the individual in two by government. Very Hegelian. It’s funny that they are probably considered far leftist even though they could just as easily be called far to the right.
Tiqqun’s take on biopoltics builds well on Agamben’s Homo Sacer, especially with their better understanding of Hegel than the stoic and poised Agamben. Even less like Agamben, Tiqqun is one of those cults of personality no one actually understands and is so far outside the system that they must be the dreaded and stigmatized “liberal”. If the right would call them anti-fascist, the left might call them an anti-communist. Whatever can distance their views from their political conservatism and the status quo. Only by using Hegelian logic is it easier to see that it’s not Tiqqun scrambling our brains, it’s also more so the political paradigm itself, and the biopoltics of late stage. This is feminism at its most brilliant, realistic, and motivated.
Tiqqun’s form of revolution is slowing down and removing communication. They talk about how all hegemony relies on surveillance. So the way to fight back is to slow down the process of carrying out that surveillance, and not to volunteer an explanation as to why you are doing it. Collaborating without becoming an ideology that can be dissolved by social media. If you can’t be defined by the media, and ostracized into submission, then you have an underground movement that can finally do something. Revolutions used to happen, with or without being televised. Today you have to literally hide in order to avoid getting media hijacked.
A slowdown of bureaucracy. Not just a strategic push of capitalism to its own demise, like many postmodernists complain about for ten yurs without really doing anything. Tiqqun believes in a culture of slowing down business so much that new business ethics are necessary. Perhaps the only way to dissolve something like corporate socialism. Breaking bureaucracy by exposing its sloth. So the cultural change can occur, and without all the needless flag waving.
You see what happens to something like BLM. Which stands for Black Lives Matter not Blue Lives Matter! Not everything is a political bifurcation! Movements get stolen by the limelight, then made into a false narrative, thereby disrespecting the sacred nature of the original movement. This is why Tiqqun’s logic makes sense.
You can also push manufactured consent to its limits, but it’s already at its limits. It’s at its limits by virtue of us never reading the shit we sign our lives away to on our phones. Should we update this app? Blah blah blah…yes, yes, agree…why is this taking so long? Slowing down bureaucracy is successful because it causes pencil pushers to not be able to ignore the necessity of invention that used to fuel a sustainable capitalism. The ghost of capitalism no longer incentivizes progress by way of hard work. It’s now progress by way of deception!
When people sell their souls for a living, and are like wtf is going on I have to think about ethics? Then change occurs. Capitalism is moving so fast at this point. It takes strategic drop outs. That or at the least a slowing down of bureaucracy for any ethical reasons to rise to the surface. Motivated not for what it will say about the movement in the media, and not in order to get some political change to occur. Literally just to change the minds of the people who depend on your local environment. On the level where change can still meaningfully occur. Change in real people’s lives who suddenly have to reconsider why they push pencils around.
March 4, 2017
*midway through this*: WELCOME (TO) VIOLENCE
*after reading this*: okay i guess
*after reading this*: okay i guess
December 1, 2013
I found this to be a much more enjoyable read this time around. I first read this when it was first published and had a very tenuous grasp on some of the concepts being deployed: forms-of-life, the imaginary party, whatever singularities, etc. I was able to follow much more closely now and have a greater appreciation for the style of writing.
In some ways, I think aphorisms are the only appropriate way to transmit these ideas. If, following from Foucault, there cannot be a "theory of power," then one of the best ways to express what we want to say is through semi-disconnected thoughts that never actually amounts to a theory (possibly related to "Preliminary Materials For a Theory...").
I think the analysis is pretty good and takes the parts of Foucault, Agamben, Schmitt, Benjamin, etc. that most interest me. I think there are strong intersections between Empire/Biopower and Camatte's anthropomorphization of capital, and it would be great to see some sort of thought put into that. (I guess a response is that it's up to me to do that...) Practically, though, and I think this applies to a lot of Tiqqun texts, there is nothing new. Their proposals (if we can call them that momentarily) seem to be the same things that have been attempted by drop-outs of the past: small-scale farming communities, shoplifting, "self-sufficiency" skills, etc. If Autonomia, a previous incarnation of the Imaginary Party, was crushed, then why are we attempting to reconstitute it with the same tactics wrapped in a slightly modified analysis? In some ways this echos some of what was put forth by The Anarchist International, where (and I don't have the book around to reference the exact terms) the "members" act as waves that ebb and flow throughout history, appearing and disappearing, making their lines of flight into zones of opacity.
In some ways, I think aphorisms are the only appropriate way to transmit these ideas. If, following from Foucault, there cannot be a "theory of power," then one of the best ways to express what we want to say is through semi-disconnected thoughts that never actually amounts to a theory (possibly related to "Preliminary Materials For a Theory...").
I think the analysis is pretty good and takes the parts of Foucault, Agamben, Schmitt, Benjamin, etc. that most interest me. I think there are strong intersections between Empire/Biopower and Camatte's anthropomorphization of capital, and it would be great to see some sort of thought put into that. (I guess a response is that it's up to me to do that...) Practically, though, and I think this applies to a lot of Tiqqun texts, there is nothing new. Their proposals (if we can call them that momentarily) seem to be the same things that have been attempted by drop-outs of the past: small-scale farming communities, shoplifting, "self-sufficiency" skills, etc. If Autonomia, a previous incarnation of the Imaginary Party, was crushed, then why are we attempting to reconstitute it with the same tactics wrapped in a slightly modified analysis? In some ways this echos some of what was put forth by The Anarchist International, where (and I don't have the book around to reference the exact terms) the "members" act as waves that ebb and flow throughout history, appearing and disappearing, making their lines of flight into zones of opacity.
September 1, 2010
Radical Continental/French philosophy on, to put it more simply than the Tiqqun collective would, the alienation of the individual from work and community, and the role of government/Empire/imperialism in creating and perpetuating those conditions. Although towards the end Tiqqun finally calls their solution "communism," their "solution" is so devoid of providing a systematic description of a political and economic foundation that would replace what we currently have (and, in fact, Tiqqun quite strongly suggest an aversion to anything even resembling a political and economic foundation), that their etherized discussion sounds closer to Buddhism's rejection of attachment than what was enacted as "communism" for seven decades.
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