(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The New Book of the Invisible Committee Today notes dryly in the first line that all conditions for a revolution exist. As the title indicates, there is nothing to wait for. It is nu, wherever we go: No matter where we look, all the signs in heaven are screaming for the need for a radical break with the state of things. Everywhere things break down: The economic crisis just keeps going, and the political chaos is spreading. Look at the US and Trump's chaotic governance; look at Brazil's accelerating political resolution, where corruption and politics have become indelible; take Venezuela, the global left poster childwho has lost the last popular support. Think of the climatic destruction that is so all-encompassing that it questions the entire capitalist modernity that underpins all established political programs, regardless of party colors. A psychological breakdown seems to hit a myriad of people in terms of stress and depression. There is clearly something that does not work at all.
Shielded bodies. But as the Invisible Committee writes, so are the bodies that are revolutionizing, and the bodies, yes, they are still in front of the screens. As part of the attempt to establish a theory of revolution today, the Invisible Committee articulates a situationalist critique of capitalism and its forms of domination and describes in a poetic and everyday language at once how a totally incoherent capitalist world reproduces itself as a totality weekday. This reproduction not least takes place thanks to the various symbolic infrastructures, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, which mediate our relationship with our surroundings, each other and ourselves. We are subjected to a cybernetic dominance that constantly recreates an already totally broken existence. As they write: "The real lie, it's all the screens, all the pictures, all the explanations that we put between ourselves and the world."
Selfishness versus solidarity. The starting point is collapse, a civilian bankruptcy. Society is no longer connected; it has burst to pieces and the state today is nothing more than a hologram. The collapse, however, is kept in view by all the representations, the regulatory notions such as "democracy", "human rights", "the economy", "the crisis" and not least "national identity". The revolution is thus confronted with a two-headed monster: the symbolic infrastructure and the new fascism. It's not just Trump who wants to make america great again; all politicians are desperately trying to create order and call for imaginary historical national communities. But the screwed-up self-fabrication merely erodes the already complete emptying of these communities. The stupidity will never end: Danishness like coziness and pork roast; Frenchness like wine and de Gaulle.
parliaments er broken down and the question is what we do in the crash. Do we entrench ourselves and shut ourselves into our self-sufficiency, or do we do something else and act in solidarity with the uprisings?
The stupidity will never end: Danishness is coziness and steak; Frenchness is wine and de Gaulle.
Moving wave. Today is the third book of the Invisible Committee. In 2007 was published The insurrection that comes, and in 2014 And nos amis. The first release announced that something was underway, that the insurgency was on its way. Not many people could see at that time. But as the Committee notes And nos amis, then they got right. In the period from 2010 onwards it suddenly went really fast: the Arab revolts, where local trash depots were overthrown or tried to be deposited, the southern European space occupation movements, which rejected the many savings plans that bought the banks and eroded the remains of the national welfare schemes, the Occupy movement in The United States, which rejected extreme local inequality, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey against gentrification, the World Cup protests in Brazil against price increases on public transport and the holding of the World Cup, protests against corrupt politicians in Bosnia and the Umbrella revolution in Hong Kong against increased Chinese political control – these are just some of the uprisings. Not since the late 1960s has the world seen a similar wave of protests move from city to city in a discontinuous pattern in which resistance to oppression and inequality interferes with attempts to create something else.
Visionary. It is a difficult exercise to embark on historical speculation, but the Invisible Committee actually anticipated the uprisings. So there is good reason to listen to the committee, which has been shown to have a very fine sense of the historical situation and its potentials. In their second book, And nos amis, they then took stock of the 2011 uprisings and analyzed the uprising's inability to develop into actual revolutions. The riots had quite come, but were just as stuck in the riot stage. Even in Egypt, which was the foremost highlight of the new wave of protests, the military had retained power (for a brief period, the Muslim Brotherhood served as the deputy to the army, but quickly seated itself heavily on the throne). With the new book, the committee is now taking a step further and, based on the events of spring 2016 in Paris, is proposing a truly revolutionary strategy, which they call impeachment, that is, "deposition" or "eradication".
The revolution is moving away from the institutions; to state the policy, abandon it and dance on top of it.
The French Nuit debout movement that began March 31, 2016 is in many ways the focal point of the new book. Each chapter of the book retrieves its headline and theme from a graffiti from the movement: "Tomorrow is Canceled", "50 Shades of Collapse", "Down with Politics", "Dismissing the World", "Ending the Work, A Great Life" , "Everyone hates the police" and "Those who come after." If cybernetic devices and fascism together make up a two-headed monster that fills our lives with lies, then Nuit debout is a moment of truth, where people find each other on the streets in a releasing rift, where the constant exposure to tomorrow is rejected in favor of action here and now. It's about acting now, together, there's no future, there's nothing to hope for, but we can do something together today.
"The real lie is all the screens, all the pictures, all the explanations we put between ourselves and the world."
Politics is passé. The Invisible Committee is engaged in a radical exposition, in which all the ideas of revolution and revolutionary organizations that are handed down collapse in favor of a violent openness to the revolutionary rupture and the transformation of all existing politics. As they write, it's not about another policy, but about doing something other than politics, emptying it of content. To get away from all the different ideas of politics, politics as party politics, as the state, as security, as humanitarian operations, as political economy, but also as politics as activism and identity, where the institution is at the individual level: The revolution is to move away from all the institutions. So abandon politics, the new sewing leave it and dance on top of it as they write and quote Lyotard. The destination is not one repeal (abolition, ed. note); we have already forgotten the policy and the important thing is to get away nu.
