{"id":3930,"date":"2018-09-25T11:47:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T15:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=3930"},"modified":"2018-09-26T12:03:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T16:03:29","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-invisible-committees-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-invisible-committees-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Introduction to Invisible Committee’s *Now*"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Invisible Committee burst on the political scene in 2007 with the publication of its anonymous tract The Coming Insurrection<\/a><\/em>. The Committee\u2014an anonymous, loosely formed group of anarchist activists in France, often associated with the earlier publication of the short-lived Tiqqun<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>philosophical journal (1999-2001)\u2014proposed a radical agenda in their first tract, calling for a return to communes and strategies of isolated secession and tactical insurrections. The Committee warned that French society was about to blow up and that it was time for direct action. Viewing the world through the prism of civil war\u2014a perspective that traces to thinkers like Foucault in the early 1970s\u2014the Committee set forth a radical vision:<\/p>\n

Expect nothing from organizations. Beware of all existing social milieus, and above all, don\u2019t become one.<\/p>\n

Form communes.<\/p>\n

Get organized in order to no longer have to work.<\/p>\n

Plunder, cultivate, fabricate.<\/p>\n

Flee visibility. Turn anonymity into an offensive position.<\/p>\n

Organize Self-Defense.<\/p>\n

Abolish general assemblies.<\/p>\n

Liberate territory from police occupation. If possible, avoid direct confrontation.<\/p>\n

Take up arms. Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary. Against the army, the only victory is political.<\/p>\n

Depose authorities at a local level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAbolish general assemblies\u201d: the Committee signaled, in no uncertain terms, that it was writing against the recent tradition of peaceful occupations and general assemblies, and advocated a far more confrontational posture.<\/p>\n

The Invisible Committee published a second book in 2014 under the title To Our Friends<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>(McKenzie Wark, who will join us at Praxis 2\/13 wrote about that book here at Public Seminar<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Just last year, the Invisible Committee published its third book, Now<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2017), another urgent call to action. \u201cAll the reasons for making a revolution are there,\u201d they begin. \u201cAll the reasons are there together, but it\u2019s not reasons that make revolutions, it\u2019s bodies. And the bodies are in front of screens.\u201d Ouch!<\/em> A devastating way to start, as we all sit in front of our screens reading this blog post … or their book on-line<\/a>!<\/p>\n

What they propose, though, is a radical project to change just that. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about addressing bodies and not just the head,\u201d they write, 158 pages later.<\/p>\n

The Committee leans in favorably with regard to riots, sounding a Fanonian theme of self-transformation: \u201cOne never comes out of one\u2019s first riot unchanged [\u2026] In the riot there is a production and affirmation of friendships, a focused configuration of the world, clear possibilities of action, means close at hand.\u201d The Committee takes aim at Nuit Debout, again challenging the model of peaceful general assemblies and the open discussion forum\u2014which, they argue, ends up becoming nothing more than a \u201cbureaucracy of the microphone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, they advocate fragmentation of politics, destitution of power and institutions and the economy, in order to give way to a form of living in common\u2014all of this reflected in the pressing nature of their text and the urgency of the moment: \u201clife is always decided now, and now, and now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Destituent insurrections: rather than the \u201cconstituent itch\u201d of Occupy Wall Street and Nuit Debout, the destituent power that undoes institutions\u2014drawing on the historical illustrations of May \u201968 and other insurrectionary communes. That is a powerful and provocative strategy that we will critically explore and discuss in the second session, live here on Wednesday, October 3, 2018<\/a>, of Praxis 13\/13.<\/p>\n

Please join us live or in webcast to read, explore, and critically discuss the Invisible Committee\u2019s latest tract in order to jumpstart the discussion we need now <\/em><\/a>of \u201cWhat is to be done?\u201d<\/p>\n

Welcome to Praxis 2\/13!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0 The Invisible Committee burst on the political scene in 2007 with the publication of its anonymous tract The Coming Insurrection. The Committee\u2014an anonymous, loosely formed group of anarchist activists in France, often associated with the earlier… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51803],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-2-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}