{"id":4012,"date":"2018-10-09T20:07:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T00:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4012"},"modified":"2018-10-09T20:07:14","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T00:07:14","slug":"chris-roberts-unconvinced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/chris-roberts-unconvinced\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Roberts | Unconvinced"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chris Roberts<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Invisible Committee is the anonymous anarcho-communist collective in France who authored 2007\u2019s The Coming Insurrection, <\/i>a call to \u201csocial rupture\u201d that was <\/i>the main inspiration behind French police\u2019s decade-long wild-goose chase<\/a> for a leftist terrorist group that ultimately was found not to exist (and whose condemnation by Fox News\u2019s Glenn Beck briefly catapulted<\/a> the anticapitalists’ book to number-one on the Amazon best-seller list).<\/p>\n

Since then, the Committee has achieved wide popularity in France, particularly among the so-called \u201cchildren of 2002,\u201d the teenagers and young adults whose early lives\u2019 defining political moment was the far-right National Front\u2019s Jean-Marie Le Pen\u2019s shockingly and Republic-shakingly successful performance in that year\u2019s presidential election.<\/p>\n

In this context, the Committee\u2019s most recent book, Now <\/i>is an answer to France\u2019s existential questions: How could 1968 have lead to 2002\u2014and what is to be done maintenant<\/i>, after the November 2015 terrorist massacre at the Bataclan and Macron\u2019s 2017 victory of centrism<\/a>? Now\u2019s <\/i>answer is for citizens upset and unsatisfied with modern capitalism\u2019s authoritarian, carceral, and destructive turns to do as Britain did to Europe and to exit\u2014not to bother interfering with TGV lines but to become ungovernable, to refuse to engage in society and to form new anarchist communes through a \u201cdestituent process.\u201d Don\u2019t bother with revolution or with critique and don\u2019t waste your time trying to blow it all up in order to start over, Now<\/i> tells us; just withdraw.<\/p>\n

Though The Invisible Committee scoff at critique in Now<\/i>\u2014the \u201ccritiques of critiques of critques\u201d have accomplished far less than a single brick tossed through a bank window during a protest, as they write\u2014Now\u2019s <\/i>philosophy draws on Giorgio Agamben\u2019s State of Exception <\/i>to justify its call to conquer the political struggle by absconding from it. <\/i>Agamben was invited to critique Now <\/i>at Praxis 2\/13; had he been present, perhaps Bernard Harcourt would not have found himself almost alone in defending the essay from the other theorists present. For Jackie Wang, McKenzie Wark, Judith Revel, Emmanuelle Saada, and Jesus Velasco, Now <\/i>failed to convince on multiple fronts\u2014on both offering an alternative ideology and a feasible praxis.<\/p>\n

I left unconvinced that Now\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0notion of becoming ungovernable, with the final aim of creating anarcho-communist communes, had intellectual validity. Are not those truly ungovernable the dead, those wholly immune to compulsion only corpses? Does not the anarchist who rejects government\u2014like the member of the ideal feminist collective described by Jackie Wang\u2014govern herself in accordance with her values, and after constant reflection, renewal, and compromise with her community, with whom she will often find herself opposed? Is not even the Id governed, by its desires? Wark\u2019s example of the union members who solve conflicts themselves without involving the police\u2014thereby self-governing<\/i>\u2014is an object lesson of how easily this pillar of Now<\/i>\u2019s thought was refuted. This flaw in its foundation suffuses Now<\/i> in an incoherence from which it did not recover at Praxis 2\/13. Even Now\u2019s<\/i> call to adopt love as the ultimate praxis was not convincing. In this way, love becomes a command\u2014 an exercise of power, not an escape from it. \u201cWhat if I don\u2019t want to love?\u201d Saada asked. \u201cIf love is a solution, it is also a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

More problematic, from the view of a seeker of a practical philosophy of action\u2014from someone hoping for a model of praxis\u2014is that the alternative Now<\/i> offers for those of us disgusted and alarmed by the path of modern society is not a useful model to follow. The solutions that Now<\/i> offers are limited. Worse, they are available only to a select few\u2014only to those already privileged by the system Now<\/i> promises to overcome through abandonment and neglect.<\/p>\n

As Wang pointed out, the imperative to become ungovernable\u2014more than merely unruly\u2014is itself couched in the power dynamics of a male-dominated society. It is inherently masculine. The more pressing question\u2014emancipation for those that men domineer, or \u201cWhat would it mean for women, the transgendered and the non-gendered to become ungovernable?\u201d as she asked us\u2014is not answered in Now<\/i>. In its thrill-seekers\u2019 praise of the \u201cboys\u2019 riot\u201d and its disdain for the past\u2014its \u201cpresentism\u201d\u2014Now <\/i>presents a politics of a juvenile masculinity privileged by the very society it claims to loathe.<\/p>\n

Coming to these conclusions would require a certain foundation. The Invisible Committee does not share its genealogy\u2014\u201cOne wonders,\u201d as Judith Revel put it, \u201chow much attention the authors paid to their own existence\u201d\u2014and so we are left to guess at it. It is not a difficult pursuit.<\/p>\n

It becomes clear that Now<\/em>\u2019s authors have not known the trauma universal among survivors of sexual assault, who may struggle even in progressive circles for acknowledgment. If it had, they would not dismiss anyone whose unhealed psychological wounds\u2014the \u201ctemporal wormhole called \u2018trauma\u2019\u201d descried by Wang\u2014leave them truly and wholly unable to embrace the maintenant <\/i>in the way prescribed. The fact that these pitfalls were avoided reveals The Invisible Committee\u2019s class situation, and it is, as Revel points out<\/a>, aristocratic. In this way, Now<\/i>\u2019s writers\u2014who, French police believed, were radical graduate students\u2014may share space with the academy it disdains. Their world, as Revel put it, is not the world in general.<\/p>\n

N<\/i>ow <\/i>does offer a reinterpretation of truth that can appear profound. This \u201crelation to the facts of the world around it\u201d is best found in the crucible of the police kettle, where strangers bonded together by a mutual enemy\u2014in this case, the helmeted and booted riot cop\u2014find \u201cincandescent fraternity\u201d in the heat of combat. This is the \u201cboys\u2019 riot,\u201d as Wark said. A more interesting and important question, \u201cWhat would a feminist riot look like? What would a disabled riot look like?\u201d is not given inquiry. And it grants us at best a superficial and temporary union. \u201cBonds are not formed in the now,\u201d Wang pointed out. They form over time, when the fast brothers leave the riot for the assembly and find themselves arrayed against each other. The bond\u2014the union\u2014is forged by resolving the disagreement, by surviving\u2014or perhaps even avoiding\u2014the \u201clitany of betrayals\u201d known to the anarchist movement.<\/p>\n

It is that assembly for which the The Invisible Committee have possibly the least patience. Assembly is a waste of time. In their praxis, disputes are solved not by compromise, examination, or critique, but by withdrawing\u2014by taking one\u2019s toys and going home, to a new home. What happens when making the choice to becoming a destituent is not available\u2014when there is no escape from the kettle, when one is confined in the banlieu or in the prison\u2014is not Now\u2019s<\/i> concern.<\/p>\n

In their world, you do not advance by renewing the revolution over and over again, by returning to the bottom of the mountain in order to continue to ascend it\u2014you find another mountain. Now\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>presumption that there is another mountain available, hermetically sealed from the troubles on the adjacent peak\u2014and that it is available for this experiment\u2014may be their boldest claim. To our panel, this was the philosophy of the reset button, with \u201cindifference to real conditions and real subjects,\u201d in Revel\u2019s words, whose material realities cannot so easily and simply be wiped clean in order to begin again somewhere else.<\/p>\n

To this, I would like to offer my own critique. As I read Now, <\/i>I recognized something familiar, something the crowd assembled for a certain train to arrive at the Finland Station in Saint Petersburg in April 1917 would have known. Wark posited<\/a> that The Invisible Committee stole their name from Marcel Marien\u2019s Theory of Immediate World Revolution<\/i>. Now\u2019s<\/i> grand view for an alternative society\u2014the anarchist commune\u2014is not so different from Peter Kropotkin\u2019s century-old call for communes, remixed a bit for the children of 2002. If David Fincher were to direct a film adaptation of Conquest of Bread<\/i>, it might not look so different from Now<\/i>. In this way, Now <\/i>may not be such a radical departure from what the soixtaint-huitards knew after all. They knew that recreating a society from scratch was exceedingly difficult.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m on board with the aim,\u201d Wark said. \u201cIt\u2019s harder to do than it looks.\u201d Until The Invisible Committee can provide a real-world model, Now <\/i>may remain only a critique of a critique.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chris Roberts The Invisible Committee is the anonymous anarcho-communist collective in France who authored 2007\u2019s The Coming Insurrection, a call to \u201csocial rupture\u201d that was the main inspiration behind French police\u2019s decade-long wild-goose chase for a leftist terrorist group… 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":[38962],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-2-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012","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=4012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}