{"id":4238,"date":"2018-12-01T16:55:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T21:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4238"},"modified":"2018-12-01T16:55:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T21:55:36","slug":"sami-cleland-the-invisible-committee-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/sami-cleland-the-invisible-committee-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Sami Cleland | The Invisible Committee Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sami Cleland<\/strong><\/p>\n

I. Destitution as Anti-Uprising<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Invisible Committee\u2019s Now<\/em> (2017) provides an interesting follow-up to last year seminar series, which explored the various modalities of uprising. In Now, <\/em>the Invisible Committee urges destitution<\/em> the essential, necessary and apt form of praxis for our time. Rather than a critique of or attempt to reform the power structure, destitution represents an escape<\/em> from the \u201cdialectical relation of struggle with the ruling authority.[1]<\/a>\u201d This approach accepts as historical fact that attempts to take possession of the ruling authority, even when successful, have failed to limit the overwhelming power of the economy and its concomitant suffering, alienation and inequity. For the Invisible Committee, \u201cdestitution makes it possible to rethink what we mean by revolution.[2]<\/a>\u201d Destitution represents an anti-uprising. The goal is not to take possession of the ruling authority, but to \u201cdisengage from it[3]<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\u201d altogether.<\/p>\n

This represents a tectonic shift in focus. Instead of #resisting the destruction of institutions, the Invisible Committee argues the goal should be to create new ways of living altogether. For the Invisible Committee, there is not much in contemporary society worth fighting to preserve. Why not see the contemporary moment, with its pervasive fragmentation, as an opening that makes possible the creation of new structures? After all, mere revolution most often signifies repetition; \u201cwhile the mode of government might alter, the social order itself is seldom displaced[4]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

The Invisible Committee sees little use for the #resistance of our time, which buttresses contemporary structures against their fragmentation and combats political incorrectness with critique and rights-based discourse. \u201cTo limit oneself to denouncing discriminations, oppressions, and injustice, and expect to harvest the fruits of that is to get one\u2019s epoch\u2019s wrong.[5]<\/a>\u201d There is little use for resort to laws, rights, or institutional structures: \u201cAs long as revolution is formulated in the language of rights and the law, the ways of neutralizing it are well-known and marked out.[6]<\/a>\u201d And what, exactly, are we fighting to preserve?<\/p>\n

This last question informs to Invisible Committee\u2019s thinking to a great degree. The time of revolutionary uprising is over because \u201ccapital has taken hold of every detail and every dimension of existence\u2026 In doing so, it has reduced to very little the share of things in this world that one might want to reappropriate.[7]<\/a>\u201d By way of example, the Invisible Committee lists nuclear powerplants, Amazon warehouses, ad agencies, and business complexes. Who would wish to reappropriate such things? Much better to start anew, which is precisely what the destituent gesture represents.<\/p>\n

II. Communism as Praxis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now <\/em>highlights the banality of life in our time, the distressing anthropomorphization of capital and the production of humanity as the subjects of capital. Man has become \u201can enterprise guided by a constant concern with self-valorization, by a vital narrative of self-promotion\u2026 man [has become] the optimizing creature.<\/em>[8]<\/a>\u201d Part of this, of course, is the result of technology, social media and the sad frivolity in which we now refers to ourselves as brands<\/em>. To live this way requires the \u201cnumbing of sensibilities\u2026 not just as the result of survival within capitalism, [but as] the precondition for survival.[9]<\/a>\u201d In a world subsumed by capital, \u201cwe don\u2019t suffer from being individuals, we suffer from trying to be that.[10]<\/a>\u201d \u201cIf the whole social circus endures it\u2019s because everyone is straining to keep their head above water when they should rather assent to going deeply enough into themselves to finally touch something solid.[11]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Invisible Committee, the solution to what can best be described as the contemporary alienation with the oneself<\/em> is communism. There is a crucial distinction here, though, between the stale conception of communism the pervaded in the past and the communism the Invisible Committee now proposes. The question is \u201cno longer \u2018how to produce, but \u2018how to live,\u2019[12]<\/a>\u201d argues the Invisible Committee. There must be a total escape from the economy \u201cin order to live, in order to be present in this world.[13]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

This problem of being present, which sounds so exceedingly simple, is becoming progressively more difficult to accomplish in practice. The forces of capital and of technology ensure that \u201cevery moment of life and every real relation are haloed by a set of possible equivalents that gnaw at them.[14]<\/a>\u201d Here, the Invisible Committee makes an incisive point. Being present in the world can have a crucial set of cascading effects. When present, one can see<\/em>, for instance, the lack of humanity in \u201cstepping over the bodies of the homeless or migrants on one\u2019s way to the office every morning[15]<\/a>\u201d Without being present, life may be lived without experiencing<\/em> anything, without thinking or feeling, with \u201cexistence reduced to a slow process of degradation.[16]<\/a>\u201d Communism, for the Invisible Committee, refutes this mode of existence. \u201cIf communism has to do with the fact of organizing ourselves\u2014collectively, materially, politically\u2014this is insofar as it also means organizing ourselves singularly, existentially, and in terms of our sensibility.[17]<\/a>\u201d Communism is about living in accordance with our thinking and our feelings, it is being present and fully experience our subjective reality. Rather than requiring conformity, communism opens us up to the possibility as living as ourselves<\/em> once again.<\/p>\n

And communism is much more than an end goal. What matters is not the question of fighting for communism, but that communism \u201cis lived in the fight itself<\/em>.[18]<\/a>\u201d This is communism as revolutionary praxis, and mirrors the philosophies of many modern movements (think Occupy and #BlackLivesMatter) which avoid hierarchy and demonstrate in their very structure <\/em>the radical possibilities that exist when people come together to create new forms of existing together.<\/p>\n

III. Failure to See<\/em> and Act <\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 More than anything else, Now <\/em>is an piercing cry for us to see <\/em>what is right in front of us, but which we nonetheless choose to ignore. \u201cThe real lie is not the one we tell others but the one we tell\u00a0ourselves\u2026 <\/em>refusing to see certain things\u00a0that one does see<\/em>\u00a0and refusing to see them\u00a0just as one sees them<\/em>.[19]<\/a>\u201d In doing so, the Invisible Committee argues, we betray ourselves by dismissing our perceptions in favor of explanations that \u201cstand between oneself and the world.[20]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of living this lie, we must live truth<\/em>. \u201cTruth is not something one professes but a way of being in the world. It is not held, therefore, nor accumulated. It manifests itself in a situation and from moment to moment.[21]<\/a>\u201d For the Invisible Committee, living presently <\/em>and truthfully <\/em>are revolutionary, are in many ways the Committee is absolutely correct. Living presently and truthfully means not allowing our self-interest to coopt us into a capitalist system that alienates us from ourselves. It means seeing the reality of exploitation, inequality, racism, and fragmentation, and, crucially, instead of trying to reform the institutions that perpetuate such abuses deciding that it\u2019s time to start anew. This is the destitution <\/em>that the Invisible Committee is calling for above all else — a destruction of the fa\u00e7ade that prevents us from seeing truth <\/em>and acting now. <\/em>\u201cThe current disaster is like a monstrous accumulation of all the deferrals of the past, to which are added those of each day and each moment, in a continuous time slide. But life is always decided now, and now, and now.[22]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> The Invisible Committee. Now. <\/em><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Kosellleck, Reinhard. Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> The Invisible Committee. Now.<\/em><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> The Invisible Committee. Now. <\/em><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> The Invisible Committee. Now.<\/em><\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> The Invisible Committee. Now<\/em><\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Id. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sami Cleland I. Destitution as Anti-Uprising The Invisible Committee\u2019s Now (2017) provides an interesting follow-up to last year seminar series, which explored the various modalities of uprising. In Now, the Invisible Committee urges destitution the essential, necessary and apt… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2166,"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-4238","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\/4238","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\/2166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}