Bøger af Tiqqun

An early text from Tiqqun that views cybernetics as a fable of late capitalism, and offers tools for the resistance.The cybernetician's mission is to combat the general entropy that threatens living beings, machines, societies—that is, to create the experimental conditions for a continuous revitalization, to constantly restore the integrity of the whole.—from The Cybernetic HypothesisThis early Tiqqun text has lost none of its pertinence. The Cybernetic Hypothesis presents a genealogy of our "technical” present that doesn't point out the political and ethical dilemmas embedded in it as if they were puzzles to be solved, but rather unmasks an enemy force to be engaged and defeated. Cybernetics in this context is the teknê of threat reduction, which unfortunately has required the reduction of a disturbing humanity to packets of manageable information. Not so easily done. Not smooth. A matter of civil war, in fact. According to the authors, cybernetics is the latest master fable, welcomed at a certain crisis juncture in late capitalism. And now the interesting question is: Has the guest in the house become the master of the house?The "cybernetic hypothesis” is strategic. Readers of this little book are not likely to be naive. They may be already looking, at least in their heads, for a weapon, for a counter-strategy. Tiqqun here imagines an unbearable disturbance to a System that can take only so much: only so much desertion, only so much destituent gesture, only so much guerilla attack, only so much wickedness and joy.

An urgent critique of the biopolitical subject and omnipresent Empire.Historical conflict no longer opposes two massive molar heaps, two classes—the exploited and the exploiters, the dominant and dominated, managers and workers—between which, in each individual case, it would be possible to differentiate. The front line no longer cuts through the middle of society; it now runs through each one of us... "—from This Is Not a ProgramTraditional lines of revolutionary struggle no longer hold. Rather, it is ubiquitous cybernetics, surveillance, and terror that create the illusion of difference within hegemony. Configurations of dissent and the rhetoric of revolution are merely the other face of capital, conforming identities to empty predicates, ensuring that even "thieves,” "saboteurs,” and "terrorists” no longer exceed the totalizing space of Empire. This Is Not a Program offers two texts, both originally published in French by Tiqqun with Introduction to Civil War in 2001. In This Is Not a Program, Tiqqun outlines a new path for resistance and struggle in the age of Empire, one that eschews the worn-out example of France's May '68 in favor of what they consider to be the still fruitful and contemporary insurrectionary movements in Italy of the 1970s. "As a Science of Apparatuses” examines the way Empire has enforced on the subject a veritable metaphysics of isolation and pacification, "apparatuses” that include chairs, desks, computers; surveillance (security guards, cameras); disease (depression); crutch (cell phone, lover, sedative); and authority. Tiqqun's critique of the biopolitical subject and omnipresent Empire is all the more urgent as we become inured to the permanent state of exception that is the War on Terror and to other, no less intimate forms of pacification. But all is not lost. In its unrelenting production of the Same, Empire itself creates the conditions necessary for the insurrection to come.

Det kan udtrykkes sådan at denne sammenhæng, betryggende, livmoragtig, kan reduceres til et ønske om en positiv antropologi. Vi har brug for at man fortæller os hvad ‘et menneske’ er, hvad ‘vi’ er, hvad der er os tilladt at ville og være. Når alt kommer til alt er den- ne tidsalder fanatisk omkring mange ting, især hvad angår det så- kaldte menneske hvormed man sublimerer det indlysende faktum: Bloom. I dens dominerende form er antropologien ikke blot positiv i kraft af dens forsonende, noget enfoldige, og elskværdigt fromme opfattelse af menneskets natur, den er først og fremmest positiv fordi den positivt tilskriver ’Mennesket’ kvaliteter, bestemte egen- skaber, substantielle prædikater. Derfor er selv den angelsaksiske pessimistiske antropologi med sin hypostasering af interesser, af be- hov, af struggle for life, endt med at være et beroligende foretagen- de fordi den stadig leverer nogle anvendelige overbevisninger om menneskets væsen. Men vi; vi som ikke stiller os tilfreds med nogen form for kom- fort, som godt nok har flossede nerver, men også til hensigt at gøre dem stadigt mere modstandsdygtige, stadigt mere uforstyrrede; vi har brug for noget helt andet. Vi har brug for en radikalt negativ antropologi, vi har brug for nogle abstrakte begreber, som er til- strækkeligt tomme, tilstrækkeligt gennemsigtige til at afholde os fra at dømme på forhånd, en fysik der garanterer ethvert væsen og enhver situation deres tilbøjelighed til det mirakuløse. Begreber der bryder isen og giver adgang til - giver plads til erfaringen. Så de kan rumme den. Om mennesker, hvilket vil sige: om deres sameksistens, kan vi ikke sige noget som ikke omgående bedøver os. Intet kan forudsiges om denne ubønhørlige frihed, så vi er tvunget til at betegne det med en udefineret term, et blændet ord hvormed man sædvanligvis navngiver det man ikke forstår, fordi man ikke vil forstå, forstå at verden kalder os. Dette ord er borgerkrig. Det er et taktisk valg; det handler om på forhånd at genindtage det ord som vores operatio- ner uundgåeligt vil blive kendt under.