The Invisible Committee The Coming Insurrection SEMIOTEXT(E) INTERVENTION SERIES © 2009 by The Invisible Committee Originally published as L'insurrection qui vient by Editions La Fabrique, Paris, 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, elec­ tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. Published by Semiotext(e) 2007 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 427, Los Angeles, CA 90057 www.semiotexte.com ISBN: 978-1-58435-080-4 Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. semiotext(e) and London, England intervention Printed in the United States of America series 01 The book you hold in your handshas become the princi­ ple piece ofevidence in an anti-terrorism case in France directed against nine individuals who were arrested on November 11, 2008, mostly in the village of Tarnac. Theyhave been accused of "criminal associationfor the purposes of terrorist activity"on the grounds that they were to have participated in the sabotage of overhead electrical lines on France's national railways. Although only scant circumstantial evidence has been presented against the nine, the French Interior Minister has pub­ lically associated them with the emergent threat of an "ultra-left" movement, taking care to single out this book, described as a "manuaJfor terrorism, " which they are accused ofauthoring. What followsis the text ofthe book preceded by the first statement of the Invisible Committee since the arrests. 5 Contents Introduction: A point of clarification 9 From whatever angle ... 23 First Circle 29 Second Circle 35 Third Circle 43 Fourth Circle 52 Fifth Circle 63 Sixth Circle 73 Seventh Circle 85 Get Going! 95 Find Each Other 97 Get Organized 103 Insurrection 117 Introduction A POINT OF CLARIFICATION Everyone agrees. It's about to explode. It is acknowl­ edged, with a serious and self-important look, in the corridors of the Assembly, just as yesterday it was repeated in the cafes. There is a certain pleasure in calculating the risks. Already, we are presented with a detailed menu of preventive measures for securing the territory. The New Years festivities take a decisive turn-"Next year there'll be no oysters, enjoy them while you can!" To prevent the celebrations from being totally eclipsed by the traditional disorder, 36,000 cops and 16 helicopters are rushed out by Alliot-Marie1-the same clown who, during the high school demonstrations in December, tremulously watched for the slightest sign of a Greek contamina­ tion, readying the police apparatus just in case. We can discern more clearly every day, beneath the reas­ suring drone, the noise of preparations for open war. It's impossible to ignore its cold and pragmatic implementation, no longer even bothering to present itself as an operation of pacification. The newspapers conscientiously draw up the list of causes for the sudden disquiet. There is the financial 1. Michele AlIior-Marie, rhe French Interior Minister. 9 unemployment, its The Greek rioters are faced with a weak state, while crisis, of course, with its booming plans, its Kerviel being able to take advantage of a strong popularity. share of hopelessness and of social failure of the educa­ One must not forget that it was against the Regime and Madoffscandals. There is the of workers and of the Colonels that, only thirty years ago, democracy tional system, its dwindling production of the middle class as reconstituted itself on the basis of a practice of polit­ citizens, even with the children existence of a youth to ical violence. This violence, whose memory is not so its raw material. There is the corresponds, a youth distant, still seems intuitive to most Greeks. Even the which no political representation the free bicycles that leaders of the socialist party have thrown a molotov or good for nothing but destroying their disposal. two in their youth. Yet classical politics is equipped society so conscientiously put at appear with variants that lmow very well how to accommo­ None of these worrisome subjects should predominant mode date these practices and to extend their ideological insurmountable in an era whose management of c:ise�. rubbish to the very heart of the riot. If the Greek of government is precisely the is confrontmg 1S battle wasn't decided, and put down, in the streets­ Unless we consider that what power just a succession of the police being visibly outflanked there-it's because neither just another crisis, nor less anticipated dist�r­ its neutralization was played out elsewhere. There is chronic problems, of more or a form of conflict nothing more draining, nothing more fatal, than this bances, but a singular peril: that been taken up, that classical politics, with its dried up rituals, its thinking has emerged, and positions have without thought, its little closed world. are no longer manageable. In France, our most exalted socialist bureaucrats Those who everywhere make up this peril have to have never been anything other than shriveled husks ask themselves more than the trifling questions filling up the halls of the Assembly. Here everything about causes, or the probabilities of inevitable move­ conspires to annihilate even the slightest form of ments and confrontations. They need to ask how, for political intensity. Which means that it is always Ii instance, does the Greek chaos resonate in the possible to oppose the citizen to the delinquent in a II French situation? An uprising here cannot be the quasi-linguistic operation that goes hand in hand with 'I IJI simple transposition of what happened over there. quasi-military operations. The riots of November 2005 li Global civil war still has its local specificities. In and, in a differentcontext, the social movements in the II France a situation of generalized rioting would autumn of 2007, have already provided several prece­ provoke an explosion of another tenor. dents. The image of right wing students in Nanterre II.!., rJ t.1 Introduction: point of clarification / 11 10 / The Coming Insurrection A II applauding as the police expelled their classmates points, though dispersed in time and space, succeed in offers a small glimpse of what the future holds in store. im�osing the rhythm of their own vibrations, always It goes without saying that the attachment of the takmg on more density. To the point that any return French to the state-the guarantor of universal values, to normal is no longer desirable or even imaginable. the last rampart against the disaster-is a pathology When we speak of Empire we name the mecha­ that is difficult to undo. It's above all a fiction that no nisms of power that preventively and surgically stifle longer knows how to carry on. Our governors them­ any revolutionary potential in a situation. In this selves increasingly consider it as a useless encumbrance sense, Empire is not an enemy that confronts US because they, at least, take the conflict for what it is­ head-on. It is a rhythm that imposes itself, a way of militarily. They have no complex about sending in dispensing and dispersing reality. Less an order of the elite antiterrorist units to subdue riots, or to liberate world than its sad, heavy and militaristic liquidation. a recycling center occupied by its workers. As the What we niean by the party of insurgents is the welfare state collapses, we see the emergence of a brute sketching out of a completely other composition, an conflict between those who desire order and those other side of reality, which from Greece to the French who don't. Everything that French politics has been banlieues2 is seeking its consistency. able to deactivate is in the process of unleashing itself. It will never be able to process all that it has It is now publicly understood that crisis situations are repressed. In the advanced degree of social decompo­ so many opportunities for the restructuring of dom­ sition, we can count on the coming movement to ination. This is why Sarkozy can announce, without find the necessary breath of nihilism. Which will not seeming to lie too much, that the financial crisis is mean that it won't be exposed to other limits. "the end of a world," and that 2009 will see France Revolutionary movements do not spread by enter a new era. This charade of an economic crisis is contamination but by resonance. Something that is supposed to be a novelty: we are supposed to be in constituted here resonates with the shock wave emitted the dawn of a new epoch where we will all join by something constituted over there. A body that together in fighting inequality and global warming. resonates does so according to its own mode. An But for our generation-which was born in the crisis insurrection is not like a plague or a forest fire-a linear and has known nothing but economic, financial, process which spreads from place to place after an initial spark. It rather takes the shape of a music, whose focal 2. Banlieue-French ghettoes, usually located in the suburban periphery. 12 1 The Coming Insurrection Introduction: A point of clarification 113 social and ecological crisis-this is rather difficult to later; between bracketing that which is to be lived accept. They won't fool us again, with another round and experimented in the name of a paradise that of "Now we start all over again" and "It's just a question seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put of tightening our belts for a little while." To tell the off, and repeating, with a corpse-filled mouth, that truth, the disastrous unemployment figures no longer planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare.