/lit/ - Literature

As for serious obstacles, it’s wrong to imagine them invulnerable to all destruction. The promethean element in all of this boils down to a certain use of fire, all blind voluntarism aside. In 356 BC, Erostratus burned down the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world. In our time of utter decadence, the only thing imposing about temples is the dismal truth that they are already ruins.

Annihilating this nothingness is hardly a sad task. It gives action a fresh demeanor. Everything suddenly coalesces and makes sense — space, time, friendship. We must use all means at our disposal and rethink their uses — we ourselves being means. Perhaps, in the misery of the present, “fucking it all up” will serve — not without reason — as the last collective seduction.

In a demonstration, a union member tears the mask off of an anonymous person who has just broken a window. “Take responsibility for what you’re doing instead of hiding yourself.” To be visible is to be exposed, that is to say above all, vulnerable. When leftists everywhere continually make their cause more “visible” — whether that of the homeless, of women, or of undocumented immigrants — in hopes that it will get dealt with, they’re doing exactly the contrary of what must be done. Not making ourselves visible, but instead turning the anonymity to which we’ve been relegated to our advantage, and through conspiracy, nocturnal or faceless actions, creating an invulnerable position of attack. The fires of November 2005 offer a model for this. No leader, no demands, no organization, but words, gestures, complicities. To be socially nothing is not a humiliating condition, the source of some tragic lack of recognition — from whom do we seek recognition? — but is on the contrary the condition for maximum freedom of action. Not claiming your illegal actions, only attaching to them some fictional acronym — we still remember the ephemeral BAFT (Brigade Anti-Flic des Tarterêts) — is a way to preserve that freedom. Quite obviously, one of the regime’s first defensive maneuvers was the creation of a “banlieue” subject to treat as the author of the “riots of November 2005.” Just looking at the faces on some of this society’s somebodies illustrates why there’s such joy in being nobody.

>>13870999
TCI comes pretty close.

There is no “clash of civilizations.” There is a clinically dead civilization kept alive by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet’s atmosphere. At this point it can no longer believe in a single one of its own “values”, and any affirmation of them is considered an impudent act, a provocation that should and must be taken apart, deconstructed, and returned to a state of doubt. Today Western imperialism is the imperialism of relativism, of the “it all depends on your point of view”; it’s the eye-rolling or the wounded indignation at anyone who’s stupid, primitive, or presumptuous enough to still believe in something, to affirm anything at all. You can see the dogmatism of constant questioning give its complicit wink of the eye everywhere in the universities and among the literary intelligentsias. No critique is too radical among postmodernist thinkers, as long as it maintains this total absence of certitude. A century ago, scandal was identified with any particularly unruly and raucous negation, while today it’s found in any affirmation that fails to tremble.

No social order can securely found itself on the principle that nothing is true. Yet it must be made secure. Applying the concept of “security” to everything these days is the expression of a project to securely fasten onto places, behaviors, and even people themselves, an ideal order to which they are no longer ready to submit. Saying “nothing is true” says nothing about the world but everything about the Western concept of truth. For the West, truth is not an attribute of beings or things, but of their representation. A representation that conforms to experience is held to be true. Science is, in the last analysis, this empire of universal verification. Since all human behavior, from the most ordinary to the most learned, is based on a foundation of unevenly formulated presuppositions, and since all practices start from a point where things and their representations can no longer be distinguished, a dose of truth that the Western concept knows nothing about enters into every life. We talk in the West about “real people,” but only in order to mock these simpletons. This is why Westerners have always been thought of as liars and hypocrites by the people they’ve colonized. This is why they’re envied for what they have, for their technological development, but never for what they are, for which they are rightly held in contempt. Sade, Nietzsche and Artaud wouldn’t be taught in schools if the kind of truth mentioned above was not discredited in advance. Containing all affirmations and deactivating all certainties as they irresistibly come to light — such is the long labor of the Western intellect. The police and philosophy are two convergent, if formally distinct, means to this end.

>>13864431
As for serious obstacles, it’s wrong to imagine them invulnerable to all destruction. The promethean element in all of this boils down to a certain use of fire, all blind voluntarism aside. In 356 BC, Erostratus burned down the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world. In our time of utter decadence, the only thing imposing about temples is the dismal truth that they are already ruins.

Annihilating this nothingness is hardly a sad task. It gives action a fresh demeanor. Everything suddenly coalesces and makes sense — space, time, friendship. We must use all means at our disposal and rethink their uses — we ourselves being means. Perhaps, in the misery of the present, “fucking it all up” will serve — not without reason — as the last collective seduction.

Flee visibility. Turn anonymity into an offensive position

In a demonstration, a union member tears the mask off of an anonymous person who has just broken a window. “Take responsibility for what you’re doing instead of hiding yourself.” To be visible is to be exposed, that is to say above all, vulnerable. When leftists everywhere continually make their cause more “visible” — whether that of the homeless, of women, or of undocumented immigrants — in hopes that it will get dealt with, they’re doing exactly the contrary of what must be done. Not making ourselves visible, but instead turning the anonymity to which we’ve been relegated to our advantage, and through conspiracy, nocturnal or faceless actions, creating an invulnerable position of attack. The fires of November 2005 offer a model for this. No leader, no demands, no organization, but words, gestures, complicities. To be socially nothing is not a humiliating condition, the source of some tragic lack of recognition — from whom do we seek recognition? — but is on the contrary the condition for maximum freedom of action. Not claiming your illegal actions, only attaching to them some fictional acronym — we still remember the ephemeral BAFT (Brigade Anti-Flic des Tarterêts) — is a way to preserve that freedom. Quite obviously, one of the regime’s first defensive maneuvers was the creation of a “banlieue” subject to treat as the author of the “riots of November 2005.” Just looking at the faces on some of this society’s somebodies illustrates why there’s such joy in being nobody.

Visibility must be avoided. But a force that gathers in the shadows can’t avoid it forever. Our appearance as a force must be pushed back until the opportune moment. The longer we avoid visibility, the stronger we’ll be when it catches up with us. And once we become visible our days will be numbered. Either we will be in a position to pulverize its reign in short order, or we’ll be crushed in no time.