Now – AudioZine

Explicit content warning

01/23/20 • -1 min

Now by The Invisible Committee – MP3 – Read– Print – Torrent – Archive – YouTube

Now (2017) is the phantom chapter to the Invisible Committee’s previous book, To Our Friends: a new critique from the anonymous collective that establishes their opposition to the world of capital and its law of labor, addresses current anti-terrorist rhetoric and the ferocious repression that comes with it, and clarifies the end of social democracy and the growing rumors of the need for a coming “civil war.”

Now emerges at a time when the Invisible Committee’s contestation has found echoes throughout the West, with a collapse of trust in the police, an inept weariness on the part of the political system, a growing urgency for opposition, a return of the theme of the Commune, a vanishing distinction between radicals and citizens, and a widespread refusal on the part of the citizen to be governed. As farcical political elections continue to unfold worldwide like a line of tumbling dominoes, and governments increasingly struggle to reclaim a legitimacy that has already slipped out of their grasp, Now clarifies the Invisible Committee’s attitude toward all such elections and their outcome: one of utter indifference.

Now proposes a “destituent process” that charts out a different path to be taken, a path of outright refusal that simply ignores elections altogether. It is a path that calls for taking over the world and not taking power, for exploring new forms of life and not a new constitution, and for desertion and silence as alternatives to proclamations and crashes. It is also a call for an unprecedented communism—a communism stronger than nation and country.

Musical interludes by Debussy from Arabesque Number One

“No more waiting.

No more hoping.

No more letting ourselves be distracted, unnerved.

Break and enter.

Put untruth back in its place.

Believe in what we feel.

Act accordingly.

Force our way into the present.

Try. Fail this time. Try again. Fail better.

Persist. Attack. Build.

Go down one’s road.

Win perhaps.

In any case, overcome.

Live, therefore.

Now...”

Now by The Invisible Committee – MP3 – Read– Print – Torrent – Archive – YouTube

Musical interludes by Debussy from Arabesque Number One

“No more waiting.

No more hoping.

No more letting ourselves be distracted, unnerved.

Break and enter.

Put untruth back in its place.

Believe in what we feel.

Act accordingly.

Force our way into the present.

Try. Fail this time. Try again. Fail better.

Persist. Attack. Build.

Go down one’s road.

Win perhaps.

In any case, overcome.

Live, therefore.

Now...”

Previous Episode

The Communard – Audio Zine

The Olympia Communard: Dispatches from the Olympia Rail Blockade – By Various Authors – MP3 – PDF – Torrent – Archive – YouTube

For seven days during the winter of 2016, radicals, revolutionaries and ne’er-do-wells – inspired by the then unfolding revolt at Standing Rock – built a blockade encampment on the train tracks in downtown Olympia, Washington (Nisqually and Squaxin Land), in order to stop a train full of essential fracking supplies from reaching the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. One year later the blockade reemerged and for another twelve days during the winter of 2017, participants took a stand against the industrial machinations of death.

This compilation of writing comes from the second year of the blockade and was intended to be record of sorts, of a special time and place affectionately referred to by its participants as the Olympia Commune. In the Olympia Communard’s own words:

“It is simply the perspective of some future possible world, glancing back at the collapse of this world and searching for those elements of redemption hidden therein”.

More audio resources on the Olympia Train Blockade(s) check out

The (Ex)Worker #61: The Olympia Train Blockade (2017)

SoleCast on the Olympia Blockade (2017)

IGD Cast – Discussion on the Blockade (2017)

IGD Cast – Audio Report (2017)

IGD Cast – Barricade That Train (2016)

Next Episode

Revolution and Destituent Power – Presentation

Revolution and Destituent Power: How do we de-activate the State without founding a new one? – MP3 – Read – Print– Torrent – Archive– YouTube

Historically, the revolutionary process in the West has centered on violently destroying a certain order and then re-founding a new order based on that prior violence. From the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution, and the writing of the American constitution in the wake of revolutionary war, to the authoritarian nightmare of the Soviet Union, to contemporary demands in Chile for a constitutional assembly, it seems impossible for revolutions to escape the logic of sovereignty, constituency, and security. How do we escape what Agamben calls the vicious spiral of terrorism and the State? Seeking a way out of the traps of modernity, some theorists and revolutionary movements have proposed an idea of destituent power: a revolutionary process that breaks the law not in order to found a new law, but to do away with the logic of law altogether.

This talk presents an overview of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s writing on the question of destituent power, tracing the history of the idea from Walter Benjamin and Georges Sorel, through the Italian Autonomia movement and the refusal of work, and into present theories of destituent power. Finally, we briefly discuss the interesting points of intersection between the largely European concept of destituent power, and the decidedly Black and North American concepts of fugitivity and the undercommons, rooted in Fred Moten’s work.

Trailer at the end for another Channel Zero podcast trailer Rebel Steps Season 2

For those who are interested in the source material, reading suggestions include:

Giorgio Agamben, From the State of Control to a Praxis of Destituent Power

Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies, Prologue and Epilogue

Robert Hurley, Communist Ontology

Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study