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. T
he 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 revolutionar
y struggle no longer hold. Rather, it is ubiquitous cybernetics, surveillance, a
nd 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," "sabot
eurs," 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 w
ith Introduction to Civil War in 2001. In "This Is Not a Program," Tiqqun outlin
es 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 t
he still fruitful and contemporary insurrectionary movements in Italy of the 197
0s. "As a Science of Apparatuses" examines the way Empire has enforced on the su
bject a veritable metaphysics of isolation and pacification, "apparatuses" that
include chairs, desks, computers; surveillance (security guards, cameras); disea
se (depression); crutch (cell phone, lover, sedative); and authority. Tiqqun's c
ritique of the biopolitical subject and omnipresent Empire is all the more urgen
t as we become inured to the permanent state of exception that is the War on Ter
ror and to other, no less intimate forms of pacification. But all is not lost. I
n its unrelenting production of the Same, Empire itself creates the conditions n
ecessary for the insurrection to come.
