A theoretical dissection of capitalism's ultimate form of merchandise: the living spectacle of the Young-Girl. The Young-Girl is not always young; more and more frequently, she is not even female. She is the figure of total integration in a disintegrating social totality. —from Theory of the Young-Girl First published in France in 1999, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl dissects the impossibility of love under Empire. The Young-Girl is consumer society's total product and model citizen: whatever “type” of Young-Girl she may embody, whether by whim or concerted performance, she can only seduce by consuming. Filled with the language of French women's magazines, rooted in Proust's figure of Albertine and the amusing misery of (teenage) romance in Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke, and informed by Pierre Klossowski's notion of “living currency” and libidinal economy, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl diagnoses—and makes visible—a phenomenon that is so ubiquitous as to have become transparent. In the years since the book's first publication in French, the worlds of fashion, shopping, seduction plans, makeover projects, and eating disorders have moved beyond the comparatively tame domain of paper magazines into the perpetual accessibility of Internet culture. Here the Young-Girl can seek her own reflection in corporate universals and social media exchanges of “personalities” within the impersonal realm of the marketplace. Tracing consumer society's colonization of youth and sexuality through the Young-Girl's “freedom” (in magazine terms) to do whatever she wants with her body, Tiqqun exposes the rapaciously competitive and psychically ruinous landscape of modern love.

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 Hypothesis This 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 Program Traditional 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.

Nesse texto sulfuroso, o agrupamento anônimo Tiqqun descreve o colapso das formas de vida atuais, bem como das fórmulas que até hoje pretenderam dar conta de seu esgotamento. O desafio consiste em redefinir a conflitualidade histórica de um ponto de vista que não seja apenas intelectual, mas vital. Não se trata mais de colocar em oposição "dois grandes aglomerados molares, duas classes, os explorados e os exploradores, os dominantes e os dominados, os dirigentes e os dirigidos", mas perceber a guerra civil que atravessa o corpo social como um todo e cada um de nós no interior dele, cada situação que vivemos. Donde a necessidade de pensar o processo revolucionário em qualquer ponto do tecido biopolítico, em toda linha de fuga que o atravessa, e intensificar e complexificar as relações entre elas. Ao repassar o legado das insurreições recentes e pretéritas, e rastrear a emergência de novos protagonismos (mulheres, jovens, desempregados, além de todas as minorias já conhecidas e sempre excluídas), o balanço é categórico: novas modalidades de fascismo pedem uma deserção maciça: "deserção da família, deserção do escritório, deserção da escola e de todas as tutelas, deserção do papel de homem, de mulher e de cidadão, deserção de todas as relações de merda às quais SE acredita estar preso". Uma curetagem generalizada pede o abandono das identidades dadas, em favor de novas subjetividades, através de outras armas, rumo a direções inéditas.

Este es un libro de amor. Habla sobre la imposibilidad del amor en nuestra estructura económica. ¿Qué significa esto? El capitalismo no está ahí fuera: en el FMI, la OMC o el BCE. El capitalismo es una promesa de paraíso en la tierra, una idea de éxito y realización, un poder de fascinación. Tiqqun le pone nombre y le da figura: la Jovencita. La Jovencita no es mujer ni hombre, sino una imagen, un modelo, un ideal. Eterna juventud, seducción ilimitada, placer indiferente, amor asegurado contra todo riesgo, control de las apariencias, cero defectos. Impersonal, implacable, impecable, impermeable e imposible, la Jovencita se apodera de nuestra mirada, de nuestro deseo y de nuestro imaginario. Es una máquina de guerra. No se deja tocar y nunca pierde. Fragmento a fragmento, Tiqqun dibuja el campo de batalla: nos lo hace ver. De qué modo un bolso, un culo, una sonrisa, un perfume, unas botas o unos bíceps pueden ser armas en una guerra. Librada entre nosotros y en el interior de cada uno. Una guerra contra el azar y los encuentros sin garantías, la belleza y la sensualidad singulares, el tiempo de toda duración, la violencia del abandono y la entrega. Contra el amor verdadero. Esta edición incluye el texto "Hombres-máquina: modo de empleo", donde Tiqqun desarrolla el análisis del biopoder contemporáneo: la reducción de la vida humana a simple carne que vigilar y gestionar según parámetros estandarizados de belleza, salud o placer.

Según Tiqqun, vivimos en el tránsito entre el paradigma soberano del poder (vertical, estático, centralizado) y el cibernético (horizontal, dinámico, distribuido). El orden cibernético es un orden que alimentamos entre todos, con nuestra participación, feedbacks y datos. El modelo serían Google o Facebook, pensados como formas de gobierno y no solo como inocentes páginas de contactos o buscadores. El poder cibernético extrae y procesa información, gestiona lo vivo entendido como información, aspira a gobernar el mundo como Facebook o Google gobiernan las redes. Un poder radicalmente distinto, pero no menos opresivo. ¿Qué pedimos entonces cuando reclamamos más transparencia, comunicación, participación y contacto entre gobernantes y gobernados? Tiqqun apuesta más bien por devenir ingobernables: opacos a la visión cibernética, ilegibles para sus códigos, imprevisibles para sus máquinas de computación y control. Por un lado, aprendiendo a discernir lo que escapa a la racionalidad fría y el tiempo "real" del orden cibernético: los cuerpos y sus encuentros, las palabras errantes, la temporalidad que implica toda duración. Por otro, buscando inspiración en los más diversos campos para subvertirlo: el ritmo del free jazz, la interferencia de Burroughs, el caos fecundo de Ilya Prigogine, el pánico según Canetti, la revuelta invisible de Alexander Trocchi, la guerrilla difusa de Lawrence de Arabia, la línea de fuga de Deleuze y Guattari, la niebla narrada por Boris Vian...

Bloom [blum] nm - v1914, origine inconnue p-ê du russe Oblomov, de l'allemand Anna Blume ou de l'anglais Ulysses. 1/Stimmung finale d'une civilisation clouée à son propre chevet, et qui ne parvient plus à se distraire de son naufrage que par l'alternance de courtes phases d'hystérie technophile et de longues plages d'asthénie contemplative. C'était comme si la masse exsangue des salariés vivait dans le Bloom. " Mort au Bloom ! " (J-Frey) 2/Figuré. Forme d'existence crépusculaire, quelconque, et pourtant commune, les hommes singuliers dans le monde de la marchandise autoritaire = bloomesque, bloomitude, bloomification. 3/Par extension. Sentiment d'être posthume. Avoir le Bloom 4/Acte de décès de lit politique classique. 5/Acte de naissance de la politique extatique 6/Historique. Ce dont l'assomption détermina la formation des différents foyers du Comité Invisible, conjuration anonyme qui, de sabotages en soulèvements, finit par liquider la domination marchande dans le premier quart du XXIe siècle. " Les spectateurs se figent quand le train passe " (K).