Product Description

Thirty years of "crisis," mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy. . . . We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it.
—from The Coming Insurrection

The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as "the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality." The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine to "spread anarchy and live communism."

Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the "war on terror."

Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized forms-of-life. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.

Intervention series
Distributed for Semiotext(e)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21354 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 136 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781584350804
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"...without a doubt the most thought-provoking radical text to be published in the past ten years. It deserves to be read and discussed."
— Daniel Miller, New Statesman

"Any book indirectly responsible for massive raids involving helicopters and anti-terrorist police, a splenetic Fox News broadcast and an impromptu book-reading at a Barnes & Noble bookshop in New York (also attended by the police) must have something going for it. And so it is with The Coming Insurrection, the kind of political pamphlet last fashionable in the 17th century (and perhaps for a period in the 1960s and ‘70s)."
— Nina Power, Frieze Magazine

"For culture jammers, anarchists and malcontents everywhere, The Coming Insurrection is a bracing tonic – an elegant and inspiring call to arms."
— Kono Matsu, Adbusters

"I am not calling for a ban on this book. It’s important that you read this book. [...] And let me tell you something: Don’t dismiss these people. Don’t dismiss them."
— Glenn Beck, Fox News / Glenn Beck Program

About the Author
The Invisible Committee is a collective and anonymous penname.

Customer Reviews

The Current Insurrection
I first heard of this book through an underground online anarchist news syndicate called submedia.tv, talking about this book being read out aloud in corporate chains like Barnes & Noble and Starbucks. Then I heard somewhere that Glenn Beck had urged the public to read this book, because it was dangerous- and it was at the moment that the author(s) already had a pre-order on their hands. Not because I care what Glenn Beck urges me to read, but because this book is 'dangerous', and dangerous books are usually chalk full of poetry, predictions, and truth that is nothing but dynamite to the current establishment in question. Those establishments being established lifestyles, taboos, philosophies or types of government. Usually those kind of books tend to be very amazing, life changing even.

There was a time when Oscar Wilde was put into jail for his book "The Picture of Dorian Gray", apparently that book was really dangerous. From what I hear (its still on my reading list) its really, really good too. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Fight Club, Ulysses, Candide. All banned, one time or another, some more then others. All really awesome books. Last I heard France is trying to ban this particular title, and even held one person in jail for an indefinite amount of time just under the suspicion that they thought he wrote it.

Dynamite.

From what I've read of peoples opinions, readers of this book either have a loving relationship with it and compare it to pure poetry, or find it highly odious. There's very little room for a gray area.

Those who compare it to poetry tend to be those of the anti-authoritarian, counterculture type- to those I say; If you've ever wanted to read Fight Club minus the plot, and just want Tyler Durden's rhetorical philosophy covering 130 pages non-stop, go for this book.

Allow me to make up for the trite hyperbole:

For those counterculture types, get this book. It will provide you with a lot of information and perspective that you never really crossed before, and I can pretty much guarantee you that you will come out of this feeling like your mind has been sharpened a bit. You will look at things differently, and feel learned, renewed, even inspired. I can already see this book being hailed as a classic entry into the discourse that is radical politics. That, and if you feel like coaxing the NSA, FBI, or CIA to watch you (more so then you already have), then make sure you buy this off the internet.

Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Now for anyone else who isn't of the anti-authoritarian counterculture type, you will probably label this as adolescent angst, anarchist garbage, an appeal to barbarism etc. And even if I may disagree with your opinion of the book, and see this as an appeal to true community and sustainable living rather then to pure destruction, I'd say don't go for this. Ignore Glenn Beck, or whatever mainstream media talking head who told you to read it, you will come out of this reading experience feeling like you've wasted your time. Maybe even a little betrayed because you expected it to be better in some aspects. Although some of you may not feel that way at all, on the whole that's the general reaction. If you still feel like you want to read a book on radical politics of roughly the same vain, I'd sway you over to Anarchy and Order: Essays in Politics, Anarchism And Other Essays, or Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control as gradient to ease you into the field rather then reading the quick and dirty onslaught of social criticism that is the coming insurrection that will probably make you feel dissatisfied if you've never had any previous readings experience on the topic.


I'm personally about as excited with this book as I am with John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (which I highly recommend for everyone, even those that don't find the rhetoric of The Coming Insurrection appealing), and I totally agree with Glenn Beck that this is an important book. But in his eyes, for all the wrong reasons. I thought this book was rather fascinating and inspiring. It made it to the top of my list before I was twenty pages into it. While I recommend only a certain circle to read it, I think that circle should pass it around to everyone else they know, especially those who they feel are ready to be introduced to this kind of philosophy.

the coming insurrection is not what you think it is...
it is a guide about building community or "the commune" in the most basic sense and not really part of the marxist tradition at all.

these are communists who are anti-state, anti-party, and anti-politics in general.

they seem to be in support of insurrection but mostly as a form of offensive retreat. they wish to drop out of the metropolis and build communes, with absolute sharing between friends.

if they must defend themselves they will. but the people of the world have always been defending themselves from their oppressors.

the work is also a pretty remarkable bit of philosophy but it is bit of a B grade compared to agamben and debord. yet it is also more practical and up on the times. it seems the only reason semiotext(e) is publishing it is because of it's notoriety in relation to the case of the tarnac 9.

Hampered by the Left-Right Paradigm
This book attempts to trace and diagnose the culmination of Modernity in its current distopian incarnation of the State as control grid and surveillance state. The authors suggests people in modern states, under the yoke of Taylor-style Capitalism and technocracy, have seen their communities fractured and their sense of purpose obliterated by a consumer culture. In order to ensure revolution is coopted, the State provides enervating entertainment, pharmaceuticals, and distraction for the masses. The authors believe the State has exhausted its means for coopting rebellion and that is why more and more riots and protests are erupting. In this regard, the book offers some interesting insights and cultural criticism that readers of Debord or Braudrillard will appreciate. As for getting to the core of the problem, students of deep politics will be disappointed. The authors retain the theoretical discourse of critical theory in its Marxist and, at times, Freudian incarnation -- there's Deleuze and Guattari here -- which tends to pre-determine their conclusions. No where, however, do the authors address the techniques and methods used by the Cryptocracy to alchemically transform and manipulate the group mind ala Hoffman. As a result, Power is never really unmasked. Ironically, in this sense, the authors remain "plugged into the matrix" since they do not question the extent to which their reality has been conjured through misdirection, the Hegelian dialectic, mass hypnosis. For a deeper analysis, see Hoffman's "Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare."