Morning Comrades.
Apart from eating my way through Paris last week and yes, it is better than one can possibly imagine, one of my highlights was buying and reading new books. I tried to stay away from political philosophy and returned my attention to some classics ( Hemmingway ) and a deeper dive into Beatnik writing, which I thoroughly enjoy, yet, one book that I finished the other night that really hit home, again, was the latest publication from the Invisible Committee, called “Now”:
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...
I am pretty certain that I may have covered one of older books in the past but all I need to say here, for the time being, is that I really enjoy them. Especially, in times of exhaustion they have a real ability to light a fire under your ass, it is a theme in French modern philosophy to be that much more directly radical and absolute in comparison to the English & German speaking works. In any case, they’re latest book “Now” comes with a very clear idea, that hegemony, as we experience it in our loves is over, especially haunting that this was written 2017, so before Covid hit but it raised some really hard hitting points for me and how they pertain to our work, today.
The text paints a vivid picture of a world in flux, where the once unassailable dominance of hegemonic systems is giving way to a multiplicity of resistance and dissent. Through a series of incisive analyses, the Invisible Committee elucidates the myriad ways in which hegemony is being challenged and undermined, from grassroots movements and uprisings to the erosion of trust in traditional institutions.
At the heart of their narrative lies a profound interrogation of power dynamics and the mechanisms of control that underpin them. They argue that the end of hegemony is not merely a collapse of authority, but a moment of radical possibility—a chance to reimagine and rebuild the social fabric from the ground up. So let’s get into it, because this is important.
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