Breaking the Waves
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BREAKING THE WAUES  i NICOLD MOLINARI

BREAKING THE WAUES  NICOLO MOLINARI

In a recent text, Temps aritiques’ reflects on how the intergenerational composition that was lacking in the Giles jaunes movement began to make its appearance in the gestating movement against pension reform in France. The authors describe what they call an alliage® of circumstance produced by the temporary fsion of different social fragments, a category that recalls what Endnotes has referred to as the "problem of composition” in recent movements.* Young people of all kinds have given a new impetus to the struggle, resulting in 2 powerful surge of the cortége e téte in the dynamics of confrontation with the police, and causing the unions to lose control over the squares. At the same time, the youth have redefined the role of school and university occupations, teansforming them into organizacional bases for actions that then spread across the cities. In this way, occupations take on a differenc ‘meaning than during past movements: instead of being understood as a reclamation or reappropriation of educational insticutions, scudents are reworking the classical practice in their repertoire into a new form capable of composing with the movement against pension reform. It is in chis sense that we must speak of an alliage taking place, which faces off against the concentrated powers of Macron’s State s well as the decentralized power of the economy.  ‘The conflictaal shape of the March mobilization in France, which tended to favor direct actions and blockades, is linked both o this compositional configuration of the various subjectivities involved within it and to Macron’s moves. The thythm of the movement developed in response to Macrons “coup? which, by circumvencing all the usual insticutional opposicions such as unions and parties, mean that the only opposition that remained possible was a direct and unmediated one. Ie i here that the youth and all those more “radical” components of the ‘movement have found space to shake up the mobilization by asigning greater centrality o a repercoire of practices made up of roadblocks, pickets, black blocs, wild demonsteacions, etc.  s
A vext appearing in Lundi matin’ on April 11th idencified three moments of mobilization: the frst (when the reforms were still being debated by the government) centered around the construction of a united mobilization by the unions, the second around the combination of surikes, blockades, and pickets in key sectors of the economy, and finally, following the forced passage of the pension reform, we saw the autonomous and widespread proliferation of nighttime rioting and the blockading of circulatory flows. According to the authors, it was only dusing s third phase that the possibiliy emerged for the mobilization 0 leap out of the reactive patcern it had adopeed with respect to the government’s moves, to leap over the shoals of republican democracy and mediated forms of organization like unions or parties, and began experimenting with novel configurations.  In the face of the historic inefficacy of the union serikes (even when these became “general’), the practice of the blockade has taken on greater centralty. These blockades—which ranged from arterial roads to strategically targeed locations such s bus depors, refineries, and waste sorting centers—tended to decentralize the conflic, interrupting the military dynamic of direct confrontation with police. This was especially true when they cropped up unexpectedly in various parts of the city, paralyzing commerce. This form opened up a different rhychm for 2 movement that had been fully controlled by the inter-union assembly at the outset  Space and place  As these texts indicate, the organization of combative blocs and actions has been most advanced where the mobilization has developed forms of coordination that operate outside the syndicalist framework, while remaining in direct relacionship with che most decermined bases within the unions. What became known as “Operation Ghost Town” [Ville mort], a seris of paralyzing blockades that occurred in Rennes, Nantes, and Lyon, ateests to the emergence of an autonomous trajectory within the mobilization capable of composing a revolutionary subjectivity that erysaallzes into an antagonism to the sate, while skirting the mediations of the union. The challenge of this new subjectivity lies in the need to  i
continually reinvent its capacicy for mobilization, coordination, and intervention within its blocs without allowing its tactics and strategy t0 harden and calcify, which makes it more predictable for the police, causinga loss of srategic advantage for the movement.  Meeting this challenge requires that struggles develop a terricorial basis—be it a a neighborhood level, throughout a town or ciy, or even across a region—allowing them both o disrupt circulatory flows, while preventingthe police from regaining control over esinfrastructure and the Rows that pass through ic. For the level of coordination to reach a certain level of efficacy, a territorial dimension will always become essential In the movement against pension reforms, for example, although the formation of conflictual spaces has been limited to student occupaions and blockades, even beyond their purely operational function, these can also become meeting places capable of gathering together a range of different subjecivities, contributing to the construction of an an exhical and practical “we.” To da, the most advanced example of this simultancous combination of conflictual forms capable of disrupting the circulatory infraseructure, and the placemaking impulse that creates an outsde, was the roundabout occupations during the first three months of the Giletjaunes prising,  ‘The creation of places belongs to the basic grammar of all recenc ‘movements, from the Movement of the Squares in Eutope to the 2020 George Floyd uprisingin the USA. In the wake of the American Occupy ‘movement some comrades invoked the category of the “insurrectionary commune” in an effort o theorize how these places opened up by struggle experimented with forms of social reproduction outside the circuits of capital*Similarly in 2020, autonomous zones were hatched from Seale to Atlanta, actempring to give lfe to teritories free of police presence Although neither were without numerous difficulies, these experiences clearly show that the control and function of policing is not exclusive to the police,since the counterinsurgent roleis ofien assumed by components of the movement.  Whether one considers these recent movements from a Marxise perspective (e communization theory) or an echical one, the creation of places in secession from, and in opposition to, governmenaal or capiaalist control of territory constitutes the element through which  7
differene subjectivities build the common ground of their existence, and che possibility of duration. The decline of programmatic politics, as wellas those built around social representations secking integation into the spaces of the classical policical sphere, leaves a void that is gradually being flled by the construction of new non-sovereign territorialitics.  “The decline of demands-based polities paves the way for a new policical geography in which what is at stake is the creation of new forms-of- life, places that are echical before being physical, a fabric of mobile and unobjectifiable relations.  “The poine is not that physical places have become the primary stake in contemporary movements, but merely that their material and strategic infrastructure depends upon them. IF we understand the term “autonomous zone” to refer to an area that is no longer dependent upon the region around it, well, such a thing doesn’e really exist. Neicher is it merely a question of implementing a formal administrative model, as if “self-management” or the practice of gifi-giving needed to automatically characterize the anti-capitalst orientation. Still less is it a matter of sovereignty and independence, of substicuting State sovereigney with some other State-like sovereignty, particularly given the other equally terrible forms that can often be generated in these kind of attemprs” In truch, “autonomy” as a strategic and revolutionary question is not primarily bout slf-administration or self-sovercigney, but is a tension or problem that emerges only wihin the dynamic space of an ongoing conflict:a seruggle remains “autonomous” so longasit recainsies capacity to continuously regenerate offensive and antagonistic forms* From this poine of view, spaces in which we can develop alternative forms of organization and social reproduction are abviously helpful, but their emergence should not be understood as the end-point or culmination of seruggle.  Territorial struggles  “The George Floyd uprising in 2020, or the Gilts jaunes in 2018-2019 were moments of massive mobilization, insurrections that mark moments of rupture. They were not the result of a ranserescence of social sruggles, nor did they represent the fulfllment of some program. Siill, on a
subjective level,they produced the kind of biographical ruptre that often can make a return to an everyday lfe devoid of such intense moments of struggle even more unbearable. For those moved by a revolutionary exhical tension, it can be difficult to accep that one must wait for the next unforeseen uprising, in order to husl oneself into it. In response, organizational questions tend to arise: how can we learn from these insurgencies, and at the same time move through moments o reflux?”  Hugh Farrell idencifies in cerriorial struggles 2 form that conflict can take during phases of great reflux and general reaction, and which have certain characteristics in common with contemporary mass uprisings." Looking celescopicall at the past decade, we see how in different parts of the Western world, terricorial struggles managed o agglutinate disparate subjectivities around an instance of defending a territory, along with a renewed impetus o inhabit and consticute it anew: This is true of the No- TAV struggle in the Susa Valley,the ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in the NoDAPL struggle in North Dakota, as well as more recent conflice, such as those against the mega the movement to Stop Cop City in Alanta  Since it is the territory that constitutes the veetors around which the struggle is articulated, the compositional processes they initiate also reflect this face. This i why the “terriorial element” in question is both physical —involving specific places that one would like to defend, or mega- projects one wishes to block—as well as afferive, entailing a process of continuous redefinition and transformation generated by those who inhabit it."" For example, the movement known as Les Soudésements de La Terre (“Earth Uprisings”) has sought to weave a composition becween different subjectivitis that i, in some respecs, similar to the movemene against pension reform deseribed above. In this case, the compositional fabric includes farmers, rural inhabitants, “ZADises” and the “climate generation” all of whom have been brought together by a series of terricorial struggles scattered actoss France—the most infamous cpisode of which occurred against the mega-teservair in Saince-Soline.  A cersitorial element has also been on display in the struggle in Atanta, which has gathered around the slogan *Stop Cop City / Defend the Forest” Since the contested site is not located in a rural  rvoirs like the one in Sainte-Soline, or  area but s a forest within Adanta (itslf a city within a forest), the  B
composition in this case has mainly articulated itself becween various local youth subeulcures, which are extremely vibrant (Wecks of Action are often punctuated by music festivals), who are joined by anarchist, and environmentalist clements from across the country, as well a local political groups such as community organizers, abolitionist associations (which try to give political concinuity o the riots of the 20105 and 20204), and religious communitics.  ‘The grammar of struggle in Addanta and Sainte-Soline is unlike most lefiist climate movements, which tend to favor mainly peaceful marches and symbolic actions aimed at cultivating “awareness” about the climate risis. Astrategic horizon that prioritizes making demandsof the various insticutions, while renouncing the possibility of originating alternative forms-of lfe, amounts to a dangerous appeal to the sovereign horror of a “climate leviathan.” the same sort promored by the green pseudo- Leninist Andreas Malm.  It worth noting that, whereas in “non-movements” such s the Gilets jaunes ot the 2023 pension reform struggles the compositional process emerged independently of any explicit intention on the parc of its individual segments, in Adanca or Sainte Soline a strtcgy of composition has been explicely and intentionally adoped (albeic only by a portion of the components) and advanced by certain pre-cxisting political necworks. Such a strategy aims, through the cooperation of diverse groups, to articulate shared goals and to assemble or “compose” actions that escalate and inensify the antagonism. Although this process might at times take on the appearance of an alliage o fusion of diverse geoups, it ultimately secks to preserve their differences throughout the process of struggle itsel, albeit without succumbing to the sclerotic tendency to prioritize reflecions on identity over the victory of the struggle isclf.  Unlike mass uprisings, terricorial scruggles are not simply ethical urgencies of refusal, but instead embody the threshold between the ethical and the political. In this, they raise pertinent organizational and strategic questions for anyone who questions how 2 struggle can become revolutionary:"* How are we to avoid the picfall of a Leninise avant-gardism, without succumbing to the opposite danger of the Bordigist spectator who merely interprets movements externally from the sidelines? How can we arrive at a logic wherein participants not  ©
only recognize themselves as integral parts of a spontancous process in which an emergent strategy is developing, but feel aurhorized to inwroduce gestures thar modify its basic placforms and processes, without atcempting to control these gestures or their trajectorics, and allowing them to be reproduced by others?  As a recent text’” on the cortége de téte reminds us, even numerically small subjectivites occasionally succeed in introducing tacties that have the power to modify and even destabilize the entire strategic plan of a struggle. Sometimes, destabilization is just what s needed to prevent a ‘movement from erystallizing or stalling in the face of an impasse, and coneributes to strengtheningis confliccual bearing, broadeningics actical horizons, and nourishing is creative capacities  In some ways,ehis s the wager of Adrian Wohlleben’s essay, “Memes without End""s by introducing gestures that spread and muliply beyond the subjectivities that initiate them, small groups can incervene in specific social movements and displace them out of their internally fixed conditions, thercby expanding their horizon for radical transformation. In order to push struggles or milicant groups beyond their reformist or martyrological impasses, it is decisive to prevent the sedimentation of tactics, to subvert any exclusive control over practices, and work againse the centralization of serategy.  Impasse  ‘The impasse confronted by many recent seruggles, particularly those of Earch Uprisings,scems to be very similar o that confronted by the pension reform mobilization: the crystallization of an antagonism that lodges the struggle in a subscancial dialectic with the scate. The stabilization of such a dialectic risks ewo sorts of impasse situations:first,  recuperation, depotentiation, or deescalation of the conflict,including the possibility of winning some concessions ora partial victory,asin the case of the ZAD"; second, a symmetsical conflice, which may then result,in the immediate term, in highly milicarized dirct confrontation.  Turning our gaze toward ourselves, toward our subjectiviey, we face the risk of solidifying our participation in the movement into a form of alienated militancy that produces a separation berween us and whae  "
" or what we can also call  Bordiga would call “the historical party” the real movement. This separacion (the Bolshevik one), which sees a vanguard at the head of a movement and organizing it, and which served as an important tactical and strategie formula throughout the twentieth century, finds its echo in all those movement strategies today that aim at constructing counterpowers and counter-subjects, without realizing that the power it secks to oppose has no specific consistency, and is in important respects “anarchic™”  Moreover, these analyses overlook the enirely decisive face that the uprisings of our time exhibit a total absence of any mass political Subject capable of centralizing the conflic, which has been replaced by a fragmentaion of mass subjecrivities, and resulting in conflices that are iven by a series of echical tensions that can find no ideologieal, discursive, or programmatic common ground. From Hong Kong to Chile and the Gilers jaunes, the revolutionary “we" has collapsed into an experiential and echical “us” that possesses no common language. Y, precisely for this reason, it makesitselfunavailable to the tradicional modes of ecuperation proper toclassical politics. Anyone whosecks to imagine how the conflicts in our epoch could become genuine revolutions must wrestle with these realicies, while abandoning nostalgia for (ofien mysificd) pas eras in which a mass subject formed the engine of struggles. We live in an cpoch in which class finds no sociological or politcal unity, bue only an ethical and subjective one, forged in and through the moment of the uprising. Class is raversed by a series of vectors that make it socially fragmented, of which “identity poliics” consticutes only a symptomatic form.  Rather than artificially re-enacting new social or political unities, any revolutionary struggle must come to terms with thissocial fragmentation and the anarchic nature of contemporary power. Unlike the fantasy of a “constituent” or “counter-power” the destituent option is the only one capable of proposing a revolutionary srategy amidst arealcy in which the illusions of formal political representation are collapsing inco simulacra Under such conditions, an antagonism that is content to miror the simulacra of its enemics can only run amok."*  Capital, having autonomized itself and entered s phase of real domination, no longer articulates nself according to a set of abstract o hegemonic principles. It possesses no other regulative principle aside  2
from its own survival and reproduction, which will ake place through violent repression if necessary. For this reason, it has no qualms about revealing is terible brutality, by crushing whatever threat it manages to recognize. The dialectical relationship between capieal and labor, dear to 50 many Marxise, is continuously broken by capital itslf. Whether oue of a nostalgia for some lost democratic horizon or otherwise,to think of reconstituting it by means of struggle is a losing wager, as the impasses in which the alcer-globalization movement and the entire post-workerise proposal of Negri and Harde have shown. How could we not see,in the police repression of Seatdle 1999 or Genoa 2001, the specter of an easily fought and won civil war? While “Tute Bianche” [White Overalls] were barding simulacra on a purely symbolic level, the other side crushed the movement in violence and fear  Similarly, one could read the murderous violence expressed by the police against protesters in Sainte-Soline on March 25 in this way Whenever an antagonist force publicly raises the bar of the confice and directs it to 2 highly symbolic level, it makes itselfclear and legible t0 the repression, which has no parcicular diffculry in organizing itself and mobilizing any necessary means capable of crushing its forces. The question of violence must then disentangle itself from a double specular naiveté: on the one hand, from a non-violent vietimhood that believes it can alter force relations solely through intervening at the discursive or cultural level through the denunciation of state violences on the other hand, areappropriation of violence that attempts to mount a symmetrical campaign of force against the State, which risks channeling the generative and inventive potentialities of the conflict into a confrontation becween oo established fronts, where one i entirely milicarily dominant  Destitution  Unlike symmetrical and dialectical models of confronation, which oppose forms of government only in order to propose alternative ones, desticution is a form of conspiracy that aims to deactivate and disable the apparacuses that govern the life and conduct of the neoliberal subject, both cerricorially as well as subjectively. Therefore, a_ revolutionary (destiuen) subjectiviey in the current era empies power, while denying  5
itselfan identity or other forms of subjectification.  Destitution represents the opaque art of overcurning the anarchy of power, in the direction of real anarchy, understood as alife that does not need legitimacy, rooted in the free play and exchange becween forms-of- life. One way to do this,accordingo the Invisible Commirtee, is o expose the anarchy of power through actions that exhibit i groundlessness: this does not mean denouncing its violence in order to llicit a democratic scandal, but rather striking at it in ways that show its true nature as devoid of any abstract legitimacy (a social contract, democracy, equality, nation, order, etc..). In the same way, a destiruent gesture does not require legitimacy, since it anchors its expression instead within 2 sensible and evident truth and reality that does nor require discursive signification. Such gestures force the police to display themselves as what they are: a criminal gang like any other, ighting for control over a teritory:  IFa destituent gesture forces power to recurn to Earth and show tself inits materiality, only to then be followed by a constituent process (of a strategy and a subject),ic will ikely send the conflct into  headlong crash with the forces of order, a tragic war that will be played out through a symmetrical confrontation in which the counterrevolutionary forces (the police) will dircct all their overwhelming military might coward winning thebacde. This is what happens to every movement that, upon hittingan impasse in its antagonism o the stae, ither enters inco decline, or finds a core morivated to continually raise the bar of the clash unil it becomes eragically milicary, closing any revolutionary glimmer, fosilizing the civil war ino owo consolidated fronts, with an adversary thar, in addition to amilitary advantage, ofien also has the priilege of choosing on which ground the batle i to be waged.  We see these truths on display in the cureent cycle of struggles in France: on the one hand, the innovasive capacity of the irruption to initiate a new compositional subjectivity a capacity which, to the extent that it succeeds both in escaping a dialectical logic with the state and in continually reinventing itsclf in practical and rhychmic terms (ic. in the temporal choice of actions), must itself be considered desticuent. Similarly, i Earth Uprisings has displayed a great capacity to checkmate and debunk the police, this is due in large part to the innovative force that the new composition was able to produce. Yet this abiliy to produce
new unexpected forms scems to have been reduced on the oceasion of March 25, where the composicion was instead rather consolidated and the strategy adopted similar to that ofthe previous date. The result wasa series of choices that had become predictable by the police, who oped o awaic the arrival of the demonstration and initiate a “sige” dynamic allowing them to deliver a brutal attack on the crowd. The ensuing analyses of tactical ervors in this case are certainly valid®; but to be able to break the impasse of March 25 will require a reformulation of the overall srategic hypothesis thatled to the automatization and hardening of organizational capacity, preventing the movement from improvising and disoriencing the other side,as during the previous October.  One hypothesis could be o aim for a broadening of the compositional process: in this regard, efforts o extend the reservoir struggle o an international plane have led, on the one hand, to raising the bar of the expectation for confrontation (an opporunity that the police did not fil toscize), and on the other hand, it can make it difficult to reformulate the tacticalorganizacion ofthe demonstration. When welook back hiscorically, however,international meet-ups and campaigns to quanticatively grow a seruggle have rarely succeeded in generating qualitative leaps if anything, they ofien announce the descent and decline of the reality of struggles. By conerast, our hypothesis is that the strengthening and decpening of a strugglearises rather from the intensification of itscompositionalrelations, o perhaps from their alterating decomposition and recomposition, which can produce new and unforeseen forms of improvisation.  Uniil March of 2023, the movement in Adanta was able to maintain the iniciative through a series of moves that almost always caught the police off guard. This is certainly because the movements internal dynamies are extremely opaque, especially to the police, who are stil groping in the dark afer a radical leadership responsible for the most destructive actions, but also because every week of action has been different and highly  improvised. During the “week of action” in March 2023, his advantage led the movement o raise the bar to a point that makes it difficult o  imagine more incisive forms of direct action®’; at the same time, the police were compelled o respond through a random roundup of bodies who were given the heavy charge of “domestic terrorism” When, almose  amonth lace, the city of Atlanta decided to serike  blow at the project,  s
initiatingthe cutting of partof he forest and milicarizingits surroundings, the movement avoided falling inco the trap of reacting to the city’s move (which would have meant laying siege o the construction site); at the same time, atcemprs to attack elsewhere by decentralizing the conflict do not yet seem to have found effective forms, despite the good incuition (numerous actions *sanctioning” the realties involved in the Cop City project have been taken place all over the United States). At this point, the only available srategy s o push for exploding intemal coneradictions i the city’s Democratic-led government through ever-increasing pressure on the mayor, exploiting the broad consensus enjoyed by the movement; however, this may shif the axis of the struggle beyond the capabilities of the movement itself. As some people who have long been active in the mobilization recognize, what could bring new life into the struggle is the involvement in the compositional process of new subjectivties, as has midly happened in the case of the students who have occupied certain Universicy buildings in Adanta, or through the experimentation with practical forms that are able to bring about a qualitaive leap from suppore o engagement by “itizens” hostil to the project.  When a movement can no longer defend itself (or attack), having exhausted its tactical resources, there is a risk of sliding back into political dynamics. Strategy begins to decline into representative forms of politics, tactical choices fall increasingly inco performative forms aimed at intervening on a public and media level. What is happening in Atlanca, or in France (especially what recently happened in Val Maurienne), risks following similar trajectories to those previously observed in Italys No-TAV movement. The lacter, facing its decline, began secking refuge in representative politics, whether by trying to use “democracy.” or simply by falling back on scunt aceivism in search of media coverage. In these momens, the “strategy of composition” no longer opens onto a revolutionary trajectory: instead, groups fall back into increasingly identitarian dynamics, and the more political ones begin to focus on building consensus and strengthening their position in the public eye, “capiralizing” the struggle. The strongly ethical-policical tension at the base of the struggle geadually becomes replaced by a public-political dynamic. When politics become public the movement not only exposes itself o repression, it also risks losing its capacity to  %
improvise and remain unpredictable.  Astrategyofcompositioncan“uncover” the revolutionary possibilicies of a struggle only if it continues to remain open while pursuing a destituent trajeccory: this means, on the one hand, maincaining an orientation of escape from any dialectical dynamic with power, and, on the other hand, subjecting the forms generated by the compositional process o continuous recombination and rupeure. A recombination might take place, as in the case of the pension reform mobilization, through the irrupion of a new protagonism that is difficult for power to decipher; or, in the case where the growing to accommaodate new components in a struggle becomes difficult, by attempting to discover new configurations of encounter and contact between the subjectivities that compose it, while secking out ways to desubjecrivize itself 5o as to prevent a process of subjectivization from crystallzing  Where no new forms or thythmicity can be found, in cases where the capacities for experimentation have been exhausted, then we must learn t0 recognize when it has already began i decline, ac which point any voluntaristc attempt to revive it will only resul in a form of sacrificial ‘milicancism, mirroring the power it seks to combat. From a broader strategic point of view, such a sacrificial wil can also result in a loss of the lessons that the struggle otherwise had to teach and transmit, the logistical, organizational and practical capacities that might otherwise constitute akey aset for a new phase of the conflict down the road  In a word, the revolutionary possibilicis of any given struggle depend upon ies ability to create and sustain destizuent power, through a process of negation and autonegation that regenerates tself through continuous experimentation and improvisation. Revolution is an alchemical are: its about casting gold, steel, and blood, generating new alloys, combining new strategies,in an endless heterogenesis  June 2023  ”

Endnotes  Tomptcrinigus, “La proestaion encour s e retries.Du sl vose? Lundimatin #57. Apil, 2003  Aliralsanslation woud b lloy-ance? s neslogisn frmed by sy (smlgamacionof metls) and slsnce”  PR —r— Anonymons,"Sorie d oesgonisme disae” Lundimatin#578, Apeil 1112023  Joshus Clver, Rio Sk Ri Vero, 2016 The suehorefes i pasticl 0 the Osidand. Commune.  Thefllowing two s ey s rjctoie in o igaficant experiencesdurng the 2020 the United Ststes n Al and n Sestle, Annymous. At the Wendys” 1 Wil Novembee 5, 2020, and Anonymous, “Get i the Zone. A Report from the Capitl Hil Automomous Zone inSesle s Ging Do, June 9, 020  On the elonsbip between sdminismaion and sovereigaty, sod baw the Zaputia experence suceeds in breaking ot of cersin shosls of Western rdical thought, sce Jesime Bascher, “Zapaista Autanory. A Desiuent Experimentz Il Will, Sptember 7,  O this e ofthe tem sty sce Adeisn Wohllcbe, dutonoy i Confic, i The Resevai Vo 1  Fromasubjectivepespectiv, the cnpines eyt nd of anpisingsofen chicalnd afcrive, et and foermot. This stands i contrast with oher o nostalgic arguments indes to the abos movement,which end o ighligh the policcl void ke in e wake, and the sbace of  reliabl pltcal Subject Sce fo exaenpe, Mo Luzrsto, “The s Seruggle i France” 1 Will, Apeil 1, 2025, o mre gencelly, bisbook. Gerra rolusione, Desive Approdi 2022  Hgh Ferel,“The Sty of ompositon’ M Wil Jaary 142023 5y of Comp  s et st entiled Trsgic Thess? the suho argues that eetoial st offce an example ofan ffnt 0 vercome o undermine the sepaation between speis, between the human and the nonhuman, b bicsking down the proceses of humasization and debumasization that underlic the processsof Capia vakezaion Ths ypothess ould seem 0 find confimation i the slogans manyofthese movemns end tosopt—We . ehevllytht defends el ” (No TAV) o evn th vry e “Eseh upising™—which poiot o place, sy rather then 0 Sabject prodaciog heagency whhin thes. S ‘Anonymons,Trgie Thse” Decampasiins, March 202,
=  7 T expresion s tken from Katheine Nebon, “The Ansechy of Powes  sbouid be i tha Eath Upisings i scallysomthing more than cestoralstugle: i Fc,th enis oganizacionl fo of s network b, i many respecs, relected 1 stemptat averoming the i of specificandlocaised escrialuggle. ntis lce my s s only onthe speific case o the seugle aainst he meg-reseeoie i Sente Saline,  Sce Anomymous, February 14,2025  Pous e i bougent en 2023:201 dars e tvoviseus” Lundimtin  drian Woblcben,“Mermes withous End.” Il Wil May 16,2021  O the complesey oftis s, e Amonyimous?Vieoryand its Consequences in Lisisos Vol.2  Bordigasehols will hopeulyforgiv me chisgross avesipliiction ofth disinetion berween husorcal and forml aris  South Mtatic  Querety, 1221 Jumsary 2023 Following Reinr Schirenann, Nelio agues tht th s of moderaity beought with i the decine of metaphysicl Frsmeworks o which fores of power wese bl i the moder e, ikl has brooghe these Famemocks oot ot the open, which, e umveled,can only begin  ncsorsbe decline. As 3 el the s ofour age i seorally ibilsic and snaschic In the Fue of this decay powes 50 onger seck et of uivesal o totaliingjustficatons, ied o do theoughat th hstoey o Waseen mnecnity, but o redefins el as pu ore, vieent dormnation. Michele Garun has seached sl conclusions i bis ecen wock on Jacques ot (S Garws  1 WAL, Apel 23 2022, Acconding o Garas, ightsand all o ofthe beal ot e o e i the id-twenieth century. Thesepressatons  “The Commanity of Capics  ith which Capial had equipped sl 1 il he vacuum crested by the desteuction of the commusitrin tes tha preceded it o longer seprscnt » coheive elment,snce econorc relations heve penetrted socal eaions snd captl has become immansot o society sl toth sl and nobonge need o produce  seie of exesnalistons Ernseendences ofsn inticuionl e vaku tpe that serve s th ghe fo » popelaion of sepaaced ndividusl Thse et hesstht Jcqes Camtte dveloped helse 19605 and caly 19704 and which, a Garu note, were taken up by Nege hiself i his 1972 ent Cri el st pian, n which te uthor defnes bourgeos fredorns and the atin:  st as nolongesprvences? bt doubleparvences” power s radom and iy money having become tota eprsenttion,becomesthe forr of dornnation o the socal word s, oingll ol s o being i s exclusively o class vclence. The e thensssmes ol it is 10 omgerone of medision bt ofprovidin th poliical b  of dominaionfo Capitl  Gonteeytothose who beiee tha the sttt ypothesissimply rpresnts s propossl o Futhes sevolt and uspensions of istosial e, te de of  dseirat poweswas Fceformulated by Agarbenand he avisible Commice preciscly i an efot o cht evoluionsey cjectorytht doc ot eave el sipseckedan the same rocksthat have ang scned modesnsevolionsnto countesevlions,
19 In The Anarchy of Powr? Neson ighlights some limes el 1o the tsnslaion of &  desicant poves oo countespower“A poltc the efuses sy e o eiimacy can deed s he vl Committe wits, o the oveenment o lowes sl the vel Fthe nsunts, who can o longesbe “monsters “ciminal o “treoest” bt il enceie; it may forcethe police o b noshing more enceforth than g, snd the i syt  ciminalasocistion’ Howerer, thi uns the sk tha the ensuin seuggl will ccome s btle e the dest” between fcions I such cascs shore cicuited destuion ccomes the broke metonym of mesningfl olitcl existence—prodacing casaltcs of an amachic epoch.To b cler such  deadly dentication o hat one i ¢ whst we e with what s o be done ofbing and prcs,is ot st ll srstive of desiaion—yet e . the ik, contend, the destinuens policics wiquely and ntisially barbrs”  20 S Lo Snlévement d  Teee,“To Those Who Marched e Since Sline? 1 Will, Apei 242025,  21 An i consructon s was et on e  )


What form should revolutionary organization take today, now that its longstanding models arein crisis? What conversations do we need to be having at an international level, in order to develop a shared strategic orientation toward insurrection? Surveying recent movements in France and in Atlanta, Nicolo Molinari traces the contours of our current cycle of struggle.  ILLWILL.COM

BREAKING
THE WAUES

i NICOLD MOLINARI
BREAKING
THE WAUES

NICOLO MOLINARI

In a recent text, Temps aritiques' reflects on how the intergenerational
composition that was lacking in the Giles jaunes movement began to
make its appearance in the gestating movement against pension reform
in France. The authors describe what they call an alliage® of circumstance
produced by the temporary fsion of different social fragments, a
category that recalls what Endnotes has referred to as the "problem of
composition” in recent movements.* Young people of all kinds have
given a new impetus to the struggle, resulting in 2 powerful surge of
the cortége e téte in the dynamics of confrontation with the police, and
causing the unions to lose control over the squares. At the same time,
the youth have redefined the role of school and university occupations,
teansforming them into organizacional bases for actions that then
spread across the cities. In this way, occupations take on a differenc
‘meaning than during past movements: instead of being understood as
a reclamation or reappropriation of educational insticutions, scudents
are reworking the classical practice in their repertoire into a new form
capable of composing with the movement against pension reform. It is
in chis sense that we must speak of an alliage taking place, which faces
off against the concentrated powers of Macron's State s well as the
decentralized power of the economy.

‘The conflictaal shape of the March mobilization in France, which
tended to favor direct actions and blockades, is linked both o this
compositional configuration of the various subjectivities involved within
it and to Macron’s moves. The thythm of the movement developed in
response to Macrons “coup? which, by circumvencing all the usual
insticutional opposicions such as unions and parties, mean that the only
opposition that remained possible was a direct and unmediated one. Ie
i here that the youth and all those more “radical” components of the
‘movement have found space to shake up the mobilization by asigning
greater centrality o a repercoire of practices made up of roadblocks,
pickets, black blocs, wild demonsteacions, etc.

s
A vext appearing in Lundi matin’ on April 11th idencified three
moments of mobilization: the frst (when the reforms were still being
debated by the government) centered around the construction of a
united mobilization by the unions, the second around the combination
of surikes, blockades, and pickets in key sectors of the economy, and
finally, following the forced passage of the pension reform, we saw the
autonomous and widespread proliferation of nighttime rioting and the
blockading of circulatory flows. According to the authors, it was only
dusing s third phase that the possibiliy emerged for the mobilization
0 leap out of the reactive patcern it had adopeed with respect to the
government’s moves, to leap over the shoals of republican democracy
and mediated forms of organization like unions or parties, and began
experimenting with novel configurations.

In the face of the historic inefficacy of the union serikes (even when
these became “general’), the practice of the blockade has taken on
greater centralty. These blockades—which ranged from arterial roads
to strategically targeed locations such s bus depors, refineries, and
waste sorting centers—tended to decentralize the conflic, interrupting
the military dynamic of direct confrontation with police. This was
especially true when they cropped up unexpectedly in various parts of
the city, paralyzing commerce. This form opened up a different rhychm
for 2 movement that had been fully controlled by the inter-union
assembly at the outset

Space and place

As these texts indicate, the organization of combative blocs and actions
has been most advanced where the mobilization has developed forms
of coordination that operate outside the syndicalist framework, while
remaining in direct relacionship with che most decermined bases within
the unions. What became known as “Operation Ghost Town” [Ville
mort], a seris of paralyzing blockades that occurred in Rennes, Nantes,
and Lyon, ateests to the emergence of an autonomous trajectory within
the mobilization capable of composing a revolutionary subjectivity that
erysaallzes into an antagonism to the sate, while skirting the mediations
of the union. The challenge of this new subjectivity lies in the need to

i
continually reinvent its capacicy for mobilization, coordination, and
intervention within its blocs without allowing its tactics and strategy
t0 harden and calcify, which makes it more predictable for the police,
causinga loss of srategic advantage for the movement.

Meeting this challenge requires that struggles develop a terricorial
basis—be it a a neighborhood level, throughout a town or ciy, or even
across a region—allowing them both o disrupt circulatory flows, while
preventingthe police from regaining control over esinfrastructure and the
Rows that pass through ic. For the level of coordination to reach a certain
level of efficacy, a territorial dimension will always become essential
In the movement against pension reforms, for example, although the
formation of conflictual spaces has been limited to student occupaions
and blockades, even beyond their purely operational function, these
can also become meeting places capable of gathering together a range
of different subjecivities, contributing to the construction of an an
exhical and practical “we.” To da, the most advanced example of this
simultancous combination of conflictual forms capable of disrupting the
circulatory infraseructure, and the placemaking impulse that creates an
outsde, was the roundabout occupations during the first three months of
the Giletjaunes prising,

‘The creation of places belongs to the basic grammar of all recenc
‘movements, from the Movement of the Squares in Eutope to the 2020
George Floyd uprisingin the USA. In the wake of the American Occupy
‘movement some comrades invoked the category of the “insurrectionary
commune” in an effort o theorize how these places opened up by struggle
experimented with forms of social reproduction outside the circuits of
capital*Similarly in 2020, autonomous zones were hatched from Seale
to Atlanta, actempring to give lfe to teritories free of police presence
Although neither were without numerous difficulies, these experiences
clearly show that the control and function of policing is not exclusive to
the police,since the counterinsurgent roleis ofien assumed by components
of the movement.

Whether one considers these recent movements from a Marxise
perspective (e communization theory) or an echical one, the creation
of places in secession from, and in opposition to, governmenaal or
capiaalist control of territory constitutes the element through which

7
differene subjectivities build the common ground of their existence,
and che possibility of duration. The decline of programmatic politics, as
wellas those built around social representations secking integation into
the spaces of the classical policical sphere, leaves a void that is gradually
being flled by the construction of new non-sovereign territorialitics.

“The decline of demands-based polities paves the way for a new policical
geography in which what is at stake is the creation of new forms-of-
life, places that are echical before being physical, a fabric of mobile and
unobjectifiable relations.

“The poine is not that physical places have become the primary
stake in contemporary movements, but merely that their material and
strategic infrastructure depends upon them. IF we understand the term
“autonomous zone” to refer to an area that is no longer dependent upon
the region around it, well, such a thing doesn'e really exist. Neicher is it
merely a question of implementing a formal administrative model, as if
“self-management” or the practice of gifi-giving needed to automatically
characterize the anti-capitalst orientation. Still less is it a matter of
sovereignty and independence, of substicuting State sovereigney with
some other State-like sovereignty, particularly given the other equally
terrible forms that can often be generated in these kind of attemprs”
In truch, “autonomy” as a strategic and revolutionary question is not
primarily bout slf-administration or self-sovercigney, but is a tension
or problem that emerges only wihin the dynamic space of an ongoing
conflict:a seruggle remains “autonomous” so longasit recainsies capacity
to continuously regenerate offensive and antagonistic forms* From
this poine of view, spaces in which we can develop alternative forms of
organization and social reproduction are abviously helpful, but their
emergence should not be understood as the end-point or culmination
of seruggle.

Territorial struggles

“The George Floyd uprising in 2020, or the Gilts jaunes in 2018-2019
were moments of massive mobilization, insurrections that mark moments
of rupture. They were not the result of a ranserescence of social sruggles,
nor did they represent the fulfllment of some program. Siill, on a
subjective level,they produced the kind of biographical ruptre that often
can make a return to an everyday lfe devoid of such intense moments
of struggle even more unbearable. For those moved by a revolutionary
exhical tension, it can be difficult to accep that one must wait for the
next unforeseen uprising, in order to husl oneself into it. In response,
organizational questions tend to arise: how can we learn from these
insurgencies, and at the same time move through moments o reflux?”

Hugh Farrell idencifies in cerriorial struggles 2 form that conflict can
take during phases of great reflux and general reaction, and which have
certain characteristics in common with contemporary mass uprisings."
Looking celescopicall at the past decade, we see how in different parts of
the Western world, terricorial struggles managed o agglutinate disparate
subjectivities around an instance of defending a territory, along with a
renewed impetus o inhabit and consticute it anew: This is true of the No-
TAV struggle in the Susa Valley,the ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in
the NoDAPL struggle in North Dakota, as well as more recent conflice,
such as those against the mega
the movement to Stop Cop City in Alanta

Since it is the territory that constitutes the veetors around which
the struggle is articulated, the compositional processes they initiate also
reflect this face. This i why the “terriorial element” in question is both
physical —involving specific places that one would like to defend, or mega-
projects one wishes to block—as well as afferive, entailing a process of
continuous redefinition and transformation generated by those who
inhabit it."" For example, the movement known as Les Soudésements de
La Terre (“Earth Uprisings”) has sought to weave a composition becween
different subjectivitis that i, in some respecs, similar to the movemene
against pension reform deseribed above. In this case, the compositional
fabric includes farmers, rural inhabitants, “ZADises” and the “climate
generation” all of whom have been brought together by a series of
terricorial struggles scattered actoss France—the most infamous cpisode
of which occurred against the mega-teservair in Saince-Soline.

A cersitorial element has also been on display in the struggle in
Atanta, which has gathered around the slogan *Stop Cop City /
Defend the Forest” Since the contested site is not located in a rural

rvoirs like the one in Sainte-Soline, or

area but s a forest within Adanta (itslf a city within a forest), the

B
composition in this case has mainly articulated itself becween various
local youth subeulcures, which are extremely vibrant (Wecks of Action
are often punctuated by music festivals), who are joined by anarchist,
and environmentalist clements from across the country, as well a local
political groups such as community organizers, abolitionist associations
(which try to give political concinuity o the riots of the 20105 and
20204), and religious communitics.

‘The grammar of struggle in Addanta and Sainte-Soline is unlike most
lefiist climate movements, which tend to favor mainly peaceful marches
and symbolic actions aimed at cultivating “awareness” about the climate
risis. Astrategic horizon that prioritizes making demandsof the various
insticutions, while renouncing the possibility of originating alternative
forms-of lfe, amounts to a dangerous appeal to the sovereign horror
of a “climate leviathan.” the same sort promored by the green pseudo-
Leninist Andreas Malm.

It worth noting that, whereas in “non-movements” such s the Gilets
jaunes ot the 2023 pension reform struggles the compositional process
emerged independently of any explicit intention on the parc of its
individual segments, in Adanca or Sainte Soline a strtcgy of composition
has been explicely and intentionally adoped (albeic only by a portion of
the components) and advanced by certain pre-cxisting political necworks.
Such a strategy aims, through the cooperation of diverse groups, to
articulate shared goals and to assemble or “compose” actions that escalate
and inensify the antagonism. Although this process might at times take
on the appearance of an alliage o fusion of diverse geoups, it ultimately
secks to preserve their differences throughout the process of struggle
itsel, albeit without succumbing to the sclerotic tendency to prioritize
reflecions on identity over the victory of the struggle isclf.

Unlike mass uprisings, terricorial scruggles are not simply ethical
urgencies of refusal, but instead embody the threshold between the
ethical and the political. In this, they raise pertinent organizational
and strategic questions for anyone who questions how 2 struggle can
become revolutionary:"* How are we to avoid the picfall of a Leninise
avant-gardism, without succumbing to the opposite danger of the
Bordigist spectator who merely interprets movements externally from
the sidelines? How can we arrive at a logic wherein participants not

©
only recognize themselves as integral parts of a spontancous process
in which an emergent strategy is developing, but feel aurhorized to
inwroduce gestures thar modify its basic placforms and processes,
without atcempting to control these gestures or their trajectorics, and
allowing them to be reproduced by others?

As a recent text'” on the cortége de téte reminds us, even numerically
small subjectivites occasionally succeed in introducing tacties that have
the power to modify and even destabilize the entire strategic plan of a
struggle. Sometimes, destabilization is just what s needed to prevent a
‘movement from erystallizing or stalling in the face of an impasse, and
coneributes to strengtheningis confliccual bearing, broadeningics actical
horizons, and nourishing is creative capacities

In some ways,ehis s the wager of Adrian Wohlleben's essay, “Memes
without End""s by introducing gestures that spread and muliply beyond
the subjectivities that initiate them, small groups can incervene in
specific social movements and displace them out of their internally fixed
conditions, thercby expanding their horizon for radical transformation.
In order to push struggles or milicant groups beyond their reformist or
martyrological impasses, it is decisive to prevent the sedimentation of
tactics, to subvert any exclusive control over practices, and work againse
the centralization of serategy.

Impasse

‘The impasse confronted by many recent seruggles, particularly those of
Earch Uprisings,scems to be very similar o that confronted by the pension
reform mobilization: the crystallization of an antagonism that lodges
the struggle in a subscancial dialectic with the scate. The stabilization of
such a dialectic risks ewo sorts of impasse situations:first, recuperation,
depotentiation, or deescalation of the conflict,including the possibility of
winning some concessions ora partial victory,asin the case of the ZAD";
second, a symmetsical conflice, which may then result,in the immediate
term, in highly milicarized dirct confrontation.

Turning our gaze toward ourselves, toward our subjectiviey, we face
the risk of solidifying our participation in the movement into a form
of alienated militancy that produces a separation berween us and whae

"
" or what we can also call

Bordiga would call “the historical party”
the real movement. This separacion (the Bolshevik one), which sees a
vanguard at the head of a movement and organizing it, and which served
as an important tactical and strategie formula throughout the twentieth
century, finds its echo in all those movement strategies today that aim
at constructing counterpowers and counter-subjects, without realizing
that the power it secks to oppose has no specific consistency, and is in
important respects “anarchic™”

Moreover, these analyses overlook the enirely decisive face that
the uprisings of our time exhibit a total absence of any mass political
Subject capable of centralizing the conflic, which has been replaced by
a fragmentaion of mass subjecrivities, and resulting in conflices that are
iven by a series of echical tensions that can find no ideologieal, discursive,
or programmatic common ground. From Hong Kong to Chile and the
Gilers jaunes, the revolutionary “we" has collapsed into an experiential
and echical “us” that possesses no common language. Y, precisely for this
reason, it makesitselfunavailable to the tradicional modes of ecuperation
proper toclassical politics. Anyone whosecks to imagine how the conflicts
in our epoch could become genuine revolutions must wrestle with these
realicies, while abandoning nostalgia for (ofien mysificd) pas eras in
which a mass subject formed the engine of struggles. We live in an cpoch
in which class finds no sociological or politcal unity, bue only an ethical
and subjective one, forged in and through the moment of the uprising.
Class is raversed by a series of vectors that make it socially fragmented, of
which “identity poliics” consticutes only a symptomatic form.

Rather than artificially re-enacting new social or political unities, any
revolutionary struggle must come to terms with thissocial fragmentation
and the anarchic nature of contemporary power. Unlike the fantasy of a
“constituent” or “counter-power” the destituent option is the only one
capable of proposing a revolutionary srategy amidst arealcy in which the
illusions of formal political representation are collapsing inco simulacra
Under such conditions, an antagonism that is content to miror the
simulacra of its enemics can only run amok."*

Capital, having autonomized itself and entered s phase of real
domination, no longer articulates nself according to a set of abstract o
hegemonic principles. It possesses no other regulative principle aside

2
from its own survival and reproduction, which will ake place through
violent repression if necessary. For this reason, it has no qualms about
revealing is terible brutality, by crushing whatever threat it manages to
recognize. The dialectical relationship between capieal and labor, dear to
50 many Marxise, is continuously broken by capital itslf. Whether oue
of a nostalgia for some lost democratic horizon or otherwise,to think of
reconstituting it by means of struggle is a losing wager, as the impasses
in which the alcer-globalization movement and the entire post-workerise
proposal of Negri and Harde have shown. How could we not see,in the
police repression of Seatdle 1999 or Genoa 2001, the specter of an easily
fought and won civil war? While “Tute Bianche” [White Overalls] were
barding simulacra on a purely symbolic level, the other side crushed the
movement in violence and fear

Similarly, one could read the murderous violence expressed by the
police against protesters in Sainte-Soline on March 25 in this way
Whenever an antagonist force publicly raises the bar of the confice
and directs it to 2 highly symbolic level, it makes itselfclear and legible
t0 the repression, which has no parcicular diffculry in organizing itself
and mobilizing any necessary means capable of crushing its forces. The
question of violence must then disentangle itself from a double specular
naiveté: on the one hand, from a non-violent vietimhood that believes
it can alter force relations solely through intervening at the discursive or
cultural level through the denunciation of state violences on the other
hand, areappropriation of violence that attempts to mount a symmetrical
campaign of force against the State, which risks channeling the generative
and inventive potentialities of the conflict into a confrontation becween
oo established fronts, where one i entirely milicarily dominant

Destitution

Unlike symmetrical and dialectical models of confronation, which
oppose forms of government only in order to propose alternative ones,
desticution is a form of conspiracy that aims to deactivate and disable the
apparacuses that govern the life and conduct of the neoliberal subject,
both cerricorially as well as subjectively. Therefore, a_ revolutionary
(destiuen) subjectiviey in the current era empies power, while denying

5
itselfan identity or other forms of subjectification.

Destitution represents the opaque art of overcurning the anarchy of
power, in the direction of real anarchy, understood as alife that does not
need legitimacy, rooted in the free play and exchange becween forms-of-
life. One way to do this,accordingo the Invisible Commirtee, is o expose
the anarchy of power through actions that exhibit i groundlessness: this
does not mean denouncing its violence in order to llicit a democratic
scandal, but rather striking at it in ways that show its true nature as
devoid of any abstract legitimacy (a social contract, democracy, equality,
nation, order, etc..). In the same way, a destiruent gesture does not require
legitimacy, since it anchors its expression instead within 2 sensible and
evident truth and reality that does nor require discursive signification.
Such gestures force the police to display themselves as what they are: a
criminal gang like any other, ighting for control over a teritory:

IFa destituent gesture forces power to recurn to Earth and show tself
inits materiality, only to then be followed by a constituent process (of a
strategy and a subject),ic will ikely send the conflct into headlong crash
with the forces of order, a tragic war that will be played out through a
symmetrical confrontation in which the counterrevolutionary forces (the
police) will dircct all their overwhelming military might coward winning
thebacde. This is what happens to every movement that, upon hittingan
impasse in its antagonism o the stae, ither enters inco decline, or finds
a core morivated to continually raise the bar of the clash unil it becomes
eragically milicary, closing any revolutionary glimmer, fosilizing the civil
war ino owo consolidated fronts, with an adversary thar, in addition to
amilitary advantage, ofien also has the priilege of choosing on which
ground the batle i to be waged.

We see these truths on display in the cureent cycle of struggles in
France: on the one hand, the innovasive capacity of the irruption to
initiate a new compositional subjectivity a capacity which, to the extent
that it succeeds both in escaping a dialectical logic with the state and
in continually reinventing itsclf in practical and rhychmic terms (ic.
in the temporal choice of actions), must itself be considered desticuent.
Similarly, i Earth Uprisings has displayed a great capacity to checkmate
and debunk the police, this is due in large part to the innovative force
that the new composition was able to produce. Yet this abiliy to produce
new unexpected forms scems to have been reduced on the oceasion of
March 25, where the composicion was instead rather consolidated and the
strategy adopted similar to that ofthe previous date. The result wasa series
of choices that had become predictable by the police, who oped o awaic
the arrival of the demonstration and initiate a “sige” dynamic allowing
them to deliver a brutal attack on the crowd. The ensuing analyses of
tactical ervors in this case are certainly valid®; but to be able to break the
impasse of March 25 will require a reformulation of the overall srategic
hypothesis thatled to the automatization and hardening of organizational
capacity, preventing the movement from improvising and disoriencing the
other side,as during the previous October.

One hypothesis could be o aim for a broadening of the compositional
process: in this regard, efforts o extend the reservoir struggle o an
international plane have led, on the one hand, to raising the bar of the
expectation for confrontation (an opporunity that the police did not fil
toscize), and on the other hand, it can make it difficult to reformulate the
tacticalorganizacion ofthe demonstration. When welook back hiscorically,
however,international meet-ups and campaigns to quanticatively grow a
seruggle have rarely succeeded in generating qualitative leaps if anything,
they ofien announce the descent and decline of the reality of struggles.
By conerast, our hypothesis is that the strengthening and decpening of a
strugglearises rather from the intensification of itscompositionalrelations,
o perhaps from their alterating decomposition and recomposition,
which can produce new and unforeseen forms of improvisation.

Uniil March of 2023, the movement in Adanta was able to maintain the
iniciative through a series of moves that almost always caught the police
off guard. This is certainly because the movements internal dynamies are
extremely opaque, especially to the police, who are stil groping in the
dark afer a radical leadership responsible for the most destructive actions,
but also because every week of action has been different and highly

improvised. During the “week of action” in March 2023, his advantage
led the movement o raise the bar to a point that makes it difficult o

imagine more incisive forms of direct action®’; at the same time, the
police were compelled o respond through a random roundup of bodies
who were given the heavy charge of “domestic terrorism” When, almose

amonth lace, the city of Atlanta decided to serike blow at the project,

s
initiatingthe cutting of partof he forest and milicarizingits surroundings,
the movement avoided falling inco the trap of reacting to the city’s move
(which would have meant laying siege o the construction site); at the
same time, atcemprs to attack elsewhere by decentralizing the conflict do
not yet seem to have found effective forms, despite the good incuition
(numerous actions *sanctioning” the realties involved in the Cop City
project have been taken place all over the United States). At this point,
the only available srategy s o push for exploding intemal coneradictions
i the city’s Democratic-led government through ever-increasing pressure
on the mayor, exploiting the broad consensus enjoyed by the movement;
however, this may shif the axis of the struggle beyond the capabilities of
the movement itself. As some people who have long been active in the
mobilization recognize, what could bring new life into the struggle is the
involvement in the compositional process of new subjectivties, as has
midly happened in the case of the students who have occupied certain
Universicy buildings in Adanta, or through the experimentation with
practical forms that are able to bring about a qualitaive leap from suppore
o engagement by “itizens” hostil to the project.

When a movement can no longer defend itself (or attack), having
exhausted its tactical resources, there is a risk of sliding back into
political dynamics. Strategy begins to decline into representative forms
of politics, tactical choices fall increasingly inco performative forms
aimed at intervening on a public and media level. What is happening
in Atlanca, or in France (especially what recently happened in Val
Maurienne), risks following similar trajectories to those previously
observed in Italys No-TAV movement. The lacter, facing its decline,
began secking refuge in representative politics, whether by trying to
use “democracy.” or simply by falling back on scunt aceivism in search
of media coverage. In these momens, the “strategy of composition” no
longer opens onto a revolutionary trajectory: instead, groups fall back
into increasingly identitarian dynamics, and the more political ones
begin to focus on building consensus and strengthening their position in
the public eye, “capiralizing” the struggle. The strongly ethical-policical
tension at the base of the struggle geadually becomes replaced by a
public-political dynamic. When politics become public the movement
not only exposes itself o repression, it also risks losing its capacity to

%
improvise and remain unpredictable.

Astrategyofcompositioncan“uncover” the revolutionary possibilicies
of a struggle only if it continues to remain open while pursuing a
destituent trajeccory: this means, on the one hand, maincaining an
orientation of escape from any dialectical dynamic with power, and, on
the other hand, subjecting the forms generated by the compositional
process o continuous recombination and rupeure. A recombination
might take place, as in the case of the pension reform mobilization,
through the irrupion of a new protagonism that is difficult for power
to decipher; or, in the case where the growing to accommaodate new
components in a struggle becomes difficult, by attempting to discover
new configurations of encounter and contact between the subjectivities
that compose it, while secking out ways to desubjecrivize itself 5o as to
prevent a process of subjectivization from crystallzing

Where no new forms or thythmicity can be found, in cases where the
capacities for experimentation have been exhausted, then we must learn
t0 recognize when it has already began i decline, ac which point any
voluntaristc attempt to revive it will only resul in a form of sacrificial
‘milicancism, mirroring the power it seks to combat. From a broader
strategic point of view, such a sacrificial wil can also result in a loss of
the lessons that the struggle otherwise had to teach and transmit, the
logistical, organizational and practical capacities that might otherwise
constitute akey aset for a new phase of the conflict down the road

In a word, the revolutionary possibilicis of any given struggle depend
upon ies ability to create and sustain destizuent power, through a process
of negation and autonegation that regenerates tself through continuous
experimentation and improvisation. Revolution is an alchemical are: its
about casting gold, steel, and blood, generating new alloys, combining
new strategies,in an endless heterogenesis

June 2023


Endnotes

Tomptcrinigus, “La proestaion encour s e retries.Du sl vose? Lundimatin
#57. Apil, 2003

Aliralsanslation woud b lloy-ance? s neslogisn frmed by sy (smlgamacionof
metls) and slsnce”

PR —r—
Anonymons,"Sorie d oesgonisme disae” Lundimatin#578, Apeil 1112023

Joshus Clver, Rio Sk Ri Vero, 2016 The suehorefes i pasticl 0 the Osidand.
Commune.

Thefllowing two s ey s rjctoie in o igaficant experiencesdurng the
2020 the United Ststes n Al and n Sestle, Annymous. At the Wendys” 1 Wil
Novembee 5, 2020, and Anonymous, “Get i the Zone. A Report from the Capitl Hil
Automomous Zone inSesle s Ging Do, June 9, 020

On the elonsbip between sdminismaion and sovereigaty, sod baw the Zaputia
experence suceeds in breaking ot of cersin shosls of Western rdical thought, sce
Jesime Bascher, “Zapaista Autanory. A Desiuent Experimentz Il Will, Sptember 7,

O this e ofthe tem sty sce Adeisn Wohllcbe, dutonoy i Confic, i The
Resevai Vo 1

Fromasubjectivepespectiv, the cnpines eyt nd of anpisingsofen chicalnd
afcrive, et and foermot. This stands i contrast with oher o nostalgic arguments
indes to the abos movement,which end o ighligh the policcl void ke in e wake,
and the sbace of reliabl pltcal Subject Sce fo exaenpe, Mo Luzrsto, “The
s Seruggle i France” 1 Will, Apeil 1, 2025, o mre gencelly, bisbook. Gerra
rolusione, Desive Approdi 2022

Hgh Ferel,“The Sty of ompositon’ M Wil Jaary 142023
5y of Comp

s et st entiled Trsgic Thess? the suho argues that eetoial st offce an
example ofan ffnt 0 vercome o undermine the sepaation between speis, between
the human and the nonhuman, b bicsking down the proceses of humasization and
debumasization that underlic the processsof Capia vakezaion Ths ypothess ould
seem 0 find confimation i the slogans manyofthese movemns end tosopt—We .
ehevllytht defends el ” (No TAV) o evn th vry e “Eseh upising™—which
poiot o place, sy rather then 0 Sabject prodaciog heagency whhin thes. S
‘Anonymons,Trgie Thse” Decampasiins, March 202,
=

7 T expresion s tken from Katheine Nebon, “The Ansechy of Powes

sbouid be i tha Eath Upisings i scallysomthing more than cestoralstugle:
i Fc,th enis oganizacionl fo of s network b, i many respecs, relected 1
stemptat averoming the i of specificandlocaised escrialuggle. ntis lce
my s s only onthe speific case o the seugle aainst he meg-reseeoie i Sente
Saline,

Sce Anomymous,
February 14,2025

Pous e i bougent en 2023:201 dars e tvoviseus” Lundimtin

drian Woblcben,“Mermes withous End.” Il Wil May 16,2021

O the complesey oftis s, e Amonyimous?Vieoryand its Consequences in Lisisos
Vol.2

Bordigasehols will hopeulyforgiv me chisgross avesipliiction ofth disinetion
berween husorcal and forml aris

South Mtatic

Querety, 1221 Jumsary 2023 Following Reinr Schirenann, Nelio agues tht th s
of moderaity beought with i the decine of metaphysicl Frsmeworks o which fores of
power wese bl i the moder e, ikl has brooghe these Famemocks oot ot the
open, which, e umveled,can only begin ncsorsbe decline. As 3 el the s
ofour age i seorally ibilsic and snaschic In the Fue of this decay powes 50 onger
seck et of uivesal o totaliingjustficatons, ied o do theoughat th hstoey
o Waseen mnecnity, but o redefins el as pu ore, vieent dormnation. Michele
Garun has seached sl conclusions i bis ecen wock on Jacques ot (S Garws

1 WAL, Apel 23 2022, Acconding o Garas, ightsand all
o ofthe beal ot e o e i the id-twenieth century. Thesepressatons

“The Commanity of Capics

ith which Capial had equipped sl 1 il he vacuum crested by the desteuction of
the commusitrin tes tha preceded it o longer seprscnt » coheive elment,snce
econorc relations heve penetrted socal eaions snd captl has become immansot o
society sl toth sl and nobonge need o produce seie of exesnalistons
Ernseendences ofsn inticuionl e vaku tpe that serve s th ghe fo » popelaion of
sepaaced ndividusl Thse et hesstht Jcqes Camtte dveloped helse 19605
and caly 19704 and which, a Garu note, were taken up by Nege hiself i his 1972
ent Cri el st pian, n which te uthor defnes bourgeos fredorns and the atin:

st as nolongesprvences? bt doubleparvences” power s radom and iy
money having become tota eprsenttion,becomesthe forr of dornnation o the socal
word s, oingll ol s o being i s exclusively o class vclence. The e
thensssmes ol it is 10 omgerone of medision bt ofprovidin th poliical b

of dominaionfo Capitl

Gonteeytothose who beiee tha the sttt ypothesissimply rpresnts s propossl
o Futhes sevolt and uspensions of istosial e, te de of dseirat poweswas
Fceformulated by Agarbenand he avisible Commice preciscly i an efot o cht
evoluionsey cjectorytht doc ot eave el sipseckedan the same rocksthat have
ang scned modesnsevolionsnto countesevlions,
19 In The Anarchy of Powr? Neson ighlights some limes el 1o the tsnslaion of &

desicant poves oo countespower“A poltc the efuses sy e o eiimacy can
deed s he vl Committe wits, o the oveenment o lowes sl the vel
Fthe nsunts, who can o longesbe “monsters “ciminal o “treoest” bt il
enceie; it may forcethe police o b noshing more enceforth than g, snd the i
syt ciminalasocistion’ Howerer, thi uns the sk tha the ensuin seuggl will
ccome s btle e the dest” between fcions I such cascs shore cicuited destuion
ccomes the broke metonym of mesningfl olitcl existence—prodacing casaltcs of
an amachic epoch.To b cler such deadly dentication o hat one i ¢ whst we e
with what s o be done ofbing and prcs,is ot st ll srstive of desiaion—yet e .
the ik, contend, the destinuens policics wiquely and ntisially barbrs”

20 S Lo Snlévement d Teee,“To Those Who Marched e Since Sline? 1 Will, Apei
242025,

21 An i consructon s was et on e

)
What form should revolutionary organization
take today, now that its longstanding models
arein crisis? What conversations do we need to
be having at an international level, in order to
develop a shared strategic orientation toward
insurrection? Surveying recent movements in
France and in Atlanta, Nicolo Molinari traces the
contours of our current cycle of struggle.

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