Global InformationTiqqun information
Tiqqun | |
|---|---|
 Front covers of the issues of Tiqqun | |
| Notable work | The Cybernetic Hypothesis, Introduction to Civil War, Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl, Theory of Bloom |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| Language | French, Italian |
Main interests | Anarchism, Anti-capitalism, Anti-statism, Communism, Communization, Feminism, Insurrectionary anarchism, Situationism |
Notable ideas | Imaginary Party, Theory of Bloom, Theory of the Young-Girl |
Tiqqun was a French-Italian Post-Marxist[1][2] anarchist philosophical journal or zine, produced in two issues from 1999 to 2001. Topics treated in the journal's articles include anti-capitalism, anti-statism, Situationism, feminism, and the history of late 20th century revolutionary movements, especially May 1968 in France, the Italian Years of Lead, and the Anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The journal's articles were written anonymously; as a result, the word "Tiqqun" is also used to name the articles' collective of authors, and other texts attributed to them.
The journal came to wider attention following the Tarnac Nine arrests of 2008, a police operation which detained nine people on suspicion of having conspired on recent sabotage of French electrical train lines. The arrested were accused of having written The Coming Insurrection, a political tract credited to The Invisible Committee, a distinct anonymous group named in the journal. Julien Coupat, one of the arrested, was a contributor to the first issue of Tiqqun.
The journal's articles are polemics against modern capitalist society, which the authors hold in contempt. Individual articles present diagnoses of specific aspects of modern society, drawing on ideas from continental philosophy, anthropology, and history. Guy Debord's concept of the Spectacle is used to explain how communication media and socialization processes support existing capitalist society, and Michel Foucault's concept of biopower is used to explain how states and businesses manage populations via their physical needs. The journal's articles introduce terminology for their topics, freely used throughout the other articles. A "Bloom" refers to an archetypal, alienated modern person or subject, named after the character Leopold Bloom from the James Joyce novel Ulysses. A "Young-Girl" refers to a person who participates in modern society and thereby reinforces it, exhibiting traits commonly associated with femininity. Although a "Bloom" frequently stands for a man and a "Young-Girl" frequently stands for a woman, the authors stress that the concepts are not gendered. The word Tiqqun is an alternate spelling of Tikkun olam, a Jewish theological concept which refers to repair or healing of the world.[3] In the authors' context, Tiqqun refers to improvement of the human condition through the subversion of modern capitalist society.
Due to their philosophical influences, political content and historical context, the Tiqqun articles have received some attention in humanities scholarship and anarchist reading circles. Selected articles have been republished in several languages.
- ^ Wang, Jackie (2018). Carceral Capitalism. Semiotext(e) Intervention Series. Vol. 21. Semiotext(e). pp. 228–259. ISBN 9781635900026.
- ^ Marcolini, Patrick. "Situationist inheritors: Julien Coupat, Tiqqun and The Coming Insurrection". notbored.org.
- ^ Mariblanca Corrales, p. 93.