Matthew reviewed Now by The Invisible Committee
Review of 'Now' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A fascinating, powerful, and highly persuasive call for a radical destitution - exit - from capitalism and the state. Drawing on thinkers like Deleuze, Schmitt, Agamben and Lyotard, what we find here is a text of surprising depth given its polemical style. I'm still mulling over and processing much of what this book has to say, but I appreciate the way in which it ties these theorists together and gives them a coherent praxis: pursuing lines of flight, of escape, of building communism here and now between each other, of uniting with others in friendship, as well as against the enemy. Conflict is at the heart of this work: the necessity of it, the inevitability of it, but also its productive potential. Beyond this, there are touching observations about the debasement of language itself, the disrepute of politics, the power of individuals to come together in assemblages which are more …
A fascinating, powerful, and highly persuasive call for a radical destitution - exit - from capitalism and the state. Drawing on thinkers like Deleuze, Schmitt, Agamben and Lyotard, what we find here is a text of surprising depth given its polemical style. I'm still mulling over and processing much of what this book has to say, but I appreciate the way in which it ties these theorists together and gives them a coherent praxis: pursuing lines of flight, of escape, of building communism here and now between each other, of uniting with others in friendship, as well as against the enemy. Conflict is at the heart of this work: the necessity of it, the inevitability of it, but also its productive potential. Beyond this, there are touching observations about the debasement of language itself, the disrepute of politics, the power of individuals to come together in assemblages which are more than the sum of their parts, the latent violence all around us, our entrapment within the false rhizome of an increasingly monopolised internet, and the vitality of forms of life and affect in producing radical change.
(My only small criticism is their unnecessarily antagonistic relation to Marxists. For example, they briefly criticise Marxists for failing to appreciate Capitalism's capacity to valorize and commodify even the human subject. This is something Marxists have been talking about for many decades already, as have Anarchists of course. It's not really a fair criticism.)
