3
" To call the population of strangers in the midst of which we live "society" is such a usurpation that even the sociologists wonder if they should abandon a concept that was, for a century, their bread and butter. Now they prefer the metaphor of a network to describe the connection of cybernetic solitudes, the intermeshing of weak interactions under names like "colleague," "contact," "buddy," acquaintance," or "date." Such networks sometimes condense into a milieu, where nothing is shared but codes, and where nothing is played out except the incessant recomposition of identity. "
― , The Coming Insurrection
4
" An diesem Punkt gibt es keinen einzigen ihrer »Werte« [der Zivilisation des Westens] mehr, an den sie noch auf irgendeine Art zu glauben vermöchte, und jede Affirmation wirkt auf sie wie eine schamlose Tat, wie eine Provokation, die man besser zerlegen, dekonstruieren und in den Zustand des Zweifels zurückführen sollte. Der westliche Imperialismus heute, das ist der des Relativismus, des »Das ist deine Ansicht«, das ist der kleine Seitenblick oder der verletzte Protest gegen all das, was dumm genug, primitiv genug oder selbstgefällig genug ist, um noch an etwas zu glauben, um noch irgendetwas zu behaupten. Es ist dieser Dogmatismus der Infragestellung, der in der gesamten universitären und literarischen Intelligenzija komplizenhaft mit dem Auge zwinkert. Unter den postmodernistischen Geistesgrößen ist keine Kritik zu radikal, solange sie ein Nichts an Gewissheit umhüllt. Vor einem Jahrhundert verursachte jede ein wenig lärmmachende Negation einen Skandal, heute liegt er in jeder Affirmation, die nicht zittert. "
― , The Coming Insurrection
11
" I am what I am.' Never has domination found such an innocent-sounding slogan. The maintenance of the self in a permanent state of deterioration, in a chronic state of near-collapse, is the best-kept secret of the present order of things. The weak, depressed, self-critical, virtual self is essentially that endlessly adaptable subject required by the ceaseless innovation of production, the accelerated obsolescence of technologies, the constant overturning of social norms, and generalized flexibility. It is at the same time the most voracious consumer and, paradoxically, the *most productive self*, the one that will most eagerly and energetically throw itself into the slightest *project*, only to return later to its original larval state. "
― , The Coming Insurrection
14
" You have to admit: this whole “catastrophe,” which they so noisily inform us about, it doesn’t really touch us. At least not until we are hit by one of its foreseeable consequences. It may concern us, but it doesn’t touch us. And that is the real catastrophe.
There is no “environmental catastrophe.” The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what’s left to man after he’s lost everything. Those who live in a neighborhood, a street, a valley, a war zone, a workshop — they don’t have an “environment;” they move through a world peopled by presences, dangers, friends, enemies, moments of life and death, all kinds of beings. Such a world has its own consistency, which varies according to the intensity and quality of the ties attaching us to all of these beings, to all of these places. It’s only us, the children of the final dispossession, exiles of the final hour — the ones who come into the world in concrete cubes, pick our fruits at the supermarket, and watch for an echo of the world on television — only we get to have an environment. "
― , The Coming Insurrection
15
" There is no “clash of civilizations.” There is a clinically dead civilization kept alive by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet’s atmosphere. At this point it can no longer believe in a single one of its own “values,” and any affirmation of them is considered an impudent act, a provocation that should and must be taken apart, deconstructed, and returned to a state of doubt. Today Western imperialism is the imperialism of relativism, of the “it all depends on your point of view”; it’s the eye-rolling or the wounded indignation at anyone who’s stupid, primitive, or presumptuous enough to still believe in something, to affirm anything at all. You can see the dogmatism of constant questioning give its complicit wink of the eye everywhere in the universities and among the literary intelligentsias. No critique is too radical among postmodernist thinkers, as long as it maintains this total absence of certitude. A century ago, scandal was identified with any particularly unruly and raucous negation, while today it’s found in any affirmation that fails to tremble. "
― , The Coming Insurrection
