this Rhizome is Breaking

Marcelle Loubchansky (1917-1988) — Untitled [oil on canvas, 1956]

An angel

The current Control society which we live under, can be considered a radically open society. It’s an Open society in the sense that there is no way not to be open. Everything is done publicly. The whole of the new ‘creator’ economy can only be done in an open and public setting. The Control society is an Open society not in its inclusivity, but in its lack of exclusivity and hatred of privacy. We’re in a world where it is a sin to be private and a glory to be transparent. A triumph of privatization over privacy. In such a society it is now more important than ever to revive the culture of the ‘Secret society’. A Secret society is not just a gathering of occultists, it is any collective, anti-ocular enunciation. An underground rave, a squatter group, a small internet artist blog etc. Unlike the Control, Discipline or Sovereign society, the Secret society cannot be institutionalized because as soon as it is institutionalized it ceases to be a Secret society. The State cannot be ‘masked’. The Secret society therefore in its anti-ocularity resembles the War machine. It is better to say that a Secret society is a War machine - liberated and given form in a certain coordinate of space-time. Its limited membership, closed off rituals and festivities are just another enunciation of the discipline inherent in the Warriors of the War machine. It is therefore an act of resistance. One must, of course, not misconstrue, it can be just as much an act of reaction. There are as many Acéphale as there are Amur river societies. There are of course more problems with Secret societies than just that they can be reactionary. One aspect of Secret societies is their aristocratic nature. Due to its secrecy and distance from the masses it can easily fall into the cesspit of elitism. The Bolsheviks are a great example of this. Once a Secret society which liberated and co-opted the degrading War machine of the Russian Empire it quickly came to replace the Russian aristocracy(even now many former party members are also members of the oligarchy). This is of course by design. One must only look to the writings of someone like Renzo Novatore to see it clear as day(even Bataille to a certain degree). There is a reason that Deleuze and Guattari called High-society a version of the band structure inherent to the Nomadic War machine. The Secret society, if unchecked, only recreates the Apparatus of Capture. So what can be done? How can we resist, create a Secret society that stays secret even when destroying the State? I don’t know, not yet anyway.

Rémy Van den Abeele (1918-2006) — A Surreal Landscape a Humanoid Skeleton [oil and mixed media, on canvas, 1957]

- Renzo Novatore, Beyond the Two Anarchies

「広いテーブル」

The Outcry by Wolfgang Lettl, 1989