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There is no unhappy revolution.
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Marcello Tari
There is no unhappy revolution.
The communism of destitution.
Marcello Tari
translated by Richard Braude
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.. Brooklyn, NY
commonnotions.org
There Is No Unhappy Revolution: The Communism of Destitution
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Contents
Translator's note vii
01. Preamble 1
02. The World or Nothing at All 13
03. Another Thought About War 33
04. Destituent Strike I:
Justice vs. Law 47
05. Destituent Strike II:
"No Future for Us" 55
06. Destituent Strike III:
Revolt Against the Metropolis 77
07. Destituent Strike IV:
The Nomos of the Commune 89
08. The Byt Front (Destituent Bolshevism) 111
09. Interruption I:
"There Is No Unhappy Love" 123
10. Interruption II:
To Save Tradition, We Must Interrupt It 131
11. Interruption III:
Destitute Everything, Including the Revolution 143
12. Interruption IV:
The Heroic Cessation: An Epic for the Revolution 151
13. The Destituent Insurrection 165
14. An Enchanting Horror 203
About the Author 211
Translator's note
A central problem of translation in Marcello Tari's text is that of the
terms "destituent" and "destitution;' a concept that lies at the heart
of its argument. If unfamiliar to the Anglophone reader, it should be
borne in mind that (linguistically speaking at least) it is simply the op
posite of"constituent" and "constitution:' The American Constitution
has a constituent assembly; an act of "destitution'' might have a cor
responding "destituent" element. One builds, the other deconstructs;
one "constitutes;' the other "destitutes:' A further distinction made is
that between the words potere and potenza, which are rendered here
as "power" and "potential:' The division is important for Tari because
it identifies a qualitative difference between the form of power within
a constituent process (potere) and that within a destituent one (poten
za). On these points, also see Adam Kotsko's note to his translation of
Giorgio Agamben's The Use of Bodies.
The notes have been used primarily to complete bibliograph
ical information and help the reader navigate the author's textual
coordinates. Wherever possible, quotations from previous English
translations have been drawn upon and cited; otherwise, references
have been made to texts in their original languages.
This translation was carried out over a few months of a year
in which many of the concepts it contains became self-evident, a
moment of rupture in which government melted away and new
(and sometimes beautiful) forms of life appeared by both necessity
and volition, and in which a new wave of Black-led uprisings burst
out from within the heart of empire. My thanks to the author for
deftly describing some paradigms of this surreal journey.
Richard Braude
Palermo, September 2020
Preamble
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When will someone finally come and -
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straighten out this topsy-turvy world?1 ...
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-Franz Kafka, Letter to Milena Jesenska Pollak ......
How does an epoch betome an era, and how does an era become an
eon? Or: how does a revolt turn into an insurrection, and how does
an insurrection turn into a revolution?
For centuries, each generation has found itself up against this
unresolved yet unavoidable question. One might say revolutions
arrive in the world at precisely the moment people begin to ask
themselyes this very question and, in dialogue with others, begin
to develop some responses. This struggle, both worldly and
spiritual, has given rise to extraordinarily audacious and adven
turous experiments that-more often than not-end in defeat. It
often happens that the struggle comes to an end because those
who posed the question melt away. The cunning of history has
always had the better of the scandal of truth. This is why Franz
Kafka said that for revolutionary spiritual movements-which
have always been movements running against the current of
history-it is as if nothing has ever happened. Despite this, or
perhaps because of it, the question arises again and again from
the ruins of time-intact.
I. Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena, ed. William Haas, trans. Tania Stern and James Stern
(New York: Schocken Books, 1954), 42. [Translator's note.]
