CONCRETIZING COMMUNISMfrom the montana house to ungdomshuset: tracing the worlding force of radical

communities

Attach yourself to what you feel to be true.Begin there.

Don’t back away from what is political in friendship. Expect nothing from organizations.Beware of all existing social milieus,

and above all, don’t become one.Form communes.

Get organized in order to no longer have to work.Create territories. Multiply zones of opacity.

Organize self-defense. Make the most of every crisis.

Sabotage every representative authority.Liberate territory from police occupation

Avoid direct confrontation, if possible.Take up arms. Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary.

Against the army, the only victory is political. All power the communes!

—The Invisible Committee1

INTRO

This is an ESSAY/LECTURE//PRESENTATION engaging how radical

communities’ practices actually embody contemporary radical

thought. Specially we will look at both the European Anarchist

squatter movement and the radical intentional communities that

1 The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection. semiotext(e) intervention series 1. Los Angeles: semiotext(e), 2007.

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speckle the United States, connecting the dots between life and a

philosophical framework that includes Tiqqun, Jacques Rancière,

Jean-Luc Nancy, Erin Manning among others).

Hopefully this resonates with the themes of Truth is Concrete by

marrying practice with a radical intellectual framework that

illustrates how radical communal practices literally embody these

concepts.

In doing so, we turn the primitivist, intentional homestead, The

Montana House, which cropped up in Asheville, North Carolina (US)

in 2003, and the militant, anarchist youth squat, Ungdomshuset in

Copenhagen (DK), which was raided and its occupants evicted in

2007. Analyzing these two communities allows us to witness

different styles and tactics that reflect literally different

worlds.

One completely militant, engaged in more direct and bodily forms

of violence, the other is a softer, safer space. The Montana

House focuses on permaculture and community projects such as

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gardening, building cabins and tree-houses, and making music and

art collectively.2 Ungdomshuset’s occupants created and

maintained community by throwing parties and sharing resources.

However, they were tactically extremely militant—they made a

bunker out of the apartment, blockaded their building with barbed

wire, and regularly threw molotovs at riot cops.3

Comparing The Montana House and Ungdomshuset allows us to track

two totally different approaches to radical communities. Totally

different worlds—forms-of-life generate different ways being-in-

common and communism. This analysis allows us to see the

importance of these communities, and the political, ontological,

and ethical stakes of creating community and forms-of-life.

RADICAL COMMUNITIES—HISTORY

THE MONTANA HOUSE

2 In garnering data about the Montana House, I draw both upon my own experiences of participating in that house and the greater radical network in Asheville, NC, and this short documentary about the house: Hussin, Tim and Noah Hussin. The Montana House: An Urban Homestead. 2010. http://www.americarecycled.org/the-montana-house/3 Research on Ungdomshuset 69 stems from this documentary by Nikolaj Viborg :Viborg, Nikolaj. 69. 2008. http://www.esprit68.org/69.html

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The Montana House was started in Asheville, North Carolina in

2003 as an urban homestead—which is a popular form of communal

living among young radicals, wherein the community attempts to

produce its own food and goods in order to reduce environmental

impacts and increase self-sufficiency. These homesteads take on

tribal-familial relations.

In fact, the United States has had a long history of creating

intentional communities designed to create space-from normative

society. Be them Transcendental Christian communities', the Hippy

communes, or Anarchist squats, the idea of a space for

experimentation with utopia is as old as the US.4

Always beginning with differing purposes, these intentional

communities in fact, by necessity, formulate resistance to

Empire’s ways of doing. If we see Empire (the nexus of State

operations, knowledge-producing-apparatuses and Capitalism) as

4 America has a very unusual history of intentional communities. Spanning backto the middle of the 17th Century, the first immigrants to the US, the Pilgrims, religious exiles from the UK, came to the new world to be free to create alternative Christian communities and townships. Protestantism and the Transcendental Movement had very similar aspirations. Early American history is filled with an expansion west fueled by one kind of ideological group or another’s attempt at creating utopian communes.

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world-shaping, or world-creating (worlding), then any operation

that attempts to, militantly or not, create a space—a world

apart, resists Empire. Thus the stakes of resisting societal

interpellation and subjection, and a common work-schedule, sense

of time, and social practices thus becomes resistance on onto-

political grounds. The stakes here get to the very nature of what

it is to be a human, and how to shape these existential decisions

in an ethical way, along with a given ideological framework.

Turning back to The Montana House, we see that it’s activities

include building living structures out of waste material, regular

house meetings, growing their own food, making art collectively

and creating their own culture. This is a real attempt to work

outside of the Neoliberal, Capitalist framework—an operation that

is unidentifiable by normative society. The Montana House is not

armed, it is more a cultural space and zone of subtraction from

society than a true militant zone.

UNGDOMSHUSET

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With very different intention than The Montana House,

Ungdomshuset was a squatted youth house and cultural center in

Copenhagen, Denmark, in operation from 1982 to 2007. Ungdomshuset

functioned as a music venue and radical activist meet-up point.

Initially owned and technically given to the youths by the city

government, for as long as Ungdomshuset was occupied it’s

legality has always been in check. Throughout its twenty-five

year existence, this house had been targeted by multiple police

raids and attempts at selling the property off. The squatters

defended their house with rocks, wooden palates, and molotovs.

The ownership controversy came to a head in 2003, when a legal

battle broke out between the technical owners of Ungdomshuset, a

religious sect called Faderhuset and its actual long term

inhabitants. While this was going on, dozens of demonstrations

occurred as the radical community came out in droves to support

Ungdomshuset. In 2006, despite formally losing the lawsuit,

squatter-activists stood their ground and were not evicted, and

instead gained international media attention.

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The final battle over Ungdomshuset occurred on March 1st 2007,

when Copenhagen police lay siege to the fortified squat,

employing helicopters, tear gas, and dogs. Ungdomshuset was

finally evicted, and shortly after supporters ran to the

squatter’s aid, and rioted in the streets, building barricades

and throwing firebombs. The riots continued for days in many

cities.

The important thing to note about Ungdomshuset is how militant it

was. It was a very different type of community than The Montana

House. Ungdomshuset used more force to maintain its position

outside of Empire, but was terminated for its more outward

display of violence (both material and existential).

TIQQUN/ CIVIL WAR/ FORM-OF-LIFE

Tiqqun, a French intellectual, insurrectionary collective, has

been extremely crucial for framing the debate around what radical

life is and how anarchists should organize. With deep theoretical

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framings, Tiqqun enriches the discussions around communes.

Tiqqun’s thinkers are major proponents of violence—not just in

physical sense: they argue that the ideological violence of

negating and subtracting-from society is critical in how we

resist Empire. Again, Empire is the summation of the various

institutions of power and apparatus of control, including the

State and Capitalism. Empire is the outermost edge of power. To

resist Empire, according to Tiqqun, is to be engaging in Civil

War. For Tiqqun, Civil War is less a simple armed struggle within

a single state, and is more an all out ethical opposition to the

entire network of Empire.

To understand Tiqqun’s theory of Civil War, it is first

imperative to define what a form-of-life is. About forms-of-life,

Tiqqun posits, in their book, Introduction to Civil War:

My form-of-life relates not to what I am, but how I am. In other words, between a being and its qualities, there is theabyss of its own presence and the singular experience I have of it. Unfortunately for Empire, the form-of-life animating a body is not to be found in any of its predicates—big, white, crazy, rich, poor, carpenter, arrogant, woman, or French—but in the singular way of its presence, and the irreducible event of its being-in-situation.5

5 Tiqqun. Introduction to Civil War. semiotext(e) intervention series 4. Los Angeles:semiotext(e), 2007. 23.

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What we can understand here is that forms-of-life are not simply

identities or lifestyles, they are all out ontological exceptions

from Empire. Forms-of-life are existential subtractions from

normative society. Forms-of-life are beings-toward-separateness—

being-toward-separateness.

Tiqqun continues to deepen their analysis of what constitutes a

form-of-life by arguing that, “All degrees of difference among

forms-of-life are ethical differences.”6 Here Tiqqun suggests

that differences among forms-of-life and between forms of life

and Empire are ethical, and relate to a whole network of codes

and practice that relate to a broader ideological framework. When

two forms-of-life come into conflict, their conflict is ethical

and ideological in nature.

To better understand these ideas, we can see forms-of-life

constituted as radical communities, wherein the intention to

resist society is understood as complex, and addressed complexly.

Anti-oppressive and anti-hierarchical frameworks are key for this

6 Ibid., 58.

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kind of life. Traditional structures and larger organizations

have to be put in check because they reinforce problematic

societal norms and limit the ways that community can operate

outside of the indirect clutches of Empire.

With regard to community, Tiqqun offers this: “When, at a certain

time and place, two bodies affected by the same form-of-life

meet...they experience community.”7 Community is not a grouping of

societally-produced subjects, it is the nature of relations

between bodies. It is the actualization of ethics and politics.

Community is this form-of-life.

All communities, just like all forms-of-life, should necessarily

look different, because they are comprised of different

singularities and different relationalities, and thus relate to

society differently. Any community must also be flexible in its

operations, for sticking too closely to a plan squelches

spontaneity of action and the overall dynamism of the form-of-

life.

7 Ibid, 37.

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HOW DOES THE MONTANA HOUSE CONSTITUTE A FORM-OF-LIFE?

Taking The Montana House as an example, we see a positive and

generative space opening up, as an ethical, moral, economic, and

political sphere outside of Empire. The Montana House focuses

internally rather than doing outward activism or attacking the

State. From collective gardening to cooking to yoga, their form-

of-life manifests in material, emotional, and spiritual ways.

These connections between bodies and ethical standards are what

cut away from normative society.

UNGDOMSHUSET AS FORM-OF-LIFE

Ungdomshuset’s form-of-life created a culture of insurrectionary

anarchism. These were squatter-punks: their lives that required

total committed to radical practice: dumpster diving, not

working, decorating their home with trash, creating a bunker—a

powerful attempt at creating space outside of Capitalism. Because

Ungdomshuset was so committed to remaining an anarchist-punk

squat—a form-of-life—its tactics necessarily were militant.

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CIVIL WAR

Having examined the stakes of formulating forms-of-life, it is

now helpful to return to Civil War, about which Tiqqun says:

Civil War is the free play of forms-of-life...War, because in each singular play between forms-of-life, the possibilityof a fierce confrontation—the possibility of violence—can never be discounted. Civil, because the confrontation between forms-of-life is not like that between States—a coincidence between a population and a territory—but like the confrontation between parties.8

Civil War is what allows forms-of-life like radical communities

to come into being—real radical, ethical life necessitates an all

out war against Empire. Civil War occurs because the violence of

subtracting from Empire is monstrous. To create an ideological

framework and a material network of bodies that runs against

Empire’s very founding logic, its logos, is to challenge Empire’s

very existence. Civil war is existential—it is ontopolitical.

The image of Civil War comes more naturally with Ungdomshuset,

which enacted more traditional guerrilla-like tactics: riots,

demonstrations, and militant occupation of space. The Montana

8 Ibid., 33.

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House manifests is much more abstract—a display of how well a

community can thrive and provide for itself outside of Empire.

VIOLENCE

For Tiqqun, violence is a key concept because it has so many

implications—the direct violence Empire employs upon the subjects

it produces and controls—both bodily and existential, and then

the dual violence it takes to resist Empire—again both militant

and ontopolitical. Tiqqun asserts that, “Violence is something

new in history. For us, ultimately, violence is what has been taken

from us, and today we need it back. What this implies is that

violence has been monopolized by the State, and that good

Citizens have been pacified from employing violence. Any use of

violence against Empire is totally prohibited, and therefor

totally necessary.

WORLDING

Worlding: the capacity of a community of bodies to generate the

ideological, ontological, and material conditions for humans.

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Worlding: a central site of discussion among contemporary

philosophers. Worlds may be produced by the various arms of

Empire: Capitalism, religion, states, and institutions. Worlds

are also produced by communities excluded from society—external

to Empire. Worlding-force creates the world. From human relations

and community agreements to outwards relations with normative

society, worlding is that which forms the norms and frameworks

fundamental to human life. Human ontology, the nature of our very

existence, relies upon these worlds as necessary framing devices.

Tiqqun weaves worlding into their argument by saying,“Every form-

of-life constitutes a community, as a community tends to

constitute a world.”9 Forms-of-life are world-productive. They

constitute their own logics, their own ethics and relations

outside of Empire. Worlding is forms-of-life coming into play, it

is Civi War.

WORLDING IS A VIOLENT ACT

9 Ibid., 183.

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Since ancient times, all worlds could be understood as different

ways of living (including customs, religion, economic

systems...), which come into conflict with one another. These

conflicts occur about differing social logics lead toward

violence. War among tribes and between nations is the war

produced by forms-of-life interacting. Therefore, worlding is

inherently violent. It is violent ontologically because it

creates such strong ways of being-in-the-world that these forms

are bound to come into conflict. Worlding is violent because

things like social logic, language and ideology are so

fundamental to our understanding as humans, that to disrupt or

destroy one is to perform total violence on a society. Being a

form-of-life outside of Empire is real violence.

WORLDING IN RADICAL COMMUNITIES

Within radical communities, their world is everything. The

worlding power produces all of the ways that people believe and

behave.

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With at least The Montana House, the way worlding power works is

far less hierarchical than within the normative and subjectifying

institutions of Empire. The Montana House has no ruler, all

members are responsible for participating in projects and house

meetings. All members are given voice and held accountable for

their actions. Again this anti-hierarchical relationship goes

against the logos of Empire.

With Ungdomshuset, we are able to see why the squatters were

willing to get arrested or die for their world, because it was

everything, a safe space for their ways of being. To stand up to

Empire is for a form-of-life to protect all of its own logic,

their art, theirs loved-one (relations), and their community. To

stand up to Empire is to perform an act of violence.

MANNING/RELATIONSCAPES

To enrich our understanding of how communities are constituted,

we turn to philosopher, Erin Manning, and her work in

Relationscapes, in which Manning examines the dynamic ontology of

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relationality—of how bodies come together to produce space and

movement.

As Manning suggests, “Bodies are dynamic expressions of movement

in its incipiency. They have not yet converged into final

from.”10 Manning speaks of the fluidity and the potential

inherent in body-space formations. They are not static ends, but

in becoming-perceptible. According to Manning, bodies and space

only come into existence in relation with one another. There is

no body without a room, no room without a body; and, furthermore,

rooms and bodies always change with relation to one another. The

sum recomposes in relation to its parts, and vice versa—the

relationality of bodies is thus deeply morphic and contextual.

This provides for a strong metaphor for how communities come-

into-being, with appreciation for indeterminacy and potentiality.

Community is formed as the relation between bodies (individuals)

and space, and from collective to collective, and moment to

moment, community is expressed differently. Communities change

10 Manning, Erin. Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. 6.

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based on a single body’s needs and on a greater collective

ideology, and thus should never be seen or treated as static. The

Montana House, like many intentional communities, takes great

care to incorporate and provide space for the varying bodies and

ideas each member has. Each member is dynamic, and will be

changed by individuals and the overall house—by its space and by

its structures. To keep alive the ethical work it takes to live

according to one’s ideology, in resistance to Empire, we must

understand how important these dynamic relations are.

Tying together what was previously said about world-creative

force, and movement, Manning says:

Movement is one with the world, not body/world, but body-worlding. We move not to populate space, not to extend it orto embody it, but to create it...space is a duration with a difference. The difference is my body-worlding, always more than one...This coming-together proposes a combination of form forces.11

Manning understands how movement creates the world—producing a

material and ideological framework. Movement is always a relation

between bodies and world/space. This world-creation is

conditioned by objects that are in-becoming, that aren’t yet

11 Ibid., 13.

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determined. Movement is a measure of whats immeasurable, only

qualifiable, and exists as a coming-together or congruence. Space

is created in this relationality of dynamic and immeasurable

parts.

Again, the relationship between various parts of a community

actually produces a world, a world with its own ideology, its own

ethics, its own political relations. This world-creative force,

this worlding power reflects what Tiqqun understands to be

central to the force of a form-of-life: creating an authentic

world-apart from Empire. Immeasurable, for what bodies offer in a

form-of-life will always be immeasurable and unidentifiable by

normative society. A form-of-life is not about identity, it is

about defying identity and identification for something more

true, and more violent. ((An organization of urban, white gay

males can never be radical, can never be a form-of-life, because

it sits all too nicely in the regime of, within the regime of the

known—within the regime of Empire.)) Forms of life have to be

immeasurable.

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The fact that both The Montana House and Ungdomshuset require a

lengthy list of descriptors—punk, anarchist, garden, radical,

sustainable, alternative, queer, hippy, militant, peaceful,

separatist, and primitivist suggest that these communities we

deal with are far more complex than being wrapped around a

singular identity. In fact, any of these descriptors alone no

longer hold any significance when trying to deal with these

communities. With these two examples, there are too many

individual idea-producers in each house to actually have any

authentic commitment to a single identity. Instead, this all gets

lost in a larger, indescribable and immeasurable formulation—a

form-of-life.

With regard to movement, the movement of bodies within these two

communities is constants—meaning that we never see stasis, only

the pure movement of a relational constellation of spaces—

apartments, gardens, roofs, streets, and bodies—humans, dogs,

cats, flies, always moving and creating new relations.s

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Turning to the political nature of movements, Manning

acknowledges that:

When articulation becomes collective, a politics is made palpable whereby what is produced is the potential for divergent series of movements. This is a virtual politics, apolitics of the not-yet. These are not politics of the body,but of the many becoming one...These are politics of that many-bodied State of transition that is the collective.12

The very nature of politics, according to Manning and Tiqqun, is

its capacity to move, to be creative of spaces, to be open and

indeterminate. The only real potentially to have a politics that

opposes the State and police-force is by way of movement-away, of

prefigurative politics—politics of forms-of-life in-becoming.

This politics is world-creative, it sets new rules by which life

is valued and action is judged. Communities again operate as

collective articulations that exist, and can only exist, as

multiplicities of sharing-outs of politics and ideas—a

multiplicity of spaces, and a multiplicity of politics

prefigured: ethics and radical life.

If we have to turn outside of Empire to find politics, then where

better than a radical community? So many intentional communities

12 Ibid., 27.

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are formulated around the question of prefigurative politics—a

politics internal to a community that is small in scale,

flexible, and worked out according to needs. Both The Montana

House and Ungdomshuset are organized according to living

according to one’s values—to live ethical life. Openness to

multiplicity, to movement and potentiality are key for these new

communities.

NANCY/COMMUNISM/COMPEARANCE/BEING-IN-COMMON

Philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s theories of compearance, being-in-

common, and Communism resonate with what Manning has developed

regarding relationality and world-creation.

Building off of Manning’s conceptualizing of relationality, Nancy

says in his essay on “The Compearance,”

We compear: we come together (in)to the world. It is not that there is a simultaneous arrival of several distinct units...but that there is not a coming (in)to the world thatis not radically common; it is even the “common” itself. To come into the world is to be-in-common.13

13 Nancy, Jean-Luc. “The Compearance: From the Existence of, “Communism” to the Community of “Existence.” Political Theory Vol. 20. No 3. Trans. Tracy B.

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Coming into the world isn’t experienced by distinct bodies

separately—it can only be felt in common. Just like with

relationality, coming into the world depends on the relations

between bodies and space. Nancy wants to avoid seeing common as

banal, but instead as full of radical potential.

Nancy turns from common to Communism, to which he breathes new

life, saying:

Communism, without a doubt, is the archaic name of a thoughtwhich is all still to come. When it will have come, it will not carry this name—in fact, it will not be a ‘thought’ in the sense that this is understood. It will be a thing... Another world will have opened itself up in the new structure—albeit obscure—of community.14

According to Nancy, Communism has yet to come, implying that the

statist formulations classically understood as “Communism” have

missed the mark. Communism, instead, is a question of community—

not as a formal political structure, but as an experience.

Communism is that which constitutes experience. Nancy’s

engagement with the concept, Communism, is unique, and carries

Strong. Sage Publications, Inc, 1992. 373-4. 14 Ibid., 377.

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with it less Marxian political-economic clout, and relates more

to human relations and ontology.

Furthering this point, Nancy says, “Communism wants to say that

being is in common. It wants to say that we are in

common...Communism is an ontological proposition, not a political

option... Communism is a political option the degree that ‘being’

itself (the being of existence) is to be engaged.”15 Nancy’s

Communism cuts very deeply, operating on the order of ontology.

Communism isn't a political formulation or structure: it is an

‘ontological condition,’ one that understands that ‘being’—the

essence and experience of humanness—is in common. Communism

speaks to the basic way that humans experience the world:

experience hinges on this commonness.

In fact, Communism is political insofar as it is an ontopolitical

expression. Understanding being to be in common is to understand

human relations to have a political element—we are in common, and

therefore we should treat our relations as common. Not banal

15 Ibid, 378.

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commonalities such as identity, but the very experience of being

a human, being in the world is shared among all humans. This

allows for a way out of competition and radical alienation under

Capitalism.

Tying together radical communities with these new concepts of

Communism and being-in-common helps to further enrich the stakes

of creating new forms-of-life. Prefigurative politics within

radical communities understands and incorporates this

ontopolitical quality of being-in-common.

Ungdomshuset’s form of Communism, being-in-the-common and being-

in-the-world was precipitated on punk culture. The house embodied

a very particular set of anti-Capitalist techniques: squatting,

shoplifting and dumpster diving, just to name a few. Here

hardness moves past appearance and into a radical militancy.

Valuable to its members is militancy and this is what compears

and holds all bodies together—in-common. Ungdomshuset was

militant in its very desire to remain a form-of-life.

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The Montana Houses’ Communism stems from an eco-spiritual

connection each member has with one another and with the earth.

Therefore sustainability, growing and eating their own food is a

sacred act—an act that produces a world outside Empire. An act

that occurs together—communal—radically in-common. The Montana

House’s relationship begins at the pre-subjective, at the

communal-affective. It is about what is felt, and what feels

right.

Nancy’s radical new positing of Communism helps to deepen the

stakes of creating community. If Communism occurs on the order of

ontology, it affects the fundamental qualities of humans and

their relations. Radical community is just that, an expression of

human nature and ontology. Given this framework, the activity of

a form-of-life of this or that community is the activity of

establishing new human ontology, new, unalienated relationships—

an understanding of human nature that does less to isolate

individuals. In fact, we are radically in common. If Communism

implies that being is in common, then Communism is a radical

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ontopolitical position that opposes Empire’s isolating,

individualistic and Capitalistic nature.

RANCIÈRE/ POLITICS/ POLICE-FORCE

Political philosopher Jacques Rancière’s complicated theorization

of the relationship between politics and police-force helps us to

understand where politics does and doesn’t occur, and also help

us to understand what might lead someone to a radical community.

Rancière defines the police as, “Essentially, the law, generally

implicitly, that defines a parties share or lack of it....the

police is thus first an order of bodies that defines the

allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of

saying.”16 Police is the ordering force—the force that

administers and regulates (proportions of) laws, orders people

into normative society, bodies into subjecthood, movement into

regular behavior, and time into regimented (labor) time. Rancière

uses police here in a way that underlines to understand a larger

16 Rancière, Jacques. Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans. Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 29.

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juridico-logical practice that State apparati deploy to restrict,

manage, and manipulate bodies, and to control movement (social

and individual).

Tiqqun extends this conception of the police, arguing, “Its no

use distinguishing between cops and citizens. Under Empire, the

difference between the police and the population is abolished. At

any moment each citizen of Empire can, through a

characteristically Bloomesque reversal, reveal himself a cop.”17

Given the stakes of Rancière’s conceptualization of the police to

include, ontologically, all ordering force, it follows that

Tiqqun includes all Citizens of Empire into the category of the

police. All good, interpellated, productive subjects of Empire

are institutionalized in a way that produces in them two things:

1) fear of non-normative bodies and behaviors; and 2) desire to

interpellate and police all deviant activity—all appearances of

politics—all movement.

17 Tiqqun, 154.

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This is a question of ethics, of forms-of-life that oppose

society being called into question. Defense against the

copishness of subjects, of Liberals, is an ethical and

ontopolitical battle. This is Civil War, not just between forms-

of-life and Empire-abstract, but between every radical community—

all appearances of Communism, and all Citizens.

If the stakes of opposing police-force, Empire, and Citizens are

on the order of the inclusion and exclusion of entire communities

from society, then what’s crucial is to examine how resistance to

police force works. According to Rancière, it has to do with

politics, which is:

Whatever breaks with the tangible configuration whereby parties and parts or lack of them are defined by a presupposition that, by definition, has no place in that configuration. Political activity is whatever shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a places’ destination...political activity is always a mode of expression that undoes the perceptible divisions of police order. 18

Politics is the break from rigid order, from rigid organization

of bodies and parts. Political activity changes relations between

populations, movement, and space—politics opens space. Politics

18 Rancière., 29-30.

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occurs outside of Empire’s regime of the sensible. Politics is

found in forms-of-life and in Communism.

The generation of radical communities is by necessity political—

political for its radical break from the police-force that

regulates the movement and order of bodies. Here we break away

from Empire. To oppose police-force is to break with the regime

of the sensible, which is exactly the role of a form-of-life

takes: to be truly outside of societal norms and to oppose the

logic of Empire. The State understands organizations: it

understand Greenpeace, it understands UNICEF—those forms are

within the logic of Empire—organizations speak the language of

Empire, of law. Empire cannot rationalize non-organizations, such

as Occupy Wall Street (at its genesis), squats, or intentional

communities. These spaces operate beyond the epistemology of

Empire, outside of its ability to truly conceive, categorize, and

measure.

The State never truly knew if Ungdomshuset was a music venue or a

haven for terrorists. The Montana House is an anti-hierarchical,

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off-the-grid primitivist bubble that was built from the ground up

using non-Western techniques, and waste materials—trash. As

Rancière reminds us, this break from the sensible—from logos—is

political.

CONCRETIZING/EMBODIMENT

Crucial to our analysis of radical communities as concretized

truth is to tie together real communities to the deeper

implications we have covered so far in this paper. An essential

link, thus, is the way in which community-members actualize and

embody theoretical frameworks such as forms-of-life, worlding,

being-in-common, and communism.

The question of how theory is concretized is a question of

embodiment—it is a question of bodies. How they interact, what

relations they take on, what changes they undergo.

AFFECT: An important aspect of bodies is to witness their pre-

subjective, affective relations. Examining pre-cognitive

experiences and feelings is key because we know that we are

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dealing directly with the body, not the subject. To look at body

behavior—very familial in the case of The Montana House, very

tough in the case of Ungdomshuset—tells us a lot about the world

and form-of-life produced.

As we discussed earlier, to embody a form-of-life is to put ones

body outside of, and at odds with, Empire. It is to create a

politics. A politics apart. A body-politics.

A politics of the movement of bodies and space. The body is here

politicized—just as all ethical actions are.

ETHICS: To examine bodies and practices of an ideological

framework is to examine ethics. The patterns of behavior created

in radical communities, from music-playing, to dancing, to

gardening, to creating blockades are all ethical gestures—

decisions community members make in order to live according to a

set of guidelines. Bodies are what are charted in a world. The

world organizes bodies, just as bodies organize the world.

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COMMUNISM: Communism exists insofar as bodies come-into-the-world

in-common. It takes bodies for being-in-common to occur, for the

understanding that we humans share all of existence to take

effect. As such, Communism is on the order of the ontological.

That said, human relations and body relations change. When they

enter a radical community, a form-of-life, or a world, bodies

change—their movement changes—their ideas change.

The Montana House’s lighter tone of Communism creates a readiness

towards compearance. These bodies are ready and willing to take

on ethical relations. By the same stroke, Ungdomshuset compears,

its bodies more committed to ethical violence.

NO CONCLUSION

With The Montana House and Ungdomshuset, we see two totally

different approaches to radical community; totally different

worlds—forms-of-life, that generate different ways being-in-

common and Communism happen.

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One overtly and visibly violent; the other a space that is off-

the grid, aiming toward holism. The Montana House’s world

embodies Nancian Communism in the positive way—generating and

facilitating a true being-in-common of likeminded but distinct

bodies. Their common being-ness is something that draws the

Montana House together, their appreciation and space for

different singularities. The Montana House is more inwardly-

focused, and generative, instead of destructive.

Ungdomshuset was a bunker, and the bodies that orbit this bunker

compear violently. They outwardly attack the State. Communism and

being-in-common occur by way of their readiness to include and be

united as social outcasts. Ungdomshuset’s commonness was their

common militancy and willingness to defend the ethical stances

they took.

Which is more violent to Empire? That is hard to say.

Ungdomshuset engaged more directly with forms of ethical

violence. However, both take up abstract forms of Civil War. The

Montana House is far more sustainable—ready to remain

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indiscernible and off the grid during for a long protracted

battle against Empire. Both communities take radical tactics

towards opposing normative society’s logic. By organizing anti-

hierarchically, not working, dumpster-diving, and being generally

“anti-social,” these communities undermine Empire’s interpolating

grasp. By proving their self-sustainability, the existence of

their lives—their forms-of-life, radical communities wrestle free

of Citizenhood, the police, Empire’s very logos.

There is and can be no conclusion. This is a beginning. This is a

starting point. Part of the goal here today is mobilization; it

is to encourage people to embody theory and concretize truth. It

is to encourage people to realize Communism. Communalizing,

creating-worlds, and livings as forms-of-life are the only first

steps towards combatting Empire. They are only the first steps.

While waging Civil War, no other causes are relevant—not

activism, not voting, not organizing. What is crucial is to

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remain ethical—that is the real ontopolitical battle with Empire,

with police-force, and with Citizens.

Choose whats right, what feels right. A militant compound or an

off-the-grid sustainable community? Choose who is right.

COMMUNALIZE! CREATE FORMS-OF-LIFE! WORLD!

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