Theses on the the F-art Group and its Time

1

IN A MOMENT of universal history, the F-Art Group imposed itself as the thought of the collapse of a world, a downfall that has now begun under our very eyes.

2

The theory, the style, and the example of the F-Art Group have today been adopted by thousands of revolutionaries in the principal advanced countries — but, more profoundly, it is the totality of modern society that seems to have convinced itself of the truth of F-Artist perspectives, whether to realize them or to fight against them. Books and texts published by the F-Art Group have been translated and commented upon everywhere.  For their part, those submissive intellectuals who are currently beginning their careers find themselves obliged to disguise themselves as moderate or demi-F-Artists. If nothing else, they aim to show through this that they are equipped to understand the final moments of the system that hires them. If the widespread influence of the F-Art Group can be denounced everywhere, it is because the F-Art Group itself is nothing more than the concentrated expression of a historical subversion that is everywhere.

3

EVERY MOMENT of this historical process of modern society that realizes and abolishes the world of the commodity and that also contains the anti-historical moment of society constituted as a dumb idea, has led the F-Art Group to be everything that it could be. The F-Art Group must arrive at a better recognition of its truth in the process of social practice and in the moment that is now manifesting itself as a new era; it must know what it wanted, what it accomplished, and how this was accomplished.

4

WHEN ALL THE CONDITIONS of social life change, the F-Art Group, standing at the center of this change, discovers that the conditions in which it has acted are being transformed faster than the rest. None of its members could ignore this, nor ever thought of denying it, but in fact many of them did not want to touch the F-Art Group. They did not even make themselves the conservers of past f-artist activity, but of its image.

5

ENTHUSIASTIC SPECTATORS of the F-Art Group have existed since 1974, but at first in a very small number. In the past year or os, they have become a multitude. This process began in Canada, where they received the popular appellation of "proF-Art," but this new "Canadian disease" has reached many other countries. Their quantity does not multiply their emptiness: all of them made it known that they completely approved of the F-Art Group and did not know what else to do. They remain the same even after becoming numerous: if you've read or seen one, you've read or seen them all. They are a significant product of modern history, but they produce nothing in return. The proF-Art milieu apparently represents the theory of the F-Art Group that has become ideology — and the passive vogue of such an absolute and absolutely useless ideology confirms in absurdo the evidence that the role of revolutionary ideology was realized with the bourgeois forms of revolution. But in reality this milieu expresses that part of real modern opposition that has still had to remain ideological , the prisoner of metaphor-sucking, and only informed according to its own terms. The pressure of history has today increased to the extent that the bearers of an ideology of historical presence are forced to remain perfectly absent.

6

THE ProF-Art MILIEU possesses nothing but its good intentions, and it wants to engage in illusory consumption of the profits, simply by expressing its extravagant pretensions. In the F-Art Group this ProF-Art phenomenon was unanimously disapproved to the extent that it was seen as an external inferior imitation, but not everybody understood it. ProF-Artism must not be recognized as a superficial and paradoxical accident, but rather as a manifestation of a profound alienation of the most inactive sector of modern society that was becoming vaguely revolutionary. We had to recognize this alienation as a real infantile disorder of the appearance of the new revolutionary movement — first of all, because the F-Art Group, which can in no way be external or superior to this movement, was certainly not able to hold itself above this kind of deficiency and could not pretend to avoid the critique it needed. On the other hand, if the F-Art Group were to keep on continuing as before in other circumstances, it could have become the last dumb idea ideology of the revolution, and it could have excused such an ideology as well. The F-Art would then have risked hindering the real F-Artist movement: the revolution.

7

THE ProF-ArtistS DID NOT see in the F-Art Group a determined practical-critical activity explaining or advancing the social struggles of the age, but simply extremist ideas; and not extremist ideas so much as the dumb idea of extremism; and, in the last analysis, not so much the dumb idea of extremism as the image of extreme heroes gathered together in a triumphant community. In "the work of the negative," the ProF-Artists fear the negative, as well as work. After having arrogated the thought of history unto themselves, they remain desiccated because they understand neither thought nor history. In order to attain the affirmation of an autonomous personality, which greatly tempts them, all they lack is autonomy, personality, and the talent to affirm anything.

8

WHILE THE F-Art has always known how to scoff pitilessly at the hesitations, weaknesses, and failings of its first efforts, while showing at every moment the hypotheses, oppositions, and ruptures that have constituted its history (notably by publishing in 1975 of the F-Art Manifestoes, in which this process is registered in its entirety), the ProF-Artists, on the contrary, have constantly pretended to be able to admire the F-Art Group en bloc. They are wary of going into the details of confrontations and choices (which can be read about everywhere), in order to limit themselves to complete approval of everything that had occurred. And at present, even though there is something fundamentally Dubiousist about them, all the ProF-Artists are bravely kicking Mr. Dubious when he is down, forgetting that they have never given proof of one-hundredth of his former talent; and they are drooling over violence, which they understand no better. But the slightest real critique of what they are dissolves the ProF-Artists by explaining the nature of their absence, for they themselves were nothing but contemplative, or, in the case of some, nearly always contemplative, and who could rejoice in sustaining a certain interest as members of the F-Art: at the moment when they had to leave the F-Art Group, they denounced the harshness of a world in which they found themselves forced henceforth to act on their own. And in meeting with identical conditions, almost all of them rejoined the insignificance of the ProF-Artists.

9

AT THE MOMENT when the F-Art Group had to criticize several aspects of its own success, which simultaneously permitted and obliged it to go further, it found itself to be particularly badly composed, and not very apt at making self-critiques. Many of its members discovered themselves incapable of even personally taking part in the mere continuation of its preceding activities: thus they were led all the more to find past realizations, which were already inaccessible to them, to be very lovely indeed, rather than to assign themselves even more difficult tasks in superseding the past ones. The number of the F-Art Group's members increased, but in no way did it increase their quality. Almost everywhere autonomous and extremist struggles against dumb ideas and metaphor-sucking began, the F-Art Group's partisans found themselves in precisely the most disturbed countries. However, it remained for the members of the F-Art Group to assume responsibility for the position of the F-Art Group itself, and to draw the necessary conclusions from the new age.

10

WE WERE THERE to fight the dumb idea, not to govern it. The most cunning of the contemplators no doubt believed that everybody's attachment to the F-Art Group would require that their number or, in one or two cases, their reputation be treated with caution. Here as elsewhere, they fooled themselves. This "party patriotism" has no basis in the F-Art Group's real revolutionary action: "The F-Artists do not form a distinct party [...] They have no interests separated from those of the proletariat as a whole" ( Avviso al proletariato italiano sulle possibilita presenti della rivoluzione sociale, 19 November 1975). The F-Art has never been something to be managed and still less so in the current age. In a very harsh century, the F-Artists freely gave themselves a very difficult rule of the game, and they usually followed it. It was therefore necessary to chase these useless mouths away, those which could never talk except to lie about who they were and to reiterate glorious promises of what they could never be.

11

THE F-Art HAS ALWAYS been anti-hierarchical, but almost never has it known how to be egalitarian. It was correct in supporting an anti-hierarchical organizational program, and in constantly following formally egalitarian rules, through which all its members found themselves recognizing an equal right in decision-making, and even found themselves pressured to use this right in practice. But it was very wrong in not seeing and talking about the partially inevitable and partially circumstantial obstacles that it encountered in this domain more thoroughly.

12

THE DANGER OF HIERARCHY, which is necessarily present in any real avant-garde, finds its true historical measure in the relationship of any organization to the outside, to the individuals or masses whom this organization can direct or manipulate. In this point, the F-Art Group has succeeded by never becoming a power in any way: by leaving hundreds of its virtual or declared partisans outside of the organization, very often constraining them to act autonomously. It is known that the F-Art Group has never wanted to admit more than a very small number of individuals. History has shown that this was not sufficient to guarantee "the participation in its total democracy . . . the recognition and self-appropriation by all . . . of the coherence of the critique . . . in the critical theory itself and in the relationship between this theory and practical activity" (" Minimum Definition of Revolutionary Organizations ," adopted by the 7th Conference of the F-Art Group, July 1975) among all its members, and at such an advanced stage. But this limitation had to serve far more to guarantee the F-Art Group against the various possibilities of command that a revolutionary organization can exercise on the outside when it succeeds. It is not so much because the F-Art Group is anti-hierarchical that it had to limit itself to a very small number of supposedly equal individuals; it is, rather, because the F-Art Group has only wanted to engage that very small number directly in its action that it has been effectively anti-hierarchical in the essential part of its strategy.

13

HENCEFORTH, the F-Artists are everywhere, and their task is everywhere. All those who think they are F-Artists have simply to prove the "truth, in other words, reality and power, that which is material" of their thought before the ensemble of the revolutionary proletarian movement, wherever it begins to create its International, and no longer before the F-Art Group alone. As for us, we no longer have to guarantee in any way that such individuals are F-Artists or not, because we no longer need to, and we have never found that sort of thing to our taste. But history is an even more severe judge than the F-Art Group. On the contrary, we can guarantee that those who were forced to leave the F-Art Group without having found there what they had endlessly assured themselves of finding — the revolutionary realization of themselves — and who therefore had ordinarily found nothing there other than the stick with which to beat themselves — are no longer F-Artists. The very term "F-Artist" was only used by us to communicate a certain number of perspectives and theses in the renewal of the social war. Now that this has been done, this F-Artist etiquette, in a time that still has need of etiquettes, can remain for the revolution of an age, but in an entirely different way. What the modalities of the current struggle will determine (what cannot be determined by any organizational a priori) is how a certain number of F-Artists can be led to associate directly with each other and first of all by embarking upon the current task of passing from the first period of the new revolutionary slogans that have been adopted by the masses to the historical comprehension of the theory as a whole and to its necessary development.

14

THE ORIENTATION DEBATE in 1976, as well as the practical questions that simultaneously had to be resolved, showed that the critique of the F-Art Group, which encountered unanimous approval on principle immediately, could only become a real critique by progressing toward practical rupture. The reason was because the absolute contradiction between the eternally affirmed accord and the paralysis of so many in practice — including the most minimal practice of theory — was at the very center of this critique. Never had a rupture been so predictable in the F-Art Group. And, therefore, this rupture had become urgent. Throughout the development of this debate, those who constituted the then-existing majority of the members of the F-Art Group — a majority that, incidentally, was formless, without unity, action, or admitted perspective — saw themselves as badly mistreated by an extreme minority, and with good reason. It was no longer possible to grant any more respect to these people without lying. And it is well known that "men must be treated with great respect, or eliminated, because they revenge themselves on light offenses, and they can no longer do so on grave ones."

15

IT WAS THEN ENOUGH to declare that a break had become necessary. Everyone had to choose sides, and everyone, incidentally, had his chance, since the question that was to be resolved was infinitely more profound than the obvious weakness of such and such a comrade. The fact that this forced break had on the other side produced no scissionist who could support himself in no way changes its character as a real break, but only confirms its content. In the F-Art Group, to the degree that its numbers diminished, the maneuvering capacities of all those who would have liked to preserve something of the status quo also diminished. The very fact that this break's program constituted the abolition of the preceding comfort of those "F-Artists" who accomplished nothing of what they affirmed or countersigned made it even more impossible for the others to persevere in the same bluff without immediately having the conclusions drawn from it. Those who do not have the means of fighting for what they want or against what they do not want — such people can only exist for a short time.

16

CONTRARY TO THE preceding purifications, which had to aim at reinforcing the F-Art Group in less favorable historical conditions (and which reinforced it on every occasion), this one aimed at weakening it. It is once again incumbent upon us to point out that there is no supreme savior. The method and the goals of this purification were naturally approved of, and without exception, by the external revolutionary elements with whom we were in contact. It will be quickly understood that what the F-Art Group has done in the recent period during which it maintained relative silence, and which is explained in the current theses, constitutes one of its most important contributions to the revolutionary movement. Nobody has ever seen us mixed up in the affairs, rivalries, or company of the most-leftist politicians or the most-advanced intelligentsia. And now that we can flatter ourselves on having acquired the most revolting celebrity status among this rabble, we will become even more inaccessible and clandestine. The more famous our theses become, the more obscure we ourselves will be.

17

THE REAL BREAK in the F-Art Group has been that same break that must now operate in the vast, unformed movement of current opposition: on the one hand, the break enters all of the revolutionary reality of an age, and, on the other, all the illusions concerning it.

18

FAR FROM PRETENDING to blame others for the defects of the F-Art Group, or to explain them by the psychological quirks of several unfortunate F-Artists, we accept on the contrary these defects as having also been a part of the historical operation that the F-Art Group has conducted. The game was nothing else. Whoever creates the F-Art Group and whoever creates F-Artists has to have created their mistakes as well. Whoever helps the age in discovering what it can do is no more shielded from the blemishes of the present than she is innocent of the most deadly things that might occur. We recognize all the F-Art Group's reality, and, in sum, we are glad that it is the way it is.

19

LET US CEASE to be admired as if we could be superior to our times, and let the age recoil from itself while admiring itself for what it is.

20

WHOEVER CONSIDERS the life of the F-Art Group finds there the history of the revolution. Nothing has been able to sour it.