The words available to us were no longer able to seduce the world’s
ears, the concepts didn’t grasp reality any more, the movements of men
could no longer understand the essence of technology and language.*****I remember that in the 1980s Félix often scolded me because I was no
longer involved in some kind of political militancy. I had stopped con-
sidering myself a political militant already in 1977. For me, the move-
ments of 1977 had actually been a critique of militancy and a gradual
overcoming of modernity’s politico-existential conceptuality. The
movements of 1977 always appeared to me modernity’s final spasm,
the beginning of a transition – and then I didn’t know how long and
painful it would be – toward a new world.
For me, militant will and ideological action had become impotent.
This is why Félix reproached me, jokingly but not really. He wanted
me to get involved with the Italian Green movements, as he himself- generously but somewhat ineffectively – was doing in France. He
wanted me to run for office, in Italy. I said no, even if I went with him
to several meetings he had with the Parisian ecologists and other mili-
tant groups. I found those meetings quite senseless. Félix had nothing
to do with militant meetings anymore, with political action. There
wasn’t any other possibility, for political action, than pure resistance.
But resistance is hopeless, because when you resist you are actually
defending conceptual configurations that have already lost their grip
on the world. When you resist, you replace desire with duty, and this
cannot work if we believe in a kind of creationist process.
Resistance is the opposite of creationism.
Félix knew this, I am sure, but he never said this much, not even to
himself, and this is why he went to all these meetings with people who
didn’t appeal to him, talking about things that distracted him and
making lists of deadlines and appointments.
And then he would run off, adjusting his glasses to consult his
overflowing daily planner.
And here again is the root of depression, in this impotence of polit-
ical will that we haven’t had the courage to admit.
I am not saying that depression has a political origin, nor do I want
to forget Joséphine. I just want to say that depression is born out of the
dispersion of the community’s immediacy. Autonomous and desiring
politics was a proliferating community. When the proliferating power
is lost, the social becomes the place of depression.
The Happy Depression 139780230_221192_03_cha02.pdf 10/3/08 11:32 AM Page 13