THEORY OF BLOOM - TIQQUN (Trans. ROBERT HURLEY)

This is a short little number that’s really popular in a certain stratum of internet leftism that I’m interested in. Tiqqun is the name of a collective/zine that published some issues back in the early 2000’s anonymously. I believe that eventually someone accused of being involved in “environmental terrorism” was alleged to have been part of the group. Anyway, the long essays in the zines have been split up into small, individual books and translated into English, where they’ve gained an enthusiastic internet audience. “Bloom” is an epithet, inspired by the main character in Ulysses, that Tiqqun uses for modern, trapped-in-capitalism people. I would say alienated people but Tiqqun writes, “a reasonable mind might conclude one day: “Actually Bloom is an alienated man.” Not true. Bloom is a man who has so thoroughly conjoined with his alienation that it would be absurd to try to separate them.” so make of that what you will. This book was short and had some great lines, “For him, all of life’s experiences are interchangeable and under-gone according to a kind of existential tourism.” “Existentialism is the first body of thought designed for Blooms.” “Who has rooted himself in placelessness, for whom uprooting no longer invokes banishment, but on the contrary, an ordinary situation.” and so on. The mood is manifesto, so Tiqqun doesn’t linger or belabor any of the points, which I appreciate. Overally, I found this book, very, very similar to Society of the Spectacle, tho while Debord focuses on the overall effects, from a society-wide scale, Tiqqun is focused on the Bloom-ification of the individual. It’s certainly a real problem. People live insane, alienated, mediated and unfulfilling lives, suffering to make capitalists richer, I don’t think anyone doubts that. I would say that this is pretty good indictment of this phenomena, though I doubt very much it would convince a Bloom to change nor does it offer real solutions, besides become a communist and be more authentic, w/r/t a de-bloomification process. Good short read but Society of the Spectacle got there first and did it better. 2001 Blooms