Only voting negative can endorse an invisible insurrection, which, rather than using force, uses mental strength to see past the mirage of semiotic capitalism and overthrow the global order

The mechanisation and technicisation of human lives are mirrored in the fact that free time is spent in the mechanical flux of news – today augmented by the semiotic fluxes of capital (from advertising to social media) – and where everything presented as ‘new’ is, in fact, a zombified repetition of the same. Vision, visuality and imagination in the contemporary condition are codified by the logic of the return of the same. As an insurrection occurring in time and place, Trocchi believed that sigma could only insert itself into the capillaries of repeated uncreative time, in the undergrounds of the urban centres and in such a way that it would change time and space from within. This is the reason why sigma could not be a revolutionary, momentous change in time-space – an event that dies immediately as it comes into existence. This is also why it could not occur democratically as a movement of forces through existing space-time: the democratic choice does not exist yet because it cannot be imagined and visualised yet. sigma is not a coup d’etat, in the manner in which Lenin and Trotsky understood it. It is rather a coup de monde, ‘more gradual, less spectacular’ – an eminently cultural virology, which begins by intelligence becoming self-conscious. Trocchi appears to believe in a kind of dialectic of historical violence, where ‘revolution follows repression and is followed by repression’ (GEN: 2). Thus instead of arguing for a revolutionary coup d’etat that would be swiftly and violently repressed, Trocchi envisioned an invisible insurrection fuelled by ‘the powerhouse of the mind’ (INV: 1). The enemy, writes Trocchi, is never personal: the real enemy is ‘spiritual ignorance breeding fear, hysteria, schizophrenia’ (GEN: 2). As the state is ultimately comprised of individuals, it is simply ignorance against what one must operate upon. Even war and violence exerted by the state appears to originate in thought. Therefore, the change in the consciousness of individuals is all that is required for a sigmatic rupture of the world.5 ‘What must occur . . . is a revelation’, which includes the perception of ‘the forces that are at work in the world’; then, calmly, without indignation, by a kind of mental ju-jitsu that is ours by virtue of intelligence, of modifying, correcting, polluting, deflecting, corrupting, eroding, outflanking . . . inspiring what we might call the invisible insurrection. (INV: 2) The metaphor of the ‘mental ju-jitsu’ here is borrowed from the Japanese martial arts: it is the art of defeating an armed opponent without the use of a weapon. It suggests hard work, self-discipline and a vigorous mind taking hold of itself, understanding its relation to the forces influencing the world – but also performing a creative and imaginative leap of faith that seems to be based on nothing but itself. A mental ju-jitsu is not a figure of aggression, though it is a figure of combat. It suggests the idea of a sigmatic insurrection taking place without aggressive weapons and only through the superiority of mental discipline. And, just like in the case of ju-jitsu, the awakening of these mental forces is available to everybody. The trick here is to give oneself time: the time freed by the gesture of rupturing fluxes of (fake) news or the time to see oneself as part of the nexus of social relations or even the time of a spiritual voyage, which may or may not be induced by drugs. sigma is precisely the opening of time when time only promises to come to an end.