Rules for the Post-Human Park

On Commune, Territory, and Abstraction

Abstract

Building on the theoretical legacy of the Invisible Committee, this exploratory article critically examines some of the key notions that inform its lexicon, such as the concepts of “commune”, “territory”, or “form-of-life,” subsequently confronting them with theoretical approaches aligned with new materialisms, post-humanism, and processual ontologies, in an attempt to overcome a latent tension in this debate between mediation and immediacy. Drawing on a constellation of thinkers, including Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Karen Barad, and Catherine Malabou, the article argues in favor of an idea of abstraction as a process of communization of the real, as opposed to a vitalist ontology that privileges a metaphysics of relational presence. The commune is thus reimagined not as an existential return to a pristine territory, but as a plane that accommodates processes of individuation and reprogramming of the real.