Today defection and exodus express the feeling of pure belonging that is typical, in Bataille's terms, of the community of all of those who have no community. Defection moves away from the dominant rules that determine individual roles and precise identities, and that surreptitiously configure the "to which" of belonging. Exodus moves toward an "accustomed place" continually reconstituted by one's own activity, an "accustomed place" that never preexists the experience that determines its location, nor that, therefore, can reflect any former habit. Today, in fact, habit has become something unusual and inhabitual, only a possible result, and never a point of departure. Exodus, therefore, points toward forms of life that give body and shape to belonging as such, and not toward new forms of life to which to belong. Exodus, perhaps, is the form of struggle best suited to demands for a radical transformation of the status quo -demands that may transform, and overthrow, the experience of the 1980s.
Paolo Virno - Ambivilance and Disenchantment
SUPERSTUDIO, SUPERSURFACE
