Tiqqun is the name of a French philosophical journal, founded in 1999 with an aim to "recreate the conditions of another community." It was created by various writers, before dissolving in Venice in 2001 following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The journal was the object of some interest in the media after the arrest of Julien Coupat

Julien Coupat

Julien Coupat is a French political activist at the centre of a controversial investigation. As one of the Tarnac Nine, he was accused of plotting the sabotage of train lines in November 2008, which the French government decided to define as terrorism, and spent over six months in jail before...

, one of its founders.

Tiqqun is also the name of the philosophical concept which stems from these texts.

Tiqqun is finally the name of many books containing the journal's texts, in order to designate, if not their author, at least "a point of spirit from which these writings come."

Origin and use of the name

The name of the journal comes from the great importance that the writers give to the philosophical concept of Tiqqun (the best definitions are found in the texts Theory of Bloom and Introduction to Civil War). It is the French transcription of the original Hebrew term Tikkun olam

Tikkun olam

Tikkun olam is a Hebrew phrase that means "repairing the world." In Judaism, the concept of tikkun olam originated in the early rabbinic period...

, a concept issuing from Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, often used in the kabbalistic

Kabbalah

Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

 and messianic

Messianic Judaism

Messianic Judaism is a syncretic religious movement that arose in the 1960s and 70s. It blends evangelical Christian theology with elements of Jewish terminology and ritual....

 traditions, which simultaneously indicates reparation, restitution, and redemption. It has also come to designate, more broadly, a contemporary Jewish conception of social justice

Social justice

Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...

.

Affiliations

Tiqquns poetic style and radical political engagement are akin to the Situationists and the Lettrists

Lettrism

Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and...

. Tiqqun is relatively accepted in the radical, philosophical milieu, the Situationist and post-Situationist groups, in the ultra-left, the squat

Squatting

Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....

 and autonomist

Autonomism

Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist communism...

 movements, as well as among some anarchists

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

. Tiqqun is strongly influenced by the work of the italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....

.

English translations

• Introduction to Civil War (translated by Alexander R. Galloway and Jason E Smith). Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2010. ISBN-13: 978-1584350866. This volume, part of Semiotext(e)'s Intervention series, contains the texts "Introduction to Civil War" and "How Is It To Be Done?", which were originally published in issue 2 of Tiqqun (2001).
• This is Not a Program. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011. ISBN 978-1584350972.

External links

• bloom0101.org is dedicated to the free diffusion of Tiqqun texts, as well as their translations in a variety of languages.
• tiqqun.info
• clairefontaine.ws
• tiqqunista.jottit.com is the work of an anonymous translator, providing texts from "Tiqqun" magazine in English.