readme com.une.farce is a new radical journal, launched by groups and individuals within the autonomous and radical left in Germany. The project aims at putting theory and the everyday into interaction. It is our intention to link cultural phenomena of the everyday to the "old-men's-politics" with a capital P. Without replacing the old economic reductionism with another one, we attempt to connect international and state politics with the social question as well as a critique of gender- and race-relations. While we find it important to distinguish between diferent forms of power relations, we are also aware that they are often intertwined. Connecting theory and the everyday means to relate politica questions to our own subject positions. Just as power is materiallz manifest in our bodies, power relations and exploitation translate into the daily terror of an administrated world. To produce a political theory that aims towards emancipation, it is not enough to preach critical theory from the lofty spheres of theoretical reflexion. If we want to get the political grammar on the move, and shake the symbolic order as well as the economic and political structures, we need to be in touch with everyday life, with politics on a grassroots level. We hope that our intervention into political debates and struggles will be a contribution to these negotiations. Who's speaking?
The collective of editors is anything but homogenous. Some are placing themselves within the tradition of the somewhat aged New Left. They want to understand their activities as taking part in the disputes over the inheritance of 68. Others don't give a shit and prefer to leave the disposal of history to museums and galleries. Some are motivated to start their own publishing-project by unpleasant experiences within the radical press, or because they simply want to join the crowd of text-producers.
Although the reasons to take up the arms of critique and join the scuffle are varied enough, we share an interest in developing radical theory and practice beyond the market and the state, joining up over difference of gender and cultural backgrounds.

More questions than answers...
Putting our energy in a journal rather than activism raises many questions: Under the given circumstances, can the practice of theory be enough? Which theory connects in which ways to whose daily life? What would a critique of the everyday today look like, if we don't want to merely add up the various trendy and not-so-trendy -isms?
Or, to be more specific: How can feminist, anti-racist and marxist concepts - wether they are grounded in post-structuralism or critical theory - be shaped into a non-dogmatic theory? How can they be used to analyse power-relations in the stuff of daily live and to name the grounds where experiments towards emancipation are possible? These questions will open up again and again, and every group or individual will answer them in their own ways. Yet this is exactly what is raising our curiosity towards the collaborative work at com.une.farce. Using the Net
The idea to place a journal in the net is not least due to financial reasons. We simply don't have the cash to print a journal - let alone the difficulty shared by many new projects in building up a distribution wide enough to maintain a journal. As an online journal, com.une.farce doesn't need to bother about marketing and paying subscribers, so things are much easier. We are aware that an online publication excludes anyone who hasn't (like some of us, we have to admit...) bothered to get access so far, cherishes computer illiteracy or, most importantly, simply can't get access for all sorts of reasons.
Therefore, a printout can be mailed on demand. However, even printed radical papers are not that easy to obtain - many of them are only available in one or two bookshops in maybe a doyen towns. But of course, the choice of medium is not just a matter of quantity. Already during the 20ies, Bertold Brecht made a causal connection between technology of communication and the social changes within society. The re-discovered brechtian myth of interactivity may be just one more hupe by ideological high-fliers - yet we do think that debates around the internet will shape future political communication. So, stepping into virtual space isn't a result of easy-going net-euphoria, nor pure pragmatism, but a chance to gather experience in the use of a new medium and to apply it to our own interest. Needless to say that this involves quite a bit of byte/bonding amongst the editors - multiple personalities turning up in editorial chat-sessions, hyperactive phones due to badly wired modems being just minor incidents. Com.une.farce will be pubished three times a year. Number Zero can be viewd under www.copyriot.com/unefarce, no 1 will be pubished on december 1st, the following issues every four months. This rather traditional rhythm of publication refrains from some of the speedy possibilities provided by the medium, but it suits the process of discussion within the collective of editors, which is decentrally organiyed and spreads over (mainly) germany. The net provides communication between the various clusters of editors, and we hope that it will help to avoid the well-knownproblems of a centralized headquarters. We are discussing to set up a mailing-list to promote discussion and exchange between readership, authors and editors. Presently, everyone is of course invited to download texts, distribute them or use them as a toolbox.

In case of re-publishing we would ask you to name the source and the authors and to send us a copy for reference. So far, we haven't used images and sound, but we are working on it. May curiosity, a laid-back attitude and a certain amount of criminal energy accompany us throughout the making of the journal, the process of reading, discussing and critizising!

The collective of editors