Abstract

The concept of instituent practice should allow us to explore new pathways for institutional critique. This approach rests in part on the link between Félix Guattari’s reflections against structuralization and the closure of the institution, and the ideas of the anarchist individualist Max Stirner, the author of The Ego and its Own , who can be considered both a rival of Marx and a radical and precocious critic of the institution. I additionally establish a relation between the conceptual genealogy of instituent practice and the concept of constituent power, particularly as developed by Antonio Negri. The modality of institution, and in particular, of participation in the institutional process, determines the formation of constituent power. This problematic, issuing from reflections on constitutional theory, is applied to the analysis of certain artistic practices dealing with the problem of the institution : the Brechtian theory of pedagogical theater, the creation of situations in the practice of the Situationist International, and finally, the ongoing process of the instituent practices of Park Fiction in Hamburg, a project mingling art and politics, which for the last ten years has continually unleashed new waves of the collective production of desire.