Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl

A short theoretical text from Tiqqun that treats the "Young-Girl" as consumer society's model citizen and the figure of total integration into the market.

First published in France in 1999, the book was translated by Ariana Reines for Semiotext(e)'s Intervention Series, where it is number 12, and appeared in English on 22 June 2012 in 144 pages. It argues that the Young-Girl is not always young and is increasingly not female, and follows how youth, sexuality and seduction are bound up with consumption and competition. It draws on Proust's Albertine, Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke and Klossowski's idea of living currency.

Tiqqun was a French journal of anonymous philosophical texts that ran two issues, in February 1999 and October 2001. The first issue named an editorial board that included Julien Coupat, though the names were dropped from the English translations. The journal introduced the figures of the Young-Girl and Bloom, drawing on Debord's spectacle and Foucault's biopower. Related texts in English include Introduction to Civil War, The Cybernetic Hypothesis and Theory of Bloom.