  A Chern-Simons theory in 11 dimensions, which is a piece of the 11
dimensional supergravity action, is considered as a quantum field theory in its
own right. We conjecture that it defines a non-perturbative phase of M theory
in which the metric and gravitino vanish. The theory is diffeomorphism
invariant but not topological in that there are local degrees of freedom.
Nevertheless, there are a countable number of momentum variables associated
with relative cobordism classes of embeddings of seven dimensional manifolds in
ten dimensional space. The canonical theory is developed in terms of an algebra
of gauge invariant observables. We find a sector of the theory corresponding to
a topological compactification in which the geometry of the compactified
directions is coded in an algebra of functions on the base manifold. The
diffeomorphism invariant quantum theory associated to this sector is
constructed, and is found to describe diffeomorphism classes of excitations of
three surfaces wrapping homology classes of the compactified dimensions.
