(Author’s note: The frequent use of quotation marks in this essay is to reinforce the idea that nature and wilderness are concepts, not actual beings.)
Nature has not always existed. It is not found in the depths of the forest, in the heart of the cougar or in the songs of the pygmies; it is found in the philosophies and image constructions of civilized human beings. Seemingly contradictory strands are woven together creating nature as an ideological construct that serves to domesticate us, to suppress and channel our expressions of wildness.
Civilization is monolithic and the civilized way of conceiving everything that is observed is also monolithic. When confronted with the myriad of beings all around, the civilized mind needs to categorize in order to feel that it is understanding (though, in fact, all it is understanding is how to make things useful to civilization). Nature is one of the most essential of civilized categories, one of the most useful in containing the wildness of human individuals and enforcing their self-identification as civilized, social beings. Continue reading Nature as Spectacle (en/es)→
Bellamy interviews Lawrence Jarach, an editor of AJODA: Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and author of such essays as “Leftism 101,” “Why I Am Not an Anti-Primitivist,” and “Essentialism and the Problem of Identity Politics.” Bellamy and Lawrence discuss the rhetoric of civil disobedience in regard to the recent Ferguson protests, anarchist representation in the media and the value or lack thereof, big tent anarchism and the idea that everyone is an anarchist, the distinction between anarchy and anarchism, humanism as a relic, and more.
“Society…1. a group of persons who have the same customs, beliefs, etc. or live under a common government and who are thought of as forming a single community… 3. all people, when thought of as forming a community in which each person is partly dependent on all the rest”.
Webster’s New World Dictionary
Nothing we “know” can be assumed to be true- none of our conceptions of the world are sacred and we would do well to question them all. Many anarchists talk about creating a “new” or “free” society. But few question the idea of society itself. The conception of society is amorphous- and so more difficult to deal with than particular aspects of it like government, religion, capitalism or technology. It is so ingrained in us that questioning it feels like questioning our very nature- which makes it all the more necessary to question it. Freeing ourselves from the character armor that represses our desires and passions may very well demand, not merely the transformation of society, but its abolition. The dictionary definitions above show society to be a single entity made up of individuals who are in a condition of (at least potential) dependency upon each other- which is to say, who are not complete in themselves. I see society as a system of relationships between beings who are acting (or being treated) as social roles in order to reproduce the system and themselves as social individuals. Continue reading The abolition of society (en/it)→
Fin dai tempi in cui per la prima volta si è definito movimento radicale autonomo, l’anarchismo è stato associato alla sinistra. Un’associazione il più delle volte problematica. I militanti di sinistra con un incarico di potere (compresi quelli anarchici, come i capi della C.N.T. e della F.A.I. nella Spagna del 1936-37) hanno sempre considerato d’ostacolo ai propri programmi politici il fine anarchico della trasformazione totale della vita — e il conseguente principio secondo cui i fini dovrebbero essere già insiti nei mezzi di lotta impiegati. L’insorgenza reale è sempre scoppiata altrove rispetto a qualsivoglia programma politico e gli anarchici più coerenti hanno intravisto la possibilità di realizzare i loro sogni proprio in un luogo sconosciuto ed altro. Tuttavia, a più riprese, quando i fuochi dell’insurrezione si raffreddavano (e talvolta perfino mentre bruciavano ancora ardentemente, come nel 1936-37), i leader anarchici hanno finito coll’assumere il ruolo di «coscienza della sinistra». Ma se l’espansione dell’utopia anarchica ed i principi ad essa connessi sono stati un ostacolo agli schemi politici della sinistra, questi schemi hanno costituito un ben più pesante macigno attorno al collo del movimento anarchico, appesantendolo con quel “realismo” che non sa sognare. Continue reading Dalla Politica alla Vita→
(Author’s note: The frequent use of quotation marks in this essay is to reinforce the idea that nature and wilderness are concepts, not actual beings.)
Nature has not always existed. It is not found in the depths of the forest, in the heart of the cougar or in the songs of the pygmies; it is found in the philosophies and image constructions of civilized human beings. Seemingly contradictory strands are woven together creating nature as an ideological construct that serves to domesticate us, to suppress and channel our expressions of wildness. Continue reading en/es – Nature As Spectacle: by Feral Faun→
The Southern Desert Correctional Center (SDCC) is located in open, arid desert, forty miles north of Las Vegas and just twenty-eight miles south of the U.S. nuclear test site at Mercury, Nev. Inmates joke that it will require but one significant mathematical mistake and we will all disintegrate and dissolve into desert dust. At night, a pack of coyotes, on their way to the institution’s garbage dump, pause at the prison’s perimeter, staring through the barbed wire at the even stranger creatures inside.
This past May, the Italian state began another round of repression against anarchists. The more sporadic state harassment anarchists had experienced over the past few years gave way to what is clearly a more focused attack. This reflects the growing repressive reality around the globe, the needs of the Italian state in the present circumstances and its attempts to find ways to strike the anarchist movement and all anti-institutional movements of resistance and revolt in their totality. Thus, these events demand more than news and calls for solidarity; they require an attempt to analyze the situation on several levels in order to develop meaningful and substantial forms of active solidarity. Continue reading State Repression Against Anarchists in Italy (2005/2006)→
“Any society that you build will have its limits. And outside the limits of any society the unruly and heroic tramps will wander with their wild and virgin thoughts…planning ever new and dreadful outbursts of rebellion.” –Renzo Novatore
I feel that there is no possible society in which I would fit, that whatever society was like, I would be a rebel. At times, this fills me with the joy of the “unruly and heroic tramps” of whom Renzo Navatore speaks, but often it leaves me feeling quite lonely and isolated.
I live in a “society” now–in a situation in which social roles are used to reproduce social relationships. Would the way that we relate when we are free of character armor and social roles still be social relationships? I envision a world in which we can live our lives fully, as unique, wild beings, moving freely into and out of relations with each other as our desires motivate us, never creating the sorts of complex structures of formalized relationships that I understand as “society.” It is only in such a world that I can imagine feeling at home. But I really don’t know how to go about creating this world. Continue reading Whither now? Some thoughts on creating anarchy By Feral Faun→
It seems to have become a given among many anti-authoritarians that radical theory is an academic pursuit. On the one hand, there are the ideological activists who accuse anyone who attempts to critically analyze society or their own activities in a way that goes beyond the latest hip anarchist sloganeering of being armchair intellectuals or academics. On the other hand, there are those who supplement the income of their academic/intellectual professions by writing tracts criticizing society, the left or even their own professions, but in such abstract and insubstantial terms as to be meaningless in relation to their lives. These intellectual “radicals” and anti-intellectual activists remain equally enslaved to society’s discourse. Radical theory is elsewhere. Continue reading A Wrecking Ball for Ivory Towers by Feral Faun→
