Desire Armed: Anarchy and the Creative Impulse

  • 2017/09/07 19:09

Text from back cover:

“My freedom is not a promise for the future, but a way to continuously confront the world where I exist now, taking possession of my life with all my might, in conflict with everything that stands in my way. This ongoing conflict (which will not end simply because we somehow manage to eradicate the entire institutional framework of authority) is what makes the essential destructive, negating aspects of anarchist practice one with the creative aspects. Consciously creating our lives as our own means destroying every chain that holds as back, smashing through every barrier that gets in our way. Thus, there is no use in waiting for some condition to hand us our freedom. We need to act now for our own sakes and on our own terms, not for any cause nor on terms set by those who want to maintain the ruling order.”

Desire Armed Anarchy and the Creative Impulse pdf

Drawing First Blood

  • 2017/09/07 19:08

From back cover:

“Every attempt to free humanity en masse is bound to fail because collective self-determination is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as the common good, for there is no good that is common to all. Society, collective, and public are only convenient terms to designate individuals in the aggregate; they are not entities — they have no bodies, minds, interests, or real existence: A collective has no self, and is but a collection of selves who have waived their individual powers and will to self-determination, for what is claimed to be the interests of the majority. The price paid for collective unity is always the subordination of the member units, which is the antithesis of anarchy…”

“Anarchy is freedom, and this most assuredly includes the freedom not to be a socialist or to live like one, and the freedom not to limit one’s identity to any social role — especially that of worker. It’s the freedom not to participate in communal activities or to share communal goals, or to pray before the idol of Solidarity. It’s freedom not only from the rule of the State but also from that of the tribe, village, commune, or production syndicate. It’s the freedom to choose one’s own path to one’s own goals, to map out one’s own campaign against Authority, and, if desired, to go it alone.”

Drawing First Blood pdf

Edible, Medicinal and Utilitarian Plants: Weeds and Common Plants

  • 2017/09/07 19:06

Text from the zine:

“For hundreds of thousands of years, we crafty human beings have been using plants with great efficacy to feed and heal ourselves, and to fashion tools in various forms. Despite this, as urban (civilized) humans have become further and further removed from their landbases, the knowledge of edible and utilitarian wild plants has become nearly extinct, and the belief that plants are useless as medicine has become commonplace. Such ignorance- disturbingly universal and constantly perpetuated by Western industry and
science- is unforgivable and easily remedied. With that in mind, this zine is the first in a series of publications written to inspire anarchists and non-radical folks alike to reconnect
with the amazing world of plants. Hopefully, upon reading this and subsequent works, the reader will never again look down upon that dandelion breaking through the concrete as a mere weed, or the clover and mallow overtaking grass lawns as nuisances.”

Edible, Medicinal, and Utilitarian Plants pdf

Escalation: Some Texts Concerning the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the Insurrectionist Project

  • 2017/09/07 19:05

A zine focused on the new era of militancy with insurrectionary anarchist ideas and attacks.

Escalation pdf

Escape Leviathan Rewilding Writings of Ria Del Montana

  • 2017/09/07 19:04

A collection of writings on green anarchy and vegan primitivism by Ria Del Montana

Escape Leviathan_Rewilding Writings of Ria Del Montana pdf

Essentialism and The Problem of Identity Politics

  • 2017/09/07 18:26

Text from the zine:

“Essentialism is the idea that there exists some detectible and objective core quality of particular groups of people that is inherent, eternal, and unalterable; groupings can be categorized according to these qualities of essence, which are based on such problematic criteria as gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, and class. These external qualities are almost always marked by visual cues, making the categories more obvious and/or easier to notice. These qualities contain social and — more importantly from an antiauthoritarian perspective — hierarchical signi cance to those marking the cues and those marked by the cues: sexism, in the case of gender; racism in the case of skin tone; the unwanted attention of authorities in the case of any and all different looking/acting people. Racism, sexism, classism, and most other forms of historical oppression are ideologies and policies maintained and justified by essentialism.”

Essentialism and the Problem of Identity Politics pdf

Fragment: Violence

  • 2017/09/07 18:25

From back cover:

“Outside of the UK many of the comrades have a much closer relationship to “violence” and “criminality” through bank robberies, organising attacks, fierce demos, stealing, fraud, counterfeiting etc. and added to that possibility the experience of clandestinity or living underground. Illegalism is the bread of the insurrection. Many have gone to prison already and we can learn about their cases in many places. In the UK there is a widespread lack of experience concerning the organisation of the attack, the recognition of the ideas and relationships of the affinity groups to the “criminal acts”. Going beyond the law is part of developing the anarchist-insurrectional project and this is part of the reason why the civil anarchists despise and neglect the cases of the imprisoned and fugitive comrades- because they reject their actions, the tendencies of attack and the global discourse of anarchists of praxis. Individual acts of violence/negation which are not approved by their group-think are regarded as part of the “criminal” or “terrorist” sphere and smeared as provocations. In this way, the civil anarchists become part of the discourse of power and compose themselves as a sector of repression.”

Fragment_Violence pdf

In Defense of Smoke and Fire

  • 2017/09/07 18:11

Originally published in Wild Fire no. 4, an anarchist prison solidarity newsletter. This essay is part of an ongoing conversation between anarchist prisoners on tactics.

wildfire.noblogs.org

Sean Swain is an anarchist held captive in the Ohio prison system. For more information, check out his support site. seanswain.org

In Defense of Fire and Smoke pdf

From Politics to Life: Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone

  • 2017/09/07 18:07

Text from the zine:

“From the time anarchism was first defined as a distinct radical movement it has been associated with the left, but the association has always been uneasy. Leftists who were in a position of authority (including those who called themselves anarchists, like the leaders of the CNT and the FAI in Spain in 1936–37) found the anarchist aim of the total transformation of life and the consequent principle that the ends should already exist in the means of struggle to be a hindrance to their political programs. Real insurgence always burst far beyond any political program, and the most coherent anarchists saw the realization of their dreams precisely in this unknown place beyond. Yet, time after time, when the fi res of insurrection cooled (and even occasionally, as in Spain in 1936–37, while they still burnt brightly), leading anarchists would take their place again as “the conscience of the left”. But if the expansiveness of anarchist dreams and the principles that it implies have been a hindrance to the political schemes of the left, these schemes have been a far greater millstone around the neck of the anarchist movement, weighing it down with the “realism” that cannot dream.”

From Politics to Life pdf

From Identity to Individuality: A Nihilist’s History in Leftism

  • 2017/09/07 18:06

From back cover:

“Rather than adhering to these strict rules, we felt free to communicate our individual desires…

…My friends of all different socially constructed identities – by race, gender, sex, etc – could behave as they wished, without being concerned that they were fulfilling stereotypes or betraying their identities.

It’s far from utopian, but as leftism continues to demonstrate, utopia is impossible without  authoritarianism.”

From Identity to Individuality_ A Nihilist’s History in Leftism pdf

Fuck Your Red Revolution: Against Ecocide, Towards Anarchy

  • 2017/09/07 18:04

From back cover:

“Collectivism, whether it be communist, fascist or capitalist ideologically isn’t  something that serves my interests as an indigenous subsistence farmer and forager living in these remote mountains. Whatever industrial dogma I’m ordered to live my life by only serves to fill my heart with sorrow. I will loudly reject the idea of a collective society at every opportunity, regardless of its ideological alliance. All industry kills all life.

I’m an anarchist. Even the idea of a “society” governing my way of life makes me vomit a  little. Your needs aren’t my needs, I don’t want to go where the collective wants to take me…

…I want to be liberated from the system, not become the system. The collective isn’t my master. The collective is really just another state, however nicely you package it.”

Fuck Your Red Revolution_Against Ecocide Towards Anarchy pdf

Guide To Closed Circuit Television Destruction

  • 2017/09/07 18:02

Text from the zine:

“The gaze of the cameras does not fall equally on all users of the street but on those who are stereotypical predefined as potentially deviant, or through appearance and demeanour, are singled out by operators as unrespectable. In this way youth, particularly those already socially and economically marginal, may be subject to even greater levels of authoritative intervention and official stigmatization, and rather than contributing to social justice through the reduction of victimisation, CCTV will merely become a tool of injustice through the amplification of differential and discriminatory policing.” “an instrument of social control and the production of discipline; the production of ‘anticipatory conformity’; the certainty of rapid deployment to observed deviance and; the compilation of individualised dossiers of the monitored population.”

Guide to CCTV Destruction pdf

How it is to be Fun

  • 2017/09/07 17:57

Text from back cover:

“So you caught wind of some of the media hype about the black bloc or maybe you saw us at a protest doing what we do and now you want in. Sweet, welcome! We’re not an organization so you don’t have to sign up anywhere, we are people all over the world who employ a certain tactic against domination when we see fit to do so and we’re excited to meet you. Together we’ll create and destroy history. However, before crossing that line into illegality with us there are some things you could benefit from knowing and considering.”

How It Is To Be Fun pdf

How Non-Violence Protects the State

  • 2017/09/07 17:53

In lucid and accessible prose, Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, systematically debunking the notion that non-violent activism is the only acceptable or effective method of struggle.

How Nonviolence Protects The State pdf

How To Form an Affinity Group

  • 2017/09/07 17:50

Another excellent zine on affinity groups, what they are and how to form one.

How To Form an Affinity Group pdf

How To Organize an Insurrection

  • 2017/09/07 17:47

Text from the zine:

“We humbly present one of the first inside reports from participants in the upheavals that shook Greece after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the anarchist neighborhood of Exarchia on December 6. This is only the first set of answers to come in from our Greek comrades. We hope shortly to receive further perspectives from other elements of the Greek uprising, so we can provide a comprehensive background on the context and dynamics of the revolt.”

how to organize an insurrection pdf

I Am Also A Nihilist

  • 2017/09/07 17:46

Text from back cover:

“I don’t care whether it is Nordic or Oriental, nor whether or not is has a historical, political, practical tradition, or a theoretical, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual one. I call myself a nihilist because I know that nihilism means negation.

Negation of every society, of every cult, of every rule and of every religion. But I don’t yearn for Nirvana, any more than I long for Schopenhauer’s desperate and powerless pessimism, which is a worse thing than the violent renunciation of life itself. Mine is an
enthusiastic and dionysian pessimism, like a flame that sets my vital exuberance ablaze, that mocks at any theoretical, scientific or moral prison.

And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an overflowing river,
wants to expand, impetuously sweeping away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder, shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life. I exalt and sing it.”

I Am Also A Nihilist pdf

Identity, Politics, Anti-Politics: A Critical Perspective

  • 2017/09/07 17:44

A critique of identity politics from a queer, anarchist perspective, arguing that identity politics runs the risk of forming cross-class affinities between queers, women, and people of colour, and assimilating radical struggles into establishment politics. Originally published in Pink and Black Attack #4, 2010, and reproduced in Queer Ultraviolence – A Bash Back! Anthology available from Ardent Press.

Identity_Politics and Anti-Politics pdf

In Praise of Chaos

  • 2017/09/07 17:43

From back cover:

Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives. Therefore anarchists are the most decisive enemies of all types of communism and those who profess to be communists or socialist cannot possibly be anarchists.

It is not by organizing into parties and syndicates that one struggles for anarchy, nor by mass action which, as has been shown, overthrows one barracks only to create another. It is by the revolt of individuals alone or in small groups, who oppose society, impede its functioning and cause its disintegration.

In Praise of Chaos pdf

Insurrectionary Anarchism

  • 2017/09/07 17:35

Text from back cover:

“It is the accumulation of “petty” acts of defiance and refusal that make critical upsurges possible. They are not a substitute for revolution but a necessary condition for it. That is why the insurrectionary moment invariably escalates so rapidly – “as if from nowhere” – and
is why revolutionary elites ( the clownish ring masters of the vanguard) always find themselves hopelessly overtaken.”

Insurrectionary Anarchism pdf

Insurrection Anarchist Magazine Issue #4

  • 2017/09/07 17:33

An insurrectionary anarchist periodical which provides essays and clandestine actions, critical of leftism and formal organizing.

Insurrection Anarchist Magazine pdf

INSURGENCY: An Anarchist Journal of Total Destruction

  • 2017/09/07 17:33

This (long awaited) zine contains a few action reports and a collection of essays written from a post-left anarchist perspective. Topics include insurrectionary anarchy, queer nihilism, veganism, individualism, nihilist anarchy and anti-civilization.

Insurgency_An Anarchist Journal of Total Destruction pdf

Insurgent Ferocity: The Playful Violence of Rebellion

  • 2017/09/07 17:32

From back cover:

“Rebellion is the aggressive, dangerous, playful attack by free­spirited individuals against society. Refusing a system of violence, refusing an organized, militarized form of armed struggle, allows the violence of insurgents to retain a high level of invisibility. It cannot be readily understood by the authorities and brought under their control. Its insurgent nature may even go undetected by the authorities as it eats away at the foundations of social control. From the rationalized perspective of authority, this playful violence will often appear utterly random, but actually is in harmony with the desires of the insurgent.”

Insurgent Ferocity_ The Playful Violence of Rebellion pdf

Leftism 101

  • 2017/09/07 17:27

This zine collects two excellent essays by Lawrence Jarach: “Leftism 101” from Back to Basics: The Problem of the Left put out by the Green Anarchy collective and “Anarchists, Don’t let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite” from Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #48.

The first essay looks at the origins of Leftist thought and anarchism’s relationship to it. The second essay provides a brief overview of anarchists’ historical relationship with “the Left,” concluding that there is no point in engaging with it.

Leftism 101 pdf

Let’s Become Dangerous: For the Diffusion of the Black International by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

  • 2017/09/07 17:23

Text from the zine:

“No, our burned banks are not a way of protest or a token of friendship and solidarity with the “poor person” who does nothing and sits on his couch. It is a way to express our “I”. An “I”, that wants to stand out from the herd of slaves, an “I” that does not bow the head down, an “I” not waiting for the crowd to revolt, an “I”, which claims his own name, his own “acronym” and does not hide behind anonymity. The meeting time of the revolted ‘Egos’ takes up the name that we give to it. Its name is FAI and it is our “we”. A collective “we”, armed with razors against our enemies.”

Lets Become Dangerous pdf

Liberation, Not Organization

  • 2017/09/07 17:22

From back cover:

“I desire liberation , not organization. While most leftists would claim that the two go hand-in-hand , or at least that the second is necessary to achieve the first ( and for some the second might even “ wither away ” sometime after “ The Revolution ”), to me , the two seem contradictory. I am not fighting for a world which is run better ( more efficiently and more fairly ), I am fighting for a world which doesn’t need running ( one which is radically decentralized ) . Here lies the contradiction between the Left , and those fighting for autonomy and anarchy.”

Liberation Not Organization pdf

Lone Wolves Are Not Alone

  • 2017/09/07 17:21

From back cover:

“It is all those conspiratorial anarchists illegalists who made the anarchist insurrection their only home land. It is those who chose to stay away from the glory of the dead ideologies and bureaucracy of the social anarchism which awaits the masses in order to begin its insurrection. Lone and unique they armed their desires, put aside the pathetic rot of the mob and went on to the storming of heaven.

Their star fills our eyes, the fire floods our thoughts, the vendetta of revenge beats in our hearts and, our hands embrace the guns and dynamite which they inherited to us. We live for an endless explosion of actions, thoughts, feelings, desires, which reaches the edge of the world.

There is no nostalgia, there is only today, while tomorrow is already late. Today is our turn, our life, our time.”

Lone Wolves Are Not Alone pdf

Lions in the Brush: On the Anatomy and Guidelines of Cell Structured Resistance

  • 2017/09/07 17:21

From back cover:

“There are two types of cells, sleeper cells and phantom cells. The sleeper cell consists of one lone wolf individual; the phantom cell however is made of no more than 2-5 individuals. Anything beyond 5 members risks falling into the same pitfalls as the organization, and begins to lose its solidity and causes it to be more vulnerable to infiltration, thus compromising its effectiveness. More importantly, cell structure differs from the organization in that, if one cell is taken out and/or compromised, it remains physically impossible for that to have any effect on any other cell. If we drew one big circle or pyramid (the organization), imagine if it only took one pin to stick into the organization block to destroy it. In the case of cell structure, the only way to destroy the cells would be to pin them each one by one, which means you would need to first locate and identify each and every one, and pick them off individually. The chance of successfully identifying all of those unknown numbers of underground cells is usually quite small. This is what gives cell structured resistance its near invincibility.”

Lions in the Brush_On the Anatomy and Guidelines of Cell Structured Resistance pdf

Max Stirner, Individualist Anarchy, And a Critical Look at Egoist Communism

  • 2017/09/07 17:20

From back cover:

“I have no need for the herd philosophy of the self-deceiving and self-sacrificing fantasy of communization and its inner leftism. I am opposed to its collectivist conformist cult of the worker, which dissolves the individual into the permanent roles of producer and consumer. When I work, I do so because I am forced and blackmailed to. So I refuse the slave role of “worker”. I want to see work abolished as a concept. I want to see the means of production and distribution reduced to ashes, blown up, turned down, destroyed and replaced with vast food forests and lush colorful gardens grown on top of the rubble.”

Max Stirner_Individualist Anarchy_ And a Critical Look at Egoist Communism pdf

The MOVE Organization: A Revolutionary Struggle for Black Liberation and Eco-Defense

  • 2017/09/07 17:20

The MOVE Organization was a radical movement that surfaced in  Philadelphia during the early 1970’s. Characterized by dreadlock hair,  the adopted surname “Africa”, a principled unity, back­-to-­nature green politics and an uncompromising commitment to freedom and equality, members practiced the teachings of MOVE founder JOHN AFRICA.

The MOVE Organization A Revolutionary Struggle for Black Liberation and Eco-Defense pdf

Manifesto Against Schools by Armeanio Lewis

  • 2017/09/07 17:19

From back cover:

“After being expelled I rushed home to write this essay. I didn’t think, I just wrote. I wrote how I was feeling, what I was thinking. I was nothing but a pure-being of anger and hatred. Arguably, I still am, but for this essay to really make sense, you must know this information. It may seem like the ramblings of an angry teenager, and technically it is. However, this essay caused a ruckus. Shortly after the publishing of this essay, 15 ARMATARK Trucks, the company that supplies school lunches and prison lunches, were sabotaged. Their tires slashed, and bleach poured into their engines. No news reported this, other than a communique found around schools in Portland. Shortly after that, an entire condo complex was burned to the ground. This fire was the biggest fire seen in Portland, and everything was torched. A claim was made, by Students For Insurrection (SFI for short). They declared they would not stop, and they didn’t.”

Manifesto Against Schools pdf

Mapping the Fire: International Words of Solidarity with the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

  • 2017/09/07 17:19

Text from the zine:

“The following texts were translated and edited by the imprisoned members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and by the comrades of Contra Info. We warmly thank them therefore, as well as the comrades A,M and E who contributed decisively in the handling of this attempt. Finally we greet the Chilean comrades from Entropia Ediciones for the version in Chile, and the comrades of Actforfreedomnow, boubour(A)s and 325 for the version in English.”

“They might have imprisoned our bodies but not our ideas, beliefs and values, which will continue to escape through various projects of insubordination. One of these projects is the creation of “Black International” editions, which are supported by us, the imprisoned members of the Anarchist Revolutionary Organization Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, and from certain comrades who every day, every moment, embody practically the value of SOLIDARITY.”

mapping-the-fire_black-international pdf

My Iconoclastic Individualism

  • 2017/09/07 17:18

From back cover:

“But when we are condemned to hear socialists more or less theorizing in order to impudently and ignorantly state that there is no incompatibility between Individualist and collectivist ideas…when we hear someone try to make an invincible and unsurpassable iconoclast like Max Stirner out to be some tool for the use of frantic proponents of communism, then we may certainly have an ironic smirk on our lips. But then it is necessary to resolutely rise up to defend ourselves and to attack, since anyone who feels that he is truly individualist in principle, means and ends cannot tolerate being at all confused with the unconscious mobs of a morbid, bleating flock.”

My Iconoclastic Individualism pdf

Negate Politics, Affirm Cuteness

  • 2017/09/07 09:49

A zine against “growing up”, politics and workerism.

Negate Politics pdf

Never Work!

  • 2017/09/07 09:45

Text from back cover:

“When Guy Debord of the Situationist International graffi tied the slogan “Never Work!” onto the walls of a Parisian street in 1953, he struck a blow in solidarity with the radical current of left communism which locates the wage-labour relation as the central pillar of capitalist relations and therefore the prime locus of attack. It is, of course, a banality that we need to work in order to produce for our basic needs. But what is at question here is the naure of that work, for whom, and to what end? Useful work? Or useless toil?”

Never Work pdf

No Hope, No Future: Let the Adventures Begin!

  • 2017/09/07 09:45

From back cover:

“But this reality, however dismal, motivates my desire to make my life, through fierce revolt, as joyful and fulfilling as possible! My hopelessness does not paralyze me with fear or depression; I celebrate it with hysterical laughter and ecstasy in spite of civilization’s death march. I arm my desires with the urgency to live… against the social order of monotony and peaceful enslavement, to sleep beneath the stars, to feel sunshine and a breeze with every hair on my body, to listen to the late­-night conversations of the insects, to become wild…

No-Hope-No-Future_-Let-the-Adventures-Begin pdf

Nihilist Anarchy, Insurrection, & Anti-Civilization

  • 2017/09/07 09:44

Text from back cover:

“The total liberation that I am speaking about could be nothing less than aggressive and in total conflict with the existent. The earth and the non­human animals as well as the human animals are parts of chaos. I am a nihilist and I see myself as an individuality inside the entire physical environment away from anthropocentric societies as the cities. Cities are prisons made by society and normality and must be torn down. Without the physical environment there would be no life. But without the cities there would still be life besides the changes this might involve that will occur, and i reject all views that state life is only viable within cities and civilization. So we should connect the struggle for liberation of our ego from every chain, with total liberation which goes beyond the destruction of the state and delves deep into the search of the destruction of anthropocentrism and civilization as two well hidden major ghosts, chains and ideologies.”

Nihilist Anarchy, Insurrection and Anti-Civilization pdf

Non-Western Anarchisms: Re-Thinking the Global Context

  • 2017/09/07 09:42

Text from the zine:

“The purpose of this paper is to help anarchist / anti-authoritarian movements active today to reconceptualise the history and theory of first-wave anarchism on the global level, and to reconsider its relevance to the continuing anarchist project. In order to truly understand the full complexity and interconnectedness of anarchism as a worldwide movement however, a specific focus on the uniqueness and agency of movements amongst the “people without history” is a deeply needed change. This is because the historiography of anarchism has focused almost entirely on these movements as they have pertained to the peoples of the West and the North, while movements amongst the peoples of the East and the South have been widely neglected. As a result, the appearance has been that anarchist movements have arisen primarily within the context of the more privileged countries. Ironically, the truth is that anarchism has primarily been a movement of the most exploited regions and peoples of the world. That most available anarchist literature does not tell this history speaks not to a necessarily malicious disregard of non-Western anarchist movements but rather to the fact that even in the context of radical publishing, centuries of engrained eurocentrism has not really been overcome. This has been changing to an extent however, as there here have been several attempts in just the past decade to re-examine this history in detail in specific non-Western countries and regions, with works such as Arif Dirlik’s Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, Sam Mbah’s African Anarchism and Frank Fernandez’ Cuban Anarchism. It is within the footsteps of this recent tradition that this paper treads further into the relatively new ground of systematically assessing, comparing and synthesizing the findings of all of these studies combined with original investigation in order to develop a more wholly global understanding of anarchism and its history.”

Non-Western Anarchisms_Rethinking the Global Context pdf

Off The Leash

  • 2017/09/07 09:37

Text from back cover:

“Feeling the need for revolt in their bodies, those of an individualist­ nihilistic bent never needed to justify their insurrection in terms of ‘the Will of the People’, ‘History’ or ‘Justice’; and have always been quite prepared to forego optimism in favour of honesty and pragmatism in favour of dignity. Amid the catastrophe of history, these individuals were free in the only way anyone can be free, by seizing their lives for themselves.”

OFF THE LEASH pdf

On the poverty of “Joyful Militancy”

  • 2017/09/07 09:36

From back cover:

““Their notion of “troubled joy” that they implicitly allude to in such roundabout ways, comes off sounding  somewhat like a ruined orgasm (but not in a kinky way), cut short by thoughts of white guilt and internalized Christianity roaming the back of its head. This truncated notion of joy, though carefully detailed as to be all­inclusive, is felt as if manicured to trim off any palpable trace of lust, wrath, or any of the remaining “deadly sins”. Though they reproduce criticism of a Catholic moralism that warns against excesses, one comes off with the impression that if ever playing “fuck, marry, kill” they would only ever choose  “marry”, under the Church no less, lest anyone think they are of ill repute.

Perhaps they should have titled the book “Sad Militancy” since it deals mainly with that, as a problem. Not daring so much to propose ­much less embody­ a concrete way out of that impasse, while also seemingly still being held hostage by its affects. One wonders how they thought they could ever overcome “rigid radicalism”, while paralyzed by the rigor mortis of academia that was so palpable to me during my intercourse with this text.”

On the Poverty of Joyful Militancy pdf