Seminar on primitivism, anarchism and anthropology – John Zerzan and the postmodern world

From Twenty third seminar

The seminar will be devoted to the thought of John Zerzan, anarchist and philosopher, whose critique of civilization and call for a non-domesticated form of life has been described as 'primitivist.' Zerzan has not only analysed agricultural and industrial society in detail, but also drawn on anthropological research on prehistoric and other 'primitive' societies in describing egalitarian and non-alienated ways of communal life. Zerzan has contributed to anarchist theory for decades, especially on topics of ecology, anti-technology, post-leftism and postmodernity.

We invite presentations and papers on any aspect of Zerzan's thought and themes related to it. The presentation is limited to 30 minutes plus 15 minutes for discussion. John Zerzan will give a talk on "From Band Society to Technoculture: A Few Comments" to the seminar, and will be present to discuss and comment on the presentations. The seminar will close with a general discussion. Proposals for papers and presentations can be made in the form of an abstract (ca. 500 words) or a full paper. The deadline for proposals is 6th of April. Presenters will be notified by 23rd of April. Full papers will be copied to all participants of the seminar.

Please, send your proposal to twentythirdseminar@gmail.com

23rd May 2009, Tampere, Finland

Organised by the Society for European Philosophy (Tampere, Finland).

at this point jz gives green

at this point jz gives green anarchy a bad name. he's whiny, self-referential, and hasn't had a new thing to say in years.
it's sad.

Carl Bridenbaugh and Philip

Carl Bridenbaugh and Philip Greven are two examples I've noticed recently as being self-referential. I see nothing wrong with that as long as the previous work holds some merit.

True, I think JZ does need

True, I think JZ does need some original material, but from the way some people, even those who call themselves anarchists, still would defend civilization to the death, I guess we still have to keep going over the most basic points.

Hey, JZ might be old news to

Hey, JZ might be old news to you, but I wouldn't mind getting my hands on his pamphlets, books etc. Derrick Jensen too, and of course, the man himself: Fredy Perlman. Fred pwnz.

Against His-story, Against Leviathan!!!

Expect the amount of these

Expect the amount of these materials in mainstream bookstores to increase in the next couple of years.

Why pay when you can just go

Why pay when you can just go to the library? Or, you could take a cruise over to TheAnarchistLibrary.org, when it's finished obviously (it's all skin and bones right now, we do have about 100 texts already formatted and organized). We even have a full text version of Leviathan!! I'm not ruling out mainstream bookstores though, but I would only use them as a last resort.

Go to anticiv.net you can

Go to anticiv.net you can choose to click on news or library, click on the library and there is a ton of books and essays you might be interested in, including zerzan and jensen.

"True, I think JZ does need

"True, I think JZ does need some original material, but from the way some people, even those who call themselves anarchists, still would defend civilization to the death, I guess we still have to keep going over the most basic points."

and that path will probably be beaten down over and over again until civilization, and thus the internet as well, collapses. i think i have thrown up about the best challenge myself. i have asked to see a technology that is possible that does not involve expirimentation on unconsenting life forms, that does not demand a steady input of "resources" (thus having expansionism built in) and basic maintence, and does not require us to be productive workers (as in doing tasks that are work that are beyond simple survival, also know as wasting time) at least for maintence purposes and also does not threaten habitats and create roles around a division of labor. show me such a technology and i will accept technologies existence as "legitimate" (as if anything really was such, as such). no one, of course, has done so and i don't think anyone can (i would be more than happy to hear about it if such a thing was thought up, hell, i'd cum all over the place if i could have my uncivilized world without having to worry about having to be cut off from the technological dependence built into me from birth). simlilarly, if you mention anything about giving a shit about the lives of animals other than humans and, bakunin forbid, showing some respect for plants you are, of course, a "misanthrope" who "wants 95% of the human population to die" (whose ass was that statistic pulled from anyway?), even though you mention that civilization continuing means a large mass die off of humans as well as many other species, and, i dunno, maybe as a human as well as a biological entity one dosen't want to see that happen or something...even if it is a few to a hundred years away (you know, maybe you also give a shit about people who will be born after you). sigh.

-lord rambler

a) that does not demand a

a) that does not demand a steady input of "resources" (thus having expansionism built in)

This premise is wrong in that consumption of resources is not unsustainable by default. The introduction of energy from the sun+recycling means that we can continually produce and reproduce. If your argument were true it would also apply to primitivism.

b) does not require us to be productive workers (as in doing tasks that are work that are beyond simple survival, also know as wasting time)

Wasting time can be fun. Why else would you be yammering away on the internet. Production should be about producing for entertainment when it is producing beyond the needs for self regeneration.

c) show me such a technology and i will accept technologies existence

I like crocheting. I think you'd be hard pressed, even under capitalism, to denounce this.

Obviously your challenge is unfair in that our entire society is built by the horrible forces of military industrial capitalism. Technology has been developed primarily for war and profit. This doesn't mean that it in itself is wrong, it just means that it has become a frankenstein's monster. We need to tear down civilisation as it is and build it up as it should be.

Rowan Duffy

"We need to tear down

"We need to tear down civilisation as it is and build it up as it should be."

Or we can just not. Civilization has been a failure since the first slaves were caught to till the soils of the first proprieted estate.

"c) show me such a

"c) show me such a technology and i will accept technologies existence

I like crocheting. I think you'd be hard pressed, even under capitalism, to denounce this. "

No primitivist that I have ever met would criticize a technology such as this. It is usually a distinction similar to the one Ted Kaczinsky makes. There are two kinds of technology. One that you have complete control over and are not dependent on any system to create, no one will say that humans should not use fire or spears or a way to make your own clothes (like corcheting). Technologies become dangerous, destructive, and liberty limiting when you are dependent on a system that you have no control over to make them, like almost everything that we use today.

Yea. In other words there's

Yea. In other words there's a difference between tools and technology.

A chisel, for example, is a tool.
:)

Instead of talking about

Instead of talking about "technology" which everyone associates with technological artifacts, we should instead be talking about "technologization", or "technique", which is the focus of Ellul's critique:

"The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity." (from The Technological Society)

The questions need to be redirected away from these things we create, and towards how these things create us.

A most useful tool,got me

A most useful tool,got me out of the shit many a time.Of course it requires a hammer,which to take this analogy further,may be technique of your own creativity,or blows to your head from those who disagree with you.I hope its the former. :) gilligan

Agreed. Just as Bookchin was

Agreed. Just as Bookchin was a *leftist* ideologue, Zerzan is a *Primitivist* ideologue.

-postnihilist

...Just as you are a

...Just as you are a postnihilist ideologue.

Arguably so. But overcoming

Arguably so. But overcoming one's own ideological tendencies is a constant tension. I know that my shit stinks and I'll admit it when I feel that it's appropriate.

-postnihilist

Poopie.

Poopie.

anonymous coward: Maybe you

anonymous coward: Maybe you could provide one instance of my being whiney or self-referential. As for
being repetitious/devoid of new approaches, how about "Silence" in the current issue of Green Anarchy, for example? Have you, by the way, contributed anything to the discourse?....JZ

John you had a point in the

John you had a point in the late 60's with ' The revolt against work' and I agree that the knowledge that we lived most of our history and developed most of our instincts without a state is significant.
But it is true that you have added nothing of interest for anarchists since yr trip to Spain several years ago.
If only there was silence!
You made the decision to leave anarchism for primitivism some years ago now and so best wishes with that. Now just leave us alone please. Thank you.

pro2rat@yahoo.etc.au

PS - You may respond at my Blurty page ' Butt darling' but darling I won't get into any flame wars here. Yr a real gone daddy. A Unabomber without a cause.

u are whiny on ur radio

u are whiny on ur radio show, pretty regularly, as far as i can tell - although i don't listen much anymore.
i don't know what self-referentil means xactly, but u don't cite ur influences or give credit to the milieu that u come out of, and u make everything good get wrapped up in ur definition of primitivism, so that the big P (trademarked by u) is just another word for God (the same way that some people do with communism, or too many people do with anarcht).
silence is ok, but it'skinda just making the P umbrella cover one more thing. i agree, u have become ideological.
its too bad becuz i think your stuff about time and language was really rad.

Someone who is

Someone who is self-referential references themselves and their pieces of work in order to support their current premises and propositions (at least in a given discourse, it can also mean to just refer to yourself, as in, a subject referring to their own subjectivity). It can be viewed as a sort of pomposity and arrogance, as well as a stagnation of their own ideas and theories. That sum it up for ya?

:)

John, one of the things that

John, one of the things that irritates me about your ideas is your flippant rejection of Hakim Bey in in this article here: http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/pmanarchist.htm. In my experience, "Postmodernism" is a catch-all phrase typically thrown around by leftist ideologues to describe any body of ideas that does not adhere to their own deterministic understanding of history. It is entirely possible for someone to engage with "Postmodern" concepts without taking an affirmative attitude towards them. Your assertion that "A liberal like Bey has really no quarrel with the totality" suggests to me that you are more intersted in self-aggrandizement than in honestly engaging with Bey's notions of "poetic terrorism" and "pirate utopias." It is precisely this sort of dogmatism that leads me to reject Primitivism in favour of my own interpretation of anti-civ ideas.

-postnihilist

Haha...Did you make the link

Haha...Did you make the link big enough? You sure you don't want to make it a little bigger just in case?

:D

I'm in the process of trying

I'm in the process of trying to reformat it but it's annoying as fuck!

-postnihilist

Agreed. I believe that TAZ

Agreed. I believe that TAZ could totally play a role in the transition to a primal lifeway. Imagine a thousand or more Barbarians occupying Times Square for a few weeks, jackhamering concrete, planting trees and flowers and vegetable gardens, painting graffiti on skyscrapers, destroying the technology boutiques, play music and partying, then when the area has been partially rewilded and some of the euphoric atmosphere runs out, then everyone goes home. Then sometime later somthing similar happens somewhere else. The System can't keep up. Think of it like Ju Jitsu.

Reformatted post: John, one

Reformatted post:

John, one of the things that irritates me about your ideas is your flippant rejection of Hakim Bey in in this article here: http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/pmanarchist.htm. In my experience, "Postmodernism" is a catch-all phrase typically thrown around by leftist ideologues to describe any body of ideas that does not adhere to their own deterministic understanding of history. It is entirely possible for someone to engage with "Postmodern" concepts without taking an affirmative attitude towards them. Your assertion that "A liberal like Bey has really no quarrel with the totality" suggests to me that you are more intersted in self-aggrandizement than in honestly engaging with Bey's notions of "poetic terrorism" and "pirate utopias." It is precisely this sort of dogmatism that leads me to reject Primitivism in favour of my own interpretation of anti-civ ideas.

-postnihilist

"I've been getting

"I've been getting increasingly annoyed by the word-salad posturing of Bey":

"how even the most air-headed
could make the extreme techno- fascist imperialism of extropy"

" Aestheticism plus knownothingism is the
pm formula; cynical as to the possibility of meaning, allergic to analysis,
hooked on trendy word-play"

"A point of view that tries to be consistent, well- researched, tentative
exploration is deemed absolutist, rigid, aggressive, the product of a
'presumptive vanguard of the pure.' Bey, however, is inconsistent, messy,
open, impure, non- exclusive, etc."

"stylistic mantras about
the glories of inconsistency and hip- sounding, three-word solutions in
capital letters."

Word-salad, sir? Watch your tongue, you are infected too.

It's pretty annoying that

It's pretty annoying that none of John's detractors have anything substantial by way of objections except for the usual stupidity of "not original" or "too many words." Fucking anti-intellectuals. Formulate some actual objections beyond your suspicions and misunderstandings and we might have something to discuss; as it is, you're all just a bunch of know-nothings wallowing in your intellectual poverty.

Did you not read my post?

Did you not read my post? What part of it do you find insubstantial?

-postnihilist

Disagreeing about the

Disagreeing about the relative merits of Hakim Bey is not what I'd call substantial. Bey's ideas are muddled, regardless of whether or not they can be characterized as postmodern. For example, his embrace of the aesthetic style of a protofascist like D'Annunzio, while completely ignoring that protofascism that inhered in his choice of those aesthetics, makes Bey's politics questionably anti-authoritarian at best. And I'd agree that Bey's discussion of extropians veers off in the same kind of protofascist direction. But again, this has nothing to do with JZ's ideas. Or was there another post you thought was a substantial disagreement with JZ?

Actually, I think that's a

Actually, I think that's a pretty reasonable summary of my disagreement with JZ. I think we might slightly disagree on the relevance of Bey's aesthetics to JZ's critique of civilization, but this could potentially be a minor point. Considering the somewhat "deviant" nature of Hakim Bey's sexual preferences, one might want to take him with a grain of salt. However, I think the pertenence of the notion of "poetic terrorism" to an insurrectional project against civilization pertains (or could potentially pertain) to what Zizek describes as the "nuemenal" level of subjective consciousness. This is the space of what can roughly be called "transcendental" consciousness. At this point, desire projects itself beyond the "medium" of its own representation: the "theatre of shadows," the "spectacle of the symbolic," etc. At this point it has become desiring-production (Deleuze) and can no longer be severed (or "castrated," if you will ;) ) by its technological/libidinal representation.

Cheers,
Postnihilist

WTF? "Intellectuals", posing

WTF? "Intellectuals", posing as lovers of wisdom, tend to produce extremely muddled language: "At this point, desire projects itself beyond the "medium" of its own representation: the "theatre of shadows," the "spectacle of the symbolic," etc. At this point it has become desiring-production (Deleuze) and can no longer be severed (or "castrated," if you will ;) ) by its technological/libidinal representation."

Plainly said, Zerzan's case against "symbolic" (art, language and everything) is just wrong and, honestly, stupid. The ART of hermeneutics does not go away by pretending or dreaming of non-symbolic and certainly not with "primitive" anthropological case studies - au contraire; "primitive" is infiltrated with "symbolic" of animism and holism and panpsychic. Symbolic (in other words, meaning), to begin with, is not limited to the dualistic/dialectical subject-object division, wich is just a stupid question demanding too much attention, and certainly not to human or even biological. A symbol that actually catches something of the essence of 'symbolic' is the metaphore of 'Indra's net'. Reinventing the wheel: all we got to do is to cease to believe in the rule of linear causality or reductionistic paradigm and sense also other forms beyond those. Starting from individual level, putting our hermeneutical filters in different positions again and again - that is what 'learning' is all about.

"As for being

"As for being repetitious/devoid of new approaches, how about "Silence" in the current issue of Green Anarchy, for example?"

That was a really interesting article. Something I would like to see evaluated sometime is the concepts on AP resistance and praxis in the work of Kevin Tucker and revisiting of Jacques Camatte's work.

Also JZ, write something

Also JZ, write something more extensive on the philosophy of Emil Cioran who you quote sometimes. He is really unappreciated among anarchists perhaps because of his obscurity, perhaps because of his reckless youthful support of Fascism.

About 2 years ago I stopped

About 2 years ago I stopped being a progressive/liberal and became an anarchist thanks to reading the SI, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and John Zerzan. Not just the first four essays in Elements of Refusal, but his more recent "The Axial Age." I know the anarchist critique of religion isn't new, but before reading JZ I would have never picked up Bakhunin's God & The State.

Since then I've found that its standard fare for anarchists of whatever stripe to denounce one another, whether is JZ denouncing Hakim Bey, Andrew Flood denouncing JZ, Bill Brown and Bob Black denouncing each other, etc. I don't see (we) anarchists ever presenting a viable alternative to Capitalism/Statism if there is no charity with regards to alternative modes & methods of resistance. We don't all need to unionize, riot, march, primitivize, or do alchemy/ritual magick because each in its way is a form of resistance and none is inherently pro-Capitalism/Statism. An acceptance of "anarchism without adjectives" would go along way in making potential anarchists view anarchy is something viable and not just a group of vicious fringe ideologues.

Word!!!

Word!!!

While I think Hakim Bey's

While I think Hakim Bey's ideas are really bizarre, and some of them absolutely absurd, and Bob Black I think is a complete arsehole and whatever about Bill Brown, JZ is in a different league.

There can be no accommodation with those who have a programme of total annihilation of most of humanity. It has nothing to do with anarchism in form or substance. There is nothing in essence libertarian about recreating primitive life any more than it is libertarian to call for living in bathing suits on Coney island after we murder half the population. It doesn't account for what happens afterwards, and it doesn't account for the means to get there (ends that meet with means anyone?). It is akin to calling for rampant industrialisation of indigenous communities as a means of emancipation - totally absurd in it's disregard for the human element in the struggle.

It actually *matters* what social relations we have with each other. The particular technologies that we try to produce are not value free, but neither is technology the fundamental generator of social relations, it is more fundamentally an expression of these relations.

Sectarianism isn't necessarily wrong. It depends on affinities that we can find. I can't find any with JZ.

Rowan Duffy

Fine then. We will learn all

Fine then. We will learn all the skills necessary for a non-technological existence and when Civilization begins collapsing under its own weight and you ask for our help we will say... No.

You'd make a really good

You'd make a really good Christian fundamentalist.

I was making a (not too)

I was making a (not too) subtle reference to Rorschach for Watchmen, but really why should you expect my help when the event I warned you about, and you refused to believe was going to happen, happens? Wouldn't a Christian fundamentalist say it's best to help someone in need no matter what?

"There can be no

"There can be no accommodation with those who have a programme of total annihilation of most of humanity. It has nothing to do with anarchism in form or substance."

That's why i don't feel that much affinity with pro-industry leftists. Go with them and we'll all end up dead.

Haven't yet actually seen any real attempts at finding practical solutions to the looming food crises besides from anti-civ folks and primmies. And no, they don't argue that we should "go back" to hunter-gatherers.

Not to be too nitpicky, but

Not to be too nitpicky, but Bill Brown does not refer to himself as an anarchist.

Lulz! Zerzan talked about

Lulz! Zerzan talked about this very thread on his radio show. I was like "lol, I was in on that discussion!"

Radio show? I must either

Radio show? I must either really not understand primitivism or they are a bunch of hypocrites...

The Primitvists aren't

The Primitvists aren't saying "never use high technology" we are saying "we need to destroy the technological system." Sometimes we use technology to network or whatever to further the goal of abolishing the Technological Society once and for all.

Like riding horses from town

Like riding horses from town to town to promote that the only useful aspect of a horse is that it be turned into glue? I understand what you are trying to do, but it makes little sense to me.

I regard my own use of

I regard my own use of technology as an expedient means to an end,in a Machiavellian sense.The technology has no inherent value,if its there use it,if its gone who cares.Opportunism is the prerequisite for trying and/or dying. gilligan

"if its there use it,if its

"if its there use it,if its gone who cares"

This doesn't seem to fit well when primitivists despise technology and think that it poisons life.

Hey Al, did I miss

Hey Al, did I miss something? When did you become an anarchist? And since you're not so self-identified, who the fuck made you the arbiter of what constitutes hypocrisy for us? Why is it any better for anarchists to pay taxes, drive cars, use the postal service (etc.) than it is for primitivists to use the technologies that are available for spreading their message (which obviously includes their desire for radically restructuring the system of technology they use). Or do you think that no primitivist has ever wrestled with the contradictions between their ideas and their actions? Do you think no anarchist has wrestled with such things? So let's be clear: the "hypocrisy" is in your head, drawn from YOUR logic and your desire to find fault with others in the competition for people's support. Screw that.

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