Identity as a Project

Identity as a Project

From Cyber Dandy by Cyber Dandy

An article was posted to LibCom recently

It is a decent analysis of Identity Politics, but like most, it misses what I think are some rather important points about Identity. I talk about some of this in my essay “Identity is Impossible,” but it is worth re-stating. The first thing to understand about Identity, in general, is that it is impossible. There isn’t just an occasional identity crisis impacting a society or an individual. Identity itself is built on a crisis that is fundamental to existence, to the ontological nature of consciousness. Since we are not things, we cannot ever identify completely with things… including conceptual things. So identities are always in crisis and they are constantly a territory of conflict.

When we talk about Identity in the way that this article does, we not only ignore the impossibility of identity, we also talk about identification as if it is a passive thing we have happen to us with no recourse. But that isn’t the case and it is crucial to any advancement on questions of Identity to understand that this isn’t the case. We are also active agents in the ongoing reconstruction of identities. We have the capability of defining what we want our identities to be. We have the ability to constitute them, consciously, intentionally, and enter into identity conflicts willfully. What is needed is a constitution of identities that permit our differentiations from each other, but also include strong tolerances for each other’s differences. Not tolerances without limits. Not tolerances of various supremecist identities. But well-formed tolerances based on concrete relations and joint projects of mutual benefit.

Of particular note here is that some identities are dominated by hegemonic forces: by religious authorities, by nationalist movements and political ideologues, by civic institutions, by psychiatric organizations and so on. The more that individuals can participate in the ever-reconstituting of the identities they accept, the more that some of the problems outlined in this article can be mitigated.

As anarchists, this should be obvious to us; but I’m afraid we often think of identity as something that merely happens to us. We often fall into all of the same trappings. We think of identities as fixed, homogeneous objects that we have no power to influence. We think that identities are anti-individualistic because we assume that individuals don’t participate in the reconstruction of identities on an ongoing basis. We conclude that one must be either individualistic or collectivistic on questions of Identity because of these false premises. And because of all of this, we allow our potential power to be diminished.

Additionally as an anarchist, the author’s various notions about the State in this text warrant some response. It isn’t enough to demand the separation of Church from State, nor to expect people to assimilate into these individualistic ideas of citizenship that come out of Secular Humanism. Emphasis on assimilate, by the way. Humanity is not just a collectivity of individuals deluded by cultural distinctions into believing that they are truly different from one another even though we are really all the same. Furthermore, the Nation State, even those based on a supposed Civic Nationalism, can not solve these problems with assimilationist agendas that historically, silently promote consumerist notions of identity to replace those inconvenient racial and religious identities of past empires and ethno-nationalist states.

Unfortunately for Liberals and authoritarian Leftists, this critique of Identity also includes a critique of peoplehood, which means that the basis for the State is thrown into question. If liberal, democratic states are to be based on the consent of the governed and to be an expression of the people (as in, “We the People”), this becomes problematic if there is no such thing a stable people to be governed, nor in whose name the State governs. This is something anarchists have long understood, but something that authoritarians of all sorts can’t accept. That without fixing the concept of the people, the State has no Right according to liberal understandings. It thus rules undemocratically, through representations of peoples that can only ever be in conflict about their identities as peoples, who are always negotiating the meaning of their peoplehood. So it is therefor up to peoples themselves, and the individuals deciding what it means to even participate in that peoplehood, to constitute their lifeways and relations with others – – not states.

Anyway, all of that business about the State is a discussion for another time… and one that I surely will have.

There are 42 Comments

"The more that individuals can participate in the ever-reconstituting of the identities they accept, the more that some of the problems outlined in this article can be mitigated."
Bad wording here, because "ever-reconstituting of the identities they accept" is contradicting to the individualist goal of identity nullification. Identity is the personalization of spooks, and social, cultural national constructs.
I doubt that you are fully aware of the repercussions that 'identity' imposes upon the autonomous being's ability to think and function creatively?

Well, at least it isn’t bad wording for the reasons you give. I don’t agree with this kind of individualism you seem to be describing.

Words are important. My individualism is unique and not slotted into a relational category constituted by morals, ethics, customs or laws. I cannot be re-constituted, I can only be more self-aware!

I partly agree with this, but the state is the absolute nomenclator, the entity which takes names of people at birth, then continuously seeks to frame them within a nomos, therefore effectively making them "slaves" without the official slavehood.If you are being politically recognized (i.e. territorialized, or designated) as "Ukrianian" or "Russian", as "White", as "LGBTQ+", as "Brown" or whatver, these are products of state hegemony upon individual, physical living persons.

These identities are all social categories serving one or another purpose of social management, and often also capital-accumulation for some of those concerned (like nationalism being the tool of the wealthiest castes of a country to consolidate their state power, but the means of excluding all those not part of the identity formation).

How does an individual "accept" these social identities, without conforming to these cogs and differentials of the state, beyond maybe some sort of self-assumed entryism, or better, to be reappropriating offensively an identity the state has created?

So is the latter the project you're referring to?

I’m not entirely talking about /those/ identities, at least only /those/. I have some things to say about them, but before I do that, I’d like to mention that I think identification can be found all over the place. One can identify with celebrities, with amateur sports teams or clubs, with their trade skill. I think that what identities are, at bottom, are a way of taking relations and treating them as things. So I think that accepting how one is identified, even how one is identified by the State, is a matter of understanding those relationships. Not to simply know their topology, but to then actively participate in them. As a personal example, I can accept that I am identified as a Jew, but instead of trying to negate the identity, I can decide what that means to me and define my own form of Jewishness based on social relations that I think are important. Sometimes it’s worth negating an identity, but I think that this urge to negate all identities is futile. Especially when it comes to identities like “anarchist” or something along those lines. In other words, I think identity is something that comes with social relations and a participatory form of social life includes a participatory form of identity construction.

Well for sure there's a nuance to be made between the "nomos" constructed through the influence of social relations, and those regulated or at best recuperated, instrumentalized by state authorities. These designations are concepts that also can be integrated and digested by bureaucratic hierarchies, where maybe only subcultural identities -such as punk- might not be.

It's interesting to see how queer started as a totally non-state -even anti-state, in some way- formation in the '60s, that quickly became its own territory, then the past few decades, coopted by the neolib state authorities. Now there's an official LGBTQ+ flag, found on several uni campuses, mainstream NGOs and what else overtly statist institutions held as some type of state-sanctioned territory of the realm. But many actual L, G, B, T, Q, or "+" individuals still won't be associating with this statist bullshit...

If only underlying politics could be as easily-identifiable, and so clearly-represented, as the vehicles they're using for power accumulation.

good stuff!

"We think of identities as fixed, homogeneous objects that we have no power to influence. We think that identities are anti-individualistic because we assume that individuals don’t participate in the reconstruction of identities on an ongoing basis. We conclude that one must be either individualistic or collectivistic on questions of Identity because of these false premises."

^ this part especially, where most people seem to get stuck and never meaningfully escape.

Or does it just seem that way because you can so rarely get people to have candid discussions about this?

That appears like a good liminal question. To be claiming that you can be this unique individualism and reject ALL of the existent identities... this sounds not only purist but also pretentious, as I still can see anarcho-individualists adhering to one or another identity, tho without defining themselves as such. In the same way as you dress up for some role... which really what it's about imo.

Back when I was young child, I grew up in a very poor large family. We couldn’t afford an identity for everyone, so we used borrow one from neighbors on weekends. When my father died, we all inherited his identity, and that’s how we all became Bill (he/him).

smugglers, fugitives, scam artists, spies, impersonators, impostors of all kinds have used and assumed multiple identities and passports, and many people adopt different identities (alts) online. there’s also those who are diagnosed with D.I.D. really makes you think, huh

Identity is a social tool for convenience and profit. D.I.D is different, it's a trauma induced mental rebooting process which in modern times resembles schizophrenia, which is I attesting because this disorder is also trauma related to the pressures and abuses the individual has endured under authoritarian moral and economic restraints.

Well yeah, if you look at the stock standard activist identity you will see that it is steeped in seething ressentiment which makes them resemble molotov lobbing ranting schizoids.

That's what it really comes down to. Some identity is fine due to the simple fact that human symbology involves inherent levels of extra-will representation. When identities have elective political weight and life structuring currency is when you get indentitarianism.

A lot of the comments above are moving in the opposite direction from where I am trying to go with these thoughts. On the one hand, I agree that numerous identities are prefabricated by this or that system of domination. On the other hand - and this hand is bigger today - the more common situation that is an obstacle to many anarchist goals is the LACK of identification that people are prone to.

Anarchism was born and lived off of, even if living apart from, the labor movement. Today, people may understand that they are of an economic class, but in their hearts, what they feel is that they are of specific cities, towns, or even sides of towns …not of classes. The meaning of their lived social relations is basically some sort of cultural geography. This is a sort of identity, but not the sort anarchists tend to appeal to. Perhaps sometimes they feel themselves to be of a profession or a trade, but they are just as likely to feel themselves to be of a favorite sports team, celebrity, or genre of film or music. Where one lives becomes the station of one’s identity, followed by how one lives there, described in many fractured ideas of race, hobbies, jobs, consumer preferences, fashions, and political (usually, religious) values.

So I don’t think nullifying or negating or eliminating identity is a worthwhile goal because most identities are fleeting anyway. I think it’s actually pretty common for people to think identities are dumb, or as some like to put it, they’re not “joiners”. And that attitude of being against identities because one isn’t a joiner, well yeah it’s a little anti-social, but more importantly it is based on understanding identities as prefabricated things to be consumed.

The reason why this is bad is because thinking about social relations as things is how we negotiate our social relations publicly. By objectifying our lived social experiences (which are private experiences) and representing them as identities, we make those relations available to a third-person perspective. So when individualists have this attitude of “just leave me alone” …one of the things they’re indicating there is that they want to just live their social relations in the first-person without anyone else commenting on them and poking at them. That’s good when you don’t want the State or marketing professionals to control your relations, but it’s bad when you want to get a bunch of people to agree on ways of relating to each other.

Ok, so this post-Society of the Spectacle situation we’re living in encourages a consumerist understanding of what identity actually is, its ontology. That is basically the product of someone else’s work and our only role as consumers is to either buy into it or not, to accept it as it is or not. And even at that, we’re to never commit entirely to identifying with anything, as we’re all aware that is antithetical to healthy consumer skepticism. So even these background identifications of our psyche with where we decide to live (a consumer choice, again) and what not… those are also to be understood as transitory decisions, temporary commitments, the right investment for the moment. It’s a life of powerlessness in a lot of ways.

What about the invisible identities, like the identity identified by the image of >> People who look at screens all day and have very little face to face creative interactive relationships<< who function within an internet reality and the script it projects for their obedience?

that's fascinating Dandy cuz like ... that hasn't been my experience in organizing or wandering the various political milieus... like, at all?

the problem imo is a completely bad faith use of identity by aspiring cult leaders and the susceptibility of those with less depth of convictions or a vague desire for a stronger sense of identity, to being manipulated by the "gravitational pull" of identity (aka the petty bullies who want cults of followers), until everyone loses sight of whatever values brought them together in the first place.

it's not about "nullifying or negating identity" for me, although I see the point you're driving at there, but in my experience, if a healthy critique of identity isn't generalized within groups of people trying to DO anarchy, it's one of the primary causes of infighting, toxicity and of course, remains the easiest attack vector for anyone wanting to disrupt.

all that said, there's plenty of completely benign or even empowering uses of identity too BUT it remains an achilles heel until everyone understands that identity is mutable, often a choice, very different when it's being done to somebody against their will, universally abhorrent when being weaponized by capitalism, etc etc blah blah blah

if i understand where you're coming from here, and where others responding to you are, i think some of the confusion may stem from a bit of putting the cart before the horse in your argument. i think it is true that identity often serves as a useful shorthand in conversations, but my position anyway is that it is only after the critique of identity is in place that those kinds of conversations can be had honestly.

i'm a resident of philadelphia, which means there are times it's useful for me to talk about being a philadelphian, or being a resident of my particular neighborhood, as shorthand particularly with other philadelphians and neighbors, so we can get a lot of the things we ostensibly already understand about each other and properly contextualize the situation for the specifics we're about to get into. for me to say in such an instance, "actually i'm not a philadelphian, i'm a citizen of the world" is more or less to back out of the conversation, to declare that i'm uninterested in its terms. on the other hand though, without a critique of identity in place i may walk into that engagement and accept a deployment of "philadelphian" that includes the interests of cops, landlords, business owners who i in fact have no relevant common cause with. that is because, as we know, identity is not just shorthand for immediate social relations. it is deployed as shorthand for a whole set of ethical and political assumptions that are meant to continuously delimit and characterize the scope of immediate social relations available to the supposed holder of the identity in question.

when i reject that latter claim i'm not necessarily abdicating my ability to participate in the kind of fleeting, local identity production you seem to be referring to. on the contrary, my own ethical, political, aesthetic claims i make out in the open--rather than submerged in the identity shorthand--become more and not less active in the social process of reconstituting what it means to live in such and such a place or such and such a way.

identity purveyors at their worst engage in an extreme version of mistaking the map for the territory. in those conversations the idea, either explicitly or implicitly, is that if we can clarify in the abstract what the identity in question means, what its contents are--if we can just derive the perfect map--then no specific understanding of the territory would be necessary. i at least am interested in rejecting that approach entirely, and claiming that we must start with the territory--including the ethical, political, aesthetic perspectives that inform our disposition towards our material realities and towards each other--and only from there find ourselves back in the place of being comfortable using shorthand like "philadelphian" or "queer" or whatever else. what i am not interested in is the notion that a claim to any given identity immediately authorizes a person to think or speak to my experience, or that it makes them trustworthy in any regard. it might signal some basic information, like any small talk does, but on any serious question i need to get to know them first.

There are at least 3 things I’m not clarifying that may be leading to confusion here:

1) I’m basing a lot of this (but not all of this) on Sartre’s phenomenological ontology and in that framework, there is a distinction between pre-reflective consciousness and reflective consciousness, as well as a distinction between two modes of existence: being for-itself and being for-others. When I talk about how social relations are lived, what I’m referring to is the way that Sartre describes how consciousness functions pre-reflectively. That is, the way human reality is experienced prior to reflecting upon that experience in a secondary movement. After experiences are reflected upon by consciousness, they become *objects* for consciousness and are no longer lived. So for Sartre (and me), there is this division between Being and Knowledge that is analogous to these modes of pre-reflective and reflective consciousness.

This distinction between pre and post-reflection is a description of how experience is structured when we are not around others. It is a description of solitary subjectivity. Included amongst the various experiences that become objects (become …objectified) for consciousness is the Ego, the Self. But what I think is most interesting about Sartre and his thoughts on this is that the Ego doesn’t develop in the mode of being for-itself. Rather, it develops in the mode of being for-others. In the language of Sartre’s work Being and Nothingness, the Ego develops through the Look of the Other.

2) Ok, so what this means for questions of identity is that anything reflected upon, including ourselves as being for-others, becomes an object for consciousness …consciousness as an ontologically different sort of being than the in-itself …consciousness as a not-a-thing, a nothingness. Anyway, this means that identity is impossible. Identity, in this schema, is Being for-Itself. So when we talk about bad faith and such, like one of the comments above mentions, yes it is true that a lot of Identity stuff is bad faith. But if you bring Sartre’s philosophy of bad faith into this, then of course that is the case because part of the condition of our lives as human beings is that we try to control who we are for others, in bad faith, by trying to identify with objects, things in themselves, the ego, with others as objects (by reducing them to their materiality, through incarnation), and all sorts of other strategies. This is all laid out in Being and Nothingness if you want to learn more about that all, but the point is that this is the common situation for human beings. It isn’t a special feature of authoritarian, capitalist society or whatever. It’s way deeper than that.

3) But the solution to bad faith and these problems of Identity isn’t to try and live in a pre-reflective mode of being. That is just another form of bad faith, since even though subjectivity and the freedom of consciousness is part of the structure of our being, the other part of our being is our materiality …what is called “facticity”. If the first points weren’t complicated enough, shit gets even more complicated at this point of dialectical relation between the for-itself and the in-itself, or what Sartre later talks about in discussions of praxis. I won’t bore you to death with it just to argue that bad faith can come from a move in either direction: towards subjectivity or towards objectivity.

4) Well, so a lot of people think Sartre stops here. They talk about his play “No Exit” where he famous says “Hell is Other People.” They talk about his saying that “man is a useless passion.” But his philosophy developed for another 40 years after all of that. When he starts thinking about social problems, with works like Anti-Semite and Jew, or with is introduction to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, and even more elaborately in his Notebooks for an Ethics… what we find out is that he had another idea in mind for how to deal with bad faith: mutuality.

So this idea of mutuality is what I’m talking about. That since bad faith can’t really be dealt with effectively through moving towards subjectivity (negation of identity), nor through moving towards objectivity (complete identification), then maybe we’re missing something. And what we’re missing, in my opinion in everything above, is an understanding of these objects for consciousness as objects that we have a role in creating, together, through our praxis. Even when that object is constituted by strangers, like let’s say the object of being an “American,” that through our own internalization and then externalization of that object we reconstitute it. We can re-constitute these objects more-or-less in the same way that we have taken them in and internalized them. Or importantly, we can modify them. Now could our modifications become more popular? Probably not, but through changing our attitudes about how we deal with these objects and the process of identification, we become engaged and active in our relationships with them …and with each other.

5) Finally, it isn’t actually these pre-fabricated, popular objects that I think are worth much of our time. Rather, it’s the process of habituating ourselves to an active relationship with objects in general. That not only do we become the artisans and craftsman of our actual material structures - housing, food, etc. - but also of the conceptual structures that indicate our priorities, values, and other such terms for meaningful shit.

6) The catch though is that this is a solitary project. This isn’t just a project in the mode of being for-itself. This is a project of being for-others. In reference to the description of those modes earlier, it is in the mode of being for-others - the dialectical relationships that our egos are constituted through - that we also constitute our social being: our identities. So it’s a question of what “we” do, not just what any of us does in the privacy of our own subjective experiences. Not even in the dialogue between two people, because the dynamics of relationships between two people aren’t objectified until there is the Look of a Third, until there is a third-person perspective that can render the dynamics of relationships objectively.

Typo in point 6, it should read “The catch though is that this is NOT a solitary project.”

Anyway, final thought for the moment….

This is mostly a critique I am aiming at some who think of themselves as nihilists and some who think of themselves as Stirnerian egoists. It’s been a while since I’ve read Stirner and when I do again, I’ll really get into the weeds on this; but, this whole fucking shit about “spooks” and whatnot. YES, there is something to that. But it’s an incomplete understanding of ego-formation and social relations. That’s why no one can figure out just what the fuck exactly the Union of Egoists is. So in a way, what I’m trying to do is say, “Stirner has some great things to say, but he wasn’t able to move forward because of his own bad faith.” I’m saying that the so-called “Creative Nothing” of Stirner is a form of Sartrean Bad Faith, basically. That it is a misunderstanding of facticity and of being for-others. And that the discourse on Identity within the anarchist movement today has been stuck because the structuralists vs post-structuralist (and Stirnerian) anarchists are dealing with different forms of bad faith.

without trying to challenge or interrogate the system of thought you've laid out beyond what's manageable in this format, i think it's exactly my point above that you have now laid out such a system which gave rise to your earlier posts. it is the perspective from which you are engaging in the production and critique of these objects we're discussing.

that for me is the rub. accepting your framework it is still the case that the way we reflect and produce these objects, whether in the normal course of being or out of some deliberately "bad faith" attempt at conversation, at saying something useful to each other, does not occur in a vacuum. that reflective activity is contoured and characterized by our perspectives and dispositions. so while a room full of sartrians who have sussed that out about each other can engage in identity production is a certain basically reliable way (for each other), a room full of nihilists or any other stripe of people who have brought these critical and philosophical concerns home for themselves will do the same but with, one would imagine, markedly different results. this is all fine and i think i agree with you that it should be done in some form or another because, as you say, stopping at the critique turns the critique itself into another shibboleth.

but whether the familiarizing work takes the form of a salon or something more like a classic conspiracy or just a neighborhood potluck, my argument is that it has to be done. the notion that this type of production or objectification can be done in such a context and then transported out of that and retain its character or usefullness is not only wrong but too often confounding to any of the well-intentioned projects that may underlie it.

as for the third-party argument i think that extends the scope of the discussion beyond what i would try to engage with here. my response to you is more motivated by the practical implications of your initial posts--the type of language they seem to gesture for or towards unless a lot else is taken for granted. and it is exactly that kind of submerged perspective that i think is so often toxic about the socially generalized practice of identity production and discourse etc.

i'm not suggesting that sartrians and nihilists cant talk to each other or to anyone else about this kind of thing btw, only meant to illustrate that in any such intentional setting there is a substantial amount of critical and perspectival work that becomes assumed--that is the intention. and outside an intentional setting no such assumptions can be reasonably or trustworthily made, and yet routinely are, and often enough deliberately and abusively.

I think I agree with what you’re saying and as you note, there are limits to this format that make further elaboration unappealing.

I’m saying that the so-called “Creative Nothing” of Stirner is a form of Sartrean Bad Faith, basically. That it is a misunderstanding of facticity and of being for-others. And that the discourse on Identity within the anarchist movement today has been stuck because the structuralists vs post-structuralist (and Stirnerian) anarchists are dealing with different forms of bad faith."

I'm not sure you got the concept of Creative Nothing correctly, CD. Also your claim of it being "Sartrean Bad Faith" is vague especially when put under the lens of structuralist vs post-structuralist anarchists (if this dichotomy means anything in 2023). Just beware of the epistemological trap of "fly-fucking" as the saying goes in my native language.

So in your native language is "fly-fucking" a metaphor for up in the air academic psuedo-intellectual ranting?

I’m also wondering what this is? As a proponent of pseudo-academic proto-ranting I feel like this might be a slight?

Imagine a bunch of philosophy nerd frat boys who, for the sad fact of not being able to get laid with the cheerleader chicks, gotta get into some ontological hermeneutics on the sex of flies.

Yes, that.

Don’t get me wrong… but when I was of frat boy age, the only way to get laid by cheerleader chicks was to explain to them how flies have sex. Are you saying that you kids aren’t doing that now? I’m really lost here. Are you like… are you saying that you don’t talk about insects banging to get in the mood? The fuck is wrong with you Zoomers?

Actually this whole naming of decades within a century is a meaningless fallacy because these decades of fads are all based on bourgeois values, morals and their fetishes. Most Westerner still exist within a neo-fuedal mindset dating back centuries.

Hey, I said I’m not ready to commit on this. My first reading of Stirner was when I was 15 or something and found The Ego and It’s Own on a website called non-servaum or something. My affection for the philosopher has been hot and cold. But since I haven’t read Wolfi’s translation yet and it’s been a long time already since it was published, I’m willing to reserve judgement until that day comes.

Nevertheless, I think at the very least that Sartre will show himself as an improvement on Stirner. We’ll see I guess!

Sartre to me has always been a reformulator -or in the words of Debord, about Sartre, a repackager- of older philosophy theories. I have yet to find original ideas or theory from Sartre, so that's always welcome to have this stance of mine shattered.

But it's hard to find something that is not provoking and original with Stirner, as the only other philosophers who came any close to his nihilistic egoism were, to varying degrees, Sade, Montaigne, or Duns Scotus.

Your opinion is definitely shared by other philosophers. Sartre is often summarizes as a “sythentic” thinker… basically, as what you said. I think there’s a lot of truth to that, actually…

But let’s not get too caught up in our love for originality here. French philosophy is a pain in the ass, to begin with. And when it comes to Debord… look, the guy took Sartre’s idea of “situation” and developed it practically. He owes a debt to Sartre and never admittied it that I know of. Foucault is another French competitor in this ridiculous show of philosophical value. Everyone had to make a statement about their relationship with Sartre in the mid-late 20th Century because of his position in French philosophy.

First of all, I think Sartre would be nothing without Simone de Beauvoir. People who have done the work have demonstrated that her thought was a crucial intervention in Sartre’s later philosophy. I also think he’d be nothing without Camus. Shit, he’d be nothing without the flock of thinkers who published in the journals he edited. That includes the anarchist Daniel Guerin.

Anyway, I think that this quality of Sartre is the reason to read him rather than a reason to avoid him. His synthetic ability lead to the development of a coherent system of thought. I think that’s good! I read Sartre for his ability to cohere the amazing philosophical insights of the milieu he was in. And to me… the fact that it resulted in his claim that he was an anarchist in the last 10-20 years of his life indicates a really important conclusion of French theory in the 20th Century. That when we think about Sartre as someone who was sucking in the juices of Merleu-Ponty, Heidegger, Hegel, Marx, Geurin, Fanon, etc. etc. etc. and finding a way to make sense of them all as participants in the work of philosophy, it’s important that he wound up at anarchism.

Personally, Binswanger is actually who I think is the important philosopher to springboard from. But who knows Binswanger’s works? Oddly enough in the book I just posted, he’s mentioned. I have yet to see what it says. But I know what I think already. Binswanger and Buber (who influenced him) are like the hard philosophical thinkers that someone like Raul Vaneigem (sp) puts into better language.

To not get too carried away though, I think Sartre’s work Critique of Dialectical Reason is chock full of argumentation and theory that isn’t found anywhere else for the insurrectionary anarchist positions I lean towards. If you dig around in Alfredo Bonanno’s works, he was also very interested in these ideas.

Sorry - the beers… they’re getting to me. But I think yo’re right to think of Sartre this way. I think you’re wrong to think that originality is more important than elegant synthesis.

Sartre having once been so swayed by Marxist theory has left a permanent taint upon his intellectual integrity!

also, sarte hated that Camus was younger, prettier and of course, got more ass

I was searching around for some work that compared Stirner with Kierkegaard since they're both contemporaries and student-critics of Hegel. I found this book, which I had never heard of before. Scrolling through it, there are some interesting arguments about Stirner as an anarchist and Stirner as an existentialist. I haven't read enough of it yet to say if I agree, but it seems like I do. Thought I'd share the wealth:

https://cyberdandy.org/wp-content/uploads/R.%20W.%20K.%20Paterson%20-%20...

thanks!

That's very helpful, but I'd already linked Stirner, Nietzsche, Heidegger and pragmatic Russian attempts to a reasonable nihilistic interpretation of life and freedom; so what's in this book is what all real anarcho-nihilists already know.

there is no such thing as a 'real' anarcho-nihilist. truth is antithetical to nihilism. a nihilist is not something you can really be at all.

Started reading this today!

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