From Eco-Revolt
Last week I tabled at the Manchester and Salford Anarchist Bookfair, and performed a reading of my collection-of-poems/manifesto Affirming The Open. After the performance and when back at the table, a woman stopped and had a look at a printed copy of Affirming The Open that was on the table. A moment later she asked me what I mean by ontology and what ontology means to me. I responded by saying that, basically, to me ontology means the exploration and consideration of what is real and what is a reality; which I would also describe as the difference between authentic and inauthentic, the difference between organic and artificial, and the difference between wild-Being/wildlife/wildness and civilisation/Leviathan/Moloch/the-state/etc. After this and after having told me that she works as a biological-ontologist, she asked me what is my most important ontological concept. With 3 Feral books in front of me and zine copies of an essay I wrote with “feral” in the title, my desire for sincerity brought me to answer “feral” – though I was not and am not entirely comfortable with the idea of my having a hierarchy of concepts – with a brief explanation of my meaning. She then took with her a copy of Affirming The Open, to my joyful pleasure.
This moment of relationship fuelled the fires of creative passion in me, to write and share this brief account of what I mean by “feral”, what my concept of “feral” is, and (most importantly) what my experience of “feral” is. I am treating this in no way as an authoritative statement and accept no authoritative negation of my meaning, should any individual seek to respond to this assuming such a position of authority.
Put simply, the meaning of “feral” that I have used throughout my writings is that of the experience of being caught between the real of wildness – that clings to the entirety of being, permeates through all attempts to close in and deny access to life and is, really, all there is – (and, for me, wildness is anarchy (ontological and primal)) and the reality of civilisation – that is artificial, doesn’t really exist, is constantly attempting to reconstruct itself as its totalitarian presence de-totalises due to the processes of wild creation/destruction. The experience of this schizoid split is a Kafkaesque involution of becoming-animal as becoming-individual. The paradoxical quality of this becoming-individual is that it is a holistic-individuality, where being “one” is being “One”.
Being both a split and a paradox, for me, renders “feral” a liminal position and concept. It is liminal in that it is a position of boundaryland-transitioning, between the wild and civilisation. But, perhaps more importantly(?), “feral” is liminal in the sense that it is being-between-oneness-and-Oneness. This affirmation of the Oneness of the wild world and the oneness of being-animal (animal as singular), alongside the splitting born from the illusion of the separation of civilisation from life, is what I mean by “feral”.
Comments
This guy looks like a young John Zerzan...
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 06:40
and just as (fill in the blank/s). Be creative folks.
and just as purple,
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 08:30
In reply to This guy looks like a young John Zerzan... by anon (not verified)
and just as purple, strawberry scented and good at tennis.
and just as many folk make
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 11:50
In reply to This guy looks like a young John Zerzan... by anon (not verified)
and just as many folk make the absurd assumption that the similarity in appearance equates to a similarity in thinking because a few trivial ideas intersect, immediately judge them and place them into the same ideological group, when infact, they have different emotional and cognitive natures. Be creative folks in all of your endeavours, but most importantly, one must act truly to ones own philosophy, and not contradict oneself. For example, if a person protests against industrial culture, then that person must not be dependant upon and benefitting from that same culture.
One must must must!
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 12:16
In reply to and just as many folk make by anon (not verified)
One must must must!
You must be lost this is an anarchist website.
But in the grammatical
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 18:38
In reply to One must must must! by anon (not verified)
But in the grammatical context it is a request for a form not a law. Read more books about freedom of speech and how to assist folk needing assistance by offering creative advice and tasks or REQUESTS for them to try.
Muh freedom of speech!
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 18:51
In reply to But in the grammatical by anon (not verified)
Muh freedom of speech!
Ughh, speak nazis!
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 20:23
In reply to Muh freedom of speech! by anon (not verified)
Ughh, speak nazis!
Orwell called it doublespeak
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 23:50
In reply to Ughh, speak nazis! by anon (not verified)
Orwell called it doublespeak brah.
" to me ontology means ..."
Philosophy Professor (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 08:36
Two basic lessons that every student of philosophy learn in their first days of study.
1. Philosophy is about thinking not about what you feel.
2. Words we use have meanings regardless of what they might 'mean to you'.
Julian's writing is like watching a newborn deer trying to stand up for the first time and then expressing to all the other deer in the forest what standing means to them and then going on to describe how it feels to sit.
Moloch??? Where we go 1 we go
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2022 - 13:56
Moloch??? Where we go 1 we go feral!!
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