#Post-Structuralism

[templeofminerva]

This is what people think the difference between modernism and postmodernism is

is that good

[omegaphilosophia]

The Ontology of Text

The ontology of text refers to the study of the nature, structure, and being of text, focusing on what text is at its most fundamental level. This exploration can span several philosophical and theoretical perspectives, often addressing questions about the existence, identity, and categorization of text as an entity. Here’s a breakdown of key aspects:

1. Text as an Ontological Entity:

Material vs. Abstract: Text can be considered both as a material object (e.g., a book or a written document) and as an abstract entity (e.g., the content or meaning conveyed by the text). The ontology of text thus involves understanding how these two aspects coexist and relate to each other.

Text as a Work vs. Text as a Document: The distinction between a text as a work (the conceptual or intellectual creation) and as a document (the physical or digital manifestation) is crucial in ontology. For instance, different editions of a book may be considered different documents but the same work.

2. Identity and Persistence:

Sameness and Variation: The ontology of text deals with the question of what makes a text the same across different instances or versions. What remains consistent between different editions or translations of a text? How much can a text change before it is considered a different text?

Temporal Aspects: How does the identity of a text persist over time? This includes considerations of how historical context, authorial intent, and reader interpretation might affect the identity of a text.

3. Structure of Text:

Hierarchical vs. Network Structures: Text can be seen as having a hierarchical structure (e.g., chapters, paragraphs, sentences) or a network-like structure (e.g., hypertext or intertextuality). The ontology of text examines how these structures are constituted and how they affect the nature of text.

Units of Text: What are the basic units of text? Words, sentences, paragraphs, or perhaps even smaller or larger units? The ontological inquiry involves defining and categorizing these units.

4. Function and Intent:

Authorial Intent: The role of the author's intention in the ontology of text is a major consideration. Is the meaning of a text tied to what the author intended, or does it exist independently?

Reader Interpretation: The ontology of text also considers the role of the reader or audience in constituting the text. Is the meaning of a text something inherent, or is it something that comes into being through interpretation?

5. Intertextuality and Contextuality:

Intertextual Relations: Texts often reference or build upon other texts. The ontology of text considers how texts are related to one another and how these relationships affect their existence and identity.

Contextual Dependency: The meaning and existence of a text can be dependent on its context, including cultural, historical, and situational factors. The ontology of text examines how context shapes what a text is.

6. Digital and Hypertext Ontology:

Digital Texts: The advent of digital texts introduces new ontological questions. How do digital formats affect the nature of text? How does hypertext, with its non-linear structure, change our understanding of text?

Versioning and Fluidity: Digital texts can be easily modified, leading to questions about the stability and identity of texts in a digital environment. What does it mean for a text to have a version, and how does this affect its ontology?

7. Philosophical Perspectives:

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: These schools of thought provide frameworks for understanding the ontology of text, focusing on the underlying structures of language (structuralism) and the fluidity and instability of meaning (post-structuralism).

Phenomenology: This approach might consider the experience of the text, focusing on how it appears to consciousness and the role of the reader in bringing the text to life.

The ontology of text is a rich and complex field that intersects with many areas of philosophy, literary theory, linguistics, and digital humanities. It seeks to answer fundamental questions about what text is, how it exists, how it maintains identity, and how it relates to both its material form and its interpretation by readers.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Finally is primitivism motivated primarily by a desire to return to a more innocent time in one’s childhood?

Ishkah: So the last thing was, I read what I thought was a good book by Saul Newman on ‘The Politics of Post-Anarchism’, his take on where we should be going, he kind of values do you know ‘le ZAD’ in France, which means ‘Zone of Defence’, so mostly separating oneself off from cities, but still rebelling, just not in a storming the Bastille way. In the book anyway Newman critiques you I think by saying how the desire for a primitive way of life is often a desire for a more innocent time in one’s childhood:

“Where Zerzan’s argument becomes problematic is in the essentialist notion that there is a rationally intelligible presence, a social objectivity that is beyond language and discourse. To speak in Lacanian terms, the prelinguistic state of jouissance is precisely unattainable: it is always mediated by language that at the same time alienates and distorts it. It is an imaginary jouissance, an illusion created by the symbolic order itself, as the secret behind its veil. We live in a symbolic and linguistic universe, and to speculate about an original condition of authenticity and immediacy, or to imagine that an authentic presence is attainable behind the veils of the symbolic order or beyond the grasp of language, is futile. There is no getting outside language and the symbolic; nor can there be any return to the pre Oedipal real. To speak in terms of alienation, as Zerzan does, is to imagine a pure presence or fullness beyond alienation, which is an impossibility. While Zerzan’s attack on technology and domestication is no doubt important and valid, it is based on a highly problematic essentialism implicit in his notion of alienation. To question this discourse of alienation is not a conservative gesture. It does not rob us of normative reasons for resisting domination, as Zerzan claims. It is to suggest that projects of resistance and emancipation do not need to be grounded in an immediate presence or positive fullness that exists beyond power and discourse. Rather, radical politics can be seen as being based on a moment of negativity: an emptiness or lack that is productive of new modes of political subjectivity and action. Instead of hearkening back to a primordial authenticity that has been alienated and yet which can be recaptured – a state of harmony which would be the very eclipse of politics – I believe it is more fruitful to think in terms of a constitutive rift that is at the base of any identity, a rift that produces radical openings for political articulation and action.”

Zerzan: Well I know Newman, I mean he’s a classic post-structuralist, post-modern character. It gets down to basic stuff doesn’t it? I mean if you feel like presence is just an illusion, most basically because there’s nothing outside of symbolic culture, right? “Outside the text, there is nothing” Derrida, right? Well what if that’s not true? What if there’s an alternative to symbolic culture? To the whole representational racket?

I mean I think there is quite possibly, there is that possibility. In fact in practice there was… hunter-gatherer life, pre-symbolic culture, right? For over a million years, you know face-to-face community, non-hierarchical, these are generalities here, but they did quite well without symbolic culture, without art, without the concept of numbers, without a lot of things.

So you can make the assertion and you know a lot of it’s traced back to say Derrida or others, but just because you’re saying there is no presence, that’s just a fiction, that the presence cannot exist because you can’t get outside of the symbolic, well that’s one point of view, but I don’t think that’s true.

That’s just, you know it’s part of the general surrender politically, in more or less reactionary times you get philosophies like that, which sort of take over. The whole backward aspect of post-modernism, it really is a way of… at a time when there’s pretty much no social movements you get stuff like that and that’s a crude way to put it, but that’s part of the picture I think.

Ishkah: Okay, yeah I take your point, I think obviously they would say that about some primitivists. But…

I guess I don’t know how they’re defining symbolism, my perspective is animals are using symbols and language going way back to parrots and primates, but…

Zerzan: Well I think that’s more… I mean that is tricky, it is an open question, animals do communicate, but I think it’s more signals than symbols. It’s not really representational, in the way of symbolic culture that the humans have just because they communicate, of course they do, birds, all sorts of animals, they have to for survival, but that doesn’t make it very symbolic, it seems to me, but anyway that’s… These definitions have to you know… they’re sort of problematic because we’ve used these terms in different ways or inelastic ways that then the whole conversation becomes a little confusing, so I don’t want to take too rigid a position, but you don’t have to have symbolic language for there to be communication. Anyway that’s obvious I guess.

Ishkah: Well, yeah it’s tricky for sure, I mean I get into debates all the time with people who want to use language like abolish work and abolish prisons and I guess it’s an attempt to reframe the debate.

But, just in terms of this term presence, whether we should desire an authenticity of a long period of our evolutionary history as humans. I don’t know, like I think potentially we could be suffering more now for sure, but it could be suffering that we we desire to take on if we can get to this left-anarchist, pro technology future. It could be a source of virtue for us, striving for these intellectual skills.

And then authenticity, as a concept it’s only developed recently, like we used to think of authenticity differently as like sincerity. So, the effort you put into helping your family would be an indication of whether you were being authentic to yourself, if you were being just and fair to your family in taking on your responsibilities.

So, I don’t know whether it would be authentic for me to desire hunter-gather life, I know I would desire hunter-gatherer life more than the middle ages, but I think rather than just settling for primitive life or just settling for the middle ages, I think we should try and be aspirational to this future world of still being able to use some technology, like printing presses and penicillin and stuff, so I don’t know.

Zerzan: Yeah, it’s needed these different steps, and one requires the other, I mean now technology comes around to promise to heal what it has caused in the first place, so where do you try to arrest that progression?

And what does it all depend on? You don’t have any technology really without the extraction, without the mining, the smelters, the warehouses. And who do people on the left assume is going to do all that? It doesn’t exist without all that? So that’s a form of slavery, but they seem to be fine with that, to have the wonders of technology resting upon what? I mean not only the ruin of the natural world, of the biosphere, but you know wage slavery for almost countless people, for that to exist. That’s not a very liberatory assumption.

Ishkah: Yeah, and if I believed that we were just going the way of machines and we were going to create artificial intelligence and terminate ourselves by just letting them take over or becoming more machine like ourselves I would definitely worry…

Zerzan: And deciding everything and people don’t understand how they work, I mean we’ve swept along in this whole van of the progress with a capital ‘p’ and look where it’s gotten us, it’s just becoming horrible on every front, it’s one large crisis where all the parts of it are kind of merging into a very, very bad picture.

Ishkah: Yeah I don’t know, like I’m still researching, maybe I’m being naive in just advocating for something where that is more likely to happen, but yeah I worry that if people take direct action and try to just separate themselves off from technology and cities, that we leave people to suffer, like we lose hospitals… I mean I don’t know how useful you think hypotheticals are, but so definitely if technology is this thing that just manufactures consent and we get towards robots then that’s definitely bad and if we have a reasonable high confidence that is the future then obviously I would be on board with just trying to collapse the system in order to try and get back to primitivism, but hypothetically…

Zerzan: These are big challenges, you know everybody wants community, right? I mean we can all agree on that, except what happened to it? Why did it go away? Why has mass society all but obliterated that? All but obliterated the face-to-face human contact kind of world? Which I think really did roughly exist before domestication.

You know, this sounded so utopian to me when I first discovered the literature that I first ran into by accident, the whole anthropological deal, but it actually isn’t and it’s just just well known a lot of it.

I mean a lot of it isn’t well known, I grant you we can’t know precisely, or even vaguely, what the consciousness was, how satisfied people were in their lives. We really don’t know that, but I mean there was some pretty good non-lethal developments apparently, you know some contacts that were worthy of lasting for quite some time.

You know domestication, I mean that’s like one tenth of one percent of our of human species, anyway you know all that.

Ishkah: Yeah I really value some nomadic cultures that I’m worried that we’re encroaching on. I think there was a story recently about loggers in the amazon taking away the tribe’s bow and arrows so that they wouldn’t shoot at them, but then leaving them to starve in this horrible way.

What was it gonna say, oh yeah so I don’t know how useful useful you think hypotheticals are but in terms of like, say we realized this hunter gatherer world, but there were still some people who had the knowledge to create assembly lines for things like penicillin and glasses and stuff, and they saw people who were disabled or injured, and they wanted to create some technology to help these people. Would that be a legitimate target for sabotage or would that just be a consent issue, where you let them do that even if you worry that it helps restart technological society?

Zerzan: Well, I don’t know, I think we’d have to, if everybody could pitch in and try to find workable solutions as we go, I mean I think there could be intermediate steps, you know we don’t want people unable to live without certain technologies to just simply die off, but at the same time it’s not clear to me that we need the worldwide grid otherwise you can’t achieve that. I mean I think there are other methods, some of which are just simple things like when you’re peddling a bicycle with the light, you pedal and it generates electricity to light your tail-light or your headlight. So why can’t you do that with somebody who needs a respirator? You know, you don’t have to have a whole world system going may be to fix, you know to to help people in different situations and as we kind of try to go away from the dependency which has been really pretty fatal.

You know something like that, whereas it isn’t just a blanket theoretical rejection overnight or you push a button and it’s something else, I mean that isn’t quite a fair characterization of the primitivist thinking I’m familiar with.

Ishkah: No sure, it’s just a funny hypothetical for like thousands of years in the future, like my ideal feature is a pro-tech society that conscientiously decides not to use technology badly and I know you don’t see that as possible, but I don’t know I see some value in labor movement philosophy of if animals finds a use value in the land that we can just give them large areas to re-wild. And I would want people to have the option of being able to live in bear country and risk getting attacked by bears if they want to.

Zerzan: Sure, but that doesn’t seem likely, that goes against the logic of domestication, the only thing that was left for indigenous people is the most inhospitable places on the planet and you know same goes for other species, that’s why extinction is just running rampart and one species after another is either gone or threatened with extinction. That’s the logic of it, yeah we can dream up free spaces for somebody or another, but where would that come from? Where would you find the basis for that inside this system, which is so all enveloping, I would be in favor of it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just hard to see if there’s a solution within the system.

[raffaellopalandri]

Desire Desire Beyond Lack: Deleuze and Guattari’s Ontology of Production and Its Cross-Philosophical ResonancesDesire

In their groundbreaking work Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari revolutionise the very concept of desire, severing it from its traditional association with lack and repositioning it as a force of positive production. This short post offers an in-depth exegesis of their pivotal assertion “Desire is not a lack, it is a plenitude, a positivity: desire…

[chimp-prolly-not-typing-hamlet]

Michel Foucault at postmodernmas simulating a simulation of a simulation of himself down the chimney to socially construct your presents and perform an epistemological deconstruction of the plate of coffee and cigarettes left by the fireplace

[rotenotes]

Simon Choat - Postanarchism from a Marxist Perspective

Simon Choat – Postanarchism from a Marxist Perspective a { text-decoration: none } a:hover { text-decoration: underline } a:active { text-decoration: underline } strike { color: grey } u { text-decoration: none; background-color: yellow } tt { color: #2e3436; } pre { color: #2e3436; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0 } h1 { text-decoration: underline; color: #4e9a06; margin: 0…

[analysisroulette]

This episode, Duck presents a #poststructural analysis of #HowlsMovingCastle. Amongst other things, this involved finding out what #poststrucuralism means.

[against-forms-recognizable]

This week and last week my reading circle went over a 2006 essay by the anarchist philosopher Todd May, titled Michel Foucault's Guide to Living. (Searchable on Anna's Archive) In it, he asks: what is left to us, as philosophers? In a day when philosophy is tamed, chained to the institution of the university and at the mercy of state funding, when any advancements within it seem less and less relevant to people's lives, how do we find meaning in what we do?

In exploring this question, he compares the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius' text Meditations, a compilation of privately penned reflections on life, to the writings of Michel Foucault. The Meditations, he says, are meant as a spiritual exercise; entry after entry presents the same short, concise ethical principles over and over again, with reflections on how to adhere to these lessons in the face of a complex society of people who all want you to bend to their way of living and thinking, a way to return yourself to a core set of values as the world constantly tries to lead you astray.

Conversely, Michel Foucault was a philosopher who rejected the idea of ethics, the idea that there was one correct way to live. Instead his philosophy is focused on aesthetics, the art of living, of constructing your life as a piece of art, of formulating your personal truth and expressing it in its utmost form. Could we perhaps extract spiritual exercises from Foucault's philosophy, then, that allow us to orient ourselves towards such a self-formulated cause, to dedicating ourselves to exploring personal truth, and in doing so finding a new way for philosophy to exist within our lives?

[thepoststructuralistdevil]

I'm like a computer error but the error made me lose my gender as well

[itsbrucey]

Big fan of sun motifs in characters not necessarily being about positivity and happiness and how they're so " bright and warm" but instead being about fucking brutal they are.

Radiant. A FORCE of nature that will turn you to ash. That warmth that burns so hot it feels like ice. Piercing yellow and red and white. A character being a Sun because you cannot challenge a Sun without burning alive or taking everything down with them if victorious.

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Semiotics

The philosophy of semiotics explores the study of signs and symbols, their meaning, and how they function in communication. Semiotics is concerned with understanding how meaning is constructed and interpreted in various forms of communication, whether linguistic, visual, or cultural. This field intersects with linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and psychology, examining the processes by which signs represent objects, ideas, or concepts.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of Semiotics:

Definition of Signs:

Signs and Symbols: In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning beyond itself. Signs can be words, images, sounds, gestures, or objects. A symbol is a type of sign that represents something by convention or agreement, such as a flag representing a country.

Sign Components: A sign typically consists of two components: the signifier (the form the sign takes, such as a word or image) and the signified (the concept or meaning it represents). The relationship between these components is central to semiotic analysis.

Semiotic Theories:

Ferdinand de Saussure: Saussure, a Swiss linguist, is one of the founding figures of semiotics. He introduced the idea of the sign as composed of the signifier and signified, and emphasized that the relationship between them is arbitrary and based on social conventions. His work laid the foundation for structuralism.

Charles Sanders Peirce: An American philosopher, Peirce developed a triadic model of the sign, consisting of the representamen (the form of the sign), the interpretant (the meaning derived by the interpreter), and the object (the actual thing to which the sign refers). Peirce’s model is more dynamic and process-oriented than Saussure’s.

Roland Barthes: A French literary theorist, Barthes extended semiotics into cultural studies, exploring how myths and ideologies are constructed through signs. He analyzed how everyday objects and media convey broader cultural meanings.

Sign Systems:

Language as a Sign System: Language is the most studied sign system in semiotics. It is composed of linguistic signs (words), which are used to communicate complex ideas and emotions. Semiotics examines how language operates as a system of signs and how meaning is structured within this system.

Non-Linguistic Signs: Semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems, such as visual art, music, clothing, architecture, and even body language. These systems, like language, rely on conventions and cultural contexts to convey meaning.

Signification and Meaning:

Denotation and Connotation: Semiotics distinguishes between denotation (the literal meaning of a sign) and connotation (the associated or implied meanings). For example, a red rose denotatively signifies a type of flower, but it connotatively signifies love or passion.

Polysemy: Many signs are polysemous, meaning they have multiple meanings depending on context. Semiotics explores how the same sign can be interpreted differently in various cultural, social, or personal contexts.

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism:

Structuralism: Structuralism, influenced by Saussure, is an approach that analyzes cultural phenomena as systems of signs governed by underlying structures. It seeks to understand how meaning is produced within these structures, emphasizing the role of binary oppositions (e.g., good/evil, male/female) in organizing meaning.

Post-Structuralism: Post-structuralist thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault challenged the fixed relationships between signifier and signified proposed by structuralism. They argued that meaning is unstable, context-dependent, and subject to continual reinterpretation and deconstruction.

Semiotics in Cultural and Media Studies:

Myth and Ideology: Semiotics is used to analyze how myths, ideologies, and cultural narratives are constructed and maintained through signs. Barthes’ concept of myth explores how dominant cultural values are naturalized through everyday signs.

Media and Representation: Semiotics is a critical tool in media studies, helping to deconstruct how media texts (films, advertisements, news, etc.) produce and manipulate meaning. It examines how representations shape public perception and reinforce power structures.

Philosophical Implications:

Reality and Representation: Semiotics raises philosophical questions about the nature of reality and our ability to represent it through signs. If our understanding of the world is mediated by signs, then our perception of reality is always interpretative, never direct.

Subjectivity and Interpretation: The interpretation of signs is influenced by individual subjectivity, cultural background, and context. This challenges the notion of objective meaning and emphasizes the role of the interpreter in creating meaning.

Applications of Semiotics:

Advertising and Marketing: Semiotics is widely used in advertising to create powerful and persuasive messages. By understanding how signs operate, advertisers craft messages that resonate with consumers’ desires and cultural values.

Literary Criticism: In literary theory, semiotics is used to analyze texts, uncovering the layers of meaning embedded in language, symbols, and narrative structures.

Anthropology and Sociology: Semiotics informs the study of cultural rituals, practices, and artifacts, offering insights into how societies construct and convey meaning.

The philosophy of semiotics provides a framework for understanding how meaning is created, communicated, and interpreted through signs. It reveals the complexities of language, culture, and communication, showing how signs shape our perception of reality and our interactions with the world. By analyzing the structures and systems of signs, semiotics offers deep insights into the workings of human thought, culture, and society.

[dailyanarchistposts]

How do you determine what direct action targets are justifiable today?

Ishkah: I’m interested in for example Ted Kaczynski’s effect on the world, I know that he partly inspired a lot of people on the left to take actions under the name Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. But, I’m a worried that he’s been a stepping stone to the anti-egalitarian far-right, like that he motivated an affinity group in Mexico called ‘Individualists Tending toward the Wild’ to go from committing arsons aimed at sabotaging evil companies and instead started to desire to have the wider effect of terrorizing people through fear of injury or death on the simple principle of being against technology and wanting to regress to hunter-gatherer societies.

Zerzan: Yeah, if in fact there really was such a group, that’s debatable I guess. They’re kind of a farce. But, whether it’s fictional or not, the fantasy still raises the same questions.

Ishkah: I know Ted Kaczynski has posited the conspiracy that the group is mostly a secret service effort to delegitimize radical groups. But I think for Kaczynski it’s likely a defence mechanism at not wishing such a group to be real and be associated with him or his political tendency.

But, for sure the actions taken under the name could be more reflective of a few individuals across the world who don’t know each other, so not even resembling a group. As well, many of the crimes they claimed to have committed so as to spread fear have been proven not to have happened, which is certainly true.

Zerzan: I’m much more interested in critique than I am in tactics, but to me what’s really at the base of it, as it usually is, is the question of violence. What is violence and what is not violence? And I think my position is rather simple, it’s not violence if it’s not directed at some form of life, in other words you can’t violate a building in my view.

I mean friends of mine might disagree, I mean they would say yes it’s violence and we don’t shrink from violence and that’s a position too.

So, I just think that in general there are a lot of targets and you know I don’t think you can get too far finding answers to that question in the abstract, but I could be wrong.

Ishkah: It’s a complicated problem, I know some websites try to put together an aims and principles list to explain what actions they’ll report on and then I think that can influence what actions people take and what actions people think are justified. [1]

You have people using slogans like ‘by any means necessary’ going all the way back to Malcolm X & Franz Fanon in the 60s, which I guess is an attempt to say we’ll go as far as we’re pushed, so be careful what state terror tactics you use on us.

I’ve experimented with writing up a list of principles for what direct action principles are necessary for different stages in history, in terms of peace time and when social tensions are at their height, [2] of which one principle is; during a non-revolutionary period “never physically hurt people in order to achieve political goals as it runs counter to our philosophy on the left that material conditions create the person and so we should make every peaceful effort to rehabilitate people.” So, what do you think about those as an important foundation?

Zerzan: Well I’ll just mention that Kaczynski did refine his own view on that, I mean he apologized for that early crude bomb on the jetliner, he renounced that. I think the targets were relatively more appropriate as he went along, as they became more lethal, on that level anyway, I think you could argue that that’s the case. [3]

And where is the effectiveness? I mean what success are you having or not having? I mean that can tell you something about what things to do or what things to avoid.”

Ishkah: And what would be the measurements of success for you do you think?

Zerzan: Well, I would say advancing the dialogue. I think that if your thing is mainly critique, it’s a question of the conversation in society, is there some resonance? Is there some interest? Is there some development going on there? In other words, I’m not afraid of certain tactics that people commonly shrink from. and they say well, ‘you’re just turning everybody off’, but sometimes I think you have to go through that stage if you will, I mean sometimes that comes with the territory, in other words, people will be defensive and horrified or whatever at first and then they won’t be. You know? Then it becomes part of the dialogue, you know then things change, they don’t remain the same. In other words, there can be shock at the beginning with some tactics, but that wears off, I think, I would assert that’s likely to be the case.

Ishkah: Right, and you’ve made the comparison between Kaczynski and John Brown in that way. The difference I would say for me though, in those two situations are that John Brown was six years away from the civil war and they were very much accepted at the time to be one of two sides fighting a guerrilla war, one for revolution and the other for conservatism. Kaczynski’s actions were in some ways asymmetrical warfare, but they didn’t have any snowballing effect, they weren’t strategic targets that scared people off from doing what they were doing.

Secondly, Kaczynski’s actions were taken during a non-revolutionary period in which I think physically hurting people to achieve political goals is bad. It’s bad precisely because the conditions weren’t right for revolutionary war.

For example, even if the revolutionary left got really good at assassinating captains of industry and getting away with it, there would be reasonable fears around the psychology of people who would take such an act against people who they could have grown up and been socially conditioned to be themselves, which would inexorably lead to a more authoritarian society and worse foundations on which to work towards a better society.

Zerzan: Well I was quite frankly surprised by the levels of sympathy that were spontaneously expressed in the US in the 90s, I was pleasantly surprised by that. Really, there was much much less horror, or there was horror at the bombings and stuff, but there was also a good deal of sympathy.

Like one case, my wife knew this woman at the business school at the university here, and this person commented on the media footage when they were taking him somewhere in Montana before they moved him to California. And he’s dressed, it’s a well-known deal, he’s got a sport coat on and you can tell he’s got a vest on underneath and he’s kind of looking up at the sky as he’s walking along. And her comment was; “why don’t they just put a cross on his shoulders?” In other words comparing him to Jesus for Christ’s sake, I mean that’s a little unexpected, especially from a rather ‘straight person’, who’s not an anarchist or anything of this sort.”

Ishkah: It was definitely a novel case, that’s for sure. I’m fascinated by Aileen Wuornos case, who was this hitch-hiking sex worker in the 70s, who ended up killing and robbing some of her clients, and it was this weird juxtaposition for the time because women were getting killed all the time by men and so it flipped the script a little bit that there was actually truck drivers who had assaulted or raped women on the road before, who began to be too afraid to pick up women because they were worried about getting killed.

On hearing news on the radio of a woman sex worker killing men, one woman compared the unbelievable experience to the first time Orson Welles’ radio-play ‘The War of The Worlds’ was received by a bemused audience. [4]

So, I’m fine with people finding a lot of value in his philosophy and he’s definitely an intellectual who has found a fairly good critique of modern civilization in 90% of his writings. I just worry that his effect on the world is going to be a stepping stone and to the right for a lot of people, so in terms of discussing his legacy we need to figure out ways to lay down some principles and say that what he did was chaotic and wrong, and we need we need these solid principles for direct action today, to lay the stepping stones for going forward today.’

For example, I know you disagree with random bombings of the ITS tendency, but in terms of people agreeing with your philosophy on what kind of technology is likely bad which is very broad, this idea that any tool that requires a hierarchy of coordination and specialization is something to be avoided, are you not concerned that you could be promoting direct action which falls well outside ethical principles like the ones I laid out in my email to you, such that you run the risk of motivating someone to take direct action which makes your rebellion look insane and so lead people to wish to preserve the status quo or facilitate a move to a more authoritarian society?

I observed some important push back like the Anarchist Federations response to an Informal Anarchist Federation cell kneecapping a nuclear physicist. [5] Critiquing firstly, taking actions based on the conspiratorial anti-industrial beliefs in the over-exaggerated dangers of nuclear meltdowns in stable nations. And secondly, the terroristic nature of attempting to spread fear rather than building social movements and sometimes sabotaging what stands in our way, but always with the goal of winning strategic victories.

Zerzan: Well again, I’d say what is happening in terms of social movements now? I mean there’s very little right now, I could point to the anti-globalization years so-called, you know around 1999 to 2001 which was a pretty considerable thing, it’s kind of forgotten but I mean I don’t know, perhaps Kaczynski’s forgotten.

Ishkah: I still don’t think a strong argument has been given for justifying direct action which attempts to harm or kill people. And so, unfortunately I think for people who take this stance like yourself and Kaczynski, some important disclaimers need to be made whenever discussing your work if – as members of campaign groups, mutual aid networks and affinity groups – we want to recruit and maintain members or advocate others over to our political philosophy.

But, I’m open to you expanding more on this in the future, here for example are a collection of statements made that I take issue with the most, mostly referencing the Unabomber case and including one from this same interview:

“The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life?”

“They ain’t innocent. Which isn’t to say that I’m totally at ease with blowing them into pieces. Part of me is. And part of me isn’t.”

“I think the targets were relatively more appropriate as he went along, as they became more lethal, on that level anyway, I think you could argue that that’s the case.”

“I ended the speech with the suggestion that there might be a parallel between Kaczynski and John Brown. Brown made an anti-slavery attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in 1859. Like Kaczynski, Brown was considered deranged, but he was tried and hung. Not long afterward he became a kind of American saint of the abolitionist movement. I offered the hope, if not the prediction, that T.K. might at some point also be considered in a more positive light for his resistance to industrial civilization.”

“Bonanno, it should be added, has been prosecuted repeatedly and imprisoned in Italy for his courageous resistance over the years.” Bonanno was imprisoned for armed robbery and promotes the strategy of kneecapping journalists.

[joncronshawauthor]

The Role of Deconstruction in Creating Rich Fantasy Worlds

In the intricate and imaginative craft of fantasy writing, where authors build worlds and narratives that stretch beyond the bounds of reality, philosophical insights can offer profound depth and perspective. Jacques Derrida, a key figure in the field of post-structuralism and known for his theory of deconstruction, provides a unique lens through which fantasy authors can explore and enhance…

[thepoststructuralistdevil]

Any post-anarchists here?

I would love to have post-anarchist mutuals on here UvU

[hurumi]

Week10_Poststructuralism

I think understanding post-structuralism is very helpful and relevant to understanding contemporary art. I think that the attitude of trying to distinguish between what is art and what is not art is an outdated value that I personally should avoid having as an artist. Marcel Duchamp's <Fountain> is an important work that can support this idea, as it was able to be recognized as art for its body of work. As Wendy Warhol, a representative artist of contemporary art and a pioneer of pop art, demonstrates in his <Brillobox>, the distinction between real and fake becomes irrelevant (='breaking down the boundaries of art'), and this thinking, together with the philosophy of post-structuralism, explains where to place the value of a work as art with the keyword of 'flexibility' in thinking.

And it is precisely this post-structuralism that gives rise to the "flexibility" that I consider to be the most important attitude to evaluate the value of art today. To see the combination of signifier and signified as accidental, the only way to connect them is to find the difference between them and to delay in this process. It is in this process that a work of art is endowed with symbolism on its own, and it is all done through 'flexibility'.

It is my position to think that this process should be applied to all processes in which an artist perceives and decides something.

[pendulouspuppyudders]

i love overeating and posting about it