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Post by wombat on Mar 17, 2015 3:41:16 GMT -5
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wolfi-landstreicher-a-critique-not-a-program-for-a-non-primitivist-anti-civilization-critique
So the anarchist individualist as I mean it has nothing to wait for [...] I already considered myself an anarchist and could not wait for the collective revolution to rebel myself or for communism to obtain my freedom.
— Renzo Novatore
I conceive of anarchism from the side of destruction. This is what its aristocratic logic consists of. Destruction! here is the real beauty of anarchism. I want to destroy all the things that enslave me, enervate me, and repress my desires, I want to leave them all behind me as corpses. Remorse, scruples, conscience are things that my iconoclastic spirit destroyed [...] Yes, iconoclastic negation is most practical.
— Armando Diluvi
First of all, there is nothing inherently primitivist about a critique of civilization, particularly if that critique is anarchist and revolutionary. Such critiques have existed nearly as long as a self-aware anarchist movement has existed — and not always even connected to a critique of technology or progress (Dejacque felt that certain technological developments would allow human beings to more easily get beyond civilization; on the other hand, Enrico Arrigoni, alias Frank Brand, saw civilization and industrial technology as blocks hindering real human progress). The real question, in my opinion, is whether primitivism is any help at all to an anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization.
The word primitivism can mean two rather different things. First of all, it can simply mean making use of what we know about “primitive” societies[1] to critique civilization. This form of primitivism appears relatively harmless. But is it? Leaving aside the obvious criticism of the dependence on those experts called anthropologists for information about “primitive” societies, there is another problem here. The actual societies that we call “primitive” were and, where they still exist, are living relationships between real, living, breathing human beings, individuals developing their interactions with the world around them. The capacity to conceive of them as a model for comparison already involves a reification of these lived relationships, transforming them into an abstract thing — the “primitive” — an idealized image of “primitiveness”. Thus, the use of this method of critiquing civilization dehumanizes and deindividualizes the real people who live or have lived these relationships. In addition, this sort of critique offers us no real tool for figuring out how to battle against civilization here and now. At most, the reified, abstract conception of the “primitive” becomes a model, a program for a possible future society.
This brings me to the second meaning of primitivism — the idea that “primitive” societies offer a model for future society. The adherents to this form of primitivism can themselves rightly be called primitivists, because, however much they may deny it, they are promoting a program and an ideology. In this form, I actually consider primitivism to be in conflict with anarchic thought and practice. The reason can be found in the Novatore quote above. Simply replace “communism” with “primitivism” and “collective revolution” with “industrial collapse” and everything should be pretty clear. As I see it, one of the most important differences between marxism and anarchism is that the latter is not essentially an eschatological vision of a future for which we wait, but a way of confronting the world here and now. Thus, revolution for the anarchist is also not something historical processes guarantees for the future, but something for us to live and create here and now. Primitivism is no more livable now than the marxist’s communism. It too is a program for the future, and one that depends on contingencies that are beyond our control to bring about. Thus, it has no more to do with anarchist practice than Marx’s eschatology.
I have already pointed out how the very concept of the “primitive” reifies the real lives and relationships of those given this label. This manifests among primitivists who seek to practice their ideology now in the way this practice ends up being defined. In a way far too reminiscent of marxism, “primitive” life gets reduced to economic necessity, to a set of skills — making fire with a bow drill, hunting with an atlatl, learning wild edible and medicinal plants, making a bow, making simple shelters, etc., etc. — to be learned in order to survive. This might then be spiced up a bit with some concept of nature spirituality learned from a book or borrowed from new age bullshit perhaps referring to a return to a “natural oneness”. But the latter is not considered necessary. The totality of the life of the people labeled “primitive” is ignored, because it is largely unknown and completely inaccessible to those who were born and raised in the industrial capitalist civilization that now dominates the world — and that includes all of us who have been involved in the development of an anarchist critique of civilization. But even if we only consider mere survival skills, the fact is that even in the United States and Canada, where real, fairly extensive (though quite damaged) wilderness exists, very few people could sustain themselves in this way. So those who learn these skills with the idea of actually living as “primitives” in their own lifetime are not thinking of the destruction of civilization (except possibly as an inevitable future circumstance for which they believe they will be prepared), but of escape from it. I won’t begrudge them this, but it has nothing to do with anarchy or a critique of civilization. On a practical level, it is much more like a more advanced form of “playing Indian” as most of us here in the US did as children, and, in reality, it is taken about that seriously. Nearly all of the people I know who have taken up the development of “primitive” skills in the name of “anarcho-primitivism” show how ready they are for such a life by the amount of time they spend on computers setting up websites, taking part in internet discussion boards, building blogs, etc., etc. Frequently, they come across to me as hyper-civilized kids playing role games in the woods, rather than as anarchists in the process of decivilizing.
An anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization does not begin from any comparison to other societies or to any future ideal. It begins from my confrontation, from your confrontation, with the immediate reality of civilization in our lives here and now. It is the recognition that the totality of social relationships that we call civilization can only exist by stealing our lives from us and breaking them down into bits that the ruling order can use in its own reproduction. This is not a process accomplished once and for all in the distant past, but one that goes on perpetually in each moment. This is where the anarchist way of conceiving life comes in. In each moment, we need to try to determine how to grasp back the totality of our own life to use against the totality of civilization. Thus, as Armando Diluvi said, our anarchism is essentially destructive. As such it needs no models or programs including those of primitivism. As an old, dead, bearded classicist of anarchism said “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge”. And one that can be put into practice immediately. (Another dead anti-authoritarian revolutionary of a generation or two later called passionate destruction “a way to grasp joy immediately”).
Having said this, I am not against playfully imagining possible decivilized worlds. But for such imaginings to be truly playful and to have experimental potential, they cannot be models worked out from abstracted conceptions of either past or future societies. In fact, in my opinion, it is best to leave the concept of “society” itself behind, and rather think in terms of perpetually changing, interweaving relationships between unique, desiring individuals. That said, we can only play and experiment now, where our desire for the apparently “impossible” meets the reality that surrounds us. If civilization were to be dismantled in our lifetime, we would not confront a world of lush forests and plains and healthy deserts teeming with an abundance of wildlife. We would instead confront a world full of the detritus of civilization — abandoned buildings, tools, scrap, etc., etc.[2] Imaginations that are not chained either to realism or to a primitivist moral ideology could find many ways to use, explore and play with all of this — the possibilities are nearly infinite. More significantly, this is an immediate possibility, and one that can be explicitly connected with a destructive attack against civilization. And this immediacy is utterly essential, because I am living now, you are living now, not several hundred years from now, when an enforced program aimed toward a primitivist ideal might be able to create a world in which this ideal could be realized globally — if primitivists have their revolution now and enforce their program. Fortunately, no primitivist seems willing to aim for such authoritarian revolutionary measures, preferring to rely on some sort of quasi-mystical transformation to bring about their dream (perhaps like the vision of the Native American ghost dance religion, where the landscape built by the European invaders was supposed to be peeled away leaving a pristine, wild landscape full of abundant life).
For this reason, it might be a bit unfair to call the primitivist vision a program (though, since I have no use for bourgeois values, I don’t give a shit about being unfair...). Perhaps it is more like a longing. When I bring up some of these questions with primitivists I know, they often say that the primitivist vision reflects their “desires”. Well, I have a different concept of desire than they do. “Desires” based on abstract and reified images — in this case the image of the “primitive” — are those ghosts of desire[3] that drive commodity consumption. This manifests explicitly among some primitivists, not just in the consumption of books by the various theorists of primitivism, but in the money and/or labor-time spent to purchase so-called “primitive” skills at schools that specialize in this.[4] But this ghost of desire, this longing for an image that has no connection to reality, is not true desire, because the object of true desire is not an abstract image upon which one becomes focused — an image that one can purchase. It is discovered through activity and relationship within the world here and now. Desire, as I conceive it, is in fact the drive to act, to relate, to create. In this sense, its object only comes to exist in the fulfillment of desire, in its realization. This again points to the necessity of immediacy. And it is only in this sense that desire becomes the enemy of the civilization in which we live, the civilization whose existence is based on the attempt to reify all relationships and activities, to transform them into things that stand above us and define us, to identify, institutionalize and commodify them. Thus, desire, as a drive rather than a longing, acts immediately to attack all that prevents it from forcefully moving. It discovers its objects in the world around it, not as abstract thing, but as active relationships. This is why it has to attack the institutionalized relationships that freeze activity into routine, protocol, custom and habit — into things to be done to order. Consider this in terms of what such activities as squatting, expropriation, using one’s work-time for oneself, graffiti, etc., etc. could mean, and how they relate to more explicitly destructive activity.
Ultimately, if we imagine dismantling civilization, actively and consciously destroying it, not in order to institute a program or realize a specific vision, but in order to open and endlessly expand the possibilities for realizing ourselves and exploring our capacities and desires, then we can begin to do it as the way we live here and now against the existing order. If, instead of hoping for a paradise, we grasp life, joy and wonder now, we will be living a truly anarchic critique of civilization that has nothing to do with any image of the “primitive”, but rather with our immediate need to no longer be domesticated, with our need to be unique, not tamed, controlled, defined identities. Then, we will find ways to grasp all that we can make our own and to destroy all that seeks to conquer us.
Wolfi Landstreicher
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Post by wombat on Mar 17, 2015 4:47:28 GMT -5
First, the accusation of ideology while controlling the definition of ideology is empty. Second, the assumption that primitivism is an insult, a projection of image, is also false. Primitive skills, primitive weapons, these are just words used to describe and differentiate. Perhaps upon initial connection to these words after reading a bunch of books, your first thought could be associating the word with a people and that people are trying to be some other people. For people that are exposed to this skill set, I imagine they would be like me, thinking about skills and weapons I can make and use myself. But more importantly, is this a call for a word change? Is that even radical? Seems like a petty complaint.
Never does Wolfi consider someone would want to be a forager today. His distain immediately assumes and projects a collapse as a necessity before a future primitive can exist and that someone has this position, even though this person isn't named and no sources are offered.
Continuing this distain, rewilding is quickly dismissed as "a way far too reminiscent of Marxism", then off handedly digs at primitivists for taking on some "new age bullshit" if they should have any sort of spirituality that, IIRC, this guy normally has no problem with.
I can perhaps think his dismissal "So those who learn these skills with the idea of actually living as “primitives” in their own lifetime are not thinking of the destruction of civilization (except possibly as an inevitable future circumstance for which they believe they will be prepared), but of escape from it." is mainly targeting people that learn primitive skills and have no real connection to those that see rewilding as both a critique of civilization and an understanding of the limitations in practicing primitive skills fully because of this.
"An anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization does not begin from any comparison to other societies or to any future ideal. It begins from my confrontation, from your confrontation, with the immediate reality of civilization in our lives here and now." This is inaccurate. The very basis of the anarchist critique of the dominant order stems from comparing peasant life with the life of the worker in industrial society. If we look into pre-industrial anti-authoritarians, we could see many comparisons, some philosophic and others anti-intellectual, but that which can be compared exists. So despite any attempt otherwise to remain ignorant of any preconception, we will have societies that we've heard of and can (and often do) compare, even when trying to remain open. It is a mental exercise to avoid comparison, failure almost certain. But I'll give Wolfi the benefit of the doubt. He was just using prose to make a point. That point being that personal and shared confrontation with immediate reality is the foundation for a critique of civilization.
That point I gave Wolfi, however, gets tossed aside rather quickly as I read further. He is fine with "playfully imagining possible decivilized worlds". We just aren't allowed to use historical examples, because that's offensive. Sci Fi though, that's a totally relevant way of examining things. "Imaginations that are not chained either to realism or to a primitivist moral ideology could find many ways to use, explore and play with all of this — the possibilities are nearly infinite." Yeah, infinite minus living as a forager.
Pretty much this seems not just an inaccurate understanding of anarchist primitivism, but also horribly out of date. The growing prepper, survival and rewilding skills communities now have grown so large that free materials are everywhere. On top of this, more people know or want to know primitive skills, giving even more potential to anarchist primitivism as relevant. Wolfi also seems to be less aware that rewilding is a process and that to practice rewilding, one need not go all or nothing. Given that most of his arguments were based on inaccurate assumptions, building up a strawman to knock down, this document fails to present a real image of anarchist primitivism and definitely fails to present an accurate portrayal of any prominent anarchist primitivist. |
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Post by codalunga on Mar 17, 2015 8:00:18 GMT -5
I tend to agree with wombat, but I'd also like to add a couple of considerations:
I'm expressing a personal opinion when I say that the term "anarchy" associated with "primitivism" doesn't necessarily points to an immediate revolution in the first place. I'm kinda new to AP, so maybe my thoughts will change on this topic in the future, but to me "anarchy" is first of all an inner state of freedom. When we talk about hunter-gatherer communities who innately live as anarchist, to me it means that they are governed only by their own selves. This is - of course - sort of impossible to do within the claws of civilization. Therefore Wolfi points out that the need of a revolution here and now is mandatory if we are to live on the ashes of civilization.
What Wolfi wrote though doesn't make much sense to me. He's right when he says that "We would [...] confront a world full of the detritus of civilization". Nevertheless he misses on the fact that those detritus won't be only physical remains of civilization. We will also confront another type of detritus, in a way a more dangerous and devious one, which is the concept of domestication itself. And here's where the idea of a "story" comes into play.
I'm not following any program whatsoever. Neither am I strictly adhering to a reified image of hunter-gatherers. Yet, I admit that I am in a certain way moved by a desire, which is fueled by hope for an existence where my innate wildness will finally be able to emerge in its pureness. This kind of desire is - and I agree with wombat 100% here - never taken into account by Wolfi. The only desire which an anarcho-primitivist would have is that of learning "primitive" skills and playing the good savage in the woods.
The lack of vision in Wolfi's essay is what strikes me the most: how can we not have a dream that moves and justifies our actions? He wants a world of anarchy now; how can you not answer the question of how that world will actually look like in terms of relationships between each other, as well as between man and nature? It looks like anarchy in Wolfi's words is presented as a mere tool for achieving the result of a world without civilization. But that's where his critique (in this essay) stops. Couldn't it be that people are re-learning "primitive" skills not just for fun, but in order not to reenact that process of exploitation and domestication which was the base of civilization?
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Post by KT on Mar 17, 2015 8:39:00 GMT -5
I probably have a cookie cutter reply to this somewhere, it's floated around a bit. I just think it's weak. Wombat nailed a lot of it, but ultimately I think the whole thing comes down to "if the AP Ideology doesn't exist it's necessary to create it".
But it's absolutely telling that so many anarchists see a subsistence mode as innately oppressive while refusing to recognize that subsistence not only matters but it is a permanent and necessary limitation on any society. You need to eat. Plain and simple. That food comes from somewhere and AP is in part a response to that question. Being a hunter-gatherer has social implications, but it's not like you're joining a ministry and limiting your thoughts and actions. If anything, looking at hunting and gathering as the least systemic form of subsistence and completely contrary to mass society, it's really a matter of leveling the social playing field. You can do whatever you want, you just don't have technological systems at hand to levy those thoughts and actions upon the rest of the world.
What's ironic here is that Wolfi has bashed at anthropology elsewhere, but here has the same principles of comparing societies, but it just has to be awkwardly handled in wording that suits his own weak visions and expectations.
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Post by landb4time on Mar 18, 2015 19:53:59 GMT -5
If only Feral Faun had never wandered into those zombie infested woods....![]() 
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Post by KT on Mar 19, 2015 0:24:30 GMT -5
That's the best supervillian origin story ever. I dig it. Zombie Wolfi is always great. "MMeeeeeeeeeeeee"
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Post by wombat on Mar 23, 2015 13:12:08 GMT -5
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-feral-a-journal-towards-wildness#toc31
How Then Do We Go Feral: unfinished notes to be discussed and acted upon by Wolfi Landstreicher
The destruction of civilization — the network of relationships encompassing the state, economy, technology, religion, the family, all forms of authority and control — the overturning of domestication — for me, these are revolutionary aims, guidelines towards a way of living in insurrection against the present. Though expressed negatively, there is a positive vision behind this negation. This positive vision can be spoken of in terms of “wildness.” But wildness — especially as an aim for individuals to achieve in revolt against domestication and civilization — is an unknown quality. As an anarchist, I am glad about this. There can be no experts in human wildness, no leaders to take us there (not even the comrade who has lived in the forest for the last fifteen years, viewing it through such civilized ideological lenses as “Nature”, “Mother Earth”, “the circle of Life”, even “wilderness” or “ecological balance” and seeing himself as the judge of who does or does not know “wildness”.) For anyone who can read this and are, thus, clearly civilized beings, wildness is a concept, an idea, which can inspire revolt; but this potential to inspire revolt does not spring from an answer this idea may seem to provide (like any liberatory idea which has not slipped into ideology, it provides no answers) but from the questions it raises, the problems it opens up.
Our exporation of the question of human wildness can, of course, include the examination of what we know about non-civilized people and how they have lived, with the realization that all such knowledge has been filtered through such scientific lenses of civilization as anthropology and paleontology. We must avoid delusions of imitating or “going back to” the way of life of these people. Even if we chose to attempt such an imitation, it would be an imitation of the static image of such a people presented to us by our civilized lenses rather than a re-living of the dynamic of real natural-social relationships of these people. What is best learned from the examination of anthropological studies of uncivilized people is that people have been able to live and live well without all the supposed conveniences provided by the complex of social and technological systems that is civilization. But again such a realization, free of any ideological frame work, does not provide answers, but raises questions demanding experimentation and courageous exploration of possibilities. I emphasize this repeatedly, because too often the rhetoric of anti-civilization anarchists is full of asceticism and a morality of sacrifice, wereas I see the revolt against civilization to be precisely a revolt against the asceticism imposed by the institutions of civilization, a revolt against the channeling of desire into production and social reproduction. Within our milieu, there have already been many good explorations of what uncivilized cultures might mean to us. I would rather explore what “going wild” might mean as an insurrectionary practise in the present.
One thing to be learned by the examination of anthropology, history and a careful look at our present is that human beings are extremely variable and adaptable creatures. To speak of a “human nature” in light of what we know of human relations with each other and with the world around us seems absurd. Human beings seem to have few — if any — instincts, and these few, if they exist at all, seem to involve taking the path of least resistance. If this is the case, then “going wild” may well require overcoming our instincts. But the level of variability and adaptability in human beings, indicates that individuals are capable of such an overcoming. The apparent lack of a specific human nature is what allowed human beings to be domesticated, to become civilized beings, but it also opens up the possibility of revolt against this condition, a revolt which could destroy this condition and transform us into something new — because the experiences that we have had as civilized beings would not simply disappear, but would affect what we become. A post-civilization “wildness” would, thus, not be a return to a pre-civilized past, but an exploration of new ways of relating to the world around us free of the limits imposed by civilization. It’s full significance would only be understood at the moment it is created and would change from moment to moment as it is recreated in the dynamic flow of interactions that is the world especially in it’s wildness.
All of this may seem abstract. After all, for the civilized individual, wildness is an abstract concept. It will remain no more then this until one is inspired by this idea — not as an ideal above oneself, but as a conception of how to create one’s own freedom — to rise up in active rebellion against their own domestication and against all of the institutions of civilization which impose this domestication. The individual who has been so inspired develops a ferocity similar to that found in many feral creatures — formerly domesticated animals who have gone wild — but the human individual can direct this ferocity at precise targets in a willful insurgence against recognized sources of domestication.
My point here is that for the insurgent against the totality of civilization, wildness is not an answer, not an ultimate solution that we will one day come upon, but rather a question, a problem to be wrestled with everyday. Thus, the practise of wildness must be for us a perpetual experimentation, which incorporates the willful creation of each moment of one’s life for oneself and the willful rejection, through destructive action, of authority in all it’s forms — and, thus, of domestication and civilization as we know it. Such experimentation will transform us and our ways of interacting with the world around us. Within the context of civilization , this may be the best practical understanding of what wildness can mean for us.
There are no answers here — only questions. But it is by the imposition of answers that we were domesticated and by the most cruel and intense of questioning that we may overcome this and become our unique selves.
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Post by wombat on Mar 23, 2015 14:38:15 GMT -5
This essay summarizes Wolfi Landstreicher's opinions on wildness, anthropology, domestication, civilization and so on. This continues the "question everything" vein often found his writing that has become rather popular.
Rather than attempt to give his definition, he opts to remain deliberately vague. In such a view we are tainted by this society and wouldn't know what real wildness is even if they are "the comrade who has lived in the forest for the last fifteen years." Instead wildness is "a concept, an idea, which can inspire revolt; but this potential to inspire revolt does not spring from an answer this idea may seem to provide (like any liberatory idea which has not slipped into ideology, it provides no answers) but from the questions it raises, the problems it opens up."
He goes on again attacking people that want to "go back" but as we know, if they wanted to instead pretend to be elven wizards, that is perfectly acceptable. By how he has continued to return to this point over and over, my guess is he has had some bad experiences with people that have lived in the woods and think they know something about it and he disagreed? Speculative, but his lack of naming names to give real examples of what he is talking about poisons the well. I've never wanted to go back to be a primitive. I presently have no utopian vision nor to wrap my desires and convictions in poetic language to hide my lack of substance and specificity, which could actually create a real dialogue on view points.
What I do want is to live my life on my own terms. To work less for society and be more self-sufficient. This is where Wolfi would stop describing. A person afraid of details, he would not go further with a clearer goal, while I will. Given my situation, my personal approach still includes many elements that require compromise with this society I'm working against. My vision of becoming wild includes having those skills I would need if I ran into the woods and had to survive on my own terms without assistance. Why run into the woods? Because I like them. Because they are near me and I've been going to the woods for years. Believe me, I could go on. I don't just ask questions, I answer them. Or at least I try to in ways to communicate where I'm going. Maybe it doesn't speak so well to a general crowd, but dismissing answers defeats the need for questions.
I can only assume that Wolfi, like most authors anymore, is talking to people new to anarchist views. Talking to people that don't regularly ask questions, thinking that questions would lead them to more radical views as theorists rather than ideologues following a line of thinking? To me, this assumes and imposes views that an other holds that need not be named. This essay comes off as an attempt to challenge people in pro-wild circles that may of just adopted agreement to a position paper or gave lip service to some random pro-wild ideology. It seems the audience he is talking to also don't want to go out in the woods or aren't regularly associated with the woods. Or perhaps he doesn't want to? We can't know his motivations, but what we do know is that his railing against people that spend time outdoors, which might also have a definition of the wild which is more specific than his, defines his definition of the wild.
Looking to be *against*, yet again, Wolfi has positioned himself in challenge to any who has a positive definition of the wild, one that might be useful in describing things presently perhaps? His definition of domestication, while lacking substance, is acted on negatively. To be against domestication may mean "to rise up in active rebellion against their own domestication and against all of the institutions of civilization which impose this domestication. The individual who has been so inspired develops a ferocity similar to that found in many feral creatures — formerly domesticated animals who have gone wild — but the human individual can direct this ferocity at precise targets in a willful insurgence against recognized sources of domestication." So domestication is the other, another undefined thing, it is instead something we do. I can understand this. We *do domestication* more than *are domesticated*. What we do changes how we see things. Cool. I can feel this revolt, this rebellion Wolfi calls for, yet...he leaves us hanging.
Only upon looking into his ideas on anarchist intervention in other documents do we see any detail on approach beyond personal approaches. For me, being an anarchist is also about communicating about being an anarchist and talking about what we do as a way to practice anarchy. Wolfi does not present himself as a creature of his present world, rather, he is an abstract being, almost a religious feature, akin to a prophet, speaking the good word of the unique to a largely ignorant audience, who have at least a rudimentary understanding of what he is talking about. This writing, like the previous one above, was written to give a spirit to the rest of the writing in Feral, which seems to be more specific and might warrant its own thread separate from this one.
He ends this piece with "There are no answers here — only questions. But it is by the imposition of answers that we were domesticated and by the most cruel and intense of questioning that we may overcome this and become our unique selves." Which assumes the other imposes answers while those that would agree with him would only question. Questions are definitely excellent and wanted. As he says elsewhere, it is experimentation that matters. But experimentation should be communicated otherwise what is the point of talking about doing something, but never talking about what is done? The questions can keep coming from me, but I do give answers. Like most that give answers with conviction, we often will stand by those answers we feel the most comfortable and solid in understanding. It can't be helped that others will bring a new perspective which might throw asunder our previous understanding of the world. This is how all things are, but to assume the answer is to just question is just as flawed as giving an answer with some amount of conviction.
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