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existential1 wrote

I have a bias lense towards this due to my current work, but it seems that they're pointing out the limits of appealing to particular identities that are antiquated or rooted in a dynamic that cannot be transcended toward the positive, but instead must be shed altogether in order to experience something different.

To appeal to "the people" or the "proletariat" is to appeal to a system that is already acknowledged as an undesirable state. Appeals such as these only show the full capture, in mind and body, that folks have been placed within.

They talk about it a few times, we need a different set of relations to each other to transcend the dominant model. Those relations can only be made with folks between each other, and not utilizing these old appeals and identities that are limited in scope.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

as a poor person, it's pretty weird to see people trying to say that anarchy is fundamentally opposed to class struggle. or that anarchy is about individual this or that. it seems like american libertarianism, which is interesting because much of the theoretical work defending this standpoint and making those critiques comes from USA

individuality is banal, and utterly meaningless because identity and politics comes from relationships. there is no individual, without a context for it to grow within. It's like trying to imagine a tree, in the absence of soil or air or water or rhizomatic mycellium-- indeed, without the rest of the forest. It is a concept which seems derivative of capitalism and hierarchy itself, as setting things apart and distinguished from one another (especially human beings) is a pathological desire historically borne of master-slave dialectics in the context of debt and its associated political economy of statecraft and warmaking. I would argue, these are the major forces which continue to reify this type of rhetoric into the material world-- these forces are not our friends, i do not think, not for any of us in this thread regardless of our standpoints or dissonances.

That is, individualism is a product of mass society and capitalism, and cannot exist without hierarchy supporting it.

i can understand the desire to push back against recuperation of radical ideas into communist statecraft and its reification of static identities, but it remain ludicrous to me that anarchists would genuinely attempt to appeal to something as flimsy as the individual as the seat of their worldview.

On the other hand, egoist action doesn't have to rest on such a fragile construct. If one defines the self not as an individual, but as a relational and dynamic entity constantly in flux, one can center such a phenomenon as one's relative perspective, without exposing yourself to the vulnerabilities and pitfalls of embracing a shallow individualism based on static identity and western ideologies.

spicy

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_caspar_ wrote

from my understanding this conflict is due to the terminology. since many ideologies use the term individual/ism: classical liberalism based on rights, capitalist American libertarians influenced by Randian objectivism or Rothbardian contract theory, and the Stirner influenced individualist anarchists, they often get conflated. however, the understanding of what an individual actually is can vary drastically depending on the philosophy in question.

"there is no individual, without a context for it to grow within. It's like trying to imagine a tree, in the absence of soil or air or water or rhizomatic mycellium-- indeed, without the rest of the forest. It is a concept which seems derivative of capitalism and hierarchy itself, as setting things apart and distinguished from one another (especially human beings)"

this more accurately presents the view of the individual from the American libertarian or anarcho-capitalist perspective (Rand, Nozick, Rothbard), and their ontological pitfalls (with which I would agree with you, and the reason why I would reject these ideologies).

however this is very different from Stirner's individual (or in their terms, unique). of course, not all self described individualist anarchists followed, understood, or agreed with Stirner's philosophy, but those who have understand their conception of the self to be expansive and divisible. it is something closer to a Daoist understanding of the self as not static, measurable, or in the service of external abstractions (the state, societal recognition, and heroic or sacrificial duty). it could also be considered a type of immanence, and resembles what you describe in your last paragraph as "as a relational and dynamic entity constantly in flux." there is a similarity in Deleuze's writings about immanence as well.

I see many critiques that either misread this, or ignore it. again, likely due to the connotations of ego/ism, I, myself, etc. rooted in the aforementioned "shallow individualism based on static identity" that are projected onto Stirner's ideas.

the reason Stirner (and those influenced) rejected a collectivist politics is the focus on the freedom of humanity (or society/community) as a concept, at the expense of actual persons: “Here is the feature of all reactionary desires, that they want to set up something universal, abstract, an empty, lifeless concept, whereas the self-owned strive to unburden the sturdy, lively particular from the tangled mass of generalities.” (p.217, The Unique and Its Own) ... "[society] lays claim to you for itself and is still there without you; in short, society is sacred." (p.298)

perhaps the core conflict is: collectivists abandon the self for the sake of the group, while the individualist (from the Stirner perspective) abandons the self for sake of the self.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

yet the idea of self-ownership itself is laden with capitalist ideology

The failure of mass politics to produce liberatory conditions, or even delay the excesses of neoliberalism, is undeniable at this point I think. It undoubtedly stems from fundamental epistemological, as well as ontological, errors.

However, notions of individuality are particularly fraught, even when compared to the tired and starry-eyed sort of mass politics advocated by neo-kropotkinites. we are all inextricably produced and moulded from the crucible of material conflicts, there is no "individual" which exists beneath these worldly concerns. In fact, individual freedom is usually constituted through the slavery of a great many poor people, under a mass society ironically enough.

The glimpses of freedom which might be experienced at an individual level are thus illusory in most part, because it is a perverse sort of freedom which corresponds to privilege. and yet, all freedom does, with privilege being defined in great part by the shaping of invisible factors which impinge or enable agency and the sense of possibility which we must have before ever considering a course of action.

A liberatory form of politics might reject both of these perspectives, seeing freedom as something which can only be carefully grown in certain conditions, rather than something which exists to be colonized or seized by a vanguard or immutably reproducing generations of individuals. Since it is so fragile, so organic, and since the level of individuality is that which bourgeois ideology seeks to reduce reality to, people concerned with freedom should take great care not to reproduce relationships of power through rhetorical shorthand for such a nebulous concept, freedom.

of course, stirner and many other thinkers, including kropotkin, have a great deal to offer. It would be arrogant for me to dismiss their entire works out of hand. but this is a broad critique i would level at the european dominated anarchist & communist intellectual traditions, the lack of serious interrogation of the enlightenment's assumptions.

Perhaps someone better read than I am, can provide us with critiques of collectivism and possible alternatives to it, from the global South. I feel that among these writings, there may be some which point to something that might trend against both individualism and anarchist collectivism both. For now, I am stuck, yearning between egoist communism and what I have been calling feminist ego-thanatics-- a crisis of the self, which I am beginning to suspect all meaningful politics touches or otherwise passes through at some point in their actualization.

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_caspar_ wrote

"but this is a broad critique i would level at the european dominated anarchist & communist intellectual traditions, the lack of serious interrogation of the enlightenment's assumptions."

Im curious about this as well, do you have examples of what you have found to be serious interrogations of the enlightenment's assumptions coming from outside anarchist and communist theory?

one reason I find Stirner's philosophy to be so interesting, is that it split from this european enlightenment humanism indicative of the Hegelian left he was witness to at the time. others have noted he may have been influenced by daoist and zen buddhist (a synthesis of sorts of daoism and mahayana buddhism) philosophy, looking to buck the trend of the time.

on the one hand you're expressing interest in moving away from a european enlightenment perspective, but still wedded to historical materialism, which I find mostly irreconcilable, perhaps the very irreconcilability of egoist/ism (if it is referring to Stirner's einzige) and communism.

"feminist ego-thanatics-- a crisis of the self"

a death of the female ego, or the death of the ego from the female perspective?

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darkecology wrote

Im curious about this as well, do you have examples of what you have found to be serious interrogations of the enlightenment's assumptions coming from outside anarchist and communist theory?

Most of the post-structuralists as well as the Frankfurt School and 20th century Marxism in general. Foucault and Derrida dedicated their lives to it, Deleuze positioned himself against the broad trajectory of western philosophy. Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment is one of the most thorough works on specifically the Enlightenment though.

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_caspar_ wrote

the timing of your post is strange (I think there's something to this phenomena, its been happening to me alot lately) because I just went back today to skim over an interesting book that discusses the link between early individualist anarchism influenced by Stirner in the journal Die Einzige, and post-structuralist theory after '68. Derrida is mentioned quite a bit in the beginning.

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polpotisevil2 OP wrote

This comment is hilarious to me, but anyway I'll reply in case it isn't a joke. (I say we in my writing below, but I really refer to my own opinions and am simply saying we in an effort to counteract your own overreaching claim)

As a fellow poor person, you should know that your starting statement "as a poor person" has no meaning to me. You are not the only poor person in the world. You opinion "as a poor person" means nothing, many poor people have opinions that are different from you, including myself. Anyway, as a poor person I disagree with you. (Did I get any extra sympathy points from that?)

Nor does where people come from matter except in the sense that people's opinions can be influenced by their surroundings and experiences(and different people will be influenced in different ways by even the same surroundings and experiences), something you say makes an individual a meaningless entity... well, I don't see how that is the case. Alas, people in the USA deserve not to be listened to or heard as a rational human being. Rather, they are from the USA and their opinions root from some sort of reactionary libertarianism. I'm not from the USA, so my opinions as a poor person matter more than yours! I have nothing to do with those americans, listen to me!

Where anyone has stated that the individual is completely seperate from their surroundings, I have no knowledge of... In fact, I would rather say the opposite is said. Now you will defend yourself in this regard because you did not claim we said COMPLETELY seperate. You said we set things apart and distinguish them from another. Well said. Everything is apart and distinguished from one another. Yet everything also interacts, and is also connected. Would you really argue that I am no different from you, or that tree is no different than that tree? I would hope not.

And hierarchy is the only reason individualists positions exist, where I would start on arguing against that I'm not sure, but I suppose what you wrote before that statement I have already addressed.

But, if I not wanting to be controlled and not wanting to control anyone else is hierarchy to you, I'm not sure I agree with your definition.

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sand wrote

This comment is hilarious to me, but anyway I'll reply in case it isn't a joke.

u very much misunderstood and got real combative and mean with that misunderstanding. no need to jump to argument; just lean back and ask questions about what u don't get. be curious about another person. celebratedrecluse got a million cool takes

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Thanks, I'm looking forward to reading this later. Hope it's good!

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