Submitted by Tequilx_Wolf in Anarchism (edited )

Why this book is cool:

It’s an outline of a complete anarchist way of being, building from metaphysics and the structure of our thought, to ethics, politics, and cosmology.

It centres around critiquing our conceptions of the human and humanism, and finding a way to do identity politics without reifying the identities we want to unmake.
Instead of going for a simple anti-humanism, it proposes an anti-authoritarian human, nothing like the one we must destroy that we have now, but instead the human as a set of relations of anarchy. This is the coolest part of the book.

The metaphysics is Deleuzean, and though Deleuze is hard, it’s explained in relatively simple and easy-to-digest terms in the book - not easy but not super obscure. If you’re interested in dipping your toes into Deleuzean thinking, I think this is a good introduction.
(There are a lot of other badass scholars and anti-colonials considered [Fanon, Césaire, Wynter, Hartman], but I would call this book pretty Deleuzean, since part 2 about Mbembe is rooted in Mbembe’s Deleuzean metaphysics.)

It’s purely anti-authoritarian (i.e. non-left) anarchism, a reparative insurrectionism that has has absorbed post-left critique, is anti-civ, and deals with notions of time and prefiguration, calling it ‘insurrectionary time’. With the anarchist notion of the human it also has an anarchist version of human rights that overcomes all the usual arguments I and others generally post around here.

It’s a anticolonial text that provides a framework an anti-authoritarian form of reparations.

It’s got a long-ass name:
Establishing an immanent counterhumanism for the un-foreclosure of the future: Deleuze, Mbembe, Hartman and the anarchic Open World

I recommend you read the intro and then the contents to get a sense of what it looks like and its structure.

(And yeah, this person and the surrounding people are where I get a lot of my ideas from)

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Comments

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GlangSnorrisson wrote (edited )

This is so cool. Will for sure try and read as soon as I have some time to do so.

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote

Oh, it also repurposes the idea of Mutual Aid in developing a kind of anarchist set of relations, ('economics', for lack of a better term) called mutuality.

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Ennui wrote

Will read once work dies down, for sure.

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote

I'm interested to hear what everybody has to say, I'd love to hear critiques or see people build on it, so let me know how it goes if you manage.

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Ennui wrote

Does it allow for reading by people who haven’t read Deleuze?

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote

I think it does. It was written assuming people who hadn't read Deleuze would be able to follow, so it explains the weird ideas and concepts along the way. I've read quite a bit of Deleuze so I can't actually say what it's like if you haven't, but I know a couple people who haven't read Deleuze who have tried the book and really liked it.

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote

A couple names that specifically asked about the book that don’t know about the book already: u/_caspar_, u/ukuleleclass.

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ukuleleclass wrote

thanks !! i’m also thinking about writing a book sometime down the line on anarchistic metaphysics alongside performative metaphysics and deleuzian thought so i’m excited to read this ! starting to read anti-oedipus right now :)

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ziq wrote

how many words is it?

I'll try to read it when I'm not swamped

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote (edited )

Um it's around 50 000 afaik.

So a short book, since I think the average book is 80 000.

But it can be read in parts, each part has its own movement, but you do need to read them in order.

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ruin wrote

Nice! Thanks for sharing. Now all that deleuze I’ve been slogging through hasn’t been in vain.

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote

Yeah you're in luck I think, Deleuze does so much stuff all over the place it's nice to get one big coherent argument on a topic like this.

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kin wrote

So much good stuff to read now, ziq's essay, this heavy packed booklet. Lots of good references, Wynter and Hartman I think I never read anything from them (or second hand)

Thanks🤙

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Tequilx_Wolf OP wrote (edited )

Hartman's a super interesting Black queer feminist anarchic nihilist, though I'm not sure what she would call herself.

Her book Scenes of Subjection is the best that I know of of the kind that show how changing to 'better' laws, as in the changes from slavery to Jim Crow to whatever garbage the US is now, come with processes of subject making that maintain the racism in even more insidious ways. I like it a lot, the logic applies to the change from apartheid to neoliberalism in SA similarly.

Wynter's highly appreciated by the Anarkata especially for the way that she deals with humanness, afaik. This book critiques a core part of Wynter's work but in many ways stays in the same direction.

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cdubose wrote (edited )

If I ever get my shit together, I'll maybe record myself reading it aloud so there can be a free audiobook version available at some point.

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