An_Old_Big_Tree wrote on September 10, 2019 at 12:38 PM

Nihilism, as a relation to positive projects (that they inevitably are coopted by civilisation/capitalism and so negative projects are better), and in its relation to futurity (the No Future approach), both appeal to me a lot, and I use them as one of many lenses that inform my approach.

That said, I'm more focused on Deleuzean stuff, which is obviously close to nihilism in its rootedness in Nietzschean critique, but I think is more developed. There's a lot that can be said here and many directions it could go, so I'll leave it at this for now. Happy to talk more about it if people wanna engage!

yaaqov wrote on September 10, 2019 at 2:44 PM

Would you be willing to go a little more into what Deleuzean stuff entails? And where YOU go with it? I’ve never read any Deleuze (/and Guattari), and I can’t say I really know anything about their work besides “rhizomes” haha

An_Old_Big_Tree wrote on September 11, 2019 at 9:19 AM

Would you be willing to go a little more into what Deleuzean stuff entails?

Probably the best thing I can do is to link to the following reading, Children of the new Earth – Deleuze, Guattari and anarchism, written by the other green anarchist Aragorn. Because it's not simple and there are so many ways to start talking about this. Aragorn also recently published a book with his partner on Deleuze and Anarchism, sadly I don't think it's been made accessible free online.

And where YOU go with it?

My anarchism has grown through many stages. I started with post-left anarchy, went very green, and moved through critique after critique to arrive at a Deleuzean decolonial anti-civ queer anarchism (which I say now just to be descriptive, [I think that all of these words should imply all the others], usually I just call myself anarchist or anti-authoritarian). Deleuze's metaphysics is inherently anti-fascist, anti-policing (in the sense that specific kinds of norms are policing) and literally anti-conservative. It gives us a complete basis from which we can have an anti-authoritarian ethics, politics, and even cosmology to live as anarchists, and I find that invaluable.

can’t say I really know anything about their work besides “rhizomes”

There are whole worlds more. It takes quite a lot to get into it, but Deleuze has been picked up by almost every good theorist coming out now and is showing itself in wonderful new places (I'm thinking Saidiya Hartman's work, Achille Mbembe's work, and Kathryn Yusoff's). Basically it's at the foundations of all the cutting edge theory I'm interested in. Which is to say, I'd completely recommend it, if you have the privilege of time and energy to go on that journey. You will literally walk away with a completely different way of perceiving being, that will reverberate through everything you value.