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Title: Defeated Spirit? Author: John Zerzan Date: November 19, 1981 Language: en Topics: Fifth Estate, letter, Fifth Estate #307 Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2022 from https://radicalarchives.org/2010/09/06/defeated-spirit-jz-to-fe/ Notes: From Fifth Estate #307 (vol. 15, no. 6), Nov. 19, 1981, p 2.
To the Editors:
The latest issue, containing much excellent analysis of our
techno-morass and its processes, nonetheless has bothered me.
The absence of a connection between the critique and its use is the most
troublesome feature. From the articles I have a persistent sense of the
too-remote, the academic; that of a profound indictment minus any
everyday applications.
Aside from some very visionary-sounding phrases, the only concrete
references to a radical anti-technology approach were calls for “a
defense of every little commodity,” which strikes me as merely
reformist, and for a “critical sociology,” which could suggest, of
course, a retention of specialization of even the university!
To me the technology critique is the first coherent, contemporary attack
on no less than every mediation and representation in social life, and
therefore exhilarating. But it is not so far for the FE authors: “We are
in eclipse; the human spirit is moribund,” says the introduction to the
last issue.
This defeated spirit tends to inform the paper, and renders the goal of
liberation an impossible (or even cynical) idea to the “Paleolithic
Liberation Organization” which produces it. The depth of misery is laid
out for all to see–only there’s really zero hope for breaking what we
can so clearly understand. Thus, the critique remains a banality:
everyone can know it and no one can win. Perfect example is quoting
Jacques Ellul at great length–Ellul who is equally known as lay Catholic
theologian as for his (trenchant) ideas about the “Technological
Society.”
As the situationists used to counsel, “Nihilists! One more effort if you
would be revolutionaries.”
Not in eclipse,
not even close,
John Zerzan
Newport, OR