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Title: Domestication Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson Date: 2004 Language: en Topics: domestication, anti-civ, Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #365 Source: Retrieved on 7th October 2021 from https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/365-summer-2004/domestication-charles-fourier/ Notes: Published in Fifth Estate #365, Summer, 2004.
The hunter/gatherer school of anarcho-anthropology and the anarchist
critique of Civilization (e.g., Perlman’s Leviathan) proposed the
domestication of plants and animals as the first step toward separation
and ultimately the State.
Sahlins posed the question: why would any sane free hunter/gatherers
voluntarily take up the shit-work of the “primitive agriculturist” (or,
by extension, pastoralist)?—the erosion of leisure, the impoverished
diet, etc.? Given his premises, this unsolved puzzle hints at coercion
and deprivation. With hindsight we see that domestication leads to
misery. We assume it began that way.
Charles Fourier boasted that his was the first coherent critique of
Civilization. He experienced his big revelation in 1799 and so invites
comparison with other early Romantics such as Blake or Novalis. (All
were deeply influenced by hermeticism.)
Fourier believed in an economy with elements of both gathering and
agriculture, one that structurally occupies a time and space between
them: he called it horticulture. Fourier associates agriculture with
societies, primitive agriculturists such as the Tahitians or pastoralist
“barbarians”—all these are to be preferred to Civilization. But whether
for better or worse, Civilization has suppressed them all and nearly
erased them. After Civilization, in the era of “Harmony,” only
horticulture will satisfy the Passions of Harmonial humanity for
magnificent and excessive luxury (a concept that later influences
Bataille’s theory of Excess), as well as ecological harmony and natural
beauty. (See Fourier’s Theory of the Four Movements.)
Thus, Fourier sees a connection between passion and horticulture.
The same theory appears independently in the work of certain
ethno-botanists and “plant historians” in the tradition of the great
Carl O. Sauer and the Russian scientist N. Vavilov (crushed by Lysenko
and Stalin).
In brief, this theory posits that the origin of horticulture lies in a
kind of love affair between certain plants and certain humans in the
Mesolithic or early Neolithic.
Most gatherers are transhumants rather than true nomads. As the tribe
makes its yearly round and returns to the summer camp, they find that
their favorite plants seem to have followed them. Plants that prefer
disturbed soil thrive in the campgrounds when their seeds are
accidentally dropped and perhaps fertilized with feces and midden mulch.
Vavilov identified two plants that spread from Central Asia in this
manner: hemp and the apple tree.
Women gatherers would’ve been the first to suss out the link between
seeds and availability, and the “secret knowledge” would belong to an
almost erotic relation between certain plants and certain women. (Some
seeds may have been discovered by men, e.g., tobacco in the New World,
which is usually cultivated by men.) Thus the origin of the garden as
“earthly paradise.”
Is it impossible to imagine something similar between hunters and
animals! The first domestication of an animal, the dog, was clearly a
sort of love affair (probably the work not of men or women but
children). The hunter’s magical relation with the game is transformed
into a symbiosis. a cross-species solidarity or love, as with the Masai
for their cattle or the Saini for their reindeer. Plants and animals are
all living beings and living beings eat each other—which scarcely rules
out the simultaneous and even necessary element of passion. The Rig Veda
is interesting on this point.
A great deal of confusion rises out of the term “Agricultural
Revolution” to describe the early Neolithic. In Fourier’s sense of the
term, agriculture doesn’t appear till the end of the Neolithic and then
only in connection with metallurgy and the emergence of the State. The
Neolithic itself is horticultural and pre-pastoral. (True nomadic
pastoralism of the “barbarian” type can only exist in relation to
civilized agriculture as its antithesis, as Ibn Khaldun first pointed
out.)
The political structure of the Neolithic is based on what Kropotkin
would’ve called the free peasantry and the village Mir.
Sahlins was perhaps a bit misleading in comparing the “leisure society”
of the hunter/gatherers to the work society of slash-and-burn
agriculturists. A great deal of that “work” consists of puttering around
in the garden. There exist wonderful accounts—for example, the Dyaks of
Borneo, who grow yams and keep pigs, do a bit of the H/G for delicacies
and spend most of their time (when not head-hunting) in feasting, making
love, and telling long stories. (See Nine Dyak Nights.)
This point needs emphasis: horticulture does not put an end to
non-authoritarian tribal structures of the Paleolithic type. On the
contrary, it successfully prolongs them under the new economic regime.
The State does not emerge amongst gardeners.
One major problem for the primitivist wing of non-authoritarian theory
has always been the tragic perception that hunting/gathering no longer
appears a viable economy for a crowded globe. It sometimes seems that
only a vast eco-catastrophe would make widespread “reversion” possible,
and this is an unthinkable thought.
A transition to horticulture however doesn’t seem quite so unthinkable.
Permaculture, for example, can be seen as a logical extension or updated
version of horticulture, entirely suited to non-authoritarian social
organization. And agrarian radicalism remains (at least potentially)
significant for vast numbers of people involved in agricultural
economies. One of the sickest things about the US is its complete
corporatization of agriculture, eliminating farms and farmers along with
nearly every vestige of agrarianism. Even Europe hasn’t reached this
stage, much less the rest of the world.
Even if our ultimate goal remains some form of victorious reversion to
the primitive, it would seem that a strategic alliance with
horticulturists and agrarian radicals might prove advantageous.
— March, 2004