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Title: Have You Heard the News?
Author: Aragorn!
Date: 2009
Language: en
Topics: AJODA, AJODA #67, anti-politics, critique, review
Notes: Published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #67, Spring-Summer 2009

Aragorn!

Have You Heard the News?

Twilight of the Machines

by John Zerzan

Feral House, 2008

141 pages. Paperback. $12

The publication of another John Zerzan book will likely be responded to

in entirely predictable ways by the majority of the anarchist milieu.

Anyone who is not interested in green anarchist or anti-civilization

thought will dismiss the book out of hand. It is a non-event. Similarly,

since John is the best known North American anarchist, there will be

those who turn to the book as a State of the state-haters, seeing it as

something Zerzan has never claimed it to be, but perhaps is needed. Like

his other books, Twilight of the Machines is a collection of Zerzan’s

articles — this time from his magazine Green Anarchy, Species Traitor

and this magazine.

For us this serves as an opportunity to revisit the role that

primitivism is currently taking in anti-civilization thought and how

Zerzan is serving in his role as its guardian. Using Zerzan’s

definition, the difference between primitivism and other libratory

theories (green or otherwise) is apparent.

A (misleadingly-named) “Man the Hunter” conference at the University of

Chicago in 1966 launched the reversal of the Hobbesian view, which for

centuries had provided ready justification for all the repressive

institutions of a complex, imperializing Western culture. Supporting

evidence for the new paradigm has come forth... and now form[s] the

theoretical basis for everything from undergraduate course[s] to field

research. Archaeologists continue to uncover examples of how our

Paleolithic forbears led mainly peaceful, egalitarian, and healthy lives

for about two million years.

The challenge is to disprove George Grant’s thesis that we live in “a

world where only catastrophe can slow the unfolding of the

potentialities of technique” and to actualize Claude Kornoouh’s judgment

that revolution can only be redefined against progress. (107–108)

The thematic elements of Zerzan’s thought can be seen here. A use of

apocalyptic imagery along with a deep ambivalence toward catastrophe

itself, a fascination with the exposition of the ideologies of

Archaeology and Anthropology, and a preference for a pastoral way of

life. These themes continue to be timely and barely explored due to

bickering about implications that Zerzan has not made and doesn’t show

much sympathy for — like mass die off; going “back to the land”

(especially as a revolutionary practice); any other Khmer Rouge-like

dystopic practices that might be imagined after hearing about

anarcho-primitivism; the critique of domestication, civilization, and

technology. These complaints are distractions that, mostly, ignore what

Zerzan actually is interested in and transform the conversation that he

is trying to have into one that is more salacious, simplistic, and

barren.

Anthropology

At its core (and even in its self-definition) anthropology is a humanist

discipline. To the extent that Zerzan is also a humanist he uses (his

predilection toward) anthropology to make the case about the kind of

society he finds appealing. To the extent that he is not a humanist, or

breaks with some tenets of humanism, he is interested in taking a

central anthropological question in a more philosophical direction. This

is the question of origins.

It seems that his interest in origins, at least in Twilight of the

Machines, continues to be two-fold. First, and primarily, that the

laundry list of “Big Issues” that radicals have with the existing order

can be explained by a sort of first anthropology, an examination of how

things were before the qualitative break called Civilization.

In the context of the generally egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherer or

foraging societies, anthropologists... have described a generally equal

relationship between men and women. In such settings where the person

who procures something also distributes it and where women procure about

80 percent of the sustenance, it is largely women who determine band

society movements and camp locations. Similarly, evidence indicates that

both women and men made the stone tools used by pre-agricultural

peoples. (12)

More speculative is an idea that Zerzan has been touching on since

Elements of Refusal (CAL Press 1999) with his essay “Language: Origin

and Meaning,” which is about the origin of alienation itself.

Within radical circles alienation is a code word containing a lot of

sub-text that can be missed on first introduction. Alienation, in

particular, is coded with a Marxist idea about how workers are alienated

from their creation by the capitalists’ ownership of the means of

production and ownership of the product of that workers labor. In the

young Marx, alienation has a more theoretical definition that remains a

central term used by (and a concern of) both anti-state communists and

Zerzan (whose background as a Marxist can’t be understated). Alienation

is the action by which people (and groups) become alien to the results

of their own activity, the environment in which that activity occurs, to

the people who share that environment and activity, and to themselves.

Most anti-state communist interest in alienation remains firmly focused

on the economy, economic relations, and how to engage in the midst of

economic tension to affect social change. Here is Zerzan’s innovation:

Instead of following the Marxist line of eternal fascination with

alienation as simply synonymous with economic relationships, he looks to

other human endeavors, in particular to pre-industrial, pre-capitalist

world-building that seems to have led to the current economic

alienation. The question for Zerzan and the anarcho-primitivists he has

inspired is “Where did alienation begin?” Their answer appears to be

with the creation of symbolic thought and the culture that arose as a

result.

Kevin Tucker: How would you distinguish symbolic culture and symbolic

thought, and what is their relation to civilization?

John Zerzan: What followed after the species began to symbolize

constitutes symbolic culture. This ethos has come to define what

thinking is, and the sensual part of experience has to [sic] greatly

given way to symbolic experience; that is, direct experience is being

reduced toward zero point... Symbolic culture in the forms of art and

religion, for example, involve re-presented reality being thus processed

as substitute for direct experience. They emerge as societies begin to

develop inequalities that express themselves in specialized roles and

realms of separate authority. (51)

For non-primitivist anarchists who are also interested in anthropology

as a way to talk about human history, the frustration is how rigid the

anarcho-primitivist view of anthropology seems to be. Rather than

critically evaluate all of anthropology for the use of anarchists,

anarcho-primitivists have chosen a view of egalitarian gatherer-hunters

that is defined by a school of anthropologists who are in honest

contention with others about their perspective and the evaluation of the

same evidence. If it is possible to come to different conclusions based

on the same evidence, then the reason that you choose one — especially

if you call it the right one — has little to do with the evidence

itself. In the case of Zerzan, the reasons aren’t stated directly.

Obliquely he reacts most strongly to the extreme stylization and

rapaciousness of techno-industrial culture, and has clearly been

influenced by the green direct action milieu that has been active around

his home in the Pacific Northwest over the past 20 years. But this

doesn’t seem to be enough to explain his particular affinity towards

Sahlins’ position against Obeyesekere’s in the conflict between

anthropologists.

Our concern isn’t for one set of views within anthropology verses

another. The utility of anthropology for anarchists looking for a

practice or a theory is marginal at best. Our concern is that an

exploration about origins (which is worthwhile) should have so much to

do with the discourse of any academic discipline. Anthropology just

happens to be the choice of one set of anarchists; economics is the

choice of another group, while sociology, philosophy, multicultural

studies, etc, reflect the preferences of others. All of these

disciplines have things to offer any critical thinker, but it indicates

a naivety and lack of imagination for any anarchist to act as a

popularizer of, or advocate for, positions that originate in the academy

(with the consequent biases). This continues to be the hallmark of far

too many anarchists.

Genocide

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before

the white man came, an Indian said simply, “Ours.”

— Vine Deloria Jr.

There are many different origin stories we can explore. We can explore

our origins with the nation-building intention of constructing a

narrative of our great journey from and back to a homeland, we can use

origins to tell ourselves a story about all of natural history beginning

in a garden somewhere along the river Nile, or one about great leaders,

or about struggles.

What differentiates Zerzan’s origins story from these others is that it

is not just a story about an appealing society, but an articulation of

the desire for that society that is a-political:

It is becoming too obvious that what bars our way is our failure to put

an end to the reigning institutions and illusions. We must allow

ourselves to see what has happened to us, including the origins of the

disaster. At the same time we realize that true revolt is inspired by

the realization that it is not impossible to bring the disaster to a

halt, to imagine and strike out in new directions — to find our way back

home. (125)

Here Zerzan is on point. To find our way home we are going to have to

follow a different path than that of institutions and illusions.

What is the experience that distinguishes nearly all of us and could,

and should, rightfully be called the origin story of this civilization?

This experience is genocide, the deliberate destruction of a

multi-generational social body. Especially on this continent, every

social body has a story of systematic violence, amnesia, and denial that

has shaped them into a form that can be called civilized. This is true

of those who were captured, enslaved, and brought here to live in

servitude for generations, those who escaped to here only to be

assimilated within generations, those who fled from famine, or the

majority of people who no longer remember their people’s creation story.

The spectacular genocides of the twentieth century have put a bad taste

into the mouths of people (politicians) who otherwise totally agree with

the strategies employed but who, politely, believe that they should be

practiced over generations and with many of the trappings of consent.

What is the difference between forced migrations and concentration camps

other than the size of the body count? Or between a Native American

boarding school and a reeducation camp, except for the use of charitable

language around helping poor children? What is the difference between

blood quantum laws (contemporary, United States) and Genetic Health

Courts (1933–45, Germany), other than which side of the historical

moment we are on? What is the difference between Americanization and

genocide?

For most of us, reaching back in time (behind the systematic removal of

our memories of ourselves, our choices, and our terrains) can only be

done through the mechanisms introduced by European Enlightenment

thought. Discussing “home,”, anarchy, or any sort of better world is

done through literature, anthropology, or religious texts that, for all

their positive traits, are also designs conceived of after our

multicultural social forms have been destroyed. The ground that our

memory is built upon is post-apocalyptic. The path from there to here is

not only a story of horror; complicating matters is that it has now

become invisible because we have been convinced that this story isn’t

true, that it never happened.

There are exceptions to this amnesiac society. There are groups, small

and shrinking, of people who have lived contiguously and were not

entirely erased. That have continued to live. To survive. If we hold a

position that the lifeways of these people are a model for a better way

of life, then why isn’t our highest priority getting to know about them,

interacting with those who are available to teach us, and establishing

ourselves along the path of their contiguous experience rather than

living in our post-apocalyptic one? The civilized task of genocide has

not been completed. There are real live non-civilized people who could

aid and teach another generation on the specifics of what it would take

to live differently.

Zerzan appears to be calling for a different approach.

Where do we look for rescue? Our predicament points us toward a

solution. The crisis of modernity is, in a very basic sense, a failure

of vision in which our disembodied life-world has lost its “place” in

existence. We no longer see ourselves within the webs and cycles of

nature. The loss of a direct relationship to the world terminates a once

universal human understanding of our oneness with the natural world. The

principle of relatedness is at the heart of indigenous wisdom:

traditional intimacy with the world as the immanent basis of

spirituality. This understanding is an essential and irreplaceable

foundation of human health and meaningfulness. (124)

There is a clear disconnect, using the terminology of sympathetic

anthropology, between proselytizing a lifeway assumed to be held by real

living people and not relying on those people’s own understanding of

what that lifeway is, or how to live it. Perhaps it is a kind of

heroism. Unlike the rest of the anti-civilization crowd,

anarcho-primitivists actually state clearly “this is what we want”

without caring about whether this has much basis in a living

multi-generational people’s experience, rather than the maintenance of a

purely intellectual opposition to what is — without particular regard to

the implications or efficacy.

The counter-cultural fascination with Native Americans in the 1960s and

‘70s is certainly a warning to urban anarchists who may conclude that

direct learning from another culture is a great idea. It should be

painfully obvious, but it bears repeating, that not all members of a

cultural or ethnic group have the same motivation, experience, or

patience in dealing with members of another group. This is especially

true if one group has been short-changed, while the other group

represents socio-economic privilege, expectation (of knowledge and

hospitality), and is not resolute in their own motivations. People are

not ideas and do not conform to the expectations we might have of them.

Dilettantes aren’t as fascinating.

Somewhere in this tension between the lessons (that should have been)

learned from the ‘70s and the need that North American anarchists and

radicals have to link up with multi-generational social bodies is a — if

not the — practice for the 21^(st) century.

It’s an all or nothing struggle. Anarchy is just a name for those who

embrace its promise of redemption and wholeness, and try to face up to

how far we’ll need to travel to get there. We humans once had it right,

if the anthropologists are to be believed. Now we’ll find out if we can

get it right again. Quite possibly our last opportunity as a species.

(68)

Zerzan is not calling for this practice. He is a town crier informing us

that danger is on the horizon. Danger is upon us! And we, urban,

civilized, educated people, are the danger. Our loneliness, our need for

pharmaceuticals, our obsession with technological toys... these are all

signs of the corruption of the totality. We are the problem and, at

best, it is only our self-aware effort to pull back from the abyss that

will save, if not this civilization then, humanity from utter

annihilation.

What Zerzan continues to miss is that for the bulk of humanity,

including civilized people, this apocalypse has already happened. We are

currently the over-populated survivors of total destruction, blinking in

the sunlight of our own loss, wandering aimlessly for food and shelter.

For people who come from multi-generational social bodies, the effort is

merely to wait out the situation until those of us from the

post-apocalypse find our way to them or fade into memory.

Appendix: (Anti)politics

Politics is a word that increases in complexity the more our world does.

It means at least three different things which overlap in meaning, but

also conflict with each other. The first is the classic war by other

means and entails the manipulation of social relationships involving

power and authority. The second is the feminist-influenced and commonly

used “personal as political,” which implicates oneself and one’s actions

in consequences in the larger world and in other people’s lives. Finally

the third addresses the assumptions that go into both the previous two

definitions.

The idea of anti-politics is to break out of politics (as defined above)

by calling into question their presumptions. As Wolfi Landstreicher puts

it, being anti-political means being “opposed to any form of social

organization — and any method of struggle — in which the decisions about

how to live and struggle are separated from the execution of those

decisions regardless of how democratic and participatory this separated

decision-making process may be.”

Anarchists who embrace anti-politics as a useful way to critique current

events point to activists who work 60 to 80 hour weeks for non-profits

in the name of political action, who police their own behavior but

especially that of those around them — far more effectively than even

surveillance society is willing to — in the name of “anti-oppression

work,” and who evoke a world of danger — of general strikes and

insurrections — but who almost always end up engaging in pale

reflections of those situations: marches, protests, and hope blocs.