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Title: Five feral readings Author: Sascha Engel Date: 2021 Language: en Topics: anti-civ, primitive, writing, symbols, egoism, feral
The project of rewilding oneself to live an anarchic existence starkly
pits individuals against a seemingly overwhelming society. It seems to
be impossible to escape the dead weight of centuries of domesticated
civilization weighing upon each of us. Yet in affirming ourselves
against civilization, in becoming so many projects to “actively refuse
our domestication, refuse to be dominated by social roles that are
forced upon us,” it may yet be possible, however provisionally, to
“become the unique and unpredictable beings that lie hidden beneath the
roles,” and to be, “for that moment, wild.” [1] At the heart of such
projects lies a refusal of obeying the imperatives of symbolic thought.
It is this type of thought that, more than anything else, detaches us
from the world of wild impulses – outside and within ourselves – and
subjects us instead to the dead letter of systematic and hierarchical
organization (which includes the separation of an ‘inside’ and an
‘outside’ ourselves). The ‘dead letter’ is here more than a metaphor.
Although symbolic thought almost certainly started before the advent of
writing, written letters are now the primary manifestation of
civilization’s weight. Everywhere we are pushed around by signage;
everywhere we carry our signed and stamped IDs; everywhere we are sorted
and assigned letters. What is more: at the heart of our very perceptions
of the world – at the immediate point where wild impulse emerges, only
to be tamed right away – the grammar of written letters “sets rules and
limits, and grinds the one-prescription-fits-all lenses through which we
see everything.” [2]
Yet it is here that hope seems to vanish altogether. For not only would
doing away with the written letter come with its own systematic
oppression, as any illiterate member of industrial society knows very
well. What is more, the written letter is also the only medium available
for expressing its critique! After all, it is no accident that this,
too, is a written text. The quest for wildness may well lead individuals
or groups to abandon written communication. Yet the glorious spontaneity
of spoken expression celebrated in this context remains surrounded by
the imperialism of written society. Where would such activity possible?
On compounds perhaps, which are protected by written contracts and
written court records. What organizational shape should such activity
take? A group of individuals without internal structure still requires
written external structure to defend itself against civilized society.
Would the wild project be possible for me alone, by myself, in solitude
and silence? For a while, sure, but then I will need written
communication to justify what I do and who I am, to explain myself, to
defend myself. Everywhere wildness gets domesticated: everywhere the
letter reigns supreme. Is every attempt to thwart the grasp of written
letters – of the grammar of symbolic thought – doomed to failure? Is the
quest for anarchic wildness condemned to performative contradiction,
safely leading it back into the harbor of lukewarm critical theory?
The answer lies perhaps not in a frontal attack on writing, but in a
circumvention. Writing can be accepted in defense, just as I accept any
spook that I am temporarily subject to because I am not yet powerful
enough to throw it off. Incorporating it into a project of wild
liberation, however, can lead to feral ways of reading written letters.
It entails techniques of unlearning reading to some extent, of
unlearning the ways in which letters immediately manifest to ourselves
as words, and from there as sentences with meaning. We can look upon
letters askance – in a way: as though they are a script we can’t read –
and re-interpret them to become part of the world of sight and sound
that our wild impulses would respond to, if they weren’t domesticated.
In other words, we can read written letters with senses that “can be
doors to vast worlds of wonder” if perceiving letters as yet another
part of “the vibrant life that is the physical world on a
moment-to-moment basis.” [3]
Here are some ideas to that end. The first two go in the direction of
transforming written text into oral sensation, while the last three
concern the text as it is written.
1
Read the above text again, but this time, read only its vowels. Think of
their sonorous quality. Whether they ring out continuously –
eoeoeiioeeoieaaaieieeaiii
Or whether you phrase them in long waves –
eoeoei
ioeeoi
eaaaie
ieeaii
Or in short ones –
eoe
oei
ioe
eoi
eaa
aie
iee
aii
Either way, their textual presence fades, and they can become part of an
aural tapestry surrounding you, or perhaps a poem creating ripples in
your soul.
2
Read the text again, but this time only its consonants. Think of their
movements in your mouth and throat, your body, as you pronounce them.
How does their clicking roll of your tongue, how do your lips form the
plosives, how does the air phrase your fricatives?
3
Now look at the letters not as letters but as lines and constellations
of lines. How does the ‘e’ encircle a space in its top half, yet release
it in its bottom half? How does the ‘h’ demarcate what the ‘d’ encloses?
How does the ‘c’ implement the implicit vertical axis that the ‘k’
embodies explicitly, how is the ‘a’ a body, and the ‘o’ too, and the ‘i’
and ‘t’ are antennae, and the ‘y’ is a root? How does the ‘s’ snake and
the ‘w’ flow? And how do the letters manage to gesture towards each
other, how to they manage to flow and morph into one another?
4
Now look not at the lines of the letters but the spaces between them.
How are the letters that form bodies also prisons for the spaces within
them? How does the space of an ‘s’ or a ‘t’ gesture beyond itself? How
is an ‘f’ pointing to the right in a flowing motion, while an ‘m’
gestures to its left, secluding itself?
5
And now consider, finally, that the lines of flight of each letter, and
the open shapes of their negative spaces just as the closed ones, don’t
end at the borders of the page. Consider that the letters are therefore
not just letters but lines within a space. Consider, too, that you
always see more than the page. And thus consider that there’s no
necessity to reading what is off the page through the lens of what is on
the page: that there’s no necessity to interpret wild sight and sound in
light of domesticated written lettering.
[1] Feral Faun, Feral Revolution (London: Elephant Editions, 2001), 17.
[2] John Zerzan, Twilight of the Machines (Port Townsend: Feral House,
2008), 5.
[3] Faun, Feral Revolution, 31.