Clarifying the Unique & Its Self-Creation: An Introduction to Stirner’s Critics, by Jason McQuinn

ClarifyingtheUniqueandItsSelf-Creation-ModernSlavery

Clarifying the Unique audio part 1 on Immediatism

Clarifying the Unique audio part 2 on Immediatism

For anybody who’s interested in reading a more contemporary critique of Stirner, here is a pamphlet against Stirner and individualism written by some anarchists recently. might be a nice addendum to this week’s piece:

Entanglement: On Anarchism and Individualism

Another potential supplement for this week’s reading, this one much shorter and with a far better grasp of Stirner than the pamphlet above. Check it out if you’ve already read the intro to Critics and are looking for something to ponder before tonight’s conversation.

Ricardo Baldissone – “Not for Understanding but for Cutting: Breaking out of the Western Conceptual Straitjacket with Stirner”

The Revolution of Fungal Life will be the main focus and the other is a supplementary text.

The Revolution of Fungal Life, by Anonymous, from Black Seed Issue 7

The Revolution of Fungal Life on Immediatism Podcast (full text read aloud)

Toward a Radical Mycology (Intro to Radical Mycology book) supplementary text

Radical Mycology, the full book, almost 700 pages pdf

This whole first part of Fragment of A Voyage to New Orleans (1855), by Elisee Reclus, which is under the title Fragment of a Voyage to Louisiana on TheAnarchistLibrary.org.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elisee-reclus-fragment-of-a-voyage-to-louisiana

The first part is a text called Putting Freedom on the Map: The Life and Work of Elisee Reclus, by John Clark, and is optional.

3/7 Update: Alternatively, the translator has sent us a longer revised version of the full text

#VOYAGE REVISED EDITION PDF

Hello all, sorry for yet another late post! This week, we’ve got three pieces to choose from. Bellamy’s piece is kind of long, but as always, feel free to read them all, a select few, or even none at all — whatever suits your needs and desires. The selections are:

Seaweed – “Permanent Subsistence Zones”

Bellamy Fitzpatrick – “An Invitation to Desertion”

Rob Los Ricos – “Traveling Autonomous Zone”

Thanks for putting up with my posting ineptitude. See you all on Tuesday!

This coming Tuesday, we’ll try a bit of a medium change and look at a graphic novel: Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. Since we’re used to calibrating our reading lengths based upon pure text, I’m not sure how many pages are too many for everyone’s taste when reading visual works like this. As such, you’ll find chapters 1 and 2 behind the jump. If that proves to be too much for your taste or than you have time for, feel free to read less. We’ll see what kind of a discussion they inspire and perhaps we’ll finish this series in the future!

Next week we’ll discuss prisons and the struggles against them from both within and without. For readings, you have a choice: either Mark Barnsley’s “If it was easy, they wouldn’t call it struggle” or the pamphlet “3 positions against prisons”. Both PDFs are found behind the link, but just be aware that “3 positions…” is in imposed format.

No need to read them both, or even to necessarily read either, just show up next week with your ideas on the carceral system and how to burn it to the ground.

Next time we’re going to read an old favorite we haven’t looked at in this group for a while: Alfredo Bonanno’s Armed Joy. It’s easily Bonanno’s most well-known piece (at least among anglophone readers), albeit one of his early ones, and a poetic evocation of his conception of insurrectionary anarchism. Lately Cory has been kind enough to record our readings, but she can take the week off as I recorded this one years ago.

There seemed to be some interest in a piece I’ve mentioned before called “Professional Anarchy and Theoretical Disarmament: On Insurrectionalism” by Miguel Amorós. It looks critically at Bonanno and the insurrectionary tendency so strongly associated with his writings (at least in this part of the world). This is just extra reading for you masochists out there, so no worries if you don’t get to it (or don’t want to). Some of you may find it worthwhile.

Hope to see you all next week for this volatile classic!

Hello all, next week we decided to read some pieces on Hakim Bey that appeared in Ceasefire Magazine. We’re going to discuss the sections “Chaos Never Died: Hakim Bey’s Ontology”, “The Temporary Autonomous Zone”, and “The Pessimism of Autonomy”.

Some of you may remember the journal Hostis that released two issues a while back. One of the editors of that project, a guy named Andrew Culp who has written some really great books of his own, is starting a new reading group meeting twice monthly online. The project is called QUIVER and the first week will focus on the concept of “weapons”, while reading both a dialogue between Deleuze and Foucault and a chapter from 1000 Plateaus. The first meeting will be this coming Monday, February 1 from 9:00-11:00 AM (yeah, weird time). You can get all the info and RSVP if you’re planning on going on their site. I’ll be checking it out for sure and I imagine that some of you might also be interested. I hear they have something like 65 people who have RSVPed thus far, so it could get a little wild… Hope to see ya there.

Next week we’ll be looking at Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman; specifically the first chapter, “Polemical Preface: Pornography in the Service of Women”. Be advised that it is on the lengthy side — totaling around 35 pages — but given the author, they are almost certain to be compelling!

Another book mentioned this evening that some of you may wish to check out: Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Ensouling Language: On the Art of Non-Fiction and the Writer’s Life. Looks interesting!

As mentioned at the very end of the meeting, we have decided to abandon the FB chat that we’ve had going for quite a while and switch to the far more secure option of a Signal chat instead. All important information and decision-making will still take place on Tuesdays in the group proper — this chat is just for us to shoot the shit between meetings and share things we come across that others might appreciate. All you need is the Signal app and a phone number, and if you’re hesitant to use your actual number, a burner number created via Google Voice or a similar app will also work. If you want in, either text me (Nev) your digits or email them to birdsoffire [at] riseup [dot] net.

Lastly, we are planning on recording a new episode of our podcast Margins of Reality soon! The current plan is to record in the late afternoon on January 30th (a week from this coming Saturday). We’re hoping that everyone who has taken part in previous episodes will join us for this one. Additionally, anyone else from the study group who feels like taking part is more than welcome to. Those of us in the Bay who feel comfortable meeting up will likely record irl, and everyone else who wants to participate can via Jitsi. If you’re interested in being a part of this, shoot an email over to birdsoffire [at] riseup [dot] net. Our topic for this episode is as yet undetermined so if you’ve got ideas, let’s hear em. Until next time!!

Next time we’ll start Laura RIding’s Anarchism is Not Enough. Looks to be a thought-provoking text with lots of opaque rumination on the vital issues of lived poetry and the central place of subjectivity. Hope you will join us to discuss!

Below you’ll find cover art from Lisa Samuel’s books (the author of the introduction we read last week) as well as some selected quotations from Laura Riding.

Laura Riding quotations & covers

Wild_Dialectics

Anti_M

Tender Girl – cover