Politics
Against Civilization - Readings and Reflections
Publisher: Feral House, 2005, 276pp, 1st ed.
A new anthology edited by the anarchist philosopher John Zerzan, Against Civilization: Readings and Reflectionn, is composed of excerpts from the works of a wide range of authors who've offered radical critiques of industrial society. Against Civilization is not all poetic rage; the various contributions include reasoned analyses of the inherent contradictions of industrial capitalism, celebrations of vernacular culture, and inspiring visions of worlds beyond systematic domination and exploitation.
Table of contents
| Foreword | ||
| Introduction | 1 | |
| Preface | 4 | |
| Sect. I | Outside civilization | 8 |
| The golden feast | 11 | |
| The noble savage : a study in romantic naturalism | 15 | |
| Discourse on the origins of inequality | 19 | |
| "Excursions" | 25 | |
| Against his-story, against Leviathan! | 27 | |
| Primitive man and his food | 31 | |
| "The original affluent society" | 35 | |
| "Birds combat civilization" | 39 | |
| "Wildflowers : a bouquet of theses" | 41 | |
| Minima moralia : reflections from damaged life | 44 | |
| Our kind | 46 | |
| Spokane museum | 49 | |
| Sect. II | The coming of civilization | 50 |
| The earth as modified by human action | 53 | |
| Beyond geography : the Western spirit against the wilderness | 58 | |
| The invasion within : the contest of cultures in colonial North America | 65 | |
| Elements of refusal | 68 | |
| Nature and madness | 74 | |
| Health and the rise of civilization | 81 | |
| The search for society | 90 | |
| My name is Chellis and I'm in recovery from Western civilization | 91 | |
| Society against the state | 95 | |
| The land of the naked people | 97 | |
| Reading and writing | 99 | |
| Sect. III | The nature of civilization | 102 |
| On the aesthetic education of man | 105 | |
| Theory of four movements and general destinies | 107 | |
| Civilization and its discontents | 108 | |
| "Civilization and the primitive" | 110 | |
| Eclipse of reason | 112 | |
| Dawn and decline | 115 | |
| "Was civilization a mistake?" | 116 | |
| Here : a small history of a mining town in the American Southwest : Warren/Bisbee Az | 124 | |
| Toward a history of needs | 129 | |
| Modernity and the Holocaust | 131 | |
| "Civilization is like a jetliner" | 136 | |
| "Industrial society and its future" | 139 | |
| The old way and civilization | 141 | |
| Women/wilderness | 147 | |
| Sect. IV | The pathology of civilization | 150 |
| Conventional lies, or our civilization | 153 | |
| The final empire : the collapse of civilization and the seed of the future | 155 | |
| The collapse of complex societies | 162 | |
| Where the wasteland ends : politics and transcendence in postindustrial society | 167 | |
| The parable of the tribes : the problem of power in social evolution | 172 | |
| Critique of cynical reason | 176 | |
| The seeds of time | 179 | |
| "The medium is the medium" | 182 | |
| "How nice to be civilized!" | 184 | |
| "Civilization in bulk" | 187 | |
| Memories and visions of paradise | 196 | |
| "They're always telling me I'm too angry" | 198 | |
| Man and technics : a contribution to a philosophy of life | 204 | |
| In search of noble ancestors | 206 | |
| Sect. V | The resistance to civilization | 212 |
| Avoiding social and ecological disaster : the politics of world transformation | 215 | |
| Future primitive | 220 | |
| News from nowhere | 222 | |
| "Feral revolution" | 227 | |
| "Don't eat your revolution! : make it!" | 231 | |
| "The machine in our heads" | 232 | |
| "Revolt of the bats" | 243 | |
| Rebels against the future : lessons from the Luddites | 247 | |
| "Actions speak louder than words" | 252 | |
| "We have to dismantle all this" | 256 | |
| Talking to the owls and butterflies | 258 | |
| Anarcho-futurist manifesto | 263 | |
| Woman and nature : the roaring inside her | 265 | |
| "Why civilization?" | 266 |