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FRR Books Podcast: On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life by Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the point of studying history? The greatest argument I have heard is that if we know history we can change the future. Nietzsche makes this argument, but this ignores the fact that history is often a weight and a burden. Despite what most liberals believe, knowledge is not always 100% positive. Sloterdijk said that “Those who first uttered the phrase that knowledge is power didn’t mean only to make that equation, but to also intervene in the game of power.” This is the positive of knowing history, power! But, knowledge can also be a burden. Knowledge can function as a chain which limits us. What is heavier than history? It weighs not only on our minds, but our bodies. History is a given. We are shackled to the past by the libidinal economy of shared history and the history that lives in our bodies. I am against revolution because in my opinion no revolution has ever led to a society or situation which I find worth affirming, but should this limit me completely from any interest in revolution? I think so, but I am open to the idea that I am wrong. Can we view history from something other than a tautological mindset? Can we reject the gift of the given? What if we reject history, or change it?  What would that look like? What does it look like to make a history for ourselves? Can I view history from one of the many options Kundera provides for us: “History is as light...

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FRR Books Podcast: Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch

“Much that is terrible we do not know.  Much that is beautiful we shall still discover.  Let’s sail till we come to the edge.”  There is something about books with shitty protagonists that I love and find compelling.  Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim usually comes to my mind first with Bron from Delany’s Trouble on Triton entering my mind second with a nod to Dostoevsky’s lead in Notes From the Underground.  These are incredibly flawed and weak characters with Dostoevsky starting his novel with “I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man.” Sometimes these characters are insecure and sometimes they are full of braggadocio such as Bron.  Thomas Disch’s novel Camp Concentration is in large parts the journal of Louis Sachetti(think Sacco and Vanzetti of anarchist fame) who is a peak liberal basking in his self-righteousness.  Louis is a conchie(conscientious objector) very satisfied with his righteous imprisonment and his poetry. Disch is bold enough to write poetry for Louis throughout the novel, which some of the other characters take hilarious jabs at.  Reading a novel with a character such as Louis forces a reader to either become a good reader(reading closely and several times over) or to miss all of the beauty and depth within the novel. When I read Camp Concentration I must find empathy and understanding for Louis, a person who if I met in real life I would find completely repulsive.  But, the truth is that there is much I dislike in Louis that I dislike in myself. I have been self-righteous,...

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Boundlessness

On Playing Out the Game Without a Reason “Nevertheless human life was thus image-graced and image-cursed; it could comprehend itself only through images, the images were not to be banished, they had been with us since the herd-beginning, they were anterior to and mightier than our thinking, they were timeless, containing past and future, they were a twofold dream-memory and they were more powerful than we: an image to himself was he who lay there, and steering toward the most real reality, borne on invisible waves, dipping into them, the image of the ship was his own image emerging from darkness, heading toward darkness sinking into darkness, he himself was the boundless ship that at the same time was boundlessness; and he himself was the flight that was aiming toward this boundlessness…” -Hermann Broch Earthsea: Ged Sailing for his Death An Indifferent Universe         What am I to do when I live in a world that is as indifferent towards me as I am towards it?  How do I live in this world when I am positioned in it physically, but against the entirety of the social constructions of man(and god!)?  How can I be in the world but also be on the margins of it? Does my center hold no matter which edge I exist on? Being anarchistic/nihilistic positions me on a fringe of the fringe, on an intellectual/conceptual and sometimes physical margin.  Being a nihilist or egoist or a label less amoral weirdo among weirdos puts me further on that fringe and deeper into the margins. This is something I...

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FRR Books Podcast: The Stirner Series Ep. 10, the Finale part 1!

I decided I was a fucking anarchist after reading the Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guinn when I was in my early twenties living in Hawaii.  I had no idea what an anarchist actually was, what an anarchist scene was..fuck I didn’t really know anything other than that I liked to surf and that I didn’t like the world that I lived in. Anarchy represented the most radical difference to that…this made it incredibly attractive to me.  It stayed incredibly attractive because I kept living in Hawaii, not knowing or meeting anarchists. I read, a lot. I’ve read a lot since I was a little kid. I didn’t make friends during childhood because I was too intense, too black and white morally and took the world way too seriously. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t cured myself of these childhood/childish ways.  I thought at a young age that there was a moral obligation to watch the news, pay attention, know everything, and that somehow this would be helpful in fixing things. All I can do now is laugh at myself, which might seem like a refrain for my life at this point. Eventually I moved to the Bay whereupon after a couple years I finally(with the help of Bellamy) joined an all volunteer anarchist solidarity network supposedly fighting evictions in Oakland.  After one of the meetings at me and Bellamy’s house, 8 or so people of the group stayed to hang and talk. Bellamy and I found ourselves actually discussing whether or not...

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On Desire and Consciousness: FRR Books Podcast the Stirner Series Episode IX

Here we are again, back on the boat discussing Stirner’s ideas. On my best days I view this project as an attempt to break from the ideological & eschatological thinking that hangs like a pall over anarchists and humans alike. It is difficult to discuss Stirner because most people haven’t read him and also because many believe that they know what is contained in this book from whatever they have read or heard other people say. We are not attempting to do the work for you, but rather to provide a companion with which to interact while reading Wolfi’s rewriting of Stirner’s book. As someone who reads all the time, it is frustrating to have few people to discuss the books with. It is frustrating because I believe reading to both an anti-social(while doing it) and social(it changes me and then I interact differently when socializing) activity. When I read a book that makes me question myself, my idea, my ideals, and what I hold closest, I am compelled to share this new version of my self with friends, fuck it, with strangers too. So here sits our version of sharing, our hope that in talking with each other we can better understand ours elves and how to relate to each other and further complicate our selves and relations to revel in pretending we can see and understand the chaos for just a little bit. We Discuss: rydra introduces the episode incorrectly…sorry not sorry Keehar has a fucked taste palette caz England Suicide: can we...

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Structures of Desire: Postanarchist kink in the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany

Here we present to you a recording of Structures of Desire: Postanarchist kink in the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, written by Lewis Call. But Butler and Delany go further than many of their peers, for they not only provide a compelling critique of the political and sexual economies of slavery, they also provide an alternative. For Butler and Delany, erotic power exchange and play-slavery provide an antidote to the ethically bankrupt institution of slavery. These two authors thus offer us a way to begin healing the wounds which chattel slavery has left upon our culture and its philosophy of ethics. You can read the original text here.

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FRR Books Podcast. Stirner Series Ep. 8: What’s Love got to do with it?! <3

In episode VII we discuss the second half of the chapter My Intercourse in the Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, translated by Wolfi Lanstreicher. What happens when six friends(aided by adult beverages and friendly plants) get together on a sailboat(well a parked sailboat) in the Pacific Ocean to discuss Stirner’s seminal piece of writing. Did the world change? Did we change? Did we discuss whether or not this was even possible? I’m not so sure. What I do know is that there are few things I love more than reading a book and shooting the shit with a few friends who also enjoy battling over ideas and seeing if it possible to take them out of the realm of the platonic and into the realm of our lives. To listen to us is to listen on a conversation shared between friends that we do for our selves but also that we love to share. Here are some things we hit on: What is love? What does love have to do with it? What does is mean to love every one instead of everyone. Food metaphors, digest, break it up, now I’m hungry! We fight about his idea of choice and how that relates to tearing down freedom Stirner doesn’t talk enough about engaging with non-humans! We hold him to account for his anthropomorphizing Can you join the party without it changing you? We disagree! We argue about buddhism and its relevance if any Much more but I am done typing and if you...

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My Intercourse! How We Have it, Who We Do it With: FRR Books Podcast the Stirner Series Episode VII

In episode VII of the Stirner Series we cover the second 50 pages of the chapter My Intercourse. In this episode Keehar, Big Cat, and rydra wrong discuss all things Stirner. We delve deeper into Stirner’s ideas and how they relate to our own lives. Some people have wondered what the purpose of this project is. The answer is simple: we are a group of friends who enjoy reading, talking, fighting, and laughing about books we like. If that isn’t of interest to you, then we probably wouldn’t get along very well if we met in the meat space. We do this project for ourselves, but we share it for our glory and because fuck, why not! I believe that Stirner’s ideas, while imperfect and old and contradicting at times, can change the way I interact with my self, your self, each other, and even the rocks I sometimes walk upon. What is an unexamined life worth? What is a life worth? These are just some of the questions we ask ourselves as we share our play for anyone to hear. I am tired of stale politics, stale ideas, and stale bread, and stale people. I have always yearned for more, desire constantly pushing me to uncomfortable places, physically and metaphysically. This podcast is for anyone who has ever wanted to meditate and marinate on life’s questions big and small, and for anyone who thinks that those changes we make, big and small, are the things we live for. Music: Never Give Up on Myself by...

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FRR Books Podcast Episode 6: The Unique and Its Property, A Close Reading

In episode 6 rydra, big cat, Kahar, and Chuck discuss many things! What is the difference between a criminal and an illegalist Liberals want us to assert our weakness! Might vs Right! Earned vs Taken rights! Rights?! Can egoism be appropriated by leftism!? Rydra says we cannot have a creative nothing because we cannot free ourselves from other’s perceptions of us! He shockingly uses Kundera to back up this point in a discussion of imagologues. What is spookier, society or other people? Big Cat brings in Daredevil references using Fisk to back her up to discuss love as the ultimate prison, “everywhere you go, you take it with you.” Aw, Fisk! We discuss Steve Prefontaine and the perfect speech for an egoist to give leading up to a first kiss! We miss you Steve! Big Cat explains Crab in A Bucket Theory Sound editing by Big Cat Production and hard labor by rydra wrong voiced by Kahar, Chuck, rydra, & Big Cat Music: Regulations- To be me Lou Miami & the Kozmetix- I live with ghosts Ghostbusters theme song by whoever wrote that

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FRR Audiobooks: Desert

Today we bring you one of the longest text readings in our history: Desert by Anonymous. Here I have tried to map present and plausible futures whilst calling for a desertion from old illusions and unwinnable battles in favour of the possible. I would hope that the implicit call throughout, for us to individually and collectively desert the cause of class society/civilisation, was clear. Yet I can already hear the accusations from my own camp; accusations of deserting the cause of Revolution, deserting the struggle for Another World. Such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such millenarian and progressive myths are at the very core of the expansion of power. We can be more anarchic than that. Desert tries to be realistic about climate change, revolution, and anarchist action in the world. With no illusions about a revolution being possible, climate change being stopped, a post-collapse eden, or our capacity to make a dent in leviathan, desert explores what the near future may bring, and where we might choose to act in it. It heavily cites climate science, and more interestingly also cites military projections about the future. What will happen? There will be some good here and there, and some bad here and there, and there are more ways of looking at things than that. Anon delivers again.