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They Who Marry Do Ill by Voltairine De Cleyre

[archiveorg FRRtheywhomarrydoillaudiobook width=640 height=30 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]   “So much as I have been able to put together the pieces of the universe in my small head, there is no absolute right or wrong; there is only a relativity, depending on the consciously though very slowly altering condition of a social race in respect to the rest of the world. Right and wrong are social conceptions: mind, I do not say human conceptions. The names “right” and “wrong,” truly, are of human invention only; but the conception “right” and “wrong,” dimly or clearly, has been wrought out with more or less effectiveness by all intelligent social beings. And the definition of Right, as sealed and approved by the successful conduct of social beings, is: That mode of behavior which best serves the growing need of that society.” This is the beginning of Voltairine De Cleyre’s talk “They Who Marry do Ill.”  My appreciation for this 110 year old essay begins with her nihilistic beginning.  It would be lovely if we could all agree that there is no right or wrong, that this is an anthropocentric opinion.  Is there such thing as a good racoon, a good or bad strain of the ebola virus, an evil elephant?  The obviousness of this thought is obscured by the religiosity of humans.  I freely admit that any sort of ethics that I could be accused of are really just my personal aesthetics, which I do not deny have been heavily influenced and informed by things over which I have...

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AJODA: Anarchism within Capitalism

Free Radical Radio is back after a brief unplanned break. Today we bring you four recordings of essays out of Anarchy: A Journal Of Desire, Armed issue #64, released at the end of 2007. That and some of my thoughts around it here. These four essays were the reading for one week of the Berkeley Anarchist Study Group, which meets every Tuesday, 8pm at The Long Haul in Berkeley (come!). Most of us here at Free Radical Radio have gone to the group a number of times, picking fights and making friends. The four essays are: To Dance With The Devil – Aragorn Capitalism means never having to say you’re sorry – Dot Matrix Thinking from the Outside: Avoiding Recuperation – Andy Robinson Proudhon’s Ghost: petit-bourgeois anarchism, anarchist businesses, and the politics of effectiveness – Lawrence Jarach All four revolve around the topic of modern anarchists doing anarchisty things within capitalism. It teases out the contradictions and tradeoffs involved. This brings up a number of questions for me: What are the tradeoffs associated with selling out in various ways? What is and isn’t an anarchist project? How does one make a successful anarchist project? What are different ways to think about success other than effectiveness in capitalist terms (big numbers, constant growth, measurable metrics)? What is the role of property in anarchist projects? Personally, the coolest anarchist projects I’ve experienced have revolved around a consistent physical space. In my life this has looked like a publishing project out of a home, a mostly-legal punk house,...

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A John Zerzan Feature!

Today we bring two pieces of audio relating to John Zerzan! First, a recording of his essay Second-Best Life: Real Virtuality. Second, a clip of one of Free Radical Radio’s favorite moments in John Zerzan’s weekly radio show Anarchy Radio: a caller named Greg. John was kind enough to advertise our ITS Communique series on his show (20:30 start) after an email exchange he had with Dirtroll. After hearing what he said about the conversation, I thought it’d be nice to publish the friendly conversation here to let everyone see what great points he makes and how wonderful his comprehension and ability to engage with ideas is. I asked for his consent to publish it, but he sadly stopped responding at that point. Why he would talk about this conversation on the air but not have the guts to back it up? I don’t know why this is sealed information or something, but I guess I can’t say anymore about it anyways. That’s, uh … I ain’t happy about that, and I’m really appalled that some people seem to get off on this drama stuff. Is that where primitivism goes? Is that an aberration or kinda the logic of it? You tell me.

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The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, pt. 2

“In these regions, you may observe Man in his constitutionally vicious, instinctively evil and studiously ferocious form – in a word, in the closest possible harmony with the natural world.” — The King Angela Carter’s Count is back, but not for long. In this chapter, his tempestuous will faces difficult challenges – slavery imposed by the law, chaotic nature, and finally, his mirrored self (and only one of those even has a chance of bringing about his demise). The morality of this novel suggests that a will of pure negation only has one possible end. Negation leads its beholder to a sort of numbness, a distancing, cutting oneself off from the world surrounding you, seeing it only as a trick to be manipulated. How could you find pleasure engaging with anything weaker than yourself, after all? And if all of reality bends to your will – what could possibly bring you pain? The Count manifests his own end in the form of himself. He creates and meets the King, a being of unlimited power, who lived his life similarly to the Count, another expert in cruelty. The women of his army devour their first-born children in order to pass “far beyond all human feeling”; their clitorises are “brutally excised” so they “are entirely cold and respond only to cruelty and abuse”. All, of course, in accordance with nature and harmony, which cares nothing for those without strong will. What happens next is inevitable. Negation, ultimately, must turn in upon oneself in order to feel. Words,...

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The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman by Angela Carter, pt. 1

In “The Realm Where Moral Judgement is Suspended” Milan Kundera writes that “If I were asked the most common cause of misunderstanding between my readers and me, I would not hesitate: humor.” There are books that make us laugh and books that make us laugh at ourselves, and I prefer the ones that do both. In The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman Angela Carter carries a dark laughter as the current flowing beneath the wild seas of her imagination and machinations. To actually read we must suspend moral judgement, we must suspend our notion of reality, and open ourselves to the possible. To engage with Angela Carter is to live in a world with infinite possibilities, where no reality is any more real or less constructed than the next, and where the trite sensibilities of society are eschewed in favor of a deep exploration of the possible. This happens with Dr. Hoffman breaking space/time, it happens with an immortal vampire who manifest its own desires, and it happens with Desiderio engaging in a quasi-romantic relationship with a child. Carter engages these topics as they are, not as taboos in modernity, and thus we can suss out our own relationship to these situations with more nuance than we are allowed in school, with friends, or in supposedly radical spaces. It is important to understand that we are engaging fiction here. We are engaging a world which is not forced to carry the burden of the real, for novels are the writings of outlaws and all...

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ITS Communiques #5+6+7

We continue with our Individualists Tending Toward The Wild recording series with communiques 5, 6, and 7. Some interesting nuggets, of which there are many: In #5, they take responsibility for a Greenpeace bombing and warn all leftists they’re targets too. In #6, they change their stance on things like using the genderless letter ‘x’, and bombing Greenpeace. In #7 they reflect on their relationship to anarchism and where they differ, as well as respond to technology apologia. But ITS thinks that authority is not always bad–it is bad when it restricts Freedom, when it limits your capacities to be able to reach your ends. But it is not bad when an authority figure teaches you not to falter, to pick yourself up from some emotional or physical decline, when he gives you wise counsel and when he leads you by good paths. You can read the translated texts at the library: #5 #6 #7 – Dirtroll

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LEAVE ME ALONE: Misanthropic Writings From the Anti-Social Edge

I once got into an argument at the anarchist study group in Berkeley, CA about where our anarchy came from.  As I usually do, I loudly proclaimed that all anarchy means to me is “No!” and nothing else.  To some at the group, this seemed an immature and childish sentiment, reminiscent of Crimethinc. and reeking of anti-intellectualism.  Some shared their displeasure at this claim of mine, while some sat silently, as they usually do at the study group, being voyeurs, being takers, giving none of their energy or effort and absorbing(or not) the work others do in attempting to explain their thoughts and feelings. No, I said to my parents No, I said to my teachers No, I said to every job when I finally found it within me to leave. No, I said to every possible lover, despite what my body and mind said yes to “No,” is the essence of my being, which of course has no essence. No is the arbitrary value placed at the center of my non-existence.  From a deep blankness, from an imageless center, exerting from formlessness comes the inertia of “my” no.  For in rejecting form, coherence, stability, and self, I am the embodied and foundationless no.  I float above the heavens and below hell, for I am everywhere and nowhere, a duality and yet not duality, rather something else, some sound in the distance barely audible, scarcely real, am I a dream?  No is One single arbitrary abstraction to open all others.  My no grants everything.  My...

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Against the Logic of Work by Apio Ludd

[archiveorg against-the-logic-of-work width=640 height=30 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] Work dominates most of our lives… so much so that even when we’re able to escape from our employers, we often re-create its logic by working towards a revolution, or some other abstract ideal of the future. So take a break from your work, from your future, and enjoy this short recording featuring scintillating musical interludes and an exotic accent for your aural pleasure. This is the first in a series of short pieces by Apio Ludd. Recording by ChooseLife

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FRR Books Podcast #1: The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera

This is the first episode of FRR’s new books podcast.  Our goal is to discuss books(mostly fiction), especially where they intersect with our lives, nihilism, and anarchism.  I(rydra) will be the most consistent host with a rotation of friends and others I find interesting broadcasting when we desire to.  In this episode we discuss Milan Kundera’s final novel, “The Festival of Insignificance.”  I began reading Kundera as a teenager and my fondness for him has only grown as I have slowly felt the effects of his writing, ideas, and brilliance sink into me over the years. Tom Robbins has written that in life we start as fools and if we live the good life, we end as fools.  Milan Kundera’s first novel was called “The Joke,” so it makes perfect sense that his final novel would again engage the idea of jokes, laughter, insignificance, and how to possibly live the good life.  In this novel, Kundera discusses how to give birth to an apologizer, how society is an army of apologizers, why nobody got Stalin’s jokes, how our obsession with the future is really an attempt to fix the past, and so much more. Kundera was living in Czechoslovakia when Stalin’s tanks stormed across the border and occupied his country.  Shortly after he was exiled to France, which has given him a unique view on politics and history.  In his writing he deconstructs History, nostalgia, identity, and is able to write with a heavy lightness that seeps deep into my bones when I read him. ...

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Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is all the rage right now because of The Handmaid’s Tale, some new TV show and book we all had to read in high school. Women being oppressed by governments is well-trod territory, but this piece tackles it from a different direction – self-imposed subjection. ALSO, IT’S HILARIOUS. “All the articles say it’s better not to resist,” one character says – but fuck that, fuck eroticizing a horrific violent thing and accepting it as something sexy and good. The real rape fantasy should be subverting it and finding humor and ridiculousness and control over it. If you fantasize about submitting in a world that demands your submission, you’ve chosen to find that power dynamic acceptable. (Shout out to all the men and women in kink relationships replicating the exact same power dynamics in the world around them and calling it “subversive” and “playful” when really it’s just lacking imagination.) I particularly appreciate how flippant/realistic this piece is about rape – as in, it’s a thing that happens literally all the time to pretty much everyone, and might even be “one of the most significant moment’s in a girl’s life – almost like getting married or having a baby or something”. (Get it? Get the joke? Because marriage and having babies are equally horrific things women are subjected to and fantasize about??? SAVAGE.) It’s scary and awful but that doesn’t mean it has to mean anything when it happens to you. And I mean that. “Dwelling on [unpleasant things] doesn’t make them go away....