John Zerzan

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John Zerzan (born 1943) is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticise (agricultural) civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Some of his criticism has extended as far as challenging domestication, language, symbolic thought (such as mathematics and art) and the concept of time. His four major books are Elements of Refusal (1988), Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994), Against Civilization: A Reader (1998) and Running on Emptiness (2002).

Contents

[edit] Early life and education

Zerzan was born in 1943 in Oregon to immigrants of Bohemian heritage. He studied as an undergraduate at Stanford University and later received a Master's degree in History from San Francisco State University. He completed his coursework towards a Ph.D. at the University of Southern California but dropped out before completing his dissertation.

[edit] Zerzan's work

Zerzan's theories draw on Theodor Adorno's concept of negative dialectics to construct a theory of civilization as the cumulative construction of alienation. Zerzan claims that original human societies in paleolithic times, and similar societies today such as the !Kung, Bushmen and Mbuti, live a non-alienated and non-oppressive form of life based on primitive abundance and closeness to nature. Constructing such societies as a kind of political ideal, or at least an instructive comparison against which to denounce contemporary (especially industrial) societies, Zerzan uses anthropological studies from such societies as the basis for a wide-ranging critique of aspects of modern life. He portrays contemporary society as a world of misery built on the psychological production of a sense of scarcity and lack.[1] The history of civilisation is the history of renunciation; what stands against this is not progress but rather the Utopia which arises from its negation.[2]

Zerzan is an anarchist, and is broadly associated with the tendencies known as anarcho-primitivism, green anarchy, anti-civ, post-left anarchy and embodiment. He rejects not only the state, but all forms of hierarchical and authoritarian relations. "Most simply, anarchy means "without rule." This implies not only a rejection of government but of all other forms of domination and power as well."[3]

Zerzan's work relies heavily on a strong dualism between the "primitive" — viewed as non-alienated, wild (hence free), non-hierarchical, ludic, and socially egalitarian — and the "civilised" — viewed as alienated, domesticated (hence enslaved or subordinated), hierarchically organised, work-obsessed and socially discriminatory. Hence, "life before domestication/agriculture was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health."[4]

Zerzan's claims about the status of primitive societies are based on a reading of the works of anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard B. Lee. Crucially, the category of primitives is restricted to those societies which are pure hunter-gatherers with no domesticated plants or animals. For instance, hierarchy among Northwest Coast Native Americans whose main activities were fishing and foraging is attributed to their having domesticated dogs and tobacco.[5] His claims are thus insulated from the criticisms made by critics such as Murray Bookchin, based on ecocidal, hierarchical or oppressive practices by other peoples labelled as "primitive". However, this comes at the cost of narrowing his empirical reference to an extremely small number of existing societies and a controversial reading of archaeological records.

The call for a "Future Primitive", for a radical reconstruction of society based on a rejection of alienation and an embracing of the wild. " It may be that our only real hope is the recovery of a face-to-face social existence, a radical decentralization, a dismantling of the devouring, estranging productionist, high-tech trajectory that is so impoverishing."[6] The usual use of anthropological evidence is comparative and demonstrative - the necessity or naturality of aspects of modern western societies is challenged by pointing to counter-examples in hunter-gatherer societies. "Ever-growing documentation of human prehistory as a very long period of largely non-alienated life stands in sharp contrast to the increasingly stark failures of untenable modernity."[7] It is unclear, however, whether this implies a re-establishment of the literal forms of hunter-gatherer societies or a broader kind of learning from their ways of life in order to construct non-alienated relations.

Zerzan's political project calls for the destruction of technology. He draws the same distinction as Ivan Illich, between tools that stay under the control of the user, and technological systems that draw the user into their control. One difference is the division of labour, which Zerzan opposes. While tools can be used by everyone in a community (albeit with varying levels of skill), hence leading to an equal distribution of power and a situation of individual autonomy, technology requires specialised knowledge which is possessed by an elite, which automatically has power over other users. This power is one of the sources of alienation, along with domestication and symbolic thought.

Zerzan's typical method is to take a particular construct of civilisation (a technology, belief, practice or institution) and construct an account of its historical origins, its alleged destructive and alienating effects and its contrasts with hunter-gatherer experiences. In his essay on number for example, Zerzan starts by contrasting the "civilized" emphasis on counting and measuring with a "primitive" emphasis on sharing, citing Dorothy Lee's work on the Trobriand Islanders in support, before constructing a narrative of the rise of number through cumulative stages of state domination, starting with the desire of Egyptian kings to measure what they ruled.[8] This approach is repeated in relation to time,[9] gender inequality,[10] work,[11] technology,[12] art and ritual,[13] agriculture[14] and globalization.[15] Zerzan also writes more general texts on anarchist[16] and primitivist theory,[17][18] critiques of "postmodernism" and of perceived opponents such as Hakim Bey[19] and Noam Chomsky,[20] and cultural commentaries on shows such as Star Trek.[21]

[edit] Political development

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In 1966 Zerzan was arrested while performing civil disobedience at a Berkeley anti-Vietnam War march and spent two weeks in the Alameda County Jail. He vowed after his release never again to be willingly arrested. He attended events organized by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and was involved with the psychedelic drug and music scene in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

As a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist[citation needed] in the late 1960s he worked as a social worker for the city of San Francisco welfare department. Becoming frustrated with the mundane life of a low-wage government worker, he helped organize a social worker's union, the SSEU, and was elected vice president in 1968, and president in 1969. Local Situationist group Contradiction denounced him as a leftist bureaucrat. He became progressively more radical as he was exposed to what he considered to be the counter-revolutionary role of his and other unions. He was also a voracious reader of the Situationists, being particularly influenced by Guy Debord.

In 1974 Black and Red Press published Unions Against Revolution by Spanish ultra-left theorist Grandizo Munis that included an essay by Zerzan which previously appeared in the journal Telos. Over the next twenty years, Zerzan became intimately involved with the Fifth Estate, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, Demolition Derby and other anarchist periodicals. After reading the works of Fredy Perlman, David Watson and others, he slowly came to the conclusion that civilization itself was at the root of the problems of the world and that a hunter-gatherer form of society presented the most egalitarian model for human relations with themselves and the natural world.

[edit] Zerzan and the "Unabomber"

In the mid-1990s Zerzan became a confidant to Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, after he read Industrial Society and Its Future, the so-called Unabomber Manifesto. Zerzan sat through the Unabomber trial and often conversed with Kaczynski during the proceedings. It was after becoming known as a friend of the Unabomber that the mainstream media became interested in Zerzan and his ideas.

In Zerzan's essay "Whose Unabomber?" (1995), he signaled his support for the Unabomber's doctrine, but criticised the bombings:

...the mailing of explosive devices intended for the agents who are engineering the present catastrophe is too random. Children, mail carriers, and others could easily be killed. Even if one granted the legitimacy of striking at the high-tech horror show by terrorizing its indispensable architects, collateral harm is not justifiable...[22]

however:

The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?.... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life?[23]

Two years later though, in the 1997 essay "He Means It - Do You?," Zerzan altered his position:

Enter the Unabomber and a new line is being drawn. This time the bohemian schiz-fluxers, Green yuppies, hobbyist anarcho-journalists, condescending organizers of the poor, hip nihilo-aesthetes and all the other "anarchists" who thought their pretentious pastimes would go on unchallenged indefinitely - well, it's time to pick which side you're on. It may be that here also is a Rubicon from which there will be no turning back.

[edit] Zerzan and Pacific Northwest anarcho-primitivism

In 1995 a full-page interview with Zerzan was featured in the New York Times. Another significant event that shot Zerzan to celebrity philosopher status was his association with members of the Eugene, Oregon anarchist scene that later were the driving force behind the use of black bloc tactics at the 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington. Anarchists using black bloc tactics were thought to be chiefly responsible for the property destruction committed at numerous corporate storefronts and banks.[24]

News media coverage started a firestorm of controversy after the riots and Zerzan was one of those that they turned to to explain the actions that some had taken at the demonstrations. After gaining this public notoriety, John Zerzan began accepting speaking engagements and giving interviews around the world explaining anarcho-primitivism and the more general Global Justice Movement. Recently Zerzan has been involved, however tempestuously, with the Post-left anarchist trend, which argues that anarchists should break with the Left, which they believe is mired in ideology and mostly concerned with seizing state power and crushing individual freedom.

Zerzan is currently one of the editors of Green Anarchy, a journal of anarcho-primitivist and insurrectionary anarchist thought. He is also the host of Anarchy Radio in Eugene on the University of Oregon's radio station KWVA 88.1FM. The program airs on Tuesday nights from nine to ten Pacific time, and hosts take calls at 541-346-0645. He is still a contributing editor at Anarchy Magazine and has been published in magazines such as AdBusters. He does extensive speaking tours around the world, and is married to an independent consultant to museums and other nonprofits.

[edit] Criticism

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Zerzan acknowledges that primitivist ideals are difficult even for the convinced to put into practice, for which he has been criticized as lacking a concrete model of realization and hence making his primitivism a purely theoretical exercise. As he told one reporter: “It’s a huge challenge. You've got these great grandiose ideas, but the rubber has to hit the road somewhere, and we know that. I don’t know how that's going to work.… [W]e are a long way from connecting with that reality and we have to face that. You start off with questioning things and trying to enlarge the space where people can have dialogue and raise the questions that are not being raised anywhere else. But we don’t have blueprints as to what people should do.”[25]

Furthermore, some state that he often fails to give a proper context to the many quotations in his work which may lead to a misleading conclusion on the part of the reader in regards to the feelings of the writer quoted. For example:

In 1976, von Glasersfeld wondered "whether, at some future time, it will still seem so obvious that language has enhanced the survival of life on this planet."[26]

The reader is given no background that might explain who von Glasersfeld is, what is the nature of his expertise, or why his observation is relevant to the particular discussion. Moreover, this is not an isolated example. His article on "Time and its Discontents" contains around 250 references to poets, writers, philosophers, scientists, ancient proverbs, and mythological figures, and it would take a considerable degree of time and effort on the part of the reader to verify these quotes in order to confirm their validity and relevance to Zerzan's arguments.

Finally, Zerzan has also on occasion quoted others to claim that, for example, “the Bushmen… can see four moons of Jupiter with the unaided eye” and that there exists “telepathic communication among the !Kung in Africa”.[27], which is indicative of the type of statements for which the likes of Murray Bookchin and Ted Kaczynski have criticised Zerzan's reading of anthropological evidence as romanticised, ignoring for instance the existence of animal cruelty among the Ituri. Academic debates about claims by authors cited by Zerzan, such as debates about how many hours foragers spend in socially-necessary activities and whether they suffer from famine, have been refracted into the debates about Zerzan's work.[28][29]

[edit] References

  1. ^ John Zerzan - The Mass Psychology of Misery
  2. ^ John Zerzan - Why Primitivism?
  3. ^ John Zerzan - What is Anarchism?
  4. ^ John Zerzan - Future Primitive
  5. ^ John Zerzan - Future Primitive
  6. ^ John Zerzan - What is Anarchism?
  7. ^ John Zerzan - Why Primitivism?
  8. ^ John Zerzan - Number: Its Origin and Evolution
  9. ^ John Zerzan - Time and its Discontents
  10. ^ John Zerzan - Patriarchy, Civilization, and the Origins of Gender
  11. ^ John Zerzan - Organized Labor versus "The Revolt Against Work"
  12. ^ John Zerzan - Technology
  13. ^ John Zerzan - Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought
  14. ^ John Zerzan - Agriculture
  15. ^ John Zerzan - Globalization and its Apologists: An Abolitionist Perspective
  16. ^ John Zerzan - What is Anarchism?
  17. ^ John Zerzan - Future Primitive
  18. ^ John Zerzan - Why Primitivism?
  19. ^ John Zerzan - "Hakim Bey," Postmodern Anarchist
  20. ^ John Zerzan - Who is Chomsky?
  21. ^ John Zerzan - Star Trek
  22. ^ John Zerzan - Whose Unibomber?
  23. ^ John Zerzan - Whose Unibomber?
  24. ^ Black Bloc communique from N30
  25. ^ Guardian Unlimited - Anarchy in the USA
  26. ^ John Zerzan - Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought
  27. ^ John Zerzan - Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought
  28. ^ Murray Bookchin - Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism
  29. ^ Letter from Ted Kaczynski

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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