from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, March 24th from 1-3 in Clark Park to discuss a few recent pieces about Aaron Bushnell, an anarchist who recently immolated himself in protest against the ongoing horror in Gaza.
anonymous – Or Just Say Nothing: A Response to CrimethInc.’s Initial Statement on Aaron Bushnell
Masha Gessen – Aaron Bushnell’s Act of Political Despair
See you there!
from Viscera
Join us Sunday, February 25th at 1 pm (location tba) for our next reading discussion!
Did you know that, in a previous lifetime, we were a group of friends discussing anarchist-y science fiction? Call it a return to form, call it revisiting a favorite, but this month we’re doing one of our favorite works of fiction!
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a story of history repeating itself – from the ashes of a world laid waste by nuclear war, we watch as civilization is rebuilt and the human tragedy plays out again. Society, technology, knowledge, history – this work grapples with all of it!
from Viscera
This summer we’ll be hosting our first multi-part reading series, where we’ll be reading the entirety of Against His-story, Against Leviathan! Each discussion will take place on the last Sunday of the month between July and September, as follows:
July 30th chapters 1-10
supplemental reading: baedan – Against the Gendered Nightmare I-XI
August 27th chapters 11-18
supplemental reading: tbd
October 1st chapters 19-24
supplemental reading: Alejandro de Acosta – History as Decomposition
You can find the full text of Against His-story here
As usual, we’ll be meeting at Clark Park near the chess tables from 1-3! Supplemental readings are optional but highly encouraged!
from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, June 25th from 1-3 for our next anarchist reading discussion! In light of Ted K’s passing, we’ll be reading “Industrial society and its future.”
Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.
The entire piece can be found here.
As usual, we’ll be meeting in Clark Park near the chess tables. This piece is a bit long, so you might want to get started early!
from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, May 21st from 1-3 PM for our next reading discussion! As usual, we’ll be meeting in Clark Park near the chess tables. This month we’ll be reading excerpts from The Palliative Turn, volume one.
APT operates from the understanding that humanity has collectively entered this phase of anticipatory grief. As we face the end of civilization as we know it, each of us is patient and caretaker and soon-to-be bereaved at the same time.
You can find the three short readings below:
Welcome to the Palliative Turn: A proposal for contemporary art
Know that Hello also Means Goodbye: On trying to be a palliative artist
Preparing for the Palliative Turn (find below)
from Viscera
Join us Sunday, April 16th from 1-3 in Clark Park near the chess tables for our next anarchist reading discussion! We’ll be reading some excerpts from Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society!
Technique must reduce man to a technical animal, the king of the slaves of technique. Human caprice crumbles before this necessity; there can be no human autonomy in the face of technical autonomy. The individual must be fashioned by techniques, either negatively (by the techniques of understanding man) or positively (by the adaptation of man to the technical framework), in order to wipe out the blots his personal determination introduces into the perfect design of the organization.
We’ll be reading three sections of Chapter One (Machines and Technique, Science and Technique and Organization and Technique) and a section of Chapter Two (The Autonomy of Technique). Find the readings after the links!
from Viscera
Join us Sunday, February 26th from 1-3 to discuss The Right to be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything.
“Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society. The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough.”
This one’s a bit long, but we encourage you to read the whole thing! Footnotes are optional but encouraged!
As usual, barring exceptionally poor weather we’ll be meeting in Clark Park near the chess tables.
from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, November 6th from 1-3 as we discuss parts 1, 2 and 3 of Adam Curtis’s documentary, Can’t Get You Out of My Head. As usual, we’ll be meeting at Clark Park near the chess tables.
Love, power, money, ghosts of empire, conspiracies, artificial intelligence – and You. An emotional history of the modern world by Adam Curtis.
We’ll be discussing “Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain,” “Shooting an Fucking are the Same Thing,” and “Money Changes Everything,” though you’re encouraged to watch the whole thing!
Find it on archive.org here – episodes on YouTube have been abridged to avoid being taken down.
from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, October 16th from 1-3 for a discussion around Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich. As usual, we’ll be meeting near the chess tables at Clark Park. Perhaps there will be autumnal treats as well?
We’ll be discussing the chapter “Ritualization of Progress.”
We are all involved in schooling, from both the side of production and that of consumption. We are superstitiously convinced that good learning can and should be produced in us—and that we can produce it in others. Our attempt to withdraw from the concept of school will reveal the resistance we find in ourselves when we try to renounce limitless consumption and the pervasive presumption that others can be manipulated for their own good. No one is fully exempt from the exploitation of others in the schooling process.
from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, September 18th from 1-3 for a discussion of the essay Less Within, More Between by dot matrix.
Feminism provides anarchists with tools to discuss both autonomy and membership. “Feminism,” “racism,” “classism”: the whole lexicon of “identity” is useful to today’s anarchists to the extent that it provides us with ways to talk about, and to meet, both sets of needs.
As usual, we’ll be meeting at Clark Park near the chess tables!
from Viscera
Join us Sunday, August 14th from 1-3 for our next reading discussion. We’ll be talking about “Anarchy & Strategy,” an essay by Aragorn! originally published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (AJODA).
An anarchist strategy is not a strategy about how to make a capitalist or statist society less authoritarian or spectacular. It assumes that we cannot have an anarchist society while the state or capitalism continues to reign.
You can find the reading here.
As usual, this discussion will be held outdoors at Clark Park – we’ll be meeting, as usual, near the chess tables (look for the disreputable-looking people mostly dressed in black who aren’t playing bocce).
from Viscera
Join us at Clark Park on Sunday, July 17th from 1-3 for a conversation among anarchists about… a Conversation Between Anarchists! This is a dialogue between imprisoned members of the Greek Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and some Mexican anarchists.
As usual, we’ll be meeting in the vicinity of the chess tables!
from Viscera
Join us Sunday, June 19th in Clark Park from 1-3 for our next anarchist discussion group. In line with the times, we’ll be reading a few pieces on abortion!
Jane’s Revenge – First Communique
Robin Marty – I am an abortion rights activist. I hope the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Laura Kaplan – The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (excerpt):
As usual, we’ll be meeting near the chess tables! Yes, we realize this is father’s day, yes, you’re welcome to bring your dad or a father figure.
from Viscera
This month we’ll be reading “The Great Caliban: The Struggle Against the Rebel Body,” a chapter from Silvia Federici’s classic work, Caliban and the Witch.
We can see, in other words, that the human body and not the steam engine, and not even the clock, was the first machine developed by capitalism.
History, gender, Foucault, surgeons stealing the bodies of executed prisoners from the gallows – it’s got something for everyone.
We’ll be meeting in Clark Park by the chess tables on Sunday, May 22nd, from 1-3. Bring a blanket or something else to sit on in case the chairs are full with other people enjoying the warm weather!
Find the reading online here or in pdf form here:
from Viscera
Who likes to work? Not us! Join us on Saturday, April 23 from for our next discussion! We’ll be meeting from 1-3 in an increasingly warmer and pleasant to be in Clark Park.
This month we’ll have two readings on how to live without work – or trying to, at least. We’ll be reading the newly-translated Tangpingest Manifesto
Some of the young people, disgusted at what they see before them, are moving on. Rather than being crushed by a sinister life, they simply live instinctually. Their poses resembling rest, sleep, sickness, and death, are not meant to renew or refresh, but are a refusal of the order of time itself.
and a section of Matsumoto Hajime’s Manual for a worldwide manuke revolution
My fellow manuke of the world, rejoice! Throughout Japan, nay, the earth, huge morons have started making tons of unthinkable spaces in opposition to this pointless world. Totally fun places, places that seem on the edge of shutting down but keep it together and persist, extremely cool spaces, places with a full-throttle feeling of freedom, places that are too stupid, places where unexpected people of mystery appear one after another… What’s that? What’s goin’ on? Hey, this looks fun!
Read the introduction and as much as you’d like of the rest, we’ll be discussing all of it!
