March discussion: Hello

  • March 2, 2022 1:03 am

from Viscera

Hello – it’s a term we use in some form every day, it’s also the name of an essay about friendship, commitment, and alienation among anarchists. With the weather warming up, we’ll be discussing “Hello” this month in Clark Park (meet near the chess tables) on Sunday, March 13th from 1-3 pm.

When we invoke commitment to commitment, we are speaking of a form of organization that is far from all the boring clubs and pseudo-military formations. The strength of this form is entirely dependent on the intensity with which one enters into it and how well it shrouds itself. You do not have to believe that you are doing something more serious than playing a game to play it seriously, to win.

Find the reading here

January discussion II: Theater and the plague

  • January 20, 2022 1:55 am

from Viscera

With our own plague raging, we’ve got another in-person, outdoor event to warm us all in these cold winter months. Come get exposed to something other than COVID-19 with our next discussion on Antonin Artaud, Hakim Bey and the Theater of Cruelty!

The theater, like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theater, but of life.

Join us Sunday, January 30th from 1-3 – we’ll be meeting in the same place as last time, so let us know if you need the address. In case of rain we’ll reschedule.

You can find the introduction to The Theater and its Double and Theater and the Plague here:

Download the reading hereDownload

In addition we’ll be discussing two short pieces from Hakim Bey’s T.A.Z. – Poetic Terrorism and Communique #6.

This is a bit of reading, so we recommend allotting some time for it!

January discussion: the schizophrenic experience

  • December 26, 2021 1:41 am

from Viscera

With the holidays coming up, we’ll be having our next event on Sunday, January 2nd from 1-3, where we’ll be discussing (anti) psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s writing on schizophrenia and social control with a chapter from The Politics of Experience and the Birds of Paradise.

There is no such ‘condition’ as ‘schizophrenia’, but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event

the schizophrenic experienceDownload

Barring the weather being really awful, this event will be in our backyard somewhere in West Philly where we can have a fire in peace. Please contact us for the address and (optional but encouraged) bring something to burn.

November discussion: The Trap

  • November 21, 2021 1:06 am

From Viscera

This month we’ll be watching Adam Curtis’s three part documentary, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom? from (dusts off label) 2007! Curtis examines positive versus negative freedom with examples ranging from the Austrian school of economics to R.D. Laing and anti-psychiatry to neoliberalism and the occupation of Iraq.

If you’ve never watched an Adam Curtis feature you’re in for a treat!

We’ll be meeting in Clark Park on Sunday, November 28th, from 1-3 barring us finding somewhere congenial and heated – meet near the chess tables.

You can find the documentary on YouTube (or elsewhere) – each part is one hour, and we’ll be discussing all three!

October discussion: Death

  • October 23, 2021 1:07 am

from Viscera

The crisp of autumn is in the air and the sun ceding ground to the long, long night, which means it’s time for a spooky reading!

Today, the man best protected against setting the stage for his own dying is the sick person in critical condition. Society, acting through the medical system, decides when and after what indignities and mutilations he shall die.

Join us on Saturday, October 30th in Clark Park (near the chess tables) from 1-3 pm for a discussion about Ivan Illich’s “Death against death” from the classic Medical Nemesis. You can read the chapter online with footnotes here or in pdf form below:

death against deathDownload

There might even be Halloween treats!

September discussion: anarchists respond to COVID (and its world)

  • September 19, 2021 1:23 am

from Viscera

oin us Sunday, September 26th from 1-3 pm for a discussion about anarchist responses to COVID! This is a subject we’ve talked about a lot, but with vaccines, new restrictions, and the limited economic support from the state being rolled back things look a lot different now – well, except for the growing number of infections!

We’ll be reading two recent pieces, one from some French anarchists who attacked a vaccination site and one less spicy (but still good!) piece from Canada!

About an attack on a vaccination centre

Health on a human scale

We’ll be meeting in Clark Park near the chess tables, as usual!

August discussion: All the terrible things we do to each other

  • August 22, 2021 1:28 am

from Viscera

This month we’ll be revisiting the theme of friendship – especially timely given the long pandemic and social strain that’s come with it. Join us in Clark Park (meet by the chess tables) Sunday, August 29th at 1 pm for a discussion of the essay The terrible things we do to each other.

And if when I say friend it means a certain willingness to throw everything away for a person you’ve just met or if you seek out certain intensities because you believe that is the purpose of friendship, to have grand and wild experiences, then perhaps we share a certain form of life—a certain idea of the good life, a common understanding of the word happiness.

Find it below, or imposed into pamphlet form here.

terribleterribleterribleDownload

May online discussion: The reproduction of daily life / Dupont

  • May 16, 2021 1:43 am

from Viscera

We’ll be reading two pieces this month – the classic Reproduction of Daily Life by Fredy Perlman and some thoughts on the essay from Frére Dupont in their essay On Marxist Ideas of Change.

The practical everyday activity of wage-workers reproduces wage labor and capital. Through their daily activities, “modern” men, like tribesmen and slaves, reproduce the inhabitants, the social relations and the ideas of their society; they reproduce the social form of daily life. Like the tribe and the slave system, the capitalist system is neither the natural nor the final form of human society; like the earlier social forms, capitalism is a specific response to material and historical conditions.

Find Perlman’s essay here and Dupont here.

Discussion will be on May 23rd on jitsi from 1-3 EST. Contact us for the password!

May in-person discussion: Against Identity Politics

  • May 9, 2021 1:44 am

from Viscera

A reading liked this piece so much we’re doing it twice! Or in this case, a third time. Our in-person discussion this month will be Against Identity Politics by Lupus Dragonowl.

Find the essay here.

We’ll be meeting in Clark Park on Sunday, May 16th from 1-3 – find us by the chess tables!

April in-person event: demotivational training

  • April 17, 2021 1:07 am

from Viscera

We’re gonna take a bet on more nice weather and host another in-person outdoor event this month! Following up on bolo’bolo’s resistance to the planetary work machine, we’ll be reading excerpts from Demotivational Training by Guillaume Paoli.

…the objective of practicing demotivation, and this treatise is a modest step in that direction, would be rather to divest oneself from the apparatuses used to lead all of us donkeys to the market, to methodically dismantle the mechanisms that ensure that, despite everything, it works.

Readings:

Why do something rather than nothing? (15 pages)Download
Canceling the project (24 pages)Download

We’ll be meeting on Saturday, April 24th from 1-3 pm at Clark Park near the chess tables.

April online event: Against Identity Politics

  • April 11, 2021 1:04 am

from Viscera

This month we’ll be revisiting Against Identity Politics, the classic critique of identity politics by Lupus Dragonowl. The world has lots of bad critiques of identity politics, but this is one we actually like.

From all of this, we must conclude that IPs are just another type of leftist, promoting sacrifice and renunciation, posing as liberators of the oppressed.

Find the essay here.

We’ll be meeting on Sunday, April 18th from 1-3pm EST on jitsi. Get in touch for the password!

March discussions: bolo’bolo, virtual and in reality

  • March 14, 2021 1:56 am

from Viscera

The weather is getting nicer, so we’re doing two discussions this month on the same reading! We’ll be revisiting (or, for some of us, reading for the first time) the classic work of anarchist utopia that’s neither, bolo’bolo.

bolo’bolo is also a modest proposal for the new arrangements on the spaceship after the Machine’s disappearance. Though it started as a mere collection of wishes, a lot of considerations about their realization have accumulated around it. bolo’bolo can be realized world-wide within five years, if we start now. It guarantees a soft landing in the second reality. Nobody will starve, freeze or die earlier than today in the transition period. There’s very little risk.

For those who prefer (or require) an online discussion, we’ll be meeting on jitsi in the room viscerapvd on Sunday, March 21st at 1-3 pm. Get in touch with us for the password!

We’ll also be doing an in-person discussion one week later on Sunday, March 28th in Clark Park (meet near the chess tables) from 1-3 pm.

This reading is a bit long, so we recommend staring early! It’s a lot of fun, and we’re looking forward to seeing people in one form or another for the discussion!

February online anarchist discussion: Stirner and individualism

  • February 14, 2021 1:33 am

from Viscera

Join us for our February anarchist discussion! Following on the heels of our previous reading on communist egoism, we’ll be doing a long-ish reading from Stirner for his thoughts on the subject for a more individualist perspective.

We’ll be reading two sections from The Unique and Its Property: I Have Based My Affairs on Nothing and section 2.2.2, My Intercourse. You can also listen to the first essay here. This reading is rather long so we suggest starting early!

Discussion will be held on Sunday, February 21st from 1-3 pm EST.

As usual, this one’ll be online on jitsi in the room viscerapvd. Email us for the password at viscerapvd[at]gmail.com!

January online anarchist reading discussion: Greed is good!

  • January 9, 2021 1:07 am

from Viscera

Join us for our first anarchist reading discussion of the year! January’s reading for discussion is The Right to be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything by the collective For Ourselves.

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.

Reading can be found here (footnotes optional but encouraged!)

Discussion will be held on Saturday, January 16th from 1-3 pm EST.

As last time, this one’ll be online on jitsi in the room viscerapvd. Email us for the password at viscerapvd@gmail.com!

Viscera Reading Group

  • December 13, 2020 1:21 am

from Instagram

Photo by Jules Bonnot on December 01, 2020.

we’ve decided to discuss these next readings both in person and online! so if you’re in philly, join us on sunday, december 20th at 1pm in clark park (meet at the orange tables) for a socially distant discussion on… social distancing, isolation, and solitude. see you then!