TOTW: Don't Say You Love the Anime...

“You get your queer theory from baedan, your history from Perlman, and your theology from Peter Lamborn Wilson. You can't swim, you can't dance and you don't know karate. Face it, you're never gonna make it.”

I once attended a discussion where we’d read some pieces by Ramon Elani when he was still writing for anarchists. Ramon had read Clastres and spoke with authority about his work, something that presumably few people in that room (myself included) could do and more than a few people found compelling. One person in that room, however, had in fact read Clastres and had a very different view of what he was saying.

This same person attended another discussion where he took issue with Blessed is the Flame and its calls for anarchists to discover messianic time from his own reading of Benjamin. His argument was that few anarchists had actually engaged with texts they were basing their arguments on, leading them to weird or bad readings of this material.

Pedantic? Sure, maybe, but was he wrong?

Insofar as we care about theory, how much does it matter that we engage with primary rather than secondary (or still further removed) sources? If you’ve watched the anime, does it matter if you’ve read the manga? Or, could it be that you’re content with someone else’s interpretation?

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First of all, I love this prompt!

To answer the question, for the vast majority of people who just passively consume anarchist or adjacent theory and then bicker about it online, none of it matters in the slightest!

To the tiny margin of people who attempt to act using said theory, it matters approximately 10,000 metric fuck tons

Oh and the last group, who are just shitty ppl, shopping around for a convenient rationalization for their exploitation and abuse of others, it matters a little. They were already doing it anyway but sometimes, edgy trends in theory can lend them cover for awhile, until ppl catch on to their schemes.

"To the tiny margin of people who attempt to act using said theory,"

Anarchy is when you just sort of read stuff and talk about it online or at bookfairs. If you "act" then it's ACTivism which is so beneath us.

acting =/= activism, most activity does not fall under what's considered to be activism. besides, this theory-praxis binary is stale.

That's where you're wrong, buddy. It's right there in the word and the only way for the Post-Act Anarch to be sure is to never do anything with the theory they consume. You can still safely quote Baedan memes and play vidya with pals so it's all good.

you're contradicting yourself, at least in my eyes, since i consider quoting Baedan memes and playing video games to be activism, which is why i refuse to partake in those activities. instead, i wash dishes, a non-activist activity of great significance and cachet

Playing CoD is the highest form of ACTivision....

I'll see myself out

reading primary sources is important if one cares about trying to be faithful to those sources; if one wants to deal with them in good faith.
and, reading primary sources can be difficult, frustrating and/or boring, especially when we factor in translation and the shifting meanings of language over time. let me tell you about all the times i've tried to read Hegel or Kant !! lolsob.

i think anarchists should read these texts if we're going to make arguments about them in what we do. but on the other hand, maybe there comes a point when reading just to refute is a waste of time.

the important part, to me, is to not say one has done the reading when, in fact, one has not done the reading.

I find it very difficult to engage with primary sources, even when those sources are people who have influenced me a lot. Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to change that. What inspired me to try to do that was that I could finally afford to buy books. Although I could find a lot of the material online, I’m able to commit myself to long works better when they’re printed.

The above should indicate that I think primary sources are important, but why? Well, it isn’t because I understand the ideas better after reading the primary sources. Even after reading primary sources, I still wind up consulting secondary sources. My motivations are much more based on negative emotions (if there is such a thing as negative emotions): fear of misrepresenting the sources, guilt in not putting the effort into someone’s work who has put so much of their effort into it, paranoia about missing some important insight. One benefit that comes from reading those primary sources though is that it really humanizes the author for me. Seeing their struggles to work out ideas, make sense of them for their intended audiences (which usually aren’t me!), and getting a sense of the interests of their time/place/society takes their works down a notch for me and helps to motivate my own efforts. For as much as I say to myself, “fuuuck why are they spending so much time on this question I don’t care about at all?” I also recognize that they were making very human choices about what questions to focus on. So that’s nice…

f

Call me a fool for thinking this, but I just assumed anarchists do their due diligence and read the primary sources, especially the examples referenced in the prompt. It makes me wonder which hip texts from recent years just used bastardized explanations and understanding. Would love to see some pot-stirring around "writer so-an-so didn't actually read the source material!"

I THINK... that some people might be taking primary continental philosophy too seriously, or give it more relevance it actually enjoys.

So it seems way more important to be reading from Clastres (who btw is not the more primary source... Levi-Strauss and Mauss were, but I don't wanna reawaken the old tiresome debate on structural functionalism) and Feyerabend, than some US academics who as we know don't always honor their Euro sources as much as they probably should. On the other hand, Kant and Hegel may not be quite super-relevant to analyzing today's society, as they also mostly been overcome by later philosophy gods.

I love theory!

BTW: Would you say that the Russian invasion is escalating consistently at a global stage, or how would you characterise it? Are decent theorists engaging the global politics of this? I ask also as someone from a country siding with Russia and China, so that I can start thinking on what that means.

“escalating consistently “ not exactly sure what this means but yes more or less. The ongoing naval exercises between Russia, China and South Africa are interesting in this regard, and I think presently the western msm is quick to link everything about Iran and other “enemy” countries to Russia and the war. Ukraine is the tip of the spear now for an alliance of the richest, whitest countries on earth, which would very much like to colonize Eurasia. If they fail the war will embolden countries like China and the global south to more actively oppose the US empire. The multipolar world is already here, and the US wants to stop it at all costs.

am starting new group, Pedants for Revolution, it will be a split from our former colleagues, Grammar Hammers for Revolution.

most of anarchist writing is just bombastic posturing and moralizing, it’s not like they need to quote a whole body of research or do a meta-review. although there has been a marked trend in the academization of anarchist discourse, here the grandstanding bibliography and proper academic writing style with quotes takes precedence over being edgy

In the case of Cowboy Bebop, the manga is vastly inferior to the animated series, and is basically irrelevant. But we can all agree all live-action adaptations are shit.

In the case of anarchism, a lot of anarchists who write have boring lives, while some who do interesting things never write, then you have those that post online. How does the metaphor translate? Was Proudhon's life the anime, and his books, the manga, or the other way around? Or are all anarchists' lives the shit live-action adaptations of the utopian critically acclaimed manga of their books? Then communiques and reportbacks are the anime?

A librarian here. Originally I was concerned about this text for some of the reasons you briefly mentioned above, however the anonymous authors are anarchists and do express anarchist ideas within the text, without using the anarchist word. Apparently, they didn't want to use the word to detract from ppl who might be interested in the text. The text was talked about for a bit before being posted, which included a brief stay in the bin.

this text is mostly technical in nature, not ideological, but it is geared towards a framework of a trained and organized militia, which is antithetical to some anarchists, although not to many others. i could care less if the anonymous authors are secretly anarchists, after reading it i can say this text does not "express anarchist ideas within the text, without using the anarchist word", it merely expresses practical aspects of organizing a capable armed unit, which may of course be of interest to anarchists, like say in rojava or ukraine or in usa in defense against fascist militias.

i don't exactly disagree with you although one could argue the use of an anti-authoritarian paramilitary command structure is the explicitly anarchist portion of this piece.

it's in there: "officers" that are elected and have no power except to do admin work, fire team "leaders" who are only calling shots during the action and subject to consensus at all other times, a temporary, practical hierarchy based on respect for the most knowledgeable/skilled person, only so far as that is useful to the rest of the group member's goals.

this is arguably anarchist imo and probably the only effective way to organize something like a militia while still using anti-authoritarian values, a very challenging project! much respect to any who attempt. most anarchists aren't going to meet the minimum standard of subordinating their egos while keeping their autonomy active.

So the question of this topic is if you're satisfied with an anarchist author's interpretation of this or that more famous text or author without reading the referenced texts. The thing is most people that call themselves anarchists haven't read any text at all, including the alluded to derivative anarchist texts. It seems a lot of people get their understanding of anarchism from cultural osmosis (including but not limited to pop culture, context cues, memes, and other forms of subcultural socialization).

This article (https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchism-contemporary-working-classes) claims:

"Anarchism has a lore, there is no denying. Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon are all seen as the readings to dip the toe into anarchy. And some other anarchist media I have read or watched have been accessible enough only because I’ve had the opportunity to spend three years getting used to reading academic language.

But the key difference is I can consider myself an anarchist without having read these writings.

Unlike Marxism, Anarchism doesn’t demand the investment into these key theorists. It encourages education through theory, and people driving the movement do a great job distributing (almost) free leaflets, newsletters and zines promoting anarchist values, but it equally recognises and legitimises living anarchically. Anarchism is action as much as it is education."

While this article (https://anarchistnews.org/content/second-undercover-police-officer-spyin...) shows us that you can easily be embraced (quite literally and intimately) by an anarchist milieu by merely having the right tattoos and t-shirts.

yeah, a lot of kids only know of malatesta or bread book from having watched a video by a certain breadtuber, or get their basic ideas from skimming wikipedia

I don't think it matters in the slightest. I think anarchist writing is best when it is highly interpretive and eith a ever growing and changing meaning from said book. I personally read buts of texts and engage with what people talk about and it changes how I act and behave in positive ways

For me if I understand the text correctly is irrelevant. For me I read texts and talk to people about texts to get pointed in a direction where I live in a way I enjoy more. So if the interpretation of a text is wrong but people get pointed in a direction where there life is better I think that's a the ideal

When I write I don't care if people understand what I mean. I care if it catalyzes them to enjoy their life more or do anarchy more. I think this makes anarchist writing unique as due to the diy nature and kill your idols culture this kinda behavior is kinda common. Which I like a lot.

says the cabbage who liked andrew lloyd’s writing and runs a book club where no one does the assigned readings

There are no assigned readings lol. What am I some kinda school teacher assigning homework? Even if I did assign stuff I don't think it looks bad on me that anarchists won't follow my orders. I actually like to talk to people who aren't bootlickers.

Also I'm allways confused by the lyod criticism. Like what am I supposed to be ashamed of? Oh no this old mysogynisric creep who was pretending to be queer person to befriend and get nudes out of other queer people successfully tricked me into thinking they weren't a creep? Like where in that did I do something wrong? Is the thing I did wrong being manipulated by a predator cuz Im young and nieve?

Leftists really need to work on their optics because waging this criticism on me doesn't make u look good at all. I don't get it. Like if I'm gonna get trolled do a good job. Lol

hey Lettuce,
no need to feel ashamed or wrong for being duped, once.
the point of this totw though, is all about reading and reading critically.
that person's social media presence was very off-putting to me and so i never really engaged them or their other writing. it was only after their book got mentioned on anews by you that i bothered to read it. their writing was a lot of bombast and fluff filled in with just enough edgy-sounding semi-anarchist words to pass as something worth reading, if you only skimmed it. the shitty writing was very apparent.
my point, and i do have one, is, encounter at least one primary source so that pale imitations don't continue to fool you.

I wold put it differently, but make roughly the same point I tihnk, which is that reading primary sources make it more likely that one will recognize bad thinking and or bad writing more quickly.

I assume I've been fooled (or read what I wanted to read, more than what wsa on the page) more than once, but again, there are many purposes to reading, and only one of them is understanding well what the author intended. Others are things like, being provoked to think things differently than you have before (and perhaps better); determining whether someone has cited accurately (and therefore how trustorthy they are in general); so on.

hi anon,

yes, all of what you said.

(one other thing about "primary sources" ... because the prompt is using that language i have repeated it. however i might say "original" or in another way, "whatever text one is reading", all deserve to be read in all these registers. for instance, the prompt also mentions Fredy Perlman. "Letters ..." is not, perhaps, a primary source, but it is an original source. if one knows nothing about the real world events he writes about in Letters one gets a captivating story. if one does know some of that history, one gets a different story and maybe can see where he embellished or understated certain bits. )(by which i mean the best "primary sources" come from outside the canon)

I read just enough of something to get dope quotes so I can impress the pseuds that never went to college so they buy me dinner and give up the ass.

In some ways the issue is more one of "Don't say you love the manga, if you've only seen the anime." A lot of material that we might consider secondary source in some academic context functions just fine in other contexts—including the anarchist milieus—as primary sources. Insisting that anarchists—or anime lovers—also engage with the sources of the things that have sparked their interest or given them pleasure can easily be just a pointless assertion of our own cred. It depends on how the sources are being used. We know that there is a lot of partisan nonsense out there, where it's a case of "Don't say you hate the manga when you haven't even seen the anime." But if we're talking about serious interpretations, or even serious appropriations, then maybe we don't get to talk about the "primary sources" until we've engaged with the new uses to which they have been put. If, in the course of that engagement, someone feels the need to assert another interpretation or appropriation, based on the same sources, then we either follow the resulting conflict back to those sources or we discover that it wasn't those "primary sources" that really mattered to us in the first place.

When I'm writing about the anarchist past, sometimes it's with the intention of encouraging others to engage with the same elements of that past—and sometimes it's entirely to spare others the trouble, whether that trouble involves the difficulties or research and translation, or perhaps those of ferreting out the good bits in texts or events that are not, on balance, at all necessary for everyone reading my work to engage. There's something to be said for being intentional about your presentation of sources, being obvious about your appropriations and provocations, etc. But, ultimately, whatever you are doing with the sources, it is presumably indeed something that you are doing, some new source that you are presenting to your audience.

only reading secondary sources or farther removed is like only reading art criticism
fine for getting a sense of someone else's sense of it, almost inevitably someone's attempt to render it into something capturable, legible, exchangeable in the economy of citation
theres no restrictive value in reading the primary stuff, you can get along fine without it im sure, but if youre so inclined you should hit the ground running with it
drop the pretense of interpretation which is academic at heart and can come later anyway--if you decide to become more invested
get a sense of what the work is setting out to do, its character, its concerns, its linguistic games and conceits
who cares if you can cite it later? even the most undisciplined reading will lend a little more awareness of when its being deployed around you, improve your eye a little towards recognizing when it is being summoned up around you
i see it as, in a practical sense, learning the language that is not so much a secret as a constant burden and weight on the scope of what the people speaking against me find is available to them to say
this article, itself a commentary, talkes about the skepticism of barthes as a movement toward neutrality, gentleness: https://schlemielintheory.com/2015/02/08/sweetness-is-the-final-word-of-...

but whats phrased as gentleness here and a lovable stupidity can equally be phrased as the kind of sharp-eyed, agile, and ever-shifting disposition of the person (and maybe gentleness and stupidity are a part of that, in a way!) who seeks honest action and ways of living in the context of an endless barrage of words and boldly-marshalled systems of thought that seek to constantly phrase and re-phrase those actions and ways of being for their own--perhaps mysterious, to the uninitiated--ends

The TOTW prompt says: “Insofar as we care about theory, how much does it matter that we engage with primary rather than secondary (or still further removed) sources?”

After reading this prompt I’m reminded of Atassa and the controversy surrounding the two books, but perhaps a little differently than was originally intended. First, I imagine that many of the people who post about Atassa on social media like Twitter have never bothered to actually read the texts and instead are simply relying off other opinions they have come across. Going deeper, this spin-cycle of controversy just feeds off itself to the point where one might ask, has anyone on social media ever read Atassa before? Kevin Tucker hasn’t, I asked them – yet, they write on social media as if they their life depends on claiming how terrible the text is. I’m sure there are many others and it’s something I think anarchists need to be wary of, or at the very least take note of – it’s good to have critique, but at least know what you are talking about as to avoid being a neophyte. If you’re going to attack other anarchists over something, then actually have some good reasoning behind it all and know what you’re talking about, instead of just hearsay.

On a more pleasant note, I think it does matter quite a bit that we engage with primary texts rather than just the secondary. And if time doesn’t weigh so much on you, why not both? And then write your own and distroismo the world.

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