Back to anarchism. I was engaged in anarchist activism in Amsterdam back in 2019. It’s interesting to return to this way of thinking through the critique of our university…
Dominant culture offers a “pacification of fear” and a sense of order to chaos. By reducing our subjectivity and a sense of freedom with the world, structures of power are unquestioned by our intellectual and sensual capacties. Therefore we must sedate sensuality, and the longing waves of subconcious desires for freedom, to participate blindly with dominant culture. We depend on external definitions to cope. This is existential politics. A blissful ignorance of our own shadow that fuels production lines.
Ursula LeGuinn writes a similiar theory in her fantasy novels “Earthsea”, where wizards are chased by their own shadows, and some pursue immortality and imbalance the ecosystem. Earthsea as the manifesto for critical awakening.
Fear and agency. How responsible are we for our “fear of chaos”? Generational poverty is traumatic, along with slavery and other kinds of oppression. How do we understand the role of fear in structures of power in relation to inequality?