Anarchist & Radical Book Club discussion
Book Club 2011 & 2012
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Hmm, seeing as no one else is participating and I'm not super pumped on continuing, I'm gonna go ahead and delete this unless someone pipes up this week. =)
Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental AestheticsIt was suggested for a group read, but didn't gather any participation for about 2 months, so I took it down. If anyone expresses interest in doing a group read or book discussion, though, I'd love to try again.
I would also suggest-Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. It's more of a pamphlet, a nice short read. It's been a few years and I would like to read it again. Any one interested in reading this one and then planning on a discussion?
I am game. Haven't read it. A bonus of reading this one is that it is online.
OK, this is some high theory/philosophy shit. I spent the second half of this intro wondering, 'ok, what's the point,' as he mused on how other authors have defined what nature Is... when I read stuff like this I just want to pull my face off, who cares??
What makes this different than the concept, teachable to kids at summer camp, that the bugs and soil and microorganisms one finds in a creek bed form an ecosystem that connects in a web to the ants and cats and bacteria in one's bedroom, and the bacteria in one's gut? Nature as its own entity is a false concept ("nature is an arbitrary rhetorical concept empty of existence beyond the texts we create about it" says Mortin), I'm down with that. But I'm not really understanding what new things Mortin is pushing into this concept.
He namedrops environmental justice and queer theory alongside Zizek and Romanticism, so I'm kind of curious to see what argument he builds.
Did anyone else read the intro, start the book? What are your initial thoughts?