Enemy Combatant Infinite Variety

$0.00

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, FREE.

Enemy Combatant’s Infinite Variety, Writings by Individualist Anarchist Women.

“…..About five years ago I stole the highly recommended book Enemies of Society: An Anthology of Individualist and Egoist Thought from the Little Black Cart table at the San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair. This ambitious reimagining of anarchism’s extinct strengths and elusive defining qualities seemed multiple steps ahead of anything the leftist posers of AK and PM presses were pushing at the time—and the masked marauders that assembled all this vibrant material (whoever they may be) certainly delivered something fresh and unexpected, with their paradoxical and unstable combination of anarchist tradition and internal defiance.

But there wasstill something about this demoniacal tome (well worth stealing yourself!) that gave the impression of being coarse and incomplete, and also rushed, as if the editor(s) were under some unreasonable deadline pressure to get the book finished.

The most glaring lacuna of the project was the almost complete lack of female individualist/egoist voices—surely somewhere in the mass of uncollated journals and microfiche consulted by these subterranean scholars were some strong writings by women! Still, if there’s one thing Enemies of Society proved it’s that anarchist history, though full of half-forgotten secrets, outright lies and many missing pages, is also enormously rich and rewarding—comparable to treasure from a trunk with many false bottoms that just keeps on giving to those who access it and explore its layers. So in the same spirit animating the aforementioned book we decided to employ a similar documentary approach (but with a greater thoroughness and accuracy) to the neglected netherworld of individualist and egoist women…..’

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, FREE.

Enemy Combatant’s Infinite Variety, Writings by Individualist Anarchist Women.

“…..About five years ago I stole the highly recommended book Enemies of Society: An Anthology of Individualist and Egoist Thought from the Little Black Cart table at the San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair. This ambitious reimagining of anarchism’s extinct strengths and elusive defining qualities seemed multiple steps ahead of anything the leftist posers of AK and PM presses were pushing at the time—and the masked marauders that assembled all this vibrant material (whoever they may be) certainly delivered something fresh and unexpected, with their paradoxical and unstable combination of anarchist tradition and internal defiance.

But there wasstill something about this demoniacal tome (well worth stealing yourself!) that gave the impression of being coarse and incomplete, and also rushed, as if the editor(s) were under some unreasonable deadline pressure to get the book finished.

The most glaring lacuna of the project was the almost complete lack of female individualist/egoist voices—surely somewhere in the mass of uncollated journals and microfiche consulted by these subterranean scholars were some strong writings by women! Still, if there’s one thing Enemies of Society proved it’s that anarchist history, though full of half-forgotten secrets, outright lies and many missing pages, is also enormously rich and rewarding—comparable to treasure from a trunk with many false bottoms that just keeps on giving to those who access it and explore its layers. So in the same spirit animating the aforementioned book we decided to employ a similar documentary approach (but with a greater thoroughness and accuracy) to the neglected netherworld of individualist and egoist women…..’

Enemy Combatant Publications remains one of our very favorite projects. The risograph used for Enemy Combatant covers is used extensively in the new Bacchus Edition’s forest press :)

Here is a bit more about EC from their own blurb, if not familiar:

At Enemy Combatant Publications we specialize in unearthing and showcasing obscure anarchist texts and in exploring territory neglected by the academic (university-based) and leftist branches of anarchist studies. In a sense, we're cultural archaeologists and connoisseurs of all things forgotten, discarded or shunned by most "radical" historians, who try to bury any traces of rebellion not in line with the ideals of political correctness and societal perfection. Our interests are multifaceted and varied, and in our short publishing history we've become notorious both for our eclectic, oddball fare (which tends to occupy a mutable space between buried tradition and frenzied innovation) and our eschewing of the accepted boundaries of anarchist discourse (which seem to be, above all, committed to weeding out the unusual and anomalous and alleviating the "newly-enlisted" of mental obstacles standing in the way of blind obedience to leftist/activist doctrine). We place a premium on the revisiting of reviled ideas and overlooked anti-authoritarians from bygone eras that don't conform to the edicts of left-wing politics, partly to provoke a reevaluation of what anarchism actually is and also to offer a potentially richer vein of oppositional thought than the simplistic and overplayed revolutionary cliches of the anarchist Left-which have lost all power, except perhaps that to annoy (we also like to create pamphlets that reflect the sorts of things we'd enjoy discovering ourselves as readers).

Depressingly, anarchism in the United States hasn't been creatively renewing itself for decades (or really, since anarcho-communism gained ascendency in the early 20th century) and the regurgitated tropes that pass for anarchist "theory" nowadays come across as pretty thin gruel to anyone who hasn't been dumbed down to a room-temperature IQ, lethargic corpse. Outside the leftist memory hole and the well-funded amnesia of the university system (and the exclusionary process that shapes so many accounts of anarchism), however, are remnants and references to a more colorful and less thoroughly governed anarchist tradition-an alternate history of party-line heresies, fluctuating styles of individual revolt, brilliant lost writings, and unforgettable mutineers whose vision of liberation was defiantly their own-and not some lame parroting of anarcho-communist platitudes; this anarchist history looks more like a bizarre carnival of egoistic expansion than a "movement" and demonstrates that anarchist history is always in a state of revision and rediscovery and is not only territory to be fought over, but a volatile storehouse of subversive narratives and evocative dreams open to multi-valent interpretations. We raid this storehouse periodically not in search of templates for action in the present world, but to tap into the pure juice at the heart of anarchism-not to faithfully "pay tribute" to our roots, but to gulp down Anarchy's distilled spirit, get bug-eyed drunk on it and let its madness take possession! And our visits to this historical nether-realm occur with enough frequency that occasionally we hit pay dirt and succeed in releasing some particularly magical or remarkable piece of writing from its long-locked crypt (to us this is the philosophical or ideational equivalent of creating a virus, or letting a genie out of the bottle, or conjuring up demons and just as fun!).