Punk Anarchism is a radical critique of contemporary politics and offers an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, and situationism.
It argues that traditional approaches to political change are ineffective in the face of the climate crisis and the failures of liberal institutions. Instead of focusing on reformist measures like recycling and voting, the book advocates for a nihilistic approach that rejects the possibility of meaningful change within the existing political system. Drawing on historical examples and cultural movements like the Russian and Japanese nihilists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, it calls for a politics of pure negation, centered on the destruction of the current social order rather than its reform. The book critiques liberal and leftist theories for their complicity in maintaining oppressive structures and advocates for a revolutionary politics that embraces resentment against the wealthy and rejects hierarchical power dynamics. It argues that resistance should be motivated by a sense of playfulness and enjoyment rather than hope for a better future. Ultimately, Parson proposes an anti-theory of negation as a way to imagine political agency beyond traditional frameworks.
An Anti-Introduction: A Leap Into the Void
I. Anti-Theory: Dada, Situationism, Stirner, and Punk
II. An Outline of Things to Come: An Anti-introduction
Chapter One: The Crisis of Representation and the Collapse of the Liberal Order
I. The Mediated Reality, the Hyperreal, and the Crisis of Representation
II. The Collapse of the Post-war Spectacle
III. The Current Crisis of Representation
IV. Concluding Thoughts: Past, Present, Future and the End of History
Chapter Two: Industrialism is a Death Camp
I. Industrial Objects and the Materiality of Symbolic Anxiety
II. A Genealogical Analysis of the Gas Mask: From Plague Doctors to Anti-state Protestors
III. Industrialism as Suicidal Blackmail
Chapter Three: The Climate isn’t Real
I. The Simulacra and Disaster Management: The Environment and Climate
II. The Politics of Models: Administrative Rationalism and the state regulation of Illusions:
III. Accepting the Nonidentity of Nature: Solaris, Cthuhlu, and the Masterless Object
IV. Anti-World Politics: Revolutionary Demonology and the Destruction of Enlightenment Order
Chapter Four: A Rising Tide Sinks All Art Galleries
I. Art, the Economy, the State:
II. Negation as an Artistic Medium: Activism as Performance Art
III. Mausoleums of our Extinct Culture
IV. Art as Resistance and Resistance as Art
Chapter Five: No Future, No Hope
I. What the End of the World Means…
II. Temporal Nihilism
III. “The Revolutionary is a Doomed Man”: Towards Political Nihilism in the 21st Century
Chapter Six: Without Gallows Humor There is Only the Gallows
I. “Dancing on the Corpses Ashes”: Russian Political Nihilism and Clearing the Rubble of Social Collapse
II. “The Goal of my Activities is the Destruction of all Living Things”: The Revolutionary Nihilism of Kaneko Fumiko
III. “We All Die in a Yellow Submarine”: Resentment and the Tragi-comedy of Dead Billionaires
IV. Conclusion: Cabin in the Woods and the Politics of Armed Joy
Chapter Seven: Towards A Nihilistic Politics of Attack
I. “The Revolutionary Handbrake": Walter Benjamin on Revolution and the Future
II. A Strategy of Attack: Against Accelerationism and Withdrawal
III. “The misplaced optimism of the doomed”: Snowpiercer (2013) as Destituent Power and An Insurrectionary Handbreak
Conclusion: A Requiem for Our World
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