Anti-Civilization: Recovering from Industry and Progress

Taught by Emma Stamm (Acid Horizon Research Commons)

When we speak of "anti-civilization" thought, we refer to an eclectic mix of thinkers, ideas, and beliefs that converge on a critique of civilization as such. Anti-civ does not comprise an internally consistent set of epistemic, metaphysical, social, political, or psychological premises. It coheres through an identification of civilization with epochal events including the transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to the agricultural production of food; the emergence of technological systems from rudimentary tools; the division and administration of labor by institutional forces; anthropogenic climate change and ecological collapse; and a perceived crisis afflicting the mundane and spiritual dimensions of human life. Its aims are fundamentally pragmatic: it seeks alternatives to the everyday practices and global structures that normalize and expand these developments' power.

"Anti-Civilization: Recovering from Industry and Progress" examines anti-civ literature both on its own terms and as a case study in social and political epistemology. Beginning with an introductory session, the course moves through anti-civ accounts of power and time, takes up the university as a site of epistemic monoculture, and concludes with the question of practical action — here and now, in the interest of liberation from oppression. Throughout, the course takes a reflexive approach, addressing critiques of anti-civ and anarchist principles from the perspectives of disability, race, class, and gender.

Readings draw on a wide range of thinkers including Zerzan, Foucault, Kaczynski, Agamben, Fanon, Rivera Cusicanqui, Fredy Perlman, Anna Kornbluh, Rebecca Solnit, and Mark Fisher, among others.

Course Structure

This five-week seminar unfolds through a series of interconnected explorations of anti-civ thought across philosophy, politics, and practice:

Introductions

Getting to know each other and orienting to the course, with possible commentary on Richard Heinberg's "A Primitivist Critique of Civilization" as an entry point into the dominant themes of anti-civ writing.

Epistemology, Time, and the Nature of Origins

Examining problematizations of "the primitive" and "the natural" through anti-civ research on time, epistemology, and origins, in dialogue with Zerzan and Foucault.

The Analytic of Power: What Does the Abolition of Power Entail?

Taking up the case of Kaczynski alongside Agamben and others to ask what "power" means in the anti-civ framework and what its abolition would look like in practice.

Epistemic Monocultures: Anti-Civ vs. Academic and Colonial Power

Exploring anti-civ's irreconcilability with academic knowledge production and drawing connections to anti-colonial discourses through Rivera Cusicanqui, Fanon, Bacevic, and Perlman.

In Concrete Form: Anti-Civ Practices and the Stakes of Theory

Concluding with case studies in anti-civ practice as lenses on theory, power, abstraction, and everyday politics, drawing on Thomsett, Kornbluh, Solnit, and Fisher.

Instructor Bio

Emma Stamm is a writer and scholar specializing in critical theory and science and technology studies. She is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of The Lenox Institute for Advanced Studies and adjunct faculty at The Bard College Microcollege in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Real Life, Vice Motherboard, and Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, among other venues. She has held teaching appointments at SUNY Farmingdale, Villanova University, New York University, and Virginia Tech. She is also the co-host of LEPHT HAND, the sibling podcast of Acid Horizon.

Course Schedule

All sessions meet from 7:00–8:30 PM EDT via Zoom.

Session 1: August 4 — Introductions

Session 2: August 11 — Epistemology, Time, and the Nature of Origins

Session 3: August 18 — The Analytic of Power: What Does the Abolition of Power Entail?

Session 4: August 25 — Epistemic Monocultures: Anti-Civ vs. Academic and Colonial Power

Session 5: September 1 — In Concrete Form: Anti-Civ Practices and the Stakes of Theory

Students will receive permanent access to all recorded lectures and a recurring Zoom link for all sessions.

Upon enrollment, download the welcome package and use the materials to navigate to your classroom.