Revolting: Eco-Absurdist Rebellion

An exploration of what it means to exist and resist, in a world that confines, confounds and conforms us.

Book details:
Publisher: Active Distribution
Published: March 2024
Author: Julian Langer
Format: Paperback: A6 pocketbook
Pages:152
Subject: Eclectics | Political Theory | Musings | Commentary and Opinion

From the author:
This book is largely an attempt to voice a rebel praxis that is hostile towards and revolted by the annihilation of the living that is Leviathan’s daily normality. Subjects explored throughout the pieces contained within include reason, negation and nihilism, gender, work, story telling, domestication, folk, diaspora, death camp resistance, revolutions, games, love, mass extinction, culls, dialectics and dialogues, separation and co-existence, and poetry. There are also autobiographical aspects to the writing and points of reflecting on my previous writings.

Extract
“The world is absurd and the strangeness of the world is the absurd. Ecologically absurd; it is strange that there is life here at all. Why is there life here? Why do living beings will their lives and fight to survive? Why did they and why do they and why will they? Answers and reasons are all absurdities – no one knows the answer, or even if there is an answer.

The world is strange. The folks we are in close relationship with and love more intensely are strange, confusing ,and utterly absurd. Why are they here? Why did they do that? Why are they doing that? Whatever answers they might give to these questions, accepting their answers involves accepting the absurd limits of their ability to reason and the absurdity of reasoning – acceptance of them begins with being-with them for the sake of being-with, rather than Cause or utility or any reason requiring justification. Most individuals are strangers to use. We do not know them. How they might have arrived upon our paths is a darkness that we cannot entirely see through ….”

Praise:

“‘revolting positivity’ is a provocative concept” – Max Cafard

“Julian’s project is not to create some Grand Synthesis of various European thinkers, however. This text is more like a product of philosophical foraging than academic rigour – and as a result is far more interesting and enjoyable. ” – Lawrence Jarach