chaotopia

I missed this book when it first came out. As soon as I heard of it, the title grabbed me; I would have loved such a book when I was 19 and living in an anarchist commune house in Sheffield! At that time I was trying to find my way through the apparent powerlessness of anarchists and leftists to drive positive changes, stumbling towards some sort of esoteric approach via Situationism.  Most of the book is a rundown of symbolism and language in anarchism, showing the debts anarchism has to esoteric literature. And not only anarchism, check this contents listing: Lagalisse asks the big question in this slim volume: How can our resistance to oppression become more effective? And for me the most interesting subsidiary question she addresses is: Can dualistic materialists work alongside people whose activism is founded in religious faith or magical perspectives? Right at the start there’s an account of a conversation which opens up that question. At a meeting with Zapatistas in 2006, o...

This is perhaps the most personal of all the books I’ve read about psychedelics in the last fifty years. And it’s almost certainly the most extreme.  These qualities are not unrelated - Williams is coming from a heart deeply broken by the horrors of history, a feeling that will be all too familiar to most of us: ‘The wounds of history, of genocide, colonization, ecological devastation, and violence don’t heal on their own. Actions and intentions are needed to make that happen. … I ask for help.’ - and, similarly familiar, a terrible disappointment with the defeat of progressive forces in society:  ‘Occupy was a brief moment in time when we could collectively set aside what divided us in favour of a utopian spirit that permeated our spaces. Then Occupy was defeated. The new reality was impossible student loans; call-out culture; Abilify and Adderall; trigger warnings; PTSD; GoFundMes; safe spaces; paying rent in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York; Tinder; and MFA or Die. I...

This is a truly superb and ground-breaking book. And very well-written - it's hard to believe that someone who isn't a many-times published writer could deliver such an immensely readable text. He throws us into the deep end right at the start, with an account of his creeping into a field in the dead of night to make a crop circle, part of his ritual process for dealing with the darkness of life he encounters on a daily basis.  Callender writes about his own life, and the snags and traumas that led him into this unusual profession. He also writes of the cultural blankness surrounding our death rituals in 'Western' culture, the ways we try and purge the humanity out of the grieving process. It's 'undertaker, by the way, not 'funeral director'; the latter, as he shows, is another distancing phrase.  He relates vividly many of the emotionally fraught situations his profession gets and got him into. Many of them emerge into deep connection with the bereaved....