My position is that you should be seen to be entirely free to make your own choices, even if the choice you make is to rape me.
I literally cannot conjure up a better example for what kinds of mistakes you can internalize by doing a clean-room design of anarchism.
I end up discovering that their reasoning has been tainted by their own authoritarian habits, presumptions or even ambitions.
That’s magical thinking. Yeah there’s no such thing as a pure anarchist text and we are all shaped by the oppressions we are subject to, but the reasonable response is not to retreat into your own head, since you are certainly just as “tainted” as anyone else. Instead, the reasonable response is to read all textscritically, i.e. assume a perfect text does not exist.
And frankly, I don’t even want to read solely anarchist books. There are lots of people who make excellent contributions to various fields of endeavor who are not necessarily anarchists. E.g., I loved Omar El-Akkad’s book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This on the Gaza genocide, and I recommend every anarchist read it even though El-Akkad is not an anarchist to the best of my knowledge. It’s up to us to approach literature with a critical assessment.
I literally cannot conjure up a better example for what kinds of mistakes you can internalize by doing a clean-room design of anarchism.
That’s magical thinking. Yeah there’s no such thing as a pure anarchist text and we are all shaped by the oppressions we are subject to, but the reasonable response is not to retreat into your own head, since you are certainly just as “tainted” as anyone else. Instead, the reasonable response is to read all texts critically, i.e. assume a perfect text does not exist.
And frankly, I don’t even want to read solely anarchist books. There are lots of people who make excellent contributions to various fields of endeavor who are not necessarily anarchists. E.g., I loved Omar El-Akkad’s book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This on the Gaza genocide, and I recommend every anarchist read it even though El-Akkad is not an anarchist to the best of my knowledge. It’s up to us to approach literature with a critical assessment.