New anarchist novel published

  • Posted on: 14 March 2016
  • By: Anonymous (not verified)

A new book by anarchist writer Paul Cudenec has been published by Winter Oak Press.

"The Fakir of Florence: A Novel in Three Layers" explores, in fictional form, the connections between anarchism, metaphysics and artistic expression.

The three threads of narration center on characters inhabiting different, yet interwoven, levels of reality.

Perantulo is a wandering sage, spreading his mystic pagan wisdom from Khaluvia to Mesqa-Murro, from the chestnut forests of Sevennola to the rain-lashed archipelago of Prydina.

He is the fictional creation of il fachiro, an Eastern philosopher who arrived in Renaissance Florence in 1459 and challenged Cosimo di Medici and Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonist revival with his own empowering and anarchic metaphysics.

Paul is a writer visiting 21st century Italy who, while laying himself open to inspiration from the energies and art of the Florentine past, comes across an historical account of il fachiro and his fables. But he, too, resides inside a book.

The novel is a first-time fictional publication for Cudenec, whose 2013 work The Anarchist Revelation: Being What We're Meant to Be is described by John Zerzan in Why Hope? The Stand Against Civilization as "the least pessimistic book I can recall reading... It brings anarchist resistance and the spirit together in a very wide-ranging and powerful contribution".

A review by anarchist writer Gabriel Kuhn adds: "The book attempts no less than equipping contemporary anarchism with a footing that is often neglected: the transformation not only of society's structures but also of people's souls".

The Fakir of Florence: A novel in three layers
by Paul Cudenec
Winter Oak Press, Sussex, England, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9576566-6-6
296 pages
More information at www.winteroak.org.uk/thefakirofflorence

category: 

Comments

Usually I don't dig Islam, but Sufi philosophy and culture is ultra-dope. Also look for Gurdjieff, who was somewhat authoritarian but really had an amazing yet still underrated philosophy (and music!) that is completely compatible with anticiv theory... way more than the already promoted post-modern philosophers. There's no need for leaders in Sufism, there are only guides that use music, dancing and other arts to "mechanically" expand and enrich the soul.

the concept of the material world being the shadow of the unifying field dynamic is common to both sufism and gurdjieff. gurdjieff was influenced by the understandings of modern physics as they were being incubated in the fin de siècle.

the 'strand in the web-of-life' worldview of indigenous anarchist man is a layover to the relational world of sufism expressed by philosopher-poet jalaluddin rumi.

“I, you, he, she, we. In the garden of mystic lovers these are not true distinctions”.
.
Oh, my friend,
all that you see of me
is just a shell,
and the rest belongs to love.". —Jelaluddin Rumi

Mach, Einstein, Schroedinger and Bohm point to the same non-dualist 'garden of mystic lovers', a place of thingless connectedness where material structures are 'appearances', condensations in the transforming relational field-continuum, in the following terms;

“[In nature]… “the individual parts reciprocally determine one another.” … “The properties of one mass always include relations to other masses,” … “Every single body of the Universe stands in some definite relations with every other body in the Universe.” Therefore, no object can “be regarded as wholly isolated.” And even in the simplest case, “the neglecting of the rest of the world is impossible.” – Ernst Mach

Space is not [empty] Euclidian’ … “Space is a participant in physical phenomena” … “Space not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.” — Einstein

"What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances).” – Erwin Schroedinger

“Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves.” — David Bohm

of course, in the opposite corner of the ring, dressed in white trunks and weighing in on the basis of its huge inertial mass, is the reigning champion of the Western world, noun-and-verb Indo-European/scientific language-and-grammar who is fighting for the retention of dualist belief in the primacy of material structures and the absolute emptiness of the space in which they reside, operate and interact [space as a disconnecting insulator that guarantees the 'independent being' of a diverse collection of material shells/structures].

organizing is the tendency to harmony inherent in the non-dualist world. the self-organizing world is an anarchist world.

organization in the dualist world is a deliberately [purposefully] determined arranging of a collection of material entities which has them cooperating and working together as an 'organization' [noun] to achieve the 'common purpose'. the common purpose is determined by 'the leader' using the principle of Lafontaine; "La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure"

not only the views of sufism and gurdjieff, but also those of taoism and advaita vedanta, indigenous pantheism and general relativity point to 'anarchism' [self-organizing] as the natural way to go.

beware those identifying as 'anarchists' yet seeking to rally people to a 'common purpose'

purpose-oriented behaviour is aberrant behaviour

“That which gives the extraordinary firmness to our belief in causality is not the great habit of seeing one occurrence following another but our inability to interpret events otherwise than as events caused by purpose. It is belief in the living and thinking as the only effective force–in will, in purpose–it is belief that every event is a deed, that every deed presupposes a doer, it is belief in the “subject.” Is this belief in the concept of subject and attribute not a great stupidity?” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’ 484

an ecosystem does not form its complex mutually supportive organizing on the basis of the 'common purpose' of the participants, but from the conjugate relation between emergent openings of relational possibility which actualize creative potentials giving shape to the participants and their development and behaviour [conjugate relation of epigenesis and genesis as in non-dualism].

one's awareness of one's relations with the relational mother-space one is situationally included in [one's cosmic fetalization] is put to sleep by rallying calls to 'common purpose' [come on, people, let's all get together and construct our own desired future and to hell with trying to stay in balance with outside-inward epigenenetic influence! noun and verb grammar says we can do it!]. the advocacy of one-sided all-hitting, no-fielding driven and directed individual and collective development and behaviour, as is perfectly possible in noun-and-verb grammar continues to 'verhex' western authoritarian civilization.

"Central to Taoist teaching is the concept of wu-wei. It is often translated as merely non-action. In fact there are striking philological similarities between 'anarchism' and 'wu-wei'. Just as 'an-archos' in Greek means absence of a ruler, wu-wei means lack of wei, where wei refers to 'artificial, contrived activity that interferes with natural and spontaneous development'. From a political point of view, wei refers to the imposition of authority. To do something in accordance with wu-wei is therefore considered natural; it leads to natural and spontaneous order. It has nothing to do with all forms of imposed authority." -- Peter Marshall, 'A History of Anarchism'

sufism is totally fine by me.

gurdjieff is complete and absolute occultist horse-shit.

Why? I never seen a lot of occultism in him. He ain't more esoterical in any way than a Deleuze or an Adorno or Derrida. His philosophical concept of the Machine and the "simianthrope" are significantly more substantial and pragmatic than any po-mo useless abuser of university armchairs.

This sounds rad, I'm excited to read it. Lots of anarchist musicians writing songs out there, but not nearly as many anarchist writers producing literary fiction, it seems at least as good an art form in which to explore anti authoritarian ideas as rock n' roll, what gives?

Finally! Anarchism finding sources of inspiration outside of the Eurocentric Xtian domain!

But that's only because they avoided reading Heidegger.

A review or at least an abstract of this book would be appreciated. I ain't sure yet how worthy it is to order, and read. I usually pick or leave a book after reading the first 10-20 pages.

Aren't anarchist writers supposed to be more open or flexible in their publishing/promotion approaches?

A review by anarchist writer Gabriel Kuhn adds: "The book attempts no less than equipping contemporary anarchism with a footing that is often neglected: the transformation not only of society's structures but also of people's souls".

Add new comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
CAPTCHA
Human?
w
k
G
F
j
b
y
Enter the code without spaces.