Wednesday 27 April 2011

A choice between two nightmares

In Heart of Darkness, the narrator Marlow is presented with a choice between two ‘nightmares’, that is between the nightmare of the Belgian company he is employed by and the nightmare of Kurtz. He ‘chooses’ Kurtz, or rather he chooses the nightmare of Kurtz as it appears on the terrain of the nightmare of the company. He does not identify any positive features in the nightmare of Kurtz but sides with it because it is not the company's nightmare. Similarly, I have written on the ideology of primitivism as it appears within libertarian communist critique and have sided with primitivism because it is not libertarian communism. Or rather, I have not sided with primitivism but reintroduced a content that is lost from libertarian communism as it goes to war against a rival ideology at the moment where it is also transformed into ideology (because it has gone to war). The piece is an exercise, a game perhaps, in not choosing sides, in refusing polarisation, and in not going to war on one side or another. 

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