Wolfi Landstreicher

Wolfi Landstreicher
Other names	Feral Faun, Apio Ludd
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Insurrectionary anarchism, Post-left anarchy, egoist anarchism
Main interests	Political philosophy, ethics, anarchism
Notable ideas	Non-primitivist criticism of civilization, feral revolution, blending communism and individualism in anarchism
Influences Surrealism, Situationist International, Max Stirner
Influenced Insurrectionary anarchism

Wolfi Landstreicher is a former nom de plume ("Landstreicher" is the German word for vagabond, tramp) of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity. He edited the anarchist publication Willful Disobedience, which was published from 1996 until 2005, and currently publishes a variety of anarchist, radical, surrealist and poetic pamphlets and booklets through his project, Venomous Butterfly Publication. His ideas are influenced by insurrectionary anarchism, Max Stirner's egoism, surrealism, the Situationist International and non-primitivist critiques of civilization.

This author also worked previously under the pseudonym Feral Faun from approximately 1982 to 1992.

Thought

Feral Faun wrote in "The ideology of victimization" that there's a "feminist version of the ideology of victimization—an ideology which promotes fear, individual weakness (and subsequently dependence on ideologically based support groups and paternalistic protection from the authorities)". But in the end "Like all ideologies, the varieties of the ideology of victimization are forms of fake consciousness. Accepting the social role of victim—in whatever one of its many forms—is choosing to not even create one's life for oneself or to explore one's real relationships to the social structures. All of the partial liberation movements—feminism, gay liberation, racial liberation, workers' movements and so on—define individuals in terms of their social roles. Because of this, these movements not only do not include a reversal of perspectives which breaks down social roles and allows individuals to create a praxis built on their own passions and desires; they actually work against such a reversal of perspective. The 'liberation' of a social role to which the individual remains subject."

Wolfi Landstreicher has also criticized the "ascetic morality of sacrifice or of a mystical disintegration into a supposedly unalienated oneness with Nature," which appears in anarcho-primitivism and deep ecology. He has criticized John Zerzan saying that "I understand alienation as the separation of our existence from ourselves through a system of social relationships that steals our capacity to create our lives on our own terms in order to use our energy to produce and reproduce what is necessary to maintain separated, centralized wealth and power. What is alien to me is thus that which I cannot enjoy as my own. Alienation, in this sense, cannot be caused by an idea or way of thinking. Its source must lie in social relationships. At times, Zerzan seems to use alienation in this way, but usually he is far more abstract, speaking of human alienation from nature in a quasi-mystical sense. And this latter conception seems prevalent in much of the anarcho-primitivist milieu. It is as if they see nature as a metaphysical entity with which humans once had an intimate relationship of unity and from which they have become separated. This is a precise parallel to christian theology, but god has been replaced with a unified nature. The idea of a “fall” into civilization (a term Zerzan frequently uses) follows logically from this."

For Wolfi Landstreicher "The reappropriation of life on the social level, as well as its full reappropriation on the individual level, can only occur when we stop identifying ourselves essentially in terms of our social identities." So "The recognition that this trajectory must be brought to an end and new ways of living and relating developed if we are to achieve full autonomy and freedom." So relationships with others are not seen anymore as in activism in which the goal is "to seek followers who accept one’s position" but instead "comrades and accomplices with which to carry on one’s explorations". As such he manifests that "A revolutionary critique of civilization is a critique of the social relationships of civilization. The rise of civilization is in fact the rise of the centralization and institutionalization of power and wealth. Starting with the dispossession of a large number of people — with the stealing away of their capacity to create their lives on their terms — , relationships of domination and exploitation, that is to say class relationships, are imposed. With the institution of class relationships, class struggle begins. At bottom, this is the struggle of the dispossessed to take back their lives and the struggle of the ruling order to maintain its dominance. If we begin our critique of civilization from this basis, we can see that the struggle against civilization is at root a class struggle and an egoist struggle...a revolutionary critique of civilization will have its basis in a communist and egoist critique of the existent — in other words, it will be fundamentally anarchist."

Selected publications

• Against the Logic of Submission
• Autonomous Self-Organization and Anarchist Intervention
• Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon
• The Network of Domination
• Consuming Fire

See also

• Bob Black
• Hakim Bey
• Egoist anarchism

External links

• Wolfi Landstreicher archive at The Anarchist Library
• An incomplete archive of written work
• Introduction to Landstreicher's perspective
• Against the Logic of Submission free audiobook from the Audio Anarchy project
• Feral Faun archive at anti-politics