Gathered Remains: Essays on Wildness, Domestication, Community, and Resistance

346 Pages·2018·1.552 MB·English

by  Kevin Tucker, John Zerzan

Gathered Remains:
Essays on Wildness,
Domestication, Community,
and Resistance
Kevin Tucker
Anti-copyright @ 2018, Kevin Tucker
Art courtesy of
http://www.graficamazatl.com/
ISBN: 978-0-9972017-6-5
Black and Green Press
PO Box 402
Salem, MO 65560
kevintucker.org
blackandgreenpress.org
Printed in Canada on recycled paper.
Gathered Remains

The natural world around me—the
forest or desert or sea—is, like my
genes, more permanent than I.
- Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape.
1967
For Mica, Dyani, Yank, and the
world more permanent than I.

Contents
viii. Preface: John Zerzan
x. Introduction

Part One: The Consequences of Domestication
1. Gathered Remains
36. I am Complicit
40. The Suffocating Void: Domestication and
Pathological Distraction
65. Hooked on a Feeling: The Loss of
Community and the Rise of Addiction
153. Society Without Strangers: Conflict Resolution,
Domestication and Systemic Violence
232. To Speak of Wildness
255. Subjects Object! Thoughts on Symbolic Thought
Part Two: The Ecology of Resistance
267. Do Humans Deserve to Survive?
274. Ecology of a Bubble
294. Means and Ends: The Coming Nomadism and
the Struggle for Community
303. The End is a Good Start: Activism in the Age
of Collapse
308. Social Media, Revolt, and Civilization: an
Interview with It’s Going Down
Preface:
John Zerzan
Much has gone down since Kevin’s earlier collection, For Wildness
and Anarchy, appeared in 2010. Amongst radicals not much has
been added, however, that inspires or that deepens critique.
Egoism and nihilism, having contributed little or nothing,
seem to have faded after an embarrassing infatuation of some with
murderous psychopaths. Lowest-common-denominator leftist and
liberal populism has been on offer, co-existing with decidedly post-
modern elements, which favor a cynical relativism on the part of at
least a few self-described anti-authoritarians.
But a radical, if often inchoate energy exists, flaring into prom-
inence on a regular basis. Standing Rock pipeline resistance grew
in 2016-2017, until snuffed out—most importantly by tribal
governance. Summer 2017 saw three days of anti-G20 fighting in
Hamburg, that required ever more pig reinforcements from across
Germany, and the Olympia Commune blockade against fracking
stood out in late fall 2017.
The Olympia blockade featured a strong and articulate an-
ti-civilization component. I see this slowly growing in general, as
deeper doubts spread through society at large. A significant an-
ti-technological feeling, for instance, now animates many novels
and films.
Kevin was the editor and publisher of Species Traitor and a key
contributor to Green Anarchy magazine (2000-2008). He initiated
Black and Green Review in 2015 and is essential among five editors,
first among equals. BAGR is a flagship anarcho-primitivist project
viii
Preface: John Zerzan
and would not exist without Kevin, I think it is safe to say.
The essays of Gathered Remains form a coherent whole, in the
best traditions of the likes of Paul Shepard and Fredy Perlman.
They explore wildness, community and resistance and are ground-
ed in the realities of struggles past and present. They inform what
faces us today, the depth that our blows against it must achieve.
His work is a rare example of the deeply from-the-heart, and
of first-rate scholarship. His wide-ranging essays are tops in both
categories. Kevin Tucker is unrelenting and uncompromising. His
writings are stand-out, must-read offerings, all the more so in these
days of crisis. I’m honored to be his friend.
ix