Peter Linebaugh
Peter Linebaugh
Anarchists & The Printing Press
Combining thoughts & words with the cunning of the hands
a review of
Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture by Kathy E. Ferguson. Duke University Press, 2023
In his search for truth, William Blake might take an idea of the dominant culture and invert it as he did in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793). There, he calls the printing house “Hell.” He sees dragon men preparing the space, vipers adorning it, eagle-like men building palaces, lions casting the sorts or types, and unnam’d forms casting them so that books were printed and bound. Kathy Ferguson does not write this kind of magical bestiary, instead her writing is scholarly to a high and sophisticated degree. It is useful, clear, and thorough, every bit as ready as Blake to turn the world upside down.
Dec 28, 2023 Read the whole text...
Peter Linebaugh
How we can exit the era of ecological destruction & affirm life
a review of
Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community by John P. Clark. PM Press 2019 pmpress.org
John P. Clark is a major thinker, on a par with Wendell Berry, Thoreau, or Rebecca Solnit. He is an anarchist and an eco-socialist but label not required.
The book under review, Between Earth and Empire, expresses the hope and the fear. From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community is his subtitle. Necrocene is geological portending death as a result of statist, technocratic, patriarchal society. The beloved community is spiritual. The terms bestride the natural and the social.
Feb 15, 2020 Read the whole text...