X-Nico

3 unusual facts about John Zerzan


Gabriel Kuhn

Tier-Werden, Schwarz-Werden, Frau-Werden. Eine Einführung in die politische Philosophie des Poststrukturalismus (2005) has become a standard left-wing introduction to poststructuralism, and the book Neuer Anarchismus in den USA. Seattle und die Folgen (2008), an annotated anthology of contemporary US anarchism, with translations from David Graeber and the CrimethInc. Collective to John Zerzan and Ward Churchill, was named "Book of the Year" by Berlin's

John Zerzan

Zerzan's claims about the status of primitive societies are based on a certain reading of the works of anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard B. Lee.

In his essay on number, for example, Zerzan starts by contrasting the "civilized" emphasis on counting and measuring with a "primitive" emphasis on sharing, citing Dorothy Lee's work on the Trobriand Islanders in support, before constructing a narrative of the rise of number through cumulative stages of state domination, starting with the desire of Egyptian kings to measure what they ruled.


Why The Future Doesn't Need Us

However John Zerzan and Chellis Glendinning believe that modern technologies are bad for both freedom and the problem of cancer, and that the two issues are connected.


see also

Future Primitive

Future Primitive and Other Essays, a 1994 collection of essays by anarchist John Zerzan