Blog

Polity-form (External constitution)

December 5, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

If we are to follow Proudhon’s an-archic account of social organization, we can expect the social collectivities that we encounter to be self-organizing associations of human beings, onto which some kind of governmental framework has been imposed from the outside. The authoritarian pretense is that society — human association in all its dynamic forms — has not really been established until the material relations of association have been seconded in some way by the establishment of an authority, sitting atop some kind of fundamentally political hierarchy. The anarchic response is that authority and hierarchy are inessential elements that we must learn to do without. […]

Legal Order

November 28, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the anarchist context, it is common to approach the question of legal order by asking whether anarchists truly desire a society in which nothing is prohibited. This is, it seems to me, only half of the question that needs to be asked, as an anarchic society would also be one in which nothing is permitted. And it is probably this second aspect that is most helpful in evaluating the antinomian character of anarchy. […]

libertatia laboratories — synthetic soundscapes

November 23, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

hors du troupeau — relays & reconstructions

November 12, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

The song remains the same — more or less. All of the various tracks that will make up relays & reconstructions are instances of a single composition assembled in Wotja, the generative music software I’ve been using on most of the hors du troupeau tracks. But because the software introduces gradual and partially random development into the composition as it unfolds, the sameness is relative — particularly as that development is allowed to continue. So, in order to explore the extent and character of that development it has made sense to allow the development to continue hour after hour, but also to record multiple instances of a “single” composition at similar lengths, both as audio files and as midi files. […]

Along a Narrow Way — An E. Armand Calendar for 2022

October 29, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

I wanted—as a first step toward getting a more comprehensive selection of Armand’s writings into print—to draw together a selection of short, direct articles and poems that presented the tone of his egoist anarchist individualism, along with some of the key preoccupations and recurring tropes from his writings. […]

E. Armand — misc. translations

October 22, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

To restrain the passions! To narrow the horizon of the enjoyment of living? Christianity has attempted it and failed. Socialism will try to reduce humanity to a similar denominator of necessities and it will fail. Fourier saw clearly when he coined this masterful expression: “the use of passions.” […]