through europe - individualism

Catholicism As Radical Atheism

Federico Campagna — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 13:32:12 +0000

Steering clear of absolutist atheism

Both in my latest book and in my recent writing, I have been working around the possibility of a strategy of radical atheism. Developing the seminal work of the German philosopher Max Stirner^{^[1]}, I defined radical atheism as a process of individual disentanglement from the web of injunctions and demands laid all around us by normative abstractions. I defined as ‘normative abstraction’ that particular position which abstract constructs typically occupy as soon as they cease to be docile tools in our hands and rear their head to the point of shaping, defining, and ultimately controlling our lives. Particularly, I focused on the most recent occupiers of this position, such as the burgeoning religions of work, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and so on.

My radically atheist attack against normative abstractions, however, was for the great part dissimilar from traditional atheism. While traditional atheism locates its critique on an ontological or epistemological level, deriding the belief in God on the grounds of its ‘falseness’ or non-demonstrability, my proposal for radical atheism disregarded such issues entirely. My project was – and it still is – concerned exclusively with ethics, that is, with the individual’s quest for the ‘good life’.

Tame Beasts: on obedience

Federico Campagna — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:18:41 +0000

In 1959, Dr. Dimitriy Belyaev and his colleagues of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, started a long-term experiment in the domestication of the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes). From an original population of 130 farm-bred foxes, the research team progressively selected those who showed the least avoidance behaviour towards humans and separated them from the rest of the group. By allowing them to breed only amongst themselves – while avoiding interbreeding – by 1985 the researchers had managed to have 18% of the tenth generation of foxes showing extremely tame behavior. Their experiment was interrupted in that year, but other, more recent experiments have shown very similar results. Foxes, some of the least domesticable animals in nature, can be tamed as a species.^{^[1]}

Let’s compare the transformation of the Vulpes vulpes over the relatively short time-span of ten generations, with the evolution of humans over the vastly longer period of History, which we presume began in 3200 BC, with the first written records in Mesopotamia. That is, over 200 generations ago.

Squandering: the case for disrespectful opportunism

Federico Campagna — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:38:15 +0000

Hitherto you have believed there were tyrants.

Well, you are mistaken: there are only slaves.

When nobody obeys nobody commands.

Anselme Bellegarigue, 1850

Promises

Why do people work? If they are not insane, they do it for the money. And what do they need this money for? To buy freedom from work. At the same time, money seems to be necessary to escape from the money-obsession of the poor, just like work seems to be necessary to escape from the work-obsession of the unemployed. The apparent non sequitur of these connections is the description of the logical loop in which most humans live and function in today’s society. Strangely enough, the very origin of their endless tail-chasing seems to be their desire to achieve a state of freedom, that is, an escape form the loop itself.

How could the human desire for freedom turn into a self-perpetuating and enslaving mechanism? Within the contemporary landscape, the answer lies in the way capitalism, as it always does, manages to take our requests to the letter, and to return them to us realized, if slightly modified. That slight modification, as we all know, is the tiny poison pill that turns all our ‘realized’ demands into even stricter chains. This is how, over the years, capitalism realized the requests for flexible work, sexual liberation, democracy, and so on. Capitalism always gives us what we want, but it does so in such a way that brings to reality the darkest warnings of the old saying, ‘be careful what you wish for’.

Discipline: on writing and collectivity

Federico Campagna — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:27:35 +0000

If you meet the Buddha, kill him.

Linji Yixuan

It is common practice to look at humans through the filter of the collectivities they supposedly belong to. This is particularly evident in conservative discourses, such as those on Nation and Ethnicity, or in the marketing categorization of different Consumer typologies. But also discourses which self-define as emancipatory rarely constitute an exception to this norm. When fighting for gender equality, for example, it is always through the filter of Gender that we look at our fellow humans kettled inside the various gender categories. Even when talking about humanity tout court, it is once again through the filter of Humanity that we look at the singular lives that are gathered on this planet. This is how we often end up fighting for the Woman, the Migrant, the Human, and so on, and hardly ever for the individual woman, the individual migrant, the individual human. Fooled by the pretense of such abstract collectivities to truly embody those who are comprised within them, we often find ourselves fighting, not for the emancipation of our fellow humans, but for that of their collective, capitalized names.

Radical Atheism

Federico Campagna — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:17:08 +0000

in loving memory of Pierre Clastres and Max Stirner

Few places in the world are more secular than the United Kingdom. The laughable origins of the Anglican church, mixed with the centuries-old hegemony of capitalist ethics seem to have finally killed the religious spirit of the people of Albion. Religion, in the UK, is a mark of underdevelopment usually reserved for impoverished ethnic minorities or for the inhabitants of rural areas.

As a migrant from Catholic Italy, when I first arrived in the UK I thought I couldn't have asked for more. Not only were the remnants of the church so liberal and progressive that even homosexuals were allowed to be priests, but also people did not feel the need to fight off the presence of the church by indulging in God-oriented swearing, as is the common habit in Italy. God seemed to have finally disappeared, both as an unrequested father figure and as the millenarian oppressor of all living creatures. Back then, I thought I had arrived in the promised land of ‘really existing atheism’. And yet, I couldn’t have been more mistaken.