Fredy Perlman (1934–1985)
Autore di Against His-story, Against Leviathan!: an Essay
Sull'Autore
Opere di Fredy Perlman
The incoherence of the intellectual : C. Wright Mills' struggle to unite knowledge and action (1970) 11 copie
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Altri nomi
- Nachalo, Sophia [character pseudonym]
Vochek, Yarostan [character pseudonym] - Data di nascita
- 1934-08-20
- Data di morte
- 1985-07-26
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- USA
Utenti
Recensioni
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 31
- Opere correlate
- 2
- Utenti
- 458
- Popolarità
- #53,635
- Voto
- 3.8
- Recensioni
- 7
- ISBN
- 31
- Lingue
- 7
- Preferito da
- 2
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."
--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Round about the three quarters mark, Fredy Perlman states that he's sick of writing this book and would rather be doing something else. I had a similar sensation reading it.
It's not that his ideas are bad or even wrong; instead it’s the contempt with which he seems to treat everything along the way. Those within states are slaves or “zeks”, those without are noble savages and helpless victims. Historians are liars and anthropologists are racists. Citations and facts are tools of the oppressors.
In rejecting historians he falls into their worst traps: the books is pretty standard european history, even devolving to tedious lists of kings. Although he stops to tell us --not show, not demonstrate, tell-- that so and so and their state is bad, it’s still great man history.
His rejection of archaeology and anthropology is both unfair and damaging. By the 80s anthropology had been rejecting the very concept of civilization and barbarism for a couple decades. Certainly anthropology gives us a window into the “free people” whom Perlman so esteems that he almost completely ignores.
In the 2000s another anarchist, David Graeber, took the same topics but treated them with respect. He went into the weeds, talked to the people instead of projecting on them and came out with Debt: The First 5000 Years. It is so jam packed with novel ideas and fascinating observations that is a joy to read at twice the length of Leviathan.
Go read that instead.… (altro)