(De-/Re-)
Constructing
Worlds
Seven Ways to Signify a Circle
As I have come to see it, symbolic signs that are meant to communicate a given idea ought to be supplemented by iconic and gestural signs that further communicate a given idea.
No need to rectify your language.
In a world that is warped and twisted, plain language fails to describe matters; only hyperbolic and elliptical language will do.
Anthropologies Beyond the Human
Why must Western(ized) anthropologists speak of peoples living in “small foraging bands” when the peoples they are referring to can and do live as if they are part of immense and complex societies that involve great multitudes of sentient non-human others?
The Horror and the Splendor
Considering the origins of the (De-/Re-)Constructing Worlds project and the outcomes of its first phase in order to better envision its next phase.
Putting the Pandemic in Context
In the midst of a planetary ecocide, the most outrageously brutal historical tragedy is beginning to replay itself as the most outrageously brutal historical farce.
At the Confluence of the Black and Indigenous Critiques of Western Civilization
Reading the work of Cedric Robinson, R.A. Judy, David Graeber, and David Wengrow, and framing a request for theoretical and historical resources to inform my project.
The Great Derangement
We must all be traumatized if we are able to rationalize a way of life that allows us to disregard the fact that wildlife populations on Earth have plummeted by more than two-thirds in the past half-century and to disregard the fact that half of the languages on Earth are likely to disappear over the course of the next century.
Five Considerations
Evoking passages from Sun Tzu, this dispatch sets out five factors to consider when planing a fugitive undertaking.
The War on Terra
Thus far, I have only been articulating theories and describing my approach to the (de-/re-)construction of our deathly world of suffering.
Beginning with this dispatch, I would like to begin telling my story and narrating my approach to the (de-/re-)construction of our deathly world of suffering.
Six Theses on Science
Science becomes entangled with art and philosophy whenever science is “put to the test” in an experiment.
Three Freedoms
Reading Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything in order to frame the question, “What can we do in our time, the present, to (re-)construct a world in which imperialist power formations are historical curiosities and the freedoms to disobey, to migrate, and to (de-/re-)construct worlds are decisive?”
Design Constraints for the Making of Statements
This dispatch sketches out four design constraints for the deconstruction of domineering statements and the (re-)construction of convivial statements.
The New Underground Railroad
A poem that expresses what has been betrayed by way of clinical and critical discourse in these dispatches.
Proxies and Redeemers
Let us (re-)create ways of living otherwise than becoming proxies for power, otherwise than becoming redeemers for power, otherwise than becoming redeemers for power's redeemers, otherwise than becoming common victims of power, and otherwise than forming rival powers that can compete for supremacy.
Late Davosian Holocausts
The latest report from the IPCC betrays the fact that incipient “Late Davosian Holocausts” are poised to do by way of neocolonialism what the “Late Victorian Holocausts” did by way of colonialism, marking a new inflection point in the history of the havoc wreaked by imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Ecoregionalism
This week, the nation of Russia attacked the nation of Ukraine in what is widely and rightly being regarded as a brazen act of nationalist imperialism. The liberal news media in the West has tended to criticize Russia’s actions in the name of the sovereignty of the nation of Ukraine, taking the inviolability of sovereign national territories for granted.
In this dispatch, I propose that we criticize acts of nationalist imperialism otherwise than affirming the inviolability of sovereign national territories. In brief, I propose that we criticize acts of nationalist imperialism by affirming nations’ shared concern for ecoregions and by affirming more or less permeable ecoregional boundaries.
Planning to Flee from Profiling
Once upon a time it was the paid administrator’s task to profile subjects under administration. In today’s deathly world of suffering, subjects under administration are tasked with profiling themselves without pay.
We are all becoming unpaid administrators, engaged in compiling and reviewing profiles about ourselves and others, and desperately trying to find ways to advantage ourselves in administrative rat races by exploiting the (mal)functioning of automated and networked systems that record, sort, filter, and match profiles.
Planning to Flee from Calendaring and Clocking
If my desire to flee from calendaring and clocking seems fanciful, it is only because we have become accustomed living in a deathly world of suffering that privileges machinic measures of time and abstract tabulations of days, months, and years.
Planning to Flee from Financing
“If it don’t make money, it don’t make sense.” — That is gist of the domineering statements, implements, and environments that form the capitalist powers that prevail over our deathly world of suffering.
Planning to Flee from Schooling
Why do we live in a deathly world of suffering in which schooling is considered to be more important than learning?