the reading is selections from baedan 2. here are the questions…

Rituals: Are rituals at risk of becoming institutions? How do rituals and institutions differ?

Masks: Against the Gendered Nighmare’s breakdown of some of the key ideas in Freddy Perlman’s Against His-tory, Against Leviathan! it refers to adorning masks as the internalization of civilization. Later in the reading is a section titled “The Black Mask” which references the black mask as “the most visible symbol of the anarchist” and also as the anarchist novices “initiation.” How are the two masks (in various meanings) different and similar? Is there a tension between them?

Ideology: Against the Gendered Nightmare references the strains of thought and ideologies they are trying to break from: Eco-Feminism, Marxist Feminism and Queer Anarchism. They claim these ideologies are based in identity politics, representation, gender essentialism, reformism and reproductive futurity. How do we know when see/hear/read these ideologies? What are effective ways of shutting them down when they try to force their answers with such certainty?

Anthropology: Against the Gendered Nightmare also links Anthropology, Science and certainty together as the primary way that anarchist primitivists articulate and justify the need to destroy civilization. Baedan 2’s desire is to abandon that project (claiming they have no need to prove what was before to know this world should burn) and instead desire the great unknown, the magical world of mystery about what was before civilization or could be after. If we abandon anthropology, science, and certainty, what kinds of conversations does this lead to and how are they different from those we are having now? As anarchists, if we abandon a certainty about how to live what does figuring out how to live look like?