amazing historian and translator shawn wilbur sends the following email, which requires me to make a decision, so i’m somewhat arbitrarily going with the first two, the intro and the garlic one (’cause YOU KNOW), and if folks are into it, we can always read the rest–we could have a month of fourier, semi-curated by shawn!
The obvious intro piece by Fourier, from my perspective at least, is “Note A” from “The Theory of Four Movements.” It’s very short, but explains how individuals will organize according to the passions in Harmony. There is a translation in the Cambridge edition, but I’ve made one that can be used freely.

Charles Fourier on the Pear-Grower’s Series

You might also be amused by “Intermeshing of the Series by Cabalistic Gastronomy,” which includes the amusing episode of the girl who loved garlic, but not grammar:

Fourier, “Intermeshing of the Series by Cabalistic Gastronomy”

re: the first reading, here are some questions/thoughts i had:

what is brought out of people when they try to create utopias (or just, better systems)? A practical, practice-based way of thinking of what is truly human – so what is fourier saying about what is deeply human?

relationship to bolo’bolo (limited size, based on some level of intentional/understanding of desire)

daniel will be doing a little intro to stirner, and we’re reading an article by alejandro on making stirner one’s own.
if you want to do extra reading, then this piece by jason mcquinn is a good addition.

chapters 2-6 of the same book. woo hoo berkman! cake!

chapter one of prison memoirs of an anarchist, by Berkman.
the person i asked for suggestions about what to read loves the whole book, and so was less helpful than one might think. here are some of his comments “First, congratulations on making good reading choices. The reading group
should clap for each other for good choices, maybe eat cake.
As to the good bits, it is a long book, and there is a lot that can be left out if you aren’t trying to read the whole thing.
I would suggest that part 1 which focuses on the attentat is good context if there is none, but not necessary in entirety, chapters 4, 5 & 6 are pretty crucial to the narrative though.”
he emphasizes that there is a lot going on in this book, and no excerpt is going to get at the book in full, so… we shouldn’t think that we know what the book is about without reading the whole thing. so cute!

a story that will be introduced by aragorn! from anews, called gentrification part 3, the anarchist

and for those who are interested, this is the atlantic article that was referenced tonight.

clastres! and maybe anthropology for a couple weeks. we will decide. for this week we have have a chapter from archeology of violence, and one from society against the state.
other authors who were floated for future readings were graeber (sigh) and james c scott.

the stanford experiment is a notorious example of how prone people are to losing their shit when put in positions of power/lack-of-power.

Jack’s choice for the reading is here.
It’s Philip Zimbardo’s account of the experiment, who was the lead in the experiment. He’s caught a lot of criticism for both the experiment and his presentation of it… so it should be a good starting point for discussion.

Jack proposes the following questions:
What’s more surprising, how guards abused their power or how prisoners complied?
Is your life more like that of a prisoner, or a guard?
Do liberals, conservatives, socialists, etc. see themselves as prisoners or guards?

ps: the piece i mentioned about artificial intelligence and corporations is here.

an essay by timothy morton from the book object-oriented feminism.

Timothy Morton, philosopher of Object Oriented Ontology, claims it is relevant to anarchists. He is the author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence; Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics; Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People; Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World; The Ecological Thought; Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality, etc. He contributed to Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism.

can’t get enough of the fascism, apparently, so here are some more interesting readings on that. one by bonanno and a famous one by umberto eco (this is a longer piece, but you can just read the numbered items, that start more than half way through the piece, if you like).

a joinder and rejoinder on fascism: both from anews. there’s a reiteration of burley’s points in this, so if you can find anything interesting in that, feel free to bring it up.