CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

i,
II)l} Nl'W YUI k, Nl'W York
1'1 l-r\lIN!.,> tIl II'J'IIC,.\I
203 The Refusal of Technology
207 Anti-Work and the Struggle for Control
PART THREE
217
245
255
261
265
273
297
301
310
The Promise of the '80s
The '80s So Far
Present-Day Banalities
Media, Irony and "Bob"
Afterword Commentary on Form and Content in
Elements of Refusal
Notes
Author's Bibliography
Index
Appendix: Excerpts from Adventures in Subversion'
Flyers & Posters, 1981-85
.
I'I{ I 'TACh TO THE SECOND EDITION
Ihis collection of offerings was published by Left Bank in 1988, and
w,'111 out of print fairly quickly. I believe most of it holds up rather well,
IIi part because of a totality that keeps giving us new evidence, on every
li'vel, of its fundamental destructiveness. The magnitude of these
"h,dlcnges, created by such a depth of peril and falsity, is the strongest
IIlIpetus behind efforts to question every component of our truly
Ii ightening reality.
Unfortunately, stark reality has far more often brought the opposite
response, based on fear and denial. More and more we are immersed in
a postmodern ethos of appearances, images, and veneers. Everyone can
feci the nothingness, the void, just beneath the surface of everyday
routines and securities. How tempting, apparently, to avoid asking why,
thus elevating the superficial as the only appropriate, indeed the only
possible response. The fragmentary, the cynical, and the partial define an
extremely pervasive postmodcrn stance-if such a cowardly, shifting
outlook even qualifies as a stance.
I! is hardly surprising that the high-tech juggernaut, embodying all the
bereft features of the social order as a whole, rushes into this intellectual
and moral vacuum with an increasing acceleration.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, where I was born and where the final
traces of the natural forests are being systematically eradicated. The vista
of cloned humans looms, as we struggle to maintain some undamaged
humanness in a blcak, artificialized panorama. The group suicide of
techno-occultists at Rancho Santa Fe (March 1997) is too faithful a
reflection of the desperation generated by engulfing emptiness. One of
the would-be UFO voyagers spoke for so many others: "Maybe I'm crazy
but I don't care. I've been here thirty-one years and there's nothing for
me here."
The first five essays in this volume, written during the mid-1980s, arc
the basis for more recent efforts such as "Future Primitive" (1992) and
"Running on Emptiness" (1997). The question of the origins of our
estrangement is refused by a reigning culture that recognizes neither
origins nor estrangement. I feel that this question must be explored, in
the facc of this stunning, still-unfolding enormity: the entire absence of