Background
The book was released in the context of the dispute in the newly resurgent anarchist movement between critics of civilisation (primarily anarcho-primitivists exemplified by John Zerzan) and its supporters (notably Murray Bookchin). Although sharply disagreeing on the merits of civilisation, technology and language, both Zerzan and Bookchin derided postmodernism as disempowering the individual and reinforcing the existing order. Another significant factor in the intellectual climate of the book's release was the rediscovery in the 1990s of anarchist theory within academia.
Although foundational work had been done on the philosophy of postanarchism by radical theorists such as Andrew Koch and Todd May, From Bakunin to Lacan introduced a slightly different and more substantive formulation of the theory.
Read more about this topic: From Bakunin To Lacan
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“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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