on Rachel Haywire and the New Reaction
no its not a Harry Potter spinoff, yes there is a review after the cut.
The New Reaction is a short but jubilant collection from Rachel Haywire. Rachel has been a divisive presence in pretty much every scene she has crossed but i made the choice to follow her on her journey in the hope that there is more to her then a pretty face and a knack for slogans. In her written works i have not been at all disappointed.
Its important when reading Haywire to understand that you are reading the work of a social chameleon; you must pay careful attention to attain her true outline. A first reading will show you an objectionable incendiary author intent on playing shock value until the last of the audience walk out. A deeper reading will give you a sense that perhaps this is the work of a conman, a social engineer, you will put your guard up and check for cognitive hacks. But if you can part the vales of misdirection and counter misdirection you can see at her core a person who in dwelling so close and long to the ugly underbelly of humanity has found a profoundly honest enlightenment and put it to work.
I was preparing to compare this book and its author to Machiavelli and his Discourses; exiled from the left as Machiavelli was exiled from Venice, she will write parody on one had while penning the sublime with the other but i found myself finding more similarities with the works of a young Bakunin; you can taste the energy and passion here, and it lifts you to know that the best is probably yet to come. Like Bakunin, Haywire isn't stacking damage on the common target, she is not lending her weight to a historically defined goal, at least not once you get to her core ideas. There is the refreshing breeze of new political thought here and you can tell that she is as excited as Bakunin was to throw light along the path. Also like Bakunin, you sometimes want to stop her and find out exactly what sort of freedom she means here, or what facet of capitalism she is referencing there, but you are loath to interrupt the frenzy.
The New Reaction is a collection of Haywire's writings for several ideologically diverse sites over the last few years encompassing her departure from the vanilla Transhuminist scene; her entry into the radical right and her most recent disillusionment therein. And it is, largely a work of reaction, not in the traditional tried binary of revolution but in the scene that every piece is reacting to as pre-existing socio/cultural/political/philosophical structure.
Haywire returns a few times to a central theme - passing so far to the radical left that she has ended up among the radical right. At the same time she watches the normalization of counterculture as a social commodity. But its important to read carefully because between the lines you can see the outline of greater ideas not bound by historical wings in a house long abandoned by original thought. Haywire asks us to look at fascism as an idea without factoring in fashion, she wants us to look at nationalism without geography. In short this is political philosophy without the weight of its own history pulling it back to the concentration camp or the riot.
The New Reaction is short, but intense, it is a book that will make it to history in a further reading list against her magnum opus, her synthesis. Whatever that is, i am sure it is on the way and you want to be ready for it.
The New Reaction is a short but jubilant collection from Rachel Haywire. Rachel has been a divisive presence in pretty much every scene she has crossed but i made the choice to follow her on her journey in the hope that there is more to her then a pretty face and a knack for slogans. In her written works i have not been at all disappointed.
Its important when reading Haywire to understand that you are reading the work of a social chameleon; you must pay careful attention to attain her true outline. A first reading will show you an objectionable incendiary author intent on playing shock value until the last of the audience walk out. A deeper reading will give you a sense that perhaps this is the work of a conman, a social engineer, you will put your guard up and check for cognitive hacks. But if you can part the vales of misdirection and counter misdirection you can see at her core a person who in dwelling so close and long to the ugly underbelly of humanity has found a profoundly honest enlightenment and put it to work.
I was preparing to compare this book and its author to Machiavelli and his Discourses; exiled from the left as Machiavelli was exiled from Venice, she will write parody on one had while penning the sublime with the other but i found myself finding more similarities with the works of a young Bakunin; you can taste the energy and passion here, and it lifts you to know that the best is probably yet to come. Like Bakunin, Haywire isn't stacking damage on the common target, she is not lending her weight to a historically defined goal, at least not once you get to her core ideas. There is the refreshing breeze of new political thought here and you can tell that she is as excited as Bakunin was to throw light along the path. Also like Bakunin, you sometimes want to stop her and find out exactly what sort of freedom she means here, or what facet of capitalism she is referencing there, but you are loath to interrupt the frenzy.
The New Reaction is a collection of Haywire's writings for several ideologically diverse sites over the last few years encompassing her departure from the vanilla Transhuminist scene; her entry into the radical right and her most recent disillusionment therein. And it is, largely a work of reaction, not in the traditional tried binary of revolution but in the scene that every piece is reacting to as pre-existing socio/cultural/political/philosophical structure.
Haywire returns a few times to a central theme - passing so far to the radical left that she has ended up among the radical right. At the same time she watches the normalization of counterculture as a social commodity. But its important to read carefully because between the lines you can see the outline of greater ideas not bound by historical wings in a house long abandoned by original thought. Haywire asks us to look at fascism as an idea without factoring in fashion, she wants us to look at nationalism without geography. In short this is political philosophy without the weight of its own history pulling it back to the concentration camp or the riot.
The New Reaction is short, but intense, it is a book that will make it to history in a further reading list against her magnum opus, her synthesis. Whatever that is, i am sure it is on the way and you want to be ready for it.