A collection of three essays previously published in other venues: Accelerationism and the Need for Speed, The Revolutionary Disaster and the Disaster of Revolution, and A Short Introduction to the Politics of Cruelty. The zines were thoughtfully designed by Shane Farrell for an art festival in 2019. They are now available in a short anthology, as well as individual zines (in both reading / printing formats). Also included in the zine-pack is my essay The Black Arrow, previously released but Flugschriften.
“The arrow arrives at its destination with a clamor, its blackness marking the arrival of thought from the outside: thought as problem, thought as sabotage.”
Herein lay a series of engagements and debates that are perfect for the journal format. Where lay the dangers of visibilty? What is the terrain by which cruelty (towards comrades and enemies) makes sense? How does vengeance inform a discussion about how to end patriarchy? What are the limits of war discourse?
Hostis is a negation. It emerges devoid of ethics, lacking any sense of democracy, and without a care for pre-figuring anything. Fed up with the search for a social solution to the present crisis, it aspires to be attacked wildly and painted as utterly black without a single virtue.
In thought, Hostis is the construction of incommensurability that figures politics in formal asymmetry to the powers that be.
In action, Hostis is an exercise in partisanship – speaking in a tongue made only for those that it wants to listen. This partisanship is neither the work of fascists, who look for fights to give their limp lives temporary jolts of excitement, nor martyrs, who take hopeless stands to live the righteousness of loss. Hostis is the struggle to be dangerous in a time when antagonism is dissipated.
This is all because Hostis is the enemy.