John Zerzan is no stranger to controversy. The Eugene resident and anarchist writer is the author of three books, including “Elements of Refusal,” “Future Primitive & Other Essays” and “Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization,” which espouse perspectives directly contradicting almost every norm of Western civilization. He hosts “Anarchy Radio,” which airs Sundays at 11 p.m. on KWVA, and is a frequent contributor to the public-access series “Cascadia Alive!”
In his essay “The Case Against Art,” written in the mid-1980s, Zerzan critiques art as the creation of a symbolic culture alienated from the natural world.
“Art anesthetizes the sense organs and removes the natural world from their purview. This reproduces culture, which can never compensate for the disability,” he writes. “The primary function of art is to objectify feeling, by which one’s own motivations and identity are transformed into symbol and metaphor.”
Later, he asks, “Why then would one respond positively to art? As compensation and palliative, because our relationship to nature and life is so deficient and disallows an authentic one. … (A)rt, like religion, arises from unsatisfied desire.”
Zerzan notes the piece “was probably the most attacked or controversial essays of mine out of all of them.”
Emerald: What is the definition of art you’re using in this essay?
John Zerzan: It’s representation, most basically. That urge or desire to represent reality. Art is just part of the symbolic culture, symbolic
communication.
Emerald: That seems to be describing it from a materialistic standpoint. Like art as the creation of an artifact, or as a materialistic thing.
JZ: You could describe it in different ways. You could talk about it in a more spiritual way, too. That’s an open question, too. I don’t claim this is some absolute right answer or this is the truth — it’s more of an exploration. It just makes it a question rather than a given, like “Well, you’ve got to have art. We all love art. How could you question art?” It’s just the fact that, well, we’ve gotten along without it, and what kind of life was that where people didn’t seem to do that.
Emerald: Do you think that’s a place we need to return to?
JZ: Maybe there’s a time when once again, it wouldn’t be needed. With this essay and some other ones, what I was really trying to do was link it up to the development of becoming estranged from the natural world, and noticing that as this kind of estrangement develops, and maybe tensions in certain societies develop, such as inequalities, then you start getting these new things, and some of them are trying to heal the problems by ritual and so forth; they’re an attempt to address these problems that evidently, didn’t exist before. So the question is, can you heal social problems by the means of the symbolic? And I think the answer is no. Other people disagree.
Emerald: Have you rethought any of your perspectives since you originally wrote the essay?
JZ: Yes. It’s important to stay open, because it’s just speculation. It was part of a series of so-called origins pieces. I just wrote a new one about the origins of gender and what that has to do with the movement to the symbolic. One thing is, of course, it has a very provocative title. But actually, it is trying to show that the reason why art comes along as part of the whole movement into the symbolic realm is interesting. Not to condemn it in some abstract way, like “I hate art” or “down with art.” It’s just to show like with religion and other things, there was a time when evidently, people didn’t need it, and then it comes in as an interesting kind of consolation or compensation. It’s not an eternal thing.
For example, one thing that really struck me, is some of the anthropological data, for example that we were cooking with fire almost 2 million years ago, and doing other interesting things. Another recent thing is, they’ve determined that humans were able to navigate on the open sea 800,000 years ago. And yet, art is very recent. Art is only like 30,000 years old. So people were obviously intelligent for a couple of million years, and they didn’t seem to need art.
Emerald: Do you feel that art in popular culture is a tool of social control?

JZ: One of the things popular culture strikes me as is a kind of loss of faith in art. When pop art comes along starting in the late 1950s — especially the post-modern which starts up a little later but is part of that whole trend — the distinction between serious art and pop art becomes dissolved. It doesn’t look like serious art anymore, and in a way it isn’t. I don’t know if it’s so much a matter of control. You could write a piece called “The End of Art” and certainly various people have. A lot of people thought art was redemptive and a really big deal, because it expressed such deep values. Now, (and I think it’s pretty sad), but who believes that? Maybe it’s kind of the end of the symbolic thing when people realize it doesn’t really deliver as much as we thought. It doesn’t stand up to what’s going on in society.
Emerald: Is the creation of art necessarily rooted in desire? Or is it possible for art to come from our relationship with nature, or something else?
JZ: Sure, it’s possible. I just have this feeling there wasn’t a need to represent things, or objectify. Apparently, people were satisfied with just digging nature, just being in nature, and having a real, full communion with nature, if you will. And I think when you start losing it, then you have to paint it, rather than live it. And, of course, that’s a big generalization, but you can kind of chart that progression and see that something is slipping away, and problems are emerging, and then the symbolic is emerging at the same time. One seems to be there in lieu of the other.
Emerald: Do you think there would be fewer artists today if, on the whole, we had a healthier relationship with our environment and surroundings?
JZ: I think so, in a basic way. For example, writing — I look at it the same way. I’m a writer. I’ve written various books, and I’m not stopping being a writer. I could say “The Case Against Writing” just as easily, and I have, actually. I’m doing it in the same kind of situation. I am cut off from nature; we’re cut off from these natural
connections, and that’s why we persevere, in terms of art, or writing, or whatever it is. That’s why I’m not saying it’s bad. But if there was a disalienated world, would we need to do that stuff? That’s really the question I’m asking.
Emerald: So you are writing to find a way to reconnect yourself with your surroundings, nature, and the environment?
JZ: Yeah, as part of a movement to challenge the society and replace the society to where that would be possible again. To stop the destruction of the natural world and be able to reconnect with it, instead of all the piling up the mediation and standardization and all of the rest of the awful stuff that’s going on. It’s got to be stopped. And that’s why I write.