Enkidu’s Lament and Aristocratic Transcendency

An Exaltation of Queer Territories

Cry to Shamash

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known work of literature, there is a passage in it where Enkidu, a wild man and one of our key cast members, cries out his woes to God Shamash as he sees he is about to die from the curse he inflicted upon himself after killing two divine beasts with Gilgamesh. While pleading to the God, Enkidu curses civilization and the issues it caused him; cursing the harlot Samate who took him from his peaceful and carefree life in the wilderness and raised him to be one with civilization. After hearing Enkidu’s words, Shamash called out from the sky, chastising him for his lack of gratitude . For it was Samate who gave him comfort, food fit for kings and garments of great splendor. It was Samate that made Enkidu know Gilgamesh, who Enkidu became the greatest of friends with and whose power he used to grant Enkidu the best of lives and who will surely give Enkidu the greatest of honors when he passes. After Shamash’s words, Enkidu takes back his curses and feels consoled, turning to bless Samate instead.

The existence of this segment on a myth that is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh gives us an interesting reading that we have nowhere else. Here, we have a discourse on civilization’s worth written at a time where the insertion of one into civilization was a contemporary issue to wrestle with. Especially considering that the myth itself starts talking about “those distant days” we can see in these tablets our ancestors debating the worth of civilization itself from a position that cannot be replicated ever again. And we see the conclusion of such a debate forever crystalized within the words in the tablet; those ancients, when facing this question found themselves yearning for the mythologized peace and freedom of non-civilized life but ultimately saw the fruits of civilization as superior to that past. Though that conclusion was just the conclusion of those who wished -for their benefit-, to tell the story to those whom they were teaching, of course, writing is a work of civilization so it only comes naturally that writing will justify civilization, as this is civilization justifying itself.

Now, the discourse about civilization didn’t limit itself to just that period or this period we live in now, in the past there have been many iterations of specific anti-civilization movements or artistic-political manifestations of a desire of escaping civilization, with Arcadism being an example of this. Just as the Epic of Gilgamesh was the conclusion those pro-civilization people reached different people, who were part of civilization, still held to those romanticist ideals of precious and free Arcadia, given us what was so far understood as two currents as to the fight for the “ideal” human territory, the civilized and the natural one. And just as any two currents fighting for opposing moral ideals both interpretations of the ideal human territory were totalising, drawing the idea of Man as one directly connected to that territory, these weren’t different modes of organization, but the correct “place” for humanity. Man was either a biological being or a social being, or perhaps the being that Man was could change depending on socio cultural attitude but there was still the correct Man, the place in which it was his nature to stay.

It would be incorrect however, to say that the present ideological manifestations of this discussion -as represented by the Anti-Civilization, Post-Civilization and Neo-Luddism of the Post-Left and Dissident-Right or that ever so grand Accelerationism that wishes to break the bounds of the current civilizational structure-, are in anyway the same in gravity, scope and meaning as the ones we had before. The times in which these ideas have been developed are unique from a civilizational standpoint, as the whole of humanity lays connected in the perfect civilizational system of Spectacular Capital, destroying the very movement of time or the agency of Individuals as they are ground into paste by the cogs of an omnipotent omnipresent techno-capital Demiurge. Alongside these political developments the very Earth we live in has started to reject humanity, the climate becomes unlivable and there remains no possibility of escaping the environmental catastrophe that is coming through the means of the present system.

Rather, we have finally come full circle, no longer are we writing our discourses while on the stone pillars and great temples of Gilgamesh but we have finally finished the cycle into once again being Enkidu, that hero who died early has finally met its reincarnation in symbolism through our present conditions. We have slayed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, and upon doing so drawn a curse by the Gods to us, now tormented by the visions of death we can only wait until it becomes time to lay on our bed and let time take our life. And much like Enkidu now do we see our fate and decide to deal with the bad thoughts it gives us by romanticizing the great wild and free Arcadia and cursing that damn civilization that made us suffer this very fate. Yet it was not in those memories that Enkidu found comfort, by drawing the image of those times in his head Enkidu only made himself bitter and resentful, angry but useless. The saddened throes of despair meet the arguments of civilization and memory and comfort make for a great struggle that can only satiate the mind.

Civilization, No Civilization

The battle over civilization is one over territory, not an overarching and opposing idea of nature versus industry as civilization has only been a continuation of nature by human hands, humankind has never stopped being part of nature when it chose to operate under the social constructs of civilization. Those very same social constructs, that civilization itself, is a product of the natural, not to say that civilization is “human nature”, but that the human when choosing civilization is only engaging in a different biological structure while still under the aspect of nature. Our factories and our houses, agriculture and animal ranches are all the same nature as the bees’ honeycombs and ants’ colonies, all products of our natural desiring-machine. To further contextualize the struggle of civilization it must also be understood that Primitivist and Neo-Luddite politics are still in-of-themselves revolutionary politics, in the sense that they are not and cannot be reactionary, as the time of reaction is in the time of revolution, and reaction under a status-quo is revolution. Any coming degrowth and civilizational abolishment would exist under a Post-Civilization aspect, and any Post-Civilization project also is by nature Anti-Civilization. All this is to say that the Anti-Civilization project is not in anyway some sort of Animist or Pagan return, as it is often framed by those adherents to it, as any attempt to reroot humanity to its tribal origins cannot find such territory again, and is left to it only the duty of picking up the ashes of such past and lighting-up the symbolic phoenix in an act of Palingenesis.

And then, bringing up the other side of Anti-Civilization is the aim to create another totalizing and unifying superstructure to function Post-Civilization. This opposing side to the Neo-Luddites and Primitivists bears the torch of the civilization builders of before, only instead of proclaiming the symbolic sacredness of the artifacts of civilization and wishing to accelerate and advance them further, like the modernists or more radically the futurists, the Post-Civilizationists wish to fundamentally alter such symbols in order to serve an utilitarian purpose of a better human organization. So it becomes not a question of changing civilization, keeping civilization the structure intact but changing the the structures of that structure but of reassembling that very primordial structure that is civilization. Only then it becomes the case that the reassemblage that comes about from this process is still made of civilization, the materials and gears of that machine still operate and exists, only recycled and remolded, Post-Civilization does not escape or transcend civilization, it simply remolds it, reforms it, and at the end of its productive process hands us civilization again.

Evident in these political projects is a process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, one that is done taking for granted the omnipresent superstructure of society and in this way only reinforces and gives back to us the very malaise of civilization. In the terms of identity and alienation the repression and authoritarianism inherent in society will come by necessity at the establishing of any other project that remains society, Primitivism and Neo-Luddism and Post-Civilization of any kind cannot in their simple terms bring us any closer to the liberation from civilizational oppression. They can only bring about superstructures and societal organisms that are parallel to society and thus oppressive in much the same way, failing at being a liberatory answer to society’s totalitarianism. They fail also in bringing a solution to the mass death of climate change, as the Primitivist and Neo-Luddite answer only brings us a different kind of mass death, the mass death due to the lack of civilization’s comfort, and the Post-Civilizational answer can only guarantee us as much safety from the wrath of climate change as present civilization, given how the former is just a different form of similar civilizational construct.

Aristocratic Aboveness

So is it solace in civilization all that’s left to help dull the senses of the pain that very same civilization caused? Is it that our fate is ultimately the same one as Enkidu's? to be reprimanded by Shamash and accept civilization as what it is as we slowly fade into our fate?

I don’t think so, rather, the answer to our conundrum lies exactly in a more critical and deeper reading of just what exactly Shamash used as arguments to the greatness of civilization, the things which the story told us were the things that made civilization worth it. When glorifying civilization Shamash speaks not of the merchant, of the scribe, the bureaucrat, the guard or the laborer. Shamash speaks of food fit for kings, the comfort of palaces and the noble and heroic friendship Enkidu made with Gilgamesh, the stories of honor that will be told of Enkidu’s deeds and the heroic myths that will be created around his conquests, from a deeper analysis what Shamsh speaks of here is not civilization, but aristocracy. But this is not a landed aristocracy or an inherited aristocracy, it's a conquered one, one that speaks to Will to Power and not material conditions, as Enkidu was just a wild man before being brought into civilization and ultimately rose to his status due to impressing and garnering the appreciation of Gilgamesh. And so with this we can draw a clearer image of just what was so great about Enkidu and what ultimately “redeemed” civilization for him, and that was that it was conquered by his Will and made into tapestry for his own design, Enkidu thus didn’t “accept” civilization, but transcended it via his position as an aristocrat.

In this situation do we finally see a dismantling of civilization and one that does not lead to any other totalising systems, the “aristocratic anarchist” -Which is this type of aristocrat represented here, one that is aristocratic by the definition of his own transcendency- operates not around or because of any system, but instead transcends it, because its own destructive force in-of-itself by its attitude of iconoclasm and treading over any institution. But also, because it ends up taking the form of a conqueror, it does not reject any civilizational conquest, in other words, unlike the primitivists, it does not take an ideological approach to the material conditions of its territory, instead operating its property from a pragmatic and individual approach. It does not, also, due to its transcendency, seek to operate and bind themselves in any system, unlike the Post-Civilizationists, and instead pushes forward always under its own volition, not mitigated by idealistic pursuits that places itself always as an agent or destroyer of a system. Instead, the aristocratic anarchist becomes something wholly separated from the system, accounted for but independent and able to pursue its own goals, this figure, this nomadic, conquering, aristocrat, is the figure of the end of civilization, not because it wishes for its own civilization, but because it is above it.

The figure of the end of civilization is this, the nomadic aristocratic conqueror who through its Will to Power transcends the bonds of civilization and ends its oppression where the aristocrat happens to exist like a fire spreading through a veil. But aside from this fantastical metaphor, we’ve seen the efficacy and strength of this aristocrat all throughout civilization, at its broadest point the potential for this exists in every lumpen, but at more specificity we can see these figures manifested through the many pirates, brigands and bandits who took the task of asserting themselves against the law. At certain points we also see this in the occultists and esoterics, who forged their own, independent way of being aside from societal grasp, the revelers and vulgar rebels would also fall in this category. In the more theoretically conscious we can see this manifested in the many egoist insurrectionists, illegalists, anarchist insurrectionaries, communizers and nomadologists who embody this nomadic destructive feeling in their ideology and praxis. It is also seen in the queer, which, much like every other group here mentioned, specify just the nature of the aristocratic anarchist, that is this; the aristocratic anarchist is anyone whose very being is an affront and attack to civilization, whose march forwards is always an invasion of the civilized world and whose taking of goods is always a pillaging of totalitarian society.

Queer Territories

When analyzing the scope of civilization it must be understood that the destructive power of the Aristocratic Anarchist does not peak at a moment of solitude. While Aristocratic Anarchists must be sovereign and self-asserting by definition if destructive actions take place outside of a bigger context and only in the dimension of one individual they can be at best only self-asserting actions, that still become only singular attacks on the system or mindless adventurism that does not accomplish any damage long term. And so that destructive nature finds its full power somewhere else, not through an organization of individuals or a strict system, but through a coalescence of that Aristocratic Anarchist nature and desire together into spaces that place these people together and join them in interaction with each other, carving a specific territory, a Queer Territory, from the geographical or digital space the civilization is in and out of that civilization.

The coalescence of Aristocratic Anarchs can be understood by a simple law of attraction, where these similar characteristics or positions had by these figures brings them together into a space where they collectively operate outside of the civilizational superstructure and in their own systemless space that they carved out. This can either be conscious and voluntary, say like an ideologically driven commune or an occult organization, a mere unconscious brought-together by desire, like with queer bars and other types of reveling, or a grouping-in by outside society of those people in that space, where the queer territory that they found is created from the necessity of an united territory to house those marginalized by society. No matter which way it manifests it will retain these same characteristics, which is being a space separate from and in conflict with civilization, created from a destructive desire for self-assertion among those participating in it, it is outside both in terms of territory -Though not necessarily geographically or temporarily- and in terms of systems and barriers.

The Queer Territory is something that has followed civilization forever, and who had been in this conflicting relationship with it since then, but this relationship hasn’t really been purely destructive on either part, in the sense that one seeks to turn the other null and create nothing from it, only consuming it into its greater part. Queer Territories have had a constructive relationship with civilization, though assimilation ends it as queer it has managed to still transform and recreate itself when it faces outside civilization, these relations then cannot be simply put as subsuming and assimilation, but of death and rebirth. Take the dionysian mysteries for example, beginning to take shape as an occultist practice and essentially a party that existed in rebellion and against the present system it would eventually be adopted by the Alexandrian greeks who too wanted to bask in the glories that the mysteries sanctified, this process may have led to the end of the Queer Territory of the mysteries but it led to the ascension of Dionysus to olympus and this series of events recontextualized the meaning of the figure and gave new life to the parties that took his godly meanings as inspiration.

The process of death and rebirth thus comes hand-in-hand with Queer Territories, as they are what come hand-in-hand with any queerness or progressive action, destroying something and creating from the ashes is inherent to both these categories. This death and rebirth of the Queer Territory, then, in queer and aristocratic fashion mutually interacts and reconstructs the anarchs participating in it, entrance in and out of the Queer Territory is a process of death and rebirth of the anarch itself, as it has its nomadic being fully recontextualizing by the new territory it inhabits, its shape unbending and stretching over a new horizon. The process of death and rebirth of the inhabitants of the Queer Territory then also in turn lead to the death and rebirth of the Queer Territory itself, as it is only a “nothingness” defined by the shapes and molds of the aristocratic anarchs within it and the limits of civilization outside it. Thus as the shapes of the anarchs changes and their changed self war against society, changing civilization too, the Queer Territory remolds, changes, breaks, crushes and expands to fit its new purpose.

Ernst Jünger’s concept of the forest passage can be seen as one of the most metaphorical and overreaching expressions of a Queer Territory, but it should still only be understood as a Queer Territory and not the Queer Territory, in this case the Queer Territory the forest passage represent is the one molded by the fleeing and rebellious anarch. The forest passage comes about by a process of insurrection and reterritorialization of society where the forest rebel reestablishes its geographical space away from the context of the civilization, but still within the context of it being “away” civilization. Thus it can be seen as a Queer Territory that is omnipresent and formless, being able to be seen and defined by quick spurts of individual break with the context that civilization placed upon any given geographical space. Similarly omnipresent is the night itself, nightlife is a Queer Territory in which social permissiveness and civilization codes of conduct and structure change and remold themselves, but not out of a mechanical form of societal operation. Nightlife grew out of the way in which individuals have managed to take the advantages given by the night to assert themselves against these structures to such a degree that civilization itself retreated and allowed nightlife to take a brand new form.

Queer desire, either coming from a reaction to a  marginalization from society or a deeper will to self-assertion is at the base for every one of those Queer Territories, but becomes more clear and more pronounced the more we go into more specific manifestations of this phenomenon. Take religious mysteries for example -In the sense of occultist esoteric cults meant to be celebrated outside of society-, most of those, with the Dionysean one as the more glaring example, are born out of a sense of marginalization from society, mostly in the sense in which it represses their desire, and thus out of reaction these cults manifest with the objective of allowing these desires to run wild and transgress against society. It is why they are a mystery cult in the first place. This manifestation of desire can also be seen more presently via the nightclubs and bars, especially the queer ones or the ones born out of social misalignment -Such as United States prohibition era secret nightclubs-, these are territories explicitly carved out from a wish to let out the people’s desires and inhibitions that civilization represses. Without this very civilization then these spaces become a breeding ground for innovation, purpose creating and connections, creating culture from the relations and the context of that space while bringing together peoples who would be placed far apart under the strict rulings of civilization, these are spaces that contain a confluence of power and energy that is constantly recreating itself and building up until they are ready to burst into outside society in shows of queer expression and destructive, socially corrosive power.

Far from simply springs of energetic destructive power, Queer Territories can also serve theoretical and organizational purposes, in the way that once carved out these can become spaces of discussion and theory creation, thus serving both a purpose in theory and praxis (by being a Queer Territory in of itself). We can see this through certain spaces in the internet, where individuals are allowed to construct and destruct concepts outside of civilizational and repressive boundaries like those set by academia, these spaces then become a spring of knowledge and identity. Occult societies are the traditional form of theory-focused Queer Territory, but they are also very useful as well, by their occultness they can be both a bludgeon against society as well as a separate civilizational structure that can organize and orientate the events and the knowledge necessary for further destruction of society. The best, most destructive words that can be written will not be written in any university or academic project, but in the cellar where a close-knit group of individuals coalesce or in the screens of a computer.

From the characteristics established of the Queer Territory do we already see its potential and purpose as the destructor of civilization, it’s capacity as a catalyzer for the individual process of death and rebirth as well as its nature as an ever increasing spring of energy portray it as the time bomb that it is, one that is ready to blow insurrectionary and destructive aristocratic anarchs into society. Furthermore its general distance from civilization allows it to be much more, it’s a war room, for planning and studying, a hospital, for recovering what civilization has broken in an individual and of course, a party, in which desire reaches a point of inhibition and can roam free. The Queer Territory cannot rest however, and remain only in one point, rather, its full, complete destructive and insurrectionary potential will come about once it finally destroys civilization itself. It can do this through growing and subsuming civilization, making it retreat as the Queer Territory itself grows through the insurrection of aristocratic anarchs, it is a process of “Queerization”, where civilizational context and structure is remolded and destructed to allow for the insurrection of the queers, like a cancer growing out of civilization it will slowly eat it from inside until it fully consumes it and spreads itself through all individual relations, finally ending civilization and taking itself with it, as it only exists under the context of civilization. No more civilization will remain, nor will ideology take its place or will a new civilization come about like in a revolution, rather, queerness will reach everything, and the mantle of civilization will be gone.