Winter Oak Press is delighted to
announce the publication of a new book by anarchist philosopher Paul Cudenec.
In The Stifled Soul of Humankind,
Cudenec depicts a humanity dispossessed, a society in which freedom,
autonomy, creativity, culture, and the spirit of collective
solidarity have been deliberately suffocated by a ruthlessly violent
and exploitative elite hiding behind the masks of Authority,
Property, Law, Progress and God.
But he also identifies an underground
current of heresy and resistance which resurfaces at key moments in
history and which, he argues, has the primal strength to sweep away
the prison walls of our diseased civilization and carry us forward to
a future of vitality and renewal.
Cudenec writes: “We have to
reintroduce ourselves to history, not as observers but as
participants. The power that we can rediscover in ourselves is, among
other things, the power to create the future. Prophecy brings hope,
hope brings courage, courage brings action, action brings
inspiration, inspiration brings more determination, renewed hope,
deepened courage. Once this magical spiral of revolt has started
spinning, it takes on a life of its own”.
In The Stifled Soul of Humankind,
Paul Cudenec delves into disparate corners of history to provide the
ammunition for his deeply radical analysis, throwing up some
intriguing questions about the way our society has become what it is
today.
What is the connection between Sufi
mystics of the Middle East and the peasant revolts that shook Europe
in the Middle Ages? At what point did Protestantism turn from being a
revolutionary force into a reactionary one? What links the
colonization of North America with the Highland Clearances in
Scotland? What is the basis of authority? Can art retain its
authenticity in an industrial civilization? What on earth did Franz Kafka have
in common with the völkisch predecessors of the Nazi
movement? Is Marxism fundamentally opposed to capitalism? Why was
Aldous Huxley targeted for ideological attack by a leading figure in
MI6? And, most crucially of all, what is it that ties all these
questions together and reveals a seam through the rock of history
that can help us understand how so much has gone wrong and how we
might yet put it right?
Cudenec’s book The Anarchist
Revelation, published by Winter Oak in 2013, has earned some
influential praise in anarchist circles. US eco-philosopher John
Zerzan, author of Future Primitive and Running on
Emptiness, described it as “the least pessimistic book I can
recall reading. It brings anarchist resistance and the spirit
together in a very wide-ranging and powerful contribution”.
Gabriel Kuhn, translator of Gustav
Landauer’s writing into English and author of Life Under the
Jolly Roger and Soccer vs the State, wrote: “The book
attempts no less than equipping contemporary anarchism with a footing
that is often neglected: the transfor-mation not only of society’s
structures but also of people’s souls... an inspiring read”.
Cudenec’s essay Antibodies,
republished as part of a book of his collected writing in 2013, was
welcomed as
“very readable and profoundly thoughtful” by
Peter Marshall, author of Demanding the Impossible: A History of
Anarchism and Nature’s Web: An Exploration of Ecological
Thinking. Marshall said Antibodies provided “many new
insights on the destructive relationship between the greater part of
humanity and the planet which tries to sustain them”.
The Stifled Soul of Humankind by Paul
Cudenec (160 pages) will go on sale at £7.99 and will be available
from all major booksellers.
For more information, to request review
copies or to arrange an interview with the author, please email
winteroak@greenmail.net.
