JohnZerzan, Primitivism, and the Value of Culture Rodrigo Gomes Guimaraes[1]Abstract This essaydiscusses primitivism as presented by John Zerzan, its most reported author onthe subject at the moment. It seeks toshow how primitivism as proposed by Zerzan cannot stand up to its own critiquesto culture, agriculture, technology, time and civilization, besides others. Theconcepts of the primitive and of the hunter-gatherer are also scrutinizedas to their use in academia today, a use that forbids any facile generalizationby primitivists or others. It providesan analysis of how Zerzans primitivism deals with power relations, understoodthrough the writings of two thinkers (Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault),and anarchist authors. The essay shows how primitivism cannot escape being astruggle for power. Primitivism is alsoanalyzed as a cultural discourse, (re)productive of the values and ways ofthinking of dominant culture, no matter how it may be also resistant to thesesame values and ways of thinking. Theessay questions the assumption of anarchism as lodged in the bones, whichcharacterizes primitivism but also many other anarchist claims. It points tocultural traditions of thought and their effects, especially those pertainingto the analysis of primitivism and anarchism, such as the primacy of humaninteriority over action in the world, a very specific Western culturalconstruct. More generally, the essayquestions primitivism as anarchist and debases its claims to a total radicalthought by showing its forms of reproduction of dominant Western culture. Finally, it argues that John Zerzan andprimitivism in his manner need to be radically shifted to think from real lifeinstead of from Utopia, since today his ideas spring more from resentment andbad conscience than from active engagement with the problems social, culturaland environmental of the world today.To sow and to harvest in personal deficiencies. - Men asRousseau know how to use their weaknesses, gaps and vices as manure for theirtalent, so to speak. When he laments the corruption and degeneration of societyas a sad consequence of culture, this has at its base the personal experience;the bitterness of that provides sharpness to his general conviction and poisonsthe arrows that he shoots; he un-oppresses himself initially as an individual,and thinks about searching a remedy that is useful directly for society, butalso indirectly, by the way of it, for himself. Friedrich Nietzsche,1886.What Primitivism?This essay will contest primitivism on the foundations it set for itselfby one of its major proponents, John Zerzan, as well as analyze it as culturaldiscourse. It will do this by appealingto different social thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault andanarchist authors. It will also rely onprimitivist texts and its own internal contradictions. It will begin by presenting John Zerzan.Zerzan was born in Salem, Oregon. He pursued an academic career for a long while, obtaining anundergraduate degree from Stanford University, a master degree from SanFrancisco State University, and dropped out of University of SouthernCalifornia before completing his doctoral dissertation. He participated of the 60s hippie and counter-culturalmovement in San Francisco, having been willingly arrested for protestingagainst the Vietnam war. This was anexperience he never again got involved in, which he regretted. In that same decade he also helped organize aworkers union, to which he was elected vice-president and later,president. During this