Against the Vortex - by Anthony Galluzzo (Paperback)

About the Book

Against the Vortex uses Boorman's '74 cult sci-fi film as the starting point for exploring a neglected strand of '70s thinkers and artists whose ideas propose a radical degrowth utopia as the horizon to which our politics should be oriented.

Book Synopsis

'Like a pastry chef who can MacGyver a five-star dessert out of a Twinkie or a Jell-O packet, Anthony Galluzzo confects something special from the unlikeliest of industrial products: the 1974 Connery-Rampling vehicle Zardoz.' Matt Tierney, author of What Lies Between: Void Aesthetics and Postwar Post-PoliticsAlongside scientific knowledge and collective effort, building a degrowth ecological society will require a different set of stories and myths than the big and fast Promethean fables we're accustomed to. Using Boorman's Zardoz as a tool, Into The Vortex unearths the artistic and intellectual output of a decelerationist 1970s, with an eye toward imagining a very different sort of future.

Review Quotes

Like a pastry chef who can MacGyver a five-star dessert out of a Twinkie or a Jell-O packet, Anthony Galluzzo confects something special from the unlikeliest of industrial products: the 1974 Connery-Rampling vehicle Zardoz. His secret ingredient is 'critical aquarianism, ' a counter-modernist blend of radical tech critique and ebullient degrowth, and it carries the flavor of radical, careful thinking. Readers who rail among and against the machines of the world will savor this book, even in the waste and ruin.

About the Author

Anthony Galluzzo is a writer and academic from New York, whose work focuses on degrowth utopias and a constellation of thinkers he dubs Critical Aquarians, offering an alternate route out of the current social and ecological crisis.