Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today

Alongside 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 the a decelerationist 1970s, with an eye toward imagining a very different sort of future.

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.

Review :
Anthony's book is environmental humanities at its best. As we in the degrowth community have increasingly been drawn into the immediate questions of economics and political economy, policy and political strategy, budgets and accounts, humane books like this, engaging with film and fantasy, bring back the soul of early decroissance engaging with broader philosophical questions, emphasizing questions of scale and conviviality, questioning modern dictates of 'progress' and development, reminding us that degrowth is also about 'roses' and not only breads. More than anything else, the book is a pleasure to read and full of little gems of thought and intellectually history facts. Highly recommended!--Giorgos Kallis, ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Galluzzo's fascinating meditations on Zardoz are sure to provoke spirited debate.--Jordan S Carroll, LA Review of Books This short book provokes us to ask: Should our species seek to transcend itself? Is mortality a disease or a gift? Galluzzo sees Zardoz as a great contemporary myth: a crystallization of the wisdom of the Aquarian 1970s, which warns against the clinical separation of life and death, of the body from being, and of man from history. We ignore it at our own peril.--Matthew Gasda, Compact Magazine Zardoz is not a simplistic black-and-white polemic and nor is Against the Vortex. Galluzzo brings the film into conversation with today's issues in a compelling read and maintains the ambivalence characteristic of his object of study.--Samuel Miller McDonald, Epilogue Against the Vortex is a delightful and surprisingly hopeful read. In the guise of film criticism, Anthony Galluzzo has laid out the foundation of a biocentric utopianism that re-directs our political imaginations away from technological delusion and towards what is truly possible. It turns out I'm a critical Aquarian, and you'll probably discover that you are, too.--Ryhd Wildermuth, Author of Here Be Monsters: How To Fight Capitalism Instead of Each Other Few people have seen the 1974 film Zardoz. And even those who have will likely remember little more than Sean Connery running around the desert with a space gun, wearing only a red diaper and thigh-high leather boots. Anthony Galluzzo, however, has watched this camp cult classic very closely and has drawn many fascinating lessons from the psychedelic wreckage. Indeed, Galluzzo has a genius for using neglected and misunderstood cultural texts as a prism for fiercely independent ideological critique, as well as opportunities for sketching promising political paths not taken. In this case, the author offers the intriguing prospect of a "critical aquarianism" a concept and orientation that recovers the less compromised utopian energies of the past in order to fight the more Promethean techno-utopias of the present (and ominous near-future). Quite a feat! Indeed, who knew that Sean Connery was carrying quite so much inside that lurid red diaper?--Dominic Pettman, Professor of Media and New Humanities at The New School, cultural theorist, and author of Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More and Less Than Human 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.--Matt Tierney, Author of What Lies Between: Void Aesthetics and Postwar Post-Politics