Fredy Perlman (1934–1985) was an American author, publisher, and activist. His best-known work,Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, retells the historical rise of state domination (and domination generally) through a poetic investigation of theHobbesian metaphor of theLeviathan.
His best-known work,[4]Against His-Story, Against Leviathan (1983) rewrites the history of humanity as a struggle of free people resisting being turned into "zeks" (a Soviet term for forced labour that Perlman borrowed fromThe Gulag Archipelago) byLeviathans (a term used byThomas Hobbes for the sovereign nation-state).[5] The book influenced the anarcho-primitivist authorJohn Zerzan.[6] Philosopher John P. Clark states thatAgainst His-Story, Against Leviathan! describes Perlman's critique of what he saw as "the millennia-long history of the assault of the technological megamachine on humanity and the Earth." Clark also notes the book discusses "anarchistic spiritual movements" such as theYellow Turban movement in ancient China and theBrethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe.[7]
^Purkis, Jonathan; Bowen, James, eds. (2005).Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 237.ISBN978-0-7190-6694-8.
^Purkis, Jonathan (2004). "Anarchy Unbound: A Tribute to John Moore". In Moore, John; Sunshine, Spencer (eds.).I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite! Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition. New York: Autonomedia. p. 6.ISBN978-1-57027-121-2.OCLC249155584.
^John P. Clark,"Anarchism" inEncyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited byBron Taylor; New York : Continuum, 2008, pp.49–56.ISBN978-1-84706-273-4
Purkis, Jon; Bowen, James, eds. (1997). "Public Secret: Fredy Perlman and the Literature of Subversion".Twenty-First Century Anarchism: Unorthodox Ideas for the New Millennium. Cassell. pp. 117–133.ISBN0-304-33742-0.
