Against the Vortex

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Galluzzo’s fascinating meditations on Zardoz are sure to provoke spirited debate.

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!