Shit to the spirit ( Artaud )

 Having spent much of his final years in various mental asylums, Artaud resurfaced in 1947 with a radio play To Have Done With the Judgment of god. Although the work remained true to his Theatre of Cruelty, utilizing an array of unsettling sounds, cries, screams and grunts, it was shelved by French Radio the day before it was scheduled to air, on February 2, 1948

Anarchists tend to have a very strong atheist critique of religion that runs from classical anarchism into the present. This is reflective of the hierarchy and authoritarianism within many of the dominant religions, namely hegemonic Christianity. Bakunin’s God and The State (1916/2009) is one of the foundational works in this regard. He assesses the rise of the state alongside religious forms of domination, where the church and state mutually reinforce power and domination. Emma Goldman’s (1917/1969) summary of anarchism, and opposition to all forms of domination, names religion as the first marker of domination: ‘Anarchism really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion…’ (p. 62). This strong anti-religious sentiment runs through much of classical anarchism but continues into the present as well. The slogan ‘No Gods, No Masters’ captures such an ongoing sentiment.