The Experts below are selected from a list of 7566 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Morgan Gibson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the Anarchism of the occupy movement
Australian Journal of Political Science, 2013Co-Authors: Morgan GibsonAbstract:Occupy has been criticised for a lack of organisation and ideological direction, its persistent failure to articulate practical reforms and its Anarchism. Occupy's extensive influence calls for scholarly analysis of its underlying ideas and its praxis. This article develops a conceptual understanding of the movement and argues that the criticisms above overlook both how the movement's participants rationalise its praxis and the consistently anarchist forms of this praxis. The article draws on recent scholarship that distinguishes between ideological Anarchism and anarchical forms of praxis inspired by anarchist principles. It argues that Occupy's praxis is anarchical. Though not ideologically anarchist, Occupy expresses a commitment to anarchist ideals. The article develops a particular conception of Anarchism and in this context, discusses Occupy's anti-capitalist position, reflected in its catchcry ‘we are the 99 per cent’. It concludes by explicating the anarchical elements of Occupy's praxis.占领运动被批评缺少...
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WikiLeaks, Anarchism and Technologies of Dissent
Antipode, 2012Co-Authors: Giorel Curran, Morgan GibsonAbstract:WikiLeaks is a controversial organisation that attracts polarised responses. This is not unexpected given its key objective of exposing the secrets and social control ambitions of the powerful. While its supporters laud its pursuit of an informational commons, its detractors condemn its antisocial character, its megalomania-and its Anarchism. It is the latter that particularly interests us here. This paper treats the "charge" of Anarchism seriously, however, giving it the analytical attention it warrants. It does this by first identifying those characteristics of the organisation that would render it anarchist, and then to conceptualise what this Anarchism means. It highlights two important elements of the WikiLeaks story: the anarchical character of the technologies it utilises to foment its dissent; and the anarchical ethos of the organisation's radical politics. We conclude by also considering the tensions and contradictions in WikiLeaks that temper both its Anarchism and its social change objectives. © 2012 The Author. Antipode.
Ruth Kinna - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Anarchist social and political theory
2021Co-Authors: Ruth KinnaAbstract:This chapter uses the critique of the state as an entry point into anarchist theory. Distinguishing Anarchism from philosophic Anarchism, it examines nineteenth-century social and political thought to identify its hallmarks. It argues that Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract served as a lightening-rod for a critique of domination and that anarchists presented models social evolution to produce a general analysis of the state as a monopolising, centralising and colonising force. The following sections use this analysis to survey post-war Anarchism, showing how anarchists have extended, revised and adapted it
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Kropotkin and communist Anarchism
2020Co-Authors: Ruth KinnaAbstract:As one of leading advocates for anarchist communism in the 1870s, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) spent much of his activist career explaining what its implementation involved. Treating communism as a principle of equality directed against subjection, he argued that it had an economic and a political aspect and that the inter-relationship of these two dimensions would reveal the distinctiveness of anarchist revolutionary politics. He also connected communism to Anarchism by grounding it in a deep-rooted socialist ethic. The composite, ‘anarchist communism’ emerged as Kropotkin’s answer to capitalist exploitation on the one hand and to the threat of state socialism on the other
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Heretical constructions of anarchist utopianism
2020Co-Authors: Ruth KinnaAbstract:This paper examines a relationship between heresy and utopianism forged in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist histories to reveal a significant and pervasive fault-line in the ideological construction of Anarchism. I look at Marxist narratives which trace the lineages of socialism to medieval religious dissent and show how the sympathetic assessment of European heretical movements was moulded by a critique of utopianism, understood as the rejection of materialist ‘science’. I argue that strands of this narrative have been woven into Anarchism by looking at three accounts: E.V. Zenker’s Anarchism (1897), James Joll’s The Anarchists (1964/1979) and Saul Newman’s From Bakunin to Lacan (2001). Their dominant theme is that Anarchism promises the transformation of corrupted nature, typically achieved though ecstatic violence, cataclysmic revolution and future perfection. I describe this Millenarian Anarchism as a ‘straw man’ but rather than jettison ‘heresy’ as an investigative tool, I refer to a conception of heresy as choosing to present an alternative account. Using Martin Buber’s analysis of utopianism in Paths in Utopia (1949) and Michael Bakunin’s critique of political theology, I pair utopianism with the rejection of perfection and heresy with faith. This reframing of heresy corrects a deep-rooted, long-standing distortion of anarchist ideas
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Max Stirner
2020Co-Authors: Ruth Kinna, Clifford HarperAbstract:Born Johann Kaspar Schmidt in Beyreuth in 1806, Stirner is one of the most controversial anarchists, by turns celebrated as the seminal anarchist theorist and marginalised as a political philosopher only tangentially related to the anarchist movement. The nineteenth-century commentator E.V. Zenker billed Stirner as the German Proudhon, one of the movement’s two intellectual forerunners; Paul Eltzbacher listed him as one of the seven exponents of anarchist philosophy. His reputation has fared less well over time and recently anarchist-communists have rejected him from Anarchism’s history...
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Anarchism and utopianism
2019Co-Authors: Laurence Davis, Ruth KinnaAbstract:Contents list Notes on contributors Preface Acknowledgements Introduction - Laurence Davis Part I Historical and philosophical overview 1. Anarchism and the dialectic of utopia - John P. Clark Part II Antecedents of the anarchist literary utopia 2. Daoism as utopian or accommodationist: radical Daoism reexamined in light of the Guodian Manuscripts - John A. Rapp 3. Diderot's *Supplement au voyage de Bougainville*: steps towards an anarchist utopia - Peter G. Stillman Part III Anti-capitalism and the anarchist utopian literary imagination 4. Everyone an artist: art, labour, anarchy, and utopia - Laurence Davis 5. Anarchist powers: B. Traven, Pierre Clastres, and the question of utopia - Nicholas Spencer 6. Utopia, Anarchism and the political implications of emotions - Gisela Heffes 7. Anarchy in the archives: notes from the ruins of Sydney and Melbourne - Brian Greenspan Part IV Free love: anarchist politics and utopian desire 8. Speaking desire: Anarchism and free love as utopian performance in fin de siecle Britain - Judy Greenway 9. Visions of the future: reproduction, revolution and regeneration in American anarchist utopian fiction - Brigitte Koenig 10. Intimate fellows: utopia and chaos in the early post-Stonewall gay liberation manifestos - Dominic Ording Part V Rethinking revolutionary practice 11. Anarchism, utopianism and the politics of emancipation - Saul Newman 12. Anarchism and the politics of utopia - Ruth Kinna 13. 'The space now possible': anarchist education as utopian hope - Judith Suissa 14. Utopia in contemporary Anarchism - Uri Gordon Index
Ole Birk Laursen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Anti-Imperialism
The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, 2019Co-Authors: Ole Birk LaursenAbstract:Focusing on the period from 1870 to 1960, this chapter provides an overview of anarchist approaches to anti-imperialism, offering examples of collaborations, solidarities, antagonisms and syntheses between anarchists and anti-colonialists from across the British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonial worlds and within the imperial metropoles in Europe. Alongside anti-colonial resistances to these processes, anarchists were central to the development of an anti-imperial political modernity within the European left as well as across the colonial worlds. In fact, as this chapter illustrates, Anarchism was inherently anti-imperial in its demands for individual freedom and insistence on dismantling the power structures that governed European colonial policies. Exploring core principles of anarchist anti-imperialism with a vision of postcolonial societies, the chapter discusses issues of nationalism and the nation-state, anti-statism and political organisation, exile and diaspora, anti-capitalism and boycott. In doing so, it pays particular attention to theory and praxis, ideological sympathies and revolutionary methods, including terrorism, insurrection and sabotage. Within these discussions, the chapter highlights antagonisms and incompatibilities among and between anarchists and anti-colonialists, allowing for an assessment of the limitations of Anarchism within the anti-colonial context.
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an uncompromising rebel m p t acharya and indian Anarchism
Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium, 2018Co-Authors: Ole Birk LaursenAbstract:Reflecting on the Indian anarchist M. P. T. Acharya’s trajectory from revolutionary anti-colonial nationalist to international anarchist pacifist in the first half of the twentieth century, the four essays presented here – transcribed and edited by the author – introduce this unique figure to a wider audience. It charts his life in exile among prominent Indian freedom fighters such as Shyamaji Krishnavarma, Madame Bhikaiji Cama, V. V. S. Aiyar, and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, and his role in the formation of the exiled Communist Party of India (CPI) in Tashkent in October 1920, to his collaboration with well-known anarchist such as Alexander Berkman, Augustin Souchy, Rudolf Rocker, Thomas Keell, and E. Armand. From the early 1920s, Acharya articulated his own perspectives on Anarchism from an Indian point of view, often denouncing Bolshevism and the Comintern, commenting on the Indian independence struggle, particularly the INC and Gandhi, as well as developing an economic critique of State capitalism. He fiercely attacked former comrades such as M. N. Roy and Shapurji Saklatvala, warning against the dangers of Bolshevism in India, and agitated instead for trade unions of a revolutionary syndicalist character in India. Acharya’s essays in this ‘Critical Edition’ focus on issues of colonialism, capitalism, decentralization, communism, poverty, and unemployment in the immediate post-independence years, opening a window onto the global reach of Anarchism during that era.
Lewis Call - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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editorial post Anarchism today
2010Co-Authors: Lewis CallAbstract:Welcome to Post-Anarchism Today. Thi s is certainly not USA Today, et ce n’est certainement pas Aujourd’hui en France. Indeed, it is a refreshing antidote to all such discourses of modern state capitalism. During its short but colourful existence, post-Anarchism has always been libertarian and socialist in its basic philosophical outlook: that’s the Anarchism part. But post-@ has also maintained its independence from modern rationalism and modern concepts of subjectivity: that’s the post- part. As I survey post-Anarchism today, I find to my surprise and delight that both parts are stronger than ever. It’s now clear that post-@ is a part of Anarchism, not something that stands against it. It’s equally clear that post-@ has changed Anarchism in some interesting and important ways. I speak of post-Anarchism today because I believe that we are living through a post-anarchist moment. I know, I know: the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk, so how can I claim to understand the moment I’m living in? But one of the many great things about post-@ is that it means we can be done, finally, with Hegel. Minerva’s owl needs to get a job. We need a new bird, faster, more intuitive, more open source: something more like the Linux penguin. Thi ngs happen faster than they used to, and the rate of change is accelerating. Our ability to comment on these things must also accelerate. Th us I maintain that we may, in fact, study our own political and intellectual environment. Indeed, I feel that we must do this, or risk being overtaken by events. Post-Anarchism waits for no one.
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postmodern Anarchism in the novels of ursula k le guin
Substance, 2007Co-Authors: Lewis CallAbstract:It is easy enough to locate anarchist themes in the science fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Her frequent critiques of state power, coupled with her rejection of capitalism and her obvious fascination with alternative systems of political economy, are sufficient to place her within the anarchist tradition. She has, from time to time, explicitly embraced that tradition. Le Guin is, among other things, a popularizer of anarchist ideas. The political philosophy of Anarchism is largely an intellectual artifact of the nineteenth century, articulated in England by William Godwin, in France by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and in Russia by Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin. Yet this vibrant intellectual tradition remains largely invisible to ordinary people in the early twenty-first century. By describing anarchist ideas in a way that is simultaneously faithful to the anarchist tradition and accessible to contemporary audiences, Le Guin performs a very valuable service. She rescues Anarchism from the cultural ghetto to which it has been consigned. She introduces the anarchist vision to an audience of science fiction readers who might never pick up a volume of Kropotkin. She moves Anarchism (ever so slightly) into the mainstream of intellectual discourse. Yet Le Guin, like many whose anarchist views developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, also seems to recognize that this is not enough. Like classical Marxism, modern Anarchism developed within the specific political, economic and intellectual environment of the nineteenth century. In that context, it made perfect sense for anarchists to focus their critical powers upon the twin sources of oppressive power in the age of the Industrial Revolution: capital and the state. By the late twentieth century, however, this traditional Anarchism had become dangerously outdated. During the 1960s in particular, political activists throughout the western world added critiques of ethnic power and gender power to the list of anarchist concerns. In the intellectual world, Michel Foucault identified and criticized the disciplinary power that emerges in schools, hospitals, military barracks, psychiatric clinics and families,
Federico Ferretti - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Journeying through Utopia: Anarchism, geographical imagination and performative futures in Marie-Louise Berneri’s works
Investigaciones Geográficas, 2019Co-Authors: Federico FerrettiAbstract:This paper addresses works and archives of transnational anarchist intellectual Marie-Louise Berneri (1918-1949), author of a neglected but very insightful history of utopias and of their spaces. Extending current literature on anarchist geographies, utopianism and on the relation between geography and the humanities, I argue that a distinction between authoritarian and libertarian utopias is key to understanding the political relevance of the notion of utopia, which is also a matter of space and geographical imagination. Berneri's criticisms to utopia were eventually informed by notions of anti-colonialism and anti-authoritarianism, especially referred to her original critique of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Then, I argue for a connection between anarchist, humanistic, cultural and historical approaches to geography, to extend the empirical and theoretical reach of the discipline and its relations with the 'humanities'. This paper likewise contributes to recent scholarship on transnational Anarchism, arguing that the anarchist tradition cannot be understood outside its transnational, cosmopolite and multilingual networks and concrete practices: therefore, only relational, contextual and space-sensitive approaches can make sense of its specificity.
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Publishing Anarchism: Pyotr Kropotkin and British print cultures, 1876?1917
Journal of Historical Geography, 2017Co-Authors: Federico FerrettiAbstract:This paper addresses the relationship between the famous anarchist geographer Pyotr Kropotkin and his most important British editors, John Scott Keltie and James Knowles. It analyses their unpublished correspondence, which has survived, for the most part, in the state archive of the Russian Federation. Drawing on recent literature on anarchist geographies, transnational Anarchism and historical geographies of science, it examines the material construction of Kropotkin's works on mutual aid, decentralisation and 'scientific Anarchism', which were originally published as articles for British periodicals. The paper argues that Kropotkin's acquaintance with liberal editors was not only a matter of necessity but a conscious strategy on his part to circulate political concepts outside activist milieus, thereby taking advantage of the public venues then available for geographers. In this way, Kropotkin succeeded in getting paid for working almost full-time as an anarchist propagandist. The paper also contributes to the wider field of critical, radical and anarchist geographies by providing early examples of knowledge struggles against Creationism, Malthusianism and environmental determinisms which have lessons for the present.
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Evolution and revolution: Anarchist geographies, modernity and poststructuralism
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2017Co-Authors: Federico FerrettiAbstract:This paper addresses the recent rediscovery of anarchist geographies and its implications in current debates on the ‘foundations’ of science and knowledge. By interrogating both recent works and original texts by early anarchist geographers who have greater influence on present-day literature such as Elisée Reclus (1830-1905) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), I discuss the possible uses of a poststructuralist critique for this line of research by first challenging ‘postanarchist’ claims that so-called ‘classical Anarchism’, allegedly biased by essentialist naturalism, should be entirely dismissed by contemporary scholarship. My main argument is that early anarchist geographers used the intellectual tools available in their day to build a completely different ‘discourse’, criticising the ways in which science and knowledge were constructed. As they openly contested ideas of linear progress, racism and European supremacy, as well as anthropocentrism and dichotomized definitions of ‘man’ and ‘nature’, it is hard to make them fit simplistic definitions. The body of work I address stresses their possible contributions to critical, anarchist and radical scholarship through their idea of knowledge, not limited to what is now called ‘discourse analysis’, but engaging with social movements in order to transform society.
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Organisation and formal activism: insights from the anarchist tradition
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2016Co-Authors: Federico FerrettiAbstract:Elisée Reclus (1830-1905) argued that ‘anarchy is the highest expression of order’. This assertion, clashing with the bourgeois interpretation of anarchy as chaos, perfectly captured the theories that were being elaborated by Reclus and other anarchist geographers including Pëtr Kropotkin (1842-1921). At the centre of these theories lay the conviction that societies organised around mutual aid and cooperation would be infinitely more rational and empowered than societies organised under the State and capitalism. Then, militants like Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) and Luigi Fabbri (1877-1935) advocated the need for formal anarchist organisation - to put in practice the principles of a horizontal and federalist society in daily life - and prepare the grounds for revolution. Acknowledging the importance of better understanding the past to inform the present, this paper first shows the link (generally overlooked by anarchist historiography) between Reclus’s and Kropotkin’s idea of order and Malatesta’s and Fabbri’s idea of organisation; then, it presents the model of anarchist organisation as a possible resource for present-day social movements, which often act as spontaneous networks of activism without a deep reflexion on organisational issues. According to the tradition of organisational communist Anarchism, represented today by the International of Anarchist Federations, organisation is a key point, being not only a necessity, but the method for social transformation: without clarity on this, social struggles are likely to fall either in reformism either in Jacobinism. Finally, I show how present-day anarchist geographies can contribute to these points through their effort to prefigure new spaces for new societies.
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Reading Reclus between Italy and South America: translations of geography and Anarchism in the work of Luce and Luigi Fabbri
Journal of Historical Geography, 2016Co-Authors: Federico FerrettiAbstract:This paper addresses how Élisée Reclus’s geographical work was read and circulated by two important activists, intellectuals and exponents of ‘transnational Anarchism’ in the twentieth century, the father and daughter Luigi and Luce Fabbri. Using both their published work and unpublished archival sources, the paper analyses the various translations, multilingual studies and interpretations of Reclus that the Fabbris undertook in Italy and later Latin America, and the role they played in the international circulation and reinterpretation of Reclus’s ideas. This paper contributes to current studies of the circulation of geographical knowledge and historical geographies of science, as well as to the transnational turn in the social sciences and, in particular, its application to ‘anarchist studies’. It draws on the recent international literature devoted to the historical and epistemological relations between geography and Anarchism, stressing the intimate relationship between intellectual and political work among early anarchist geographers.
