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The Politics of Postanarchism
Abstract
This book explores the relevance of anarchism for contemporary politics. The author contends that this long neglected and almost heretical political philosophy is becoming increasingly central to radical struggles and movements today, especially in the wake of the collapse of the Marxist revolutionary projects and with the terminal decline of both social democracy and political liberalism. Here the author explores new directions for anti-authoritarian thought. Seeing anarchism as a politics of anti-politics, the author uses this paradox to formulate alternative ways of thinking about the place of the political, and the relationship between politics and ethics. Working at the intersections between anarchism and poststructuralism, the author frames a new approach to radical politics: 'postanarchism' – or anarchism without essential foundations. This original theoretical perspective – which draws upon classical anarchist thought, deconstruction, post-Marxism and psychoanalytic theory - allows for a renewed engagement with contemporary debates about future directions in radical politics. Postanarchism offers a distinct way of theorising a politics of emancipation, confronting central questions of the state domination, agency, ethics, democracy, social movements and the struggles taking place today on the terrain of globalisation.
... As a demarcation within social movement studies, characteristics of autonomous social movements have been coined by Richard F. Day (2001Day ( , 2005, George Katsiaficas (2006), David Graeber (2002Graeber ( , 2004, Marina A. Sitrin (2012), Saul Newman (2010) and many others. Some of these characteristics have led to a definition of autonomous social movements as the counterpart of institutionalised social movements stating that [A]an autonomous orientation entails emphasizing self-management, egalitarian, nonhierarchical structures, and consensus-based decision making. ...
This article investigates the challenges arising from the relationship of epistemology to the post-representational practices of autonomous social movements. It does so with the help of the concepts of nomad science and royal science developed by Deleuze and Guattari. These concepts allow us to picture the knowledge creation within autonomous social movements, which is based in a politics of the act within everyday life and constituted in relations of affinity between differently situated subject positions, as a different but equal type of knowledge to academic or scientific knowledge. The article engages with two challenges resulting from this relational conception of knowledge within everyday life: the devaluation of such knowledge within academic discourse, and methodological difficulties of recognising moments of knowledge creation for a researcher speaking from within autonomous social movements. Two proposals for facing these challenges are formulated at the end of the article: engaging in an epistemological rebellion in walking on the borderline between royal science and nomad science, and taking the geographies of autonomous social movement's political practices as contestable focus points of sensitive attention to relational knowledge creation processes.
Anarchists believe that the state is a deeply harmful institution and that the good society is one without a state or government. Visions of a stateless society can be found throughout history, but comprehensive theories of anarchism emerged in the late eighteenth and mid‐nineteenth centuries in the wake of the French and Industrial Revolutions. Anarchist thinkers have appealed to a variety of ethical systems, these yielding different arguments against government and different understandings of the desirable anarchist society. In the “classical” tradition, thinkers such as Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin argue for anarchism on grounds including utilitarianism, individual liberty, “mutualism” (fair exchange for equal value), and Darwinian evolution. Other streams of anarchism have appealed to Christianity, egoism, existentialism, feminism, ecologism, and postmodernism or poststructuralism. Recent radical movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and the “hacktivism” of Wikileaks, have been associated with anarchism. None of these approaches and applications is without its difficulties, but all pose a stimulating challenge to standard assumptions in moral and political philosophy.
Anarchism signifies the condition of being without rule. Anarchism, then, has often been equated with chaos. This interpretation was lent weight by the period of anarchist “propaganda by deed” towards the end of the nineteenth century. For most anarchists, though, their political allegiances involve opposition to the intrusiveness, destructiveness, and artificiality of state authority, the rejection of all forms of domination and hierarchy, and the desire to construct a social order based on free association. Anarchism is, however, a heterogeneous political field, containing a host of variations – for instance, organization versus spontaneity, peaceful transition versus violence, individualist versus collectivist means and ends, romanticism versus science, and existential versus structural critique of domination.
Building on recent developments in radical democratic theory, in this article we articulate and explore a fresh perspective for theorists and activists of radical democracy: a ‘living critique of domination’. Characterized by a two-fold analytical effort, a ‘living critique of domination’ calls for a radical critique of contemporary forms of power and control coupled with a reappraisal of emancipatory political experiences created by the political action of the Many. We demonstrate that this project responds to the theoretical and practical challenges faced by a politics of emancipation today. Our article offers a first articulation of this living critique through a discussion of three recent political experiences, namely, the 2016 French uprising, Nuit Debout, as well as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements.
El artículo se propone mostrar algunos rasgos específicos en la concepción anarco-revolucionaria de Rodolfo González Pacheco (Tandil, 1883 – Buenos Aires, 1949), a saber: su vitalismo, esteticismo e irracionalismo, a partir del análisis de sus escritos de propaganda y difusión del ideario anarquista y revolucionario, los que consisten, principalmente, en los llamados carteles, especie de proclamas que sintetizan una idea en pocos más de veinte líneas, de escritura simple, encendida y convocante a la acción.
Resumo: A legitimidade é uma relação entre sujeito e objeto, com base em um conjunto de valores e crenças, que estabelece um não-conflito (compreendendo tanto a ausência de conflito quanto seu encerramento). Estados buscam legitimar (estabelecer uma ausência de conflito sobre) sua prerrogativa exclusiva de encerrar conflitos violentamente. Alguma medida de não-conflito é essencial ao funcionamento de qualquer grupo, e um modelo anarquista de legitimidade teria por base o questionamento da dinâmica bélica / mercadológica / competitiva de relações sociais, o princípio de ação direta e a ética de coerência entre meios e fins, gerando a defesa de métodos não-violentos de resolução de conflitos. Dentro deste modelo mais amplo defino dois subtipos que surgem de divergências quanto a questões identitárias e organizacionais: o modelo de assembleia e o modelo de rede.
The purpose of the study is to analyse the notion of the politics of anti-politics formulated by the postanarchist theorist S. Newman. The article sheds light on the semantic core of the paradoxical anarchist synthesis of politics and anti-politics, which is reflected in a number of protest socio-political movements of modern times. Scientific novelty of the study is associated with both criticism and defence of postanarchist attitudes aimed at rethinking and assigning an alternative meaning to the notion of politics. The result amounts to an interim conclusion about inevitability of micro-political and “anti-political” practices in the context of appropriation and bureaucratisation of the political by the state.
Overall, while fast track land reform may have “resolved” certain matters, it also left other matters unattended or even facilitated the emergence of new dilemmas (and new sites of struggle) which continue to be played out, even within post-coup Zimbabwe under the presidency of Emmerson Mnangagwa. This chapter makes no attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the post-2000 period in Zimbabwe and the fast track programme more specifically, as there is abundant literature on this. Rather, the chapter points to certain post-2000 issues arising from the analysis of the three zvimurenga and in particular of the third chimurenga. In other words, the chapter uses the zvimurenga examination as a lens through which to speak about post-2000 Zimbabwe. In particular, analytically, the chapter considers the ways in which the third chimurenga occupations were subdued and institutionalised by way of a state-driven restructuring of land and agrarian spaces (namely, through fast track), and the possibilities and existence of further land contestations—specifically in the light of a neoliberal capital-driven process under the presidency of Mnangagwa. It does so with reference to what we label as an autonomist commoning perspective.
In 1998, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont published Fashionable Nonsense, a book that attacks the misuse of scientific and mathematical terms in French theory; Lacan is their target in the first chapter. Sokal and Bricmont claim that Lacan’s idiosyncratic use of mathematical formalization reflects the willingness of his followers to follow his ideas blindly, but an extensive survey of Lacanian thinkers reveals, on the contrary, a widespread resistance to this theoretical direction. After considering some critical responses to Fashionable Nonsense, this chapter argues that what is really at stake is an ideological struggle over the meaning of Enlightenment, as explored in some decisive (but overlooked) sections of Sokal and Bricmont’s book. As such, the chapter closes with Lacan’s reflections on the importance of Descartes, the Enlightenment figure who makes such a crucial connection between mathematics and certainty in his methodical attempt to rethink rational skepticism.
In this chapter, el-Ojeili turns to the far-Left. Increasingly, since the end of the 1990s, a new global Left has consolidated, a Left that includes a configuration el-Ojeili labels the “new communism”. Within this configuration, a number of novel utopian dimensions are visible. Evincing a convergence between anarchism and Marxism, this new communism produces novel totalizing maps of power. It also develops new positions on resistance and on the subjects, both individual and collective, of emancipatory transformation, espousing what is labeled an “insurrectionary immediatism”. While discussion of the institutional and strategic dimensions of this new communism is underdeveloped, today’s far-Left, in emphases on poetry, post-secularism, and affect, chart a contemporary variant of the Left’s artistic critique.
The relationship of Noam Chomsky to the anarchist tradition is a matter of some controversy. On one end of the spectrum are those—usually self-identified anarchists—who maintain that Chomsky is not an anarchist at all. The corollary of this claim is generally that Chomsky is something else masquerading as an anarchist—a Marxist, perhaps, or a liberal (Woodcock, 1974; Zerzan, 2002). On the opposite end of the spectrum are those who believe that Chomsky ranks among the elite members of the anarchist canon, as exemplified by Carlos Otero’s contention that ‘Chomsky’s anarchism … appears to be the most developed conception of anarchism to date, and the deepest and best founded intellectually speaking’ (Otero, 2003: 29). If the former assessment is coloured by a certain amount of resentment that Chomsky, the mild-mannered and pragmatic intellectual, has become the de facto standard-bearer for a tradition that prides itself on fire-breathing radicalism, the latter has surely been embellished by the adulatory tone struck all too frequently by Chomsky’s admirers.
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it seeks to give expression to the trends of an important debate that has not been formally articulated among anarchist theorists, namely whether or not the concept ‘citizenship’ can be meaningfully salvaged and repurposed. While many anarchist theorists have gestured at such a debate, the dimensions of this discourse have not been clarified. Secondly, in identifying the features of this debate, this paper seeks to show that citizenship can be meaningfully rehabilitated by the anarchist left. And finally, this essay seeks to provide some preliminary reasons why anarchist theories of citizenship may provide a fruitful partnership with theorists of citizenship today, especially those engaging in critical citizenship studies.
This article aims to add a new line of research to the post-development school of thought. Drawing on the many evident yet rarely noticed parallels between post-development and (post-)anarchism, I develop an understanding of ‘anarchistic post-development’ as a politics based on what French philosopher Jacques Rancière calls ‘the presupposition of equality’. I further connect this with Arturo Escobar and Marisol De la Cadena’s concept of political ontology, suggesting that we can make sense of and analyse both contemporary ‘Development’ projects as well as anarchistic post-developmental ‘alternatives to Development’ through the lens of what I call ‘the ontological politics of (in-)equality’. To substantiate my points, I will draw on the recent case of a Mâori tribe who won a historical legal battle to declare the Whanganui River a living entity.
Given present criticisms of contemporary education and leadership practices, this article investigates the ways in which the basic concepts of state freedom and bureaucracy stifle ethics and social justice in educational leadership practices through the philosophical framework of Emmanuel Levinas. By investigating Levinas’ ‘an-archy’, the definition of ethics and justice in school leadership can be reframed towards responsibility to otherness rather than individual freedom. The anarchical ethic of pure responsibility to the Other suggests that educational leaders should prioritize specific acts of responsibility over general actions based on the assumptions of traditional state education. Aspects of transactional, transformational, and social justice leadership are critiqued from this perspective.
The notion of “extremism,” we argue, can be understood as an element of the contemporary liberal consensus or “post-politics.” In particular, the anti-utopian character of extremism discourse necessitates robust critical theoretical attention. As part of this critique, we seek to return to the historic far-Left and examine various dimensions of Leftist “extremism,” reading and retrieving this material in light of its utopian significance. Here, we examine far-Left extremism that deals with the utopian re-making of the subject, what might be called the “revolutionary anthropology” found in far-Left work. Exploring some of the historic twists and turns of this revolutionary anthropology, drawing on the work of Luc Boltanski and associates, we suggest three distinctive facets of this renewed critical bearing within contemporary far-Left thought: insurrectionary immediatism, a new anti-foundationalist collectivism, and a theological turn. Attention to the sphere of revolutionary anthropology, we hope, might help us think the subject(s) able to not only resist the current social order but also to realise a new one.
The introduction explores Saramago’s explicit and implicit relationship with philosophy, construing thereby a sort of framework that contextualizes the philosophical readings to be found in the chapters. It presents the few explicit references to philosophers or philosophies to be found in his writings, diaries, conferences and interviews, to show how his fictional writing rests on constant and firm philosophical foundations. More importantly, however, it shows how this “penchant” for philosophy also affects Saramago’s writing itself, the very “form” of his fiction, with what he himself calls the “essayistic temptation” of his novels: this “temptation” dissolves the divisions and separations between literary genres and transforms the novel into a “literary space,” which, as such, admits everything into his realm: essay, science, historiography, poetry—and also philosophy.
Herman Melvelle’s fictional character Bartleby, the New York scrivener who had the deadly habit of answering every question he received with the solemn “I would prefer not to,” has become one of the central paradigms of political philosophy. José Saramago’s novel Seeing has, recently, been portrayed as reiterating a similar political plotline. This chapter, by means of a comparative investigation of the activity performed by Melville’s scrivener and Saramago’s mostly nameless population of the (former) capital, and the interplay between silence and vocality in both tales, intends to demonstrate that this comparison is inaccurate. Saramago’s novel is not about (passive) resistance like Bartleby. Seeing, on the contrary, is a true heretical tale in the “original” meaning of the word airesis.
This article explores the wider critical and creative powers of education to bring about a society where no one person is valued more than another and where each person is celebrated for their differences – this the author calls the ‘society of equals’. It is argued that discourses of equality are not only co-extensive with democracy; they are co-extensive with co-operation and education. The extent to which equalities between people are limited to certain spheres of activity is also the limit to which democracy and co-operation are exercised in the affairs of everyday life. To what extent are democracy and co-operation evidenced in schools, colleges and universities – the supposedly privileged places for the development of people’s powers? In whose interests and for what purposes are those powers to be developed? And how may socially just democratic futures be realised through co-operative forms of education? The critical points at issue in answering these questions will be approached by exploring Dewey’s discussions of education and the democratic public in comparison to Lippmann’s views of the public and the role of elites, alongside the values and practices of the co-operative movement and the idea of the society of equals capable of undermining and replacing neo-liberal forms of schooling.
This article focuses on the role of protest music in the biggest social movement of recent Turkish history. It is the result of three years of fieldwork triangulating musical and cultural analysis with ethnographic methods. Motives of the protest, strategies of the movement, agency of musicians and participatory performances are investigated and contextualised in an analysis of Turkey's cultural changes. The function of music shifted from framing the protest to encouraging political action and fostering a sense of belonging to the collective identity of the Gezi Park movement. Music even became political activism. By underlining different functions played by music in the case of the Gezi Park movement, this article problematises the relevance of music for social movements.
This chapter is a philosophical exploration of the politics of schooling that goes beyond the fear-driven politics of Hobbes and is instead informed by personalism and optimistic anarchism. Anarchism sees relatively small-scale communities as the dominating features of politics. It is not that larger-scale political entities—such as nation-states—are necessarily bad: instead, they are somewhat redundant, unnecessary, or superfluous. A principle of radical subsidiarity—taking decisions at the most local possible level—is an anarchist approach. There is more power than might be expected in the hands of small-scale local communities. This power can dominate our political, lived-together, personally significant lives. Schools can make a difference as those in schools wield significant power.
At a time when representative democracies are in deep crisis, this article examines the debate over representation as it appears in contemporary Marxist and poststructuralist political thought. The article discusses, more specifically, Ernesto Laclau’s defense of political representation and pits this against Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s vision of an “absolute democracy” beyond representation, in order to chart a path between and beyond both contrasting positions. The crux of the argument is that in participatory democracies political governance becomes a common affair: a public good accessible to all members of a community on the basis of equality. Such a democratic regime contrasts with both representative democracies, where the assembled demos is excluded from any effective participation in the everyday exercise of major political power, as well as direct democracy, where the collective sovereign would be fully present to itself, total and undivided. Common political representation is open to all, inclusive, participatory, and accountable.
Anarchists believe that the state is a deeply harmful institution and that the good society is one without a state or government – without, that is, a permanent body entitled to use force to ensure compliance with its decisions within a given territory.
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 dichotomised 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.
Purpose
Literature on social movements increasingly identifies everyday life as significant to understand political practices and activism. However, scholars have retained a major bias towards movement mobilisation and collective action, often relegating the everyday at the margins of social movements. While there have been notable exceptions, with studies of prefigurative activism and everyday practices of social change, they have usually focussed on alternative community spaces such as autonomous social centres and protest camps, and paid less attention to “ordinary” practices and spaces of activism. The purpose of this paper is to address these problems by suggesting that everyday life may be central to the production of activist spaces and the action of social movements.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon ethnography methods, interviews with vegan activists, an on-line survey of supporters of vegan movements and an examination of on-line vegan forums, it seeks to analyse the practices of the vegan movement in France.
Findings
This paper attempts to demonstrate that prefigurative activism and seemingly banal practices may be central to strategies for social change. Drawing on an anarchist perspective on activism, it further suggests that activism and everyday life should not be studied in isolation from each other but as mutually constitutive in the creation of everyday alternative spaces – hemeratopias.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the literature on activism and social movements by offering a more complex picture of the spatial politics at work in social movements and a better understanding of individual action and mobilisation.
This article engages with the autonomist Marxism of John Holloway from a feminist standpoint. The positions developed by this feminist critique are used to shed new light on the land occupations in contemporary Zimbabwe. Though sympathetic to his work, we argue that Holloway does not sufficiently address gender identity with specific reference to social reproduction and women. The notions of the commons and the process of commoning are consistent with Holloway’s autonomist framework and its complementarities to Silvia Federici’s Marxist feminist lens on the commons is highlighted. Against a tendency within autonomist and commoning theories, we argue for a pronounced identitarian politics as grounded in localised struggles undertaken by women as women. We privilege the significance of women asserting and revaluing their identities as part of a possible project of transformation. For us, struggling against and beyond what exists is invariably rooted in struggles within what exists (including identities).
The unanticipated affinities between Lee Edelman’s ‘politics of negativity’ and Saul Neman’s theorizations of an ‘anti-political politics’ of postanarchism allow a re-thinking of the import of queer antisocial projects for a queer politics where ‘anarchy’ and ‘queer’ combine. This paper explores a queer anti-political politics of negativity to destabilize the creativity–negativity debate, and to track the emergence of what I call an ‘anti-utopian utopianism’. As shown by the 2013 anti-government die-in performance of the Israeli queer anarchist group Mashpritzot, this (im)possible project casts the ‘no’ of negativity, anarchy and queer as non-essentialist grounds for a politics of difference that insists on the present of dissent as precondition for (its) survival.
To what extent is it possible to situate Hardt and Negri’s thought? Are they best regarded as ‘anarchists’, ‘socialists’, ‘communists’, ‘Marxists’, ‘Leninists’, ‘post-Marxists’ or ‘post-anarchists’? Answering this question is no mere intel-lectual exercise. As Wittgenstein once remarked, ‘words are deeds’.1 On the radical Left, much blood has been spilled through those deeds, careers ended and reputations shattered. Of course, today a great deal is made of the claim that we live in ‘post-ideological’ times, ‘new times’ where ‘class struggle’ does not have the importance it once had; postmodern times, where meanings and identities are constantly subject to the contestation of ‘discourse’. Now, while the costs of labelling are not what they once were, there are still costs. Labelling instigates a kind of ‘symbolic violence’ over discursive space. Rival ideologies are constructed as ‘straw men’, as ‘crude’, ‘naïve’, as ‘elitist’ or ‘authoritarian’ and so on. This process neglects any philosophical sophistication, common ground, or indeed the interpenetration of ‘rival ideologies’. One danger of labelling is that we move beyond healthy criticism to a desire to relegate our theoretical interlocutors to the status of the ‘other’. Accordingly, they become an opponent we seek to dismiss, in order to give positive identity to ourselves, rather than a potential ally in the struggle against the exploitative mechanisms of global capitalism. Where labelling is also connected with the construction of orthodoxies, it can lead to what Skinner has termed a ‘mythology of coherence’ (and of incoherence) produced often by those wishing to defend the integrity of their specific ideological projects.2
My aim in this chapter is to show how Stirner’s critical post-humanist philosophy allows him to engage with a specific problem in political theory that of voluntary servitude — in other words, the wilful acquiescence of people to the power that dominates them. Here it will be argued that Stirner’s demolition of the abstract idealism of humanism, rational truth and morality, and his alternative project of grounding reality in the singularity of the individual ego, may be understood as a way of countering and avoiding this condition of self-domination. In contrast to various claims that Stirner’s thought is nihilistic, one finds in Stirner a series of ethical strategies through which the self’s relation to power is interrogated, and in which the possibility of alternative modes of subjectivity is opened up, where the subject can invent for himself new forms of existence and practices of freedom that release him from this condition of subjection. There emerges, from Stirner’s thought, a certain kind of micro-political ethics that has important implications for any consideration of radical politics today.
The thesis of the ontological primacy of antagonism, thus the political, is central to Chantal Mouffe’s call for taming antagonism into agonism, or agonistic pluralism. Within planning theory, Mouffe’s conflictual ontology that underpins this call has raised questions over the ontological assumption of the presently prominent and consensus-oriented communicative and deliberative planning approaches. This is because these approaches consider consensus formation as a normative ideal and always at least a potential outcome from open and inclusive deliberation, that is, ontological. Yet, the notion that antagonism is also an ever-present possibility for all social relations and therefore an ineradicable risk for consensus-building effort in planning practices appears to be increasingly accepted even by communicative planning theorists. In this article, I trace the origin of Mouffe’s thesis of the ontological primacy of antagonism back to both her original collaborative work with Earnest Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, and Carl Schmitt. With Derrida and Laclau, I then argue that this Mouffean thesis does not hold: antagonism operates at the ontic level in the social and it is only but one way of discursively inscribing the experience of exclusion and the use of power. This insight supports a new, post-antagonism approach to politics and the political based on the ontology of radical negativity. Finally, I discuss how this approach can be linked with planning theory by adopting a de-ontologised notion of the political. I conclude by arguing that since agonism is not the only option for dealing with antagonism for the socially established actors, for example, planners, its implementation in planning practice can appear merely as a top-down imposition of a democratic ethos. Sometimes, depoliticisation of agonistic planning might therefore be necessary.
The crime novelist Didier Daeninckx originally established himself as an author of historical crime fiction. His 1984 Daeninckx, D. (1984) 2011a. Meurtres pour mémoire. Paris: Folio Policier. [Google Scholar] novel, Meurtres pour mémoire, in particular challenged occluded and intertwined memories of the Occupation and the Algerian War of Independence. Since then, and through his subsequent writings and political activities, Daeninckx has been recognised as giving voice to a range of marginalised communities and memories. Much academic study has therefore concentrated on the recovery of the past in Daeninckx’s fiction, approaching his work from the perspective of cultural history and memory studies, considering it a form of memory activism. This article offers a new perspective on Daeninckx’s political engagement. It will examine Daeninckx’s three contributions to Éditions Baleine’s collaboratively authored detective series Le Poulpe: Nazis dans le métro (1996), Éthique en toc (2000) and La Route du Rom (2003). It will argue that they are informed by a memory of France’s broad libertarian tradition which constitutes a hidden referent essential to understanding the formulation of the ethico-political counter-communities to which many of his characters (and his ideal, implied reader) belong. More particularly, it will argue that these communities form the basis of a new model of political engagement beyond party, state and class, suggesting not only the persistence but also the adaptability of libertarian thinking in Daeninckx’s work and the French roman noir.
There is an established body of politically informed scholarly work that offers a sustained critique of how corporate business ethics is a form of organizing that acts as a subterfuge to facilitate the expansion of corporate sovereignty. This paper contributes to that work by using its critique as the basis for theorizing an alternative form of ethics for corporations. Using the case of the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal as an illustrative example, the paper theorizes an ethics that locates corporations in the democratic sphere so as to defy their professed ability to organize ethics in a self-sufficient and autonomous manner. The Volkswagen scandal shows how established organizational practices of corporate business ethics are no barrier to, and can even serve to enable, the rampant pursuit of business self-interest through well-orchestrated and large-scale conspiracies involving lying, cheating, fraud and lawlessness. The case also shows how society, represented by individuals and institutions, is able to effectively resist such corporate malfeasance. The ‘democratic business ethics’ that this epitomizes is one where civil society holds corporations to account for their actions, and in so doing disrupts corporate sovereignty. This ethics finds practical purchase in forms of dissent that redirect power away from centres of organized wealth and capital, returning it to its democratically rightful place with the people, with society.
This paper situates the discourse of the Occupy movement within the context of radical political philosophy. Our analysis takes place on two levels. First, we conduct an empirical analysis of the ‘official’ publications of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Occupy London (OL). Operationalising core concepts from the framing perspective within social movement theory, we provide a descriptive-comparative analysis of the ‘collective action frames’ of OWS and OL. Second, we consider the extent to which radical political philosophy speaks to the discourse of Occupy. Our empirical analysis reveals that both movements share diagnostic frames, but there were notable differences in terms of prognostic framing. The philosophical discussion suggests that there are alignments between anarchist, post-anarchist and post-Marxist ideologies at the level of both identity and strategy. Indeed, the absence of totalising anti-capitalist or anti-statist positions in Occupy suggests that – particularly with Occupy London – alignments are perhaps not so distant from typically social democratic demands.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2016.1141697
This paper seeks an articulation between Marxist and anarchist approaches to representation in social movements. A generalised dismissal of representational politics leaves power with too many places to hide and sets unnecessary limits to political imagination. Prefigurative politics should not exclude political representation, as the exclusion can imply a class bias. The paper explores two different paths beyond strict assumptions of horizontality. Using mostly Latin American examples, a distinction is made between more classical state-centric paths and less theorised alternatives of non-state representation. Finally, the article approaches global democratisation from a non-state-centric perspective, tentatively called transnational libertarian socialism.
Challenging claims of a recent ‘anarchist turn’, this article argues that calls for a ‘left convergence’ between anarchism and Marxism should be treated with caution. It sets out to establish what distinguishes Marxism from anarchism today, and argues that the former contains superior resources with which to challenge the current dominance of neoliberalism. In order to elucidate the strengths of Marxism, it addresses three common anarchist criticisms of Marxism, concerning its authoritarian strategies; its economic reductionism; and its lack of moral or ethical perspective. It argues that each of these criticisms inadvertently highlights the advantages of Marxism over anarchism.
In this article I explore the possibilities of experimentation as a non-foundational praxis for introducing novel ways of being into existence. Beginning with a discussion, following Bataille, of the excess of any thought, I argue that any action in the world is necessarily uncertain. Using the insights of Derridean deconstruction combined with Badiousian truth procedure I argue that experimentation offers a means for acting from this uncertain position. Experimentation takes advantage of the play and uncertainty of our understanding of the world as a means of moving towards more progressive political positions.
We introduce the case for non-territorial unbundling by taking a discursive approach through public choice and evolutionary economic theory. The argument begins with an appreciation of the many paradoxes and problems of majoritarian voting and proceeds to explore the theory of non-territorial and unbundled governance as means to improve political choice. I find that decoupling political jurisdiction from geographical location (so that citizens can switch political jurisdictions without switching location) and unbundling government (so that collective goods and services can be provided separately by independent public enterprises) will result in greater diversity of governmental forms, a wider range of choice for groups and individuals, and ultimately, better governance. Moreover, I contend that not all bundling should be ruled out; rather, the point is to create an ‘unbundleable’ system of governance and allow political entrepreneurs to discover ways to rebundle functions. Experimentation with bundling, unbundling, and rebundling of the various services states offer elicits the discovery of optimal bundling options for the diversity of citizen preferences.
We introduce the case for non-territorial unbundling by taking a discursive approach through public choice and evolutionary economic theory. The argument begins with an appreciation of the many paradoxes and problems of majoritarian voting and proceeds to explore the theory of non-territorial and unbundled governance as means to improve political choice. I find that decoupling political jurisdiction from geographical location (so that citizens can switch political jurisdictions without switching location) and unbundling government (so that collective goods and services can be provided separately by independent public enterprises) will result in greater diversity of governmental forms, a wider range of choice for groups and individuals, and ultimately, better governance. Moreover, I contend that not all bundling should be ruled out; rather, the point is to create an ‘unbundleable’ system of governance and allow political entrepreneurs to discover ways to rebundle functions. Experimentation with bundling, unbundling, and rebundling of the various services states offer elicits the discovery of optimal bundling options for the diversity of citizen preferences.
Schooling is a form of misopedy and a fundamental structure in conditioning societal acceptance of domination in other registers. The subordination of children begins with the misguided notion that they are incapable of autonomy, reinforcing a dichotomous understanding of adult/child or teacher/student. Schooling should not be confused with education. The former represents the interests of oppression, molding societal consciousness to accept the conditions of subjugation. In contrast, education in its idealized form is a process of self-discovery, an awakening to one’s potential, and a desire to see such abilities realized. To ensure the absence of coercion in education children need to explore for themselves, making their own decisions about what their interests are, and how those curiosities might be fulfilled. Presenting a broad range of opportunities is crucial, but the decision about what path to follow should be determined by the child. When bound to a classroom we often mistake obedience for education. Yet learning, as geographers recognize, best occurs ‘through the soles of our feet’ and when children explore the world through unschooling, they live into their creative potential, opening an aperture on alternative ontologies. Unschooling is, in short, one of the most powerful forms of anarchism we can engage.
This article challenges the assumption that the post-war era was relatively insignificant in the development of anarchist thought. In fact, many of the most important figures within the post-war anarchist milieu in Britain and the US were concerned with questions of theory as well as practice, and their thought comprises a distinct and coherent ideological configuration of anarchism. In adapting anarchism to the post-war political context, this ‘New Anarchism’ revised key concepts of classical anarchism like ‘revolution’ and ‘utopia’, while placing stronger emphasis on concepts like ‘education’ and ‘planning’. The New Anarchists were more ‘practical’ than their predecessors, as Ruth Kinna has noted—they looked for liberatory potential within the status quo, they eschewed sectarianism and they embraced piecemeal change. But the New Anarchists shared more than just practicality—they shared an innovative vision of anarchism with potential relevance to the present day. This article provides an account of the historical context that gave rise to the New Anarchism, develops an outline of the New Anarchism's main features and proposes some reasons as to why the New Anarchism has been neglected.
This article examines the relationship between different expressions of psychological therapy, alternative movements such as anarchism, and the potential for revolutionary social and personal transformation. By drawing on the history of socio-political movements in different European countries in the early 20th century, we suggest that approaches to healthcare and to social and individual transformation have much to learn from what is generally a forgotten or underestimated past. While the circumstances that engendered radical movements dedicated to psychoanalysis, therapy, and social change were the product of specific contexts, the current precariousness of European health systems and the increasing incidence of psychological damage invite a critical look to the past for inspiration for our embattled present. Germany in the 1890s and Spain in the 1930s are focused upon in particular with these aims in mind. All translations from the original Spanish in this article are our own unless otherwise stated. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This paper focuses on Foucault's analysis of two forms of neo-liberalism in his lecture of 1979 at the Collège de France: German post-War liberalism and the liberalism of the Chicago School. Since the course is available only on audio-tapes at the Foucault archive in Paris, the larger part of the text presents a comprehensive reconstruction of the main line of argumentation, citing previously unpublished source material. The nal section offers a short discussion of the methodological and theoretical principles underlying the concept of governmentality and the critical political angle it provides for an analysis of contemporary neo-liberalism.
ABSTRACT According to many contemporary observers, including Hillel Steiner [1], Herbert Hart [2], John Gray [3] and Isaiah Berlin [4], the equal liberty principle lies at the heart of liberalism. Yet despite its central place in liberal theory, it has attracted little critical appraisal. This paper seeks to examine the meaning and some of the policy implications of the equal liberty principle, paying particular attention to the elucidations produced by Herbert Spencer, Steiner and Hart — the only systematic analysts of the notion of equal liberty. In part 1, the meaning of the equal liberty principle is discussed, and it is shown to be intrinsically ambivalent. In part 2, where certain policy implications are considered, the conclusion is reached that the equal liberty principle is ambiguous in its policy prescriptions, and requires to be supplemented by some other principle before it can be unequivocally applied.
positions: east asia cultures critique 13.3 (2005) 575-634
In "So Near! So Far!" the first section in his polemical Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Alain Badiou briefly recalls the tense ideological situation in the late sixties and early seventies in which he once went so far as to boycott his older colleague's course at the recently created University of Paris VIII at Vincennes:
In the original French version, published in 1997, this passage—like the remainder of the brief introduction in which it appears—is actually written in the present tense. Pour le maoïste que je suis, Badiou thus writes, literally, "For the Maoist that I am." Of course, the French usage merely represents a sudden shift to the narrative present; technically speaking, we are still in the past, and, in this sense, the English translation is by no means incorrect. Nevertheless, something of the heightened ambiguity attached to the use of the narrative present is lost in the passage from one language to the other, as the overall image of a potentially discomforting past replaces the suggestion of an ongoing loyalty, or at the very least a lingering debt, to Maoism.
By way of framing my translation of Badiou's talk "The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?" I want to argue that Badiou's relation to Maoism, which amounts to a form of post-Maoism, can in fact be summarized in the ambiguous use of the narrative present. If we were to spell out this ambiguity, we could say that Badiou was and still is a Maoist, even though he no longer is the same Maoist that he once was. Badiou himself says at the beginning of his talk, quoting Rimbaud to refer to his red years: "J'y suis, j'y suis toujours" ("I am there, I am still there," sometimes translated as "I am here, I am still here"). And yet we also sense that an impression of pastness undeniably overshadows the past's continuing presence in the present. What seems so near is also exceedingly far; and what is there is perhaps not quite here. By the same token, we should not overlook the possibility that a certain inner distancing may already define the original rapport to Maoism itself. In fact, Mao's own role for Badiou will largely have consisted in introducing an interior divide into the legacy of Marxism-Leninism. "From the Jinggang Mountains to the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong's thought is formulated against the current, as the work of division," Badiou summarizes in his Théorie de la contradiction (1975), before identifying Mao's logic of scission as a prime example of dialectical thinking: "Rebel thinking if there ever was one, revolted thinking of the revolt: dialectical thinking." Maoism, then, in more strictly philosophical terms will come to mark an understanding of the dialectic as precisely such a thinking through inner splits and divided recompositions. As Badiou would write several years later in an article for Le Perroquet, one of the periodicals of his Maoist group: "At stake are the criteria of dialectical thinking—general thinking of scission, of rupture, of the event and of recomposition."
We could begin by pondering some of the more unfortunate consequences of the fact that Badiou's vast body of work, standing nearly as tall as its author, has only recently begun to attract serious critical attention. This is true not only in English-speaking parts of the world, where several books have now been translated or are being translated, but even in his home country of France. In fact, to find a long-standing tradition of critical commentary and concrete analysis informed by this thinker's work, I often insist that we should turn to Latin America, especially to Argentina, where the journal Acontecimiento...