Reanimating Anarchist Geographies: A New Burst of Colour

Abstract: The late nineteenth century saw a burgeoning of geographical writings from influential anarchist thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus. Yet despite the vigorous intellectual debate sparked by the works of these two individuals, following their deaths anarchist ideas within geography faded. It was not until the 1970s that anarchism was once again given serious consideration by academic geographers who, in laying the groundwork for what is today known as “radical geography”, attempted to reintroduce anarchism as a legitimate political philosophy. Unfortunately, quiet followed once more, and although numerous contemporary radical geographers employ a sense of theory and practice that shares many affinities with anarchism, direct engagement with anarchist ideas among academic geographers have been limited. As contemporary global challenges push anarchist theory and practice back into widespread currency, geographers need to rise to this occasion and begin (re)mapping the possibilities of what anarchist perspectives might yet contribute to the discipline.     

Emotion at the Center of Radical Politics: On the Affective Structures of Rebellion and Control

Abstract: Through an examination of anarchist organizing and policing and security tactics at the 2008 Republican National Convention, this paper argues that the emotional connections between radical activists have become the targets of both social movement strategies for growth and police strategies for social control. As such, the emotions of activists are a site of intense political contestation. I introduce the concept of affective structures to develop an account of the relations between affect, emotion, and radical politics, and present these structures as both the means and the ends of contemporary anarchist organizing and state strategies for social control.     

The rhetoric of reproduction and the reconfiguration of womanhood in the French birth control movement, 1890-1920

Birth control movements that emerged in Europe and the United States during the last third of the nineteenth century lost their emancipatory and feminist potential in the twentieth century as they succumbed to control by the medical profession, eugenicists, and institutionalized goals of planned parenthood. The neo-Malthusian movement in France, however, retained a radical character and became a focal point for the convergence of libertarian, feminist, and anarchist concerns. By emancipating women from their "biological destiny" and separating sexuality and reproduction, neo-Malthusian rhetoric reconfigured womanhood and established the basis for women's development as full individuals and citizens.     

The anti-Francoist movements and the Middle East conflict (1947–57): The portrayal of Israelis and Arabs in the Spanish left-wing press

To date, scholars have not examined the representations of the Middle East conflict in the 1940s and 1950s by the Spanish anti-Francoist movements. This work analyzes media narratives concerning Arabs and Israelis produced between 1947 and 1957 by the communist, socialist and anarchist press. Through a critical analysis of the articles published in those years, it is possible to demonstrate that the coverage of the Spanish left-wing periodicals was not rooted in the realities of the Middle East, but rather in the political and ideological interests of their parties.     

Return to reason: reviving political realism in western foreign policy

Twenty‐first‐century political crises stretching from Europe to the Middle East and the Asia–Pacific have undermined the worldview that governed post‐Cold War western thinking about a liberal end of history. This worldview assumed that shared norms and transnational institutions would transform the state based‐order. In this context, the use of force is considered appropriate only for humanitarian ends meeting a set of predetermined axioms laid down in chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Yet for any strategy to be effective—in an international order subject to change—a clear political aim is required, which might deviate from the general rule. Preoccupied with universal postulates, legal normativism has lost sight of the particular. The argument put forth in this article is that the failure of contemporary western foreign policy in the twenty‐first century to address this limitation or to prioritize political ends has led to strategic confusion from Afghanistan to Syria and Ukraine. In this context, it might be useful to reappraise the utility of abstract rationalist approaches to global governance and return instead to an earlier understanding of statecraft that avoided premature generalizations and treated norms as maxims of prudence rather than axioms requiring universal application.     

Arcangelo Ghisleri and the “Right to Barbarity”: Geography and Anti‐colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire (1875–1914)

This paper addresses the work of early critics of colonialism and Eurocentrism within Italian geography in the Age of Empire. At that time, a minority but rather influential group of Italian scholars, influenced by the international debates promoted by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Kropotkin and Me?nikov, fumed publicly at Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa. Their positions assumed, at least in the case of Arcangelo Ghisleri, the character of a radical critique of both political and cultural European hegemony. These approaches were linked to a similar critique of “internal colonialism”, both Austrian in the Italian‐speaking regions of Trento and Trieste, and Piedmontese in southern Italy. Based on primary sources, and drawing on the international literature on imperial geography and colonial and postcolonial sciences, this paper conjures up the Italian example to discuss how some European geographers of the Age of Empire were also early critics of racism, colonialism and chauvinism, and how these historical experiences can serve current debates on critical, radical and anarchist geographies.     

Analisi della fede e critica della ragione nella filosofia di Pierre Bayle

This article re-examines the political thought of the neglected Fabian essayist and radical journalist William Clarke. Historians have differed over the relative importance of socialism and liberalism in Clarke's political thought. The argument is made here that the key to Clarke's thought lies in his moralised conception of democracy, rooted in his monist ontology. The further deepening of democracy was threatened for Clarke by developments in monopolistic capitalism and the related emergence of a new imperialism. Clarke's understanding of democracy, rather than more overtly economic considerations, lies at the heart of his political religion, and links his views on domestic and foreign affairs. As befits a philosophical monist, his political thought reveals the limitations of established dichotomies for grasping the character of progressivism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain.     

Anarchist Anti-Imperialism: Guy Aldred and the Indian Revolutionary Movement, 1909–14

This article examines the British anarchist Guy Aldred’s involvement in the Indian revolutionary movement from 1909 to 1914 in order to reflect on solidarities and antagonisms between anarchism and anti-colonial movements in the early twentieth century. Drawing on Aldred’s writings, court material and intelligence reports, it explores, first, his decision to print the suppressed Indian nationalist periodical The Indian Sociologist in August 1909 and, second, his involvement in Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s disputed arrest and deportation, which was brought to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in October 1910. In spite of recent attempts by historians to bring the Indian revolutionary movement into much closer conjunction with anarchism than previously assumed, Aldred’s engagement with the Indian freedom struggle has escaped sustained historical attention. Addressing this silence, the article argues that Aldred’s anti-imperialism was rooted in his anarchist visions of freedom, including freedom of the press, and reveals a more unusual concern with the question of colonialism than shown by almost any other British anarchist in the early twentieth century. At the same time, it cautions that Aldred was blind to the problems of Indian nationalism, especially the Hindu variety espoused by Savarkar, which leaves his anarchist anti-imperialism much compromised.     

Rethinking the role of the arts in politics: lessons from the Négritude movement

The arts can be a powerful tool for emancipation, community building and political expression. This article makes the argument that artistic and cultural expression should be viewed by politicians and policy makers as an effective form of political engagement and an important feedback loop for understanding the political dissatisfaction of the electorate. It draws on one particular historical example, the Négritude movement, to highlight the value and strength of cultural movements in responding to questions of politics and to draw out lessons for current policy makers in recognising the value of culture in effecting political change. Against a contemporary political and scholarly narrative of disaffected citizenship, this article demonstrates that a lack of trust in a political model does not necessarily demonstrate a disinterested citizenry; rather it can suggest a citizenry who have found new and innovative ways to engage. The Négritude movement provides one such historical example.     

Sociopolitics

Sociopolitics refer to ways in which politics and relations of power are constituted through an authoritative discourse on the social. This concept echoes Foucault's biopolitics. “Society” and the “social” are devices, as well as categorical foundations, for the political. As with “bio” in biopolitics, “socio” gives a particular form to power that it articulates and constitutes. This review essay uses this concept to discuss recent work of James Scott and David Graeber, and the English-language translation of a 1980 collection of essays by Pierre Clastres. I argue that this anarchist anthropology articulates a clear break within anarchist theory. This break is in the ways the social and the political are related as means and ends in ethnography and in conceptualization of anarchist practice.     

Féminisme,anarchisme et fédéralisme. L’exemple de l’organisation Alternative libertaire entre 2006 et 2012

Abstract

This article examines the spatial, and especially scalar, dimension of feminism in a contemporary French anarchist organisation. This perspective is contextualised by a reminder of the role of feminism in the political history of anarchism and of the role of the spatial dimention through the question of anarchist federalism. The empirical study is based on research conducted through participant observation within the organisation Alternative Libertaire between 2006 and 2012. The problem to be addressed is the question of whether anarchist women succeed as well as they claim in bringing into question, in their promotion of feminism both inside the organisation and outside, the centrality of Paris in favour of an anarchist federalism. For this reason two scales or levels are studied: the national level and the local level of the city. The city of Paris is treated as both the national capital and as a locality.     

Was zählt der Preis? Dogmengeschichte und Wissensgeschichte der Ökonomie

What’s in a Price? History of Economic Ideologies vs. History of Economic Ideas. This paper suggests applying the approach of a historical epistemology to the field of economics. We observe that an assumedly fundamental opposition between the market and the state dominates popular images of the history of economic ideas. Two conflicting ideologies are roughly assigned to the two opposing sides in the Cold War. To this historical narrative the paper opposes a different view. The argument is that when taking the technical practices of economic knowledge production in the twentieth century into view, similarities abound across ideological ruptures. The chief characteristic change in the recent history of economics was a radical turn towards quantification, measurement, and mathematical modelling. A historical epistemology of economics could show how deeply both, admirers of the state and of the market, share a history. The paper concludes that to-date critique of political economy should also take into consideration a critical perspective towards the unfolding of this measurement revolution in the social sciences.     

Early Socialism in Canada: International and Regional Impulses

International and regional impulses have shaped Canadian socialism from the movement’s origins in the nineteenth century to the present. Many of Canada’s early socialists arrived as ready-made socialists from abroad. From the British Isles, continental Europe, and the United States, these idealists and dissidents imported radical political ideals, which they subsequently adapted to meet the emerging conditions of an industrializing, urbanizing Canada. Directed at a broad cross-section of society, the early Canadian socialist rainbow featured many colours: Chartists, Christian socialists, cooperators, and, by the nineteenth century’s end—communists, anarchists, and other adherents of European radical movements. This process of importation, adaptation, and change took different forms in the distinctive regional contexts of Canada’s multi-ethnic federal state. Building on an interdisciplinary literature, the authors illuminate the ways in which international and regional impulses shaped Canada’s socialist tradition, helping to explain persistent tensions and forces within contemporary Canadian politics.     

Reframing the “Irish Question”: the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the formation of Irish nationalism, 1900–22

This article examines the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the early twentieth century and argues that it played a crucial role in shaping a popular understanding of the “Irish Question”. This mass-membership movement impacted upon the development of the Irish state and population. By taking this rural, social movement as a lens to analyse Irish society in the early twentieth century, social and economic issues re-emerge as central components to a contemporary understanding of Ireland's increasingly contested position within the Union. As the expectation of some kind of political resolution to demands for political independence grew during the First World War, radical nationalism absorbed a social and economic discourse that originated within the co-operative movement in its critique of the British state as it operated in Ireland. Irish co-operation represented a sophisticated form of political economy that provided an influential ideological platform for Irish nationalists as they anticipated some form of political independence.     

Stateless Nation-Building: Quebec,Catalonia and Scotland in the Changing State System

Abstract. The reconfiguration of political space is bringing about new forms of territorial politics. The meanings of nationalism and the state are being transformed and new types of autonomist movement are emerging. These are often seen as a resurgence of ethnicity, or as attempts to recreate mini nation-states fragmented from the existing ones. Mainstream political science tends to regard them negatively. It is argued that the resurgence of minority nationalism is also a response to the needs for collective action in a world of weakened nation-states. New forms of collective identity and action are emerging which recognise the limitations of traditional sovereignty and the necessary interdependence of the contemporary world. There is much that is new here, but also much that has always been present but has been lost in the state-centred perspective of political science. The argument is illustrated by an examination of three of the most electorally successful nationalist movements in the Western world, in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland. These are seen not as classic nationalist movements but as nation-building projects which recognise the limitations of the nation-state formula and are engaged in ‘stateless nation-building’. This project is difficult to translate into constitutional terms or to reconcile with the model of the state prevailing in the respective majority communities.     

The sources of communitarianism on the American left: Pluralism, republicanism, and participatory democracy

This article considers the nature of communitarian thought in late twentieth century Anglo-American political philosophy. It argues that communitarianism arose out of a critique of modernist theories of justice such as that of John Rawls shared by a group of writers committed to idealist principles that emphasised narrative approaches to the study of political thought, the importance of historical context, and popular participation in political life. It then focuses on one particular American strand of communitarian thought, exemplified by the work of Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel, which draws on a tradition of radical democracy and, in so doing, helps both to create and to transform a new American republicanism. An important connection between Walzer and Sandel is that they share the view that egalitarian politics must draw on shared traditions of social criticism rather than on the abstract individualism that they associate with Rawls. A key difference is that Walzer's vision of American life is pluralist and enthusiastic about difference, whereas Sandel's is republican and concerned above all with fostering civic virtue and identification with the state and political community.     

Dies-non: refusal of work in the 21st century

Abstract

My comments aim to cast light on a specific political proposal that can arise from a discussion of the topic of the ‘refusal of work’ and its implications for a social radical change. Autonomist, anarchist and feminist activism, have been and are the main sources of a long-term conceptual and empirical work on the refusal of work. Refusal of work is a very complex concept that has traversed history and is reduced for uncritical dominant common sense to unemployment, laziness, idleness, indolence but it is in reality one of the basic foundational qualification to think any radical change. Among many important intuitions, the added value of Silvia Federici’s work is to have offered a different perspective on the refusal of work discussion and how it can be expressed to develop different forms of communing. Her work provides the backbone for this brief excursion on the issue of the refusal of work. Emerging and consolidated social movements, for example in Southern Europe, have, consciously or not, taken position, often contradictorily, regarding what refusal of work means. In the context of current neoliberal capitalism, an increasing structural unemployment and precarious jobs are one of the trademarks of austerity policies to ‘revive’ economies. Drawing on Federici’s insights on the women exclusion as a useful way of thinking about the spatial dimension of these issues in feminist theory, this article looks at examples of prefigurative politics that define their strategies of refusal of work building significant spatial patterns.     

A Matter of Framing: Explaining the Failure of Post‐Islamist Social Movements in the Arab Spring

Shortly after the Arab Spring began in 2010, multiple scholars noted that the dominant discursive trend present within these protests was that of post‐Islamism. Post‐Islamism is broadly defined as an ideology seeking to establish a democratic state within a distinctly Islamic society. Despite the presence of post‐Islamist opportunity structures, social movements embodying post‐Islamist principles have had little success consolidating power. The theoretical argument presented here is that the failure of these movements is the result of inherent flaws within post‐Islamist frames. Specifically, this study posits that unlike traditional Islamist frames (i.e., frames emphasizing the creation of a state governed by Shari‘a) post‐Islamist frames limit the ability of movements’ to monopolize religion as a cultural asset. As such, when post‐Islamist movements face political challenges during contentious periods they cannot rely on nontemporal legitimacy to retain power. Additionally, the challenging task of integrating Islamic and democratic frames in contentious moments renders post‐Islamist movements susceptible to counterframing. The preceding claims will be tested through a comparative analysis of the Iranian Hierocracy (1977–1979), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (2011–2014). Comparing the experiences of a post‐Islamist movement (Brotherhood) with that of an Islamist movement (Hierocracy) will explicate the flaws within post‐Islamist frames.     

Songs of Sisterhood: Feminist Political Practice between Empire and Internationalism 1910–20

This article seeks to understand how feminist thought and practice in the early twentieth century intersected with emergent movements against British imperialism. By tracing relations between Indian, Irish and British feminists, it delineates the diverse ways in which women, across imperial spaces, adopted emergent languages of internationalism and female fraternity to further their political ambitions. This article moves beyond the geographical boundaries of colony and metropole to uncover a much wider circulation of ideas, practices and solidarities amongst feminist networks in the early twentieth century. Collectively, the stories presented in this article convey multiple feminist political imaginaries in an era defined at once by imperial crisis and the rise of internationalism. They show that women's choices of political association in the autumn of empire were determined by their ideological affinity, political practice and social class rather than their country of origin or ethnic identity alone.