negations

The following new books may be of interest:

Tom Goyens’s forthcoming Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 will be attractive to anyone with an interest in anarchism, New York’s radical history, and/or oppositional culture generally (University of Illinois Press, September 2007). The publisher writes:

Understanding an infamous political movement’s grounding in festivity and defiance, Beer and Revolution examines the rollicking life and times of German immigrant anarchists in New York City from 1880 to 1914. Offering a new approach to an often misunderstood political movement, Tom Goyens puts a human face on anarchism and reveals a dedication less to bombs than to beer halls and saloons where political meetings, public lectures, discussion circles, fundraising events, and theater groups were held. Goyens brings to life the fascinating relationship between social space and politics by examining how the intersection of political ideals, entertainment, and social activism embodied anarchism not as an abstract idea, but as a chosen lifestyle for thousands of women and men. He shows how anarchist social gatherings were themselves events of defiance and resistance that aimed at establishing anarchism as an alternative lifestyle through the combination of German working-class conviviality and a dedication to the principle that coercive authority was not only unnecessary, but actually damaging to full and free human development as well. Goyens also explores the broader circumstances in both the United States and Germany that served as catalysts for the emergence of anarchism in urban America and how anarchist activism was hampered by police surveillance, ethnic insularity, and a widening gulf between the anarchists’ message and the majority of American workers.

Those interested in the state’s impact on oppositional culture, or oppositional culture’s impact on the the state (of Massachusetts), may want to check out Christine Bold’s Writers, Plumbers, and Anarchists: The WPA Writer’s Project in Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006). The publisher writes:

The Works Progress Administration (1935–1943) housed America’s largest arts funding program ever, part of the New Deal’s foray into nationwide work relief. In Massachusetts its acronym could well have stood for “Writers, Plumbers, and Anarchists,” in tribute to the state’s distinctive contribution to the writers’ wing of the program. Beginning in 1935, the Massachusetts writers’ project took a huge range of white- and blue-collar workers off the breadlines and put them to work as government writers. This motley group produced approximately two dozen state, regional, and community guides, which included stories that ran the gamut from the quirky to the disturbing. WPA writers in the state were routinely accused of being “plumbers” and, after publication of the state guide, the project was accused of supporting anarchists and other subversives.

The Massachusetts writers’ project was often mired in dramas and scandals. The most notorious concerned the censorship of guidebook copy on the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, the true story of which remained hidden for almost seventy years. Struggles also broke out over the representation of people of color, as the guides shifted the state’s image away from an ethnically homogeneous “cradle of the nation” to a much more culturally diverse and politically volatile society.

Making excellent use of the extensive surviving records, Christine Bold offers a unique glimpse into what New Deal pieties meant in practice for the “worker-writers” in its employ. As the first book to pursue the WPA writers’ project in a single state, this work probes the Massachusetts experience to discover the consequences of New Deal patronage for writers-in-the-making, for community image-making, and for minority groups attempting to achieve cultural citizenship in America.

* * * Yesterday, the Spanish Supreme Court refused to accept the admission of new evidence that could have helped efforts to force a revision of the trial in which Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich was condemned to death. Puig Antich, a militant of the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación (Iberian Liberation Movement), was convicted for the murder of policeman Francisco Anguas and executed by garrote on March 2, 1974. The trial was then and remains contentious due to numerous inconsistencies in the proceedings. His case has received new attention in recent years thanks to the release of Manuel Huerga’s excellent film Salvador. [Madrid Digital]

You can watch film’s trailer here:

* * * New book: Autonomedia has announced a June publication date for Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt by Richard Kempton.

Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolts isthe first book-length English-language study of Holland’s legendary insurrectional movement. In an introduction and eight chapters, Richard Kempton narrates the rise and fall of Provo from early Dutch “Happenings” staged in 1962 through to the so-called “Death of Provo” in 1967, including Robert Jasper Grootveld’s anarchist anti-cancer campaigns, the riots against Princess Beatrix’s marriage to an ex-Nazi, and the famous White Bicycle program. Then, in seven appendices, he comments on parallel contemporary and near-contemporary movements, including Dada and Situationism; studies Amsterdam’s previous anarchist traditions; chronicles the spread of Provo through the Netherlands and the development of the Kabouter (Gnome) party; and offers an existentialist critique of Provo and other anarchist movements of the 60s. This unique book is based on extensive primary research and includes a selective bibliography of the Dutch-language sources.

* * * The brain and skull of Giovanni Passannante, an Italian anarchist, are finally buried more than a century after he tried to kill King Umberto I, although the interment occurs under a cloak of secrecy. [NYTimes]

* * * Toronto anarchist causes a scandal by leaking the Conservative government’s environmental plan. He is led away from work in handcuffs, though he has not been charged with any crime. [The Toronto Star]

* * * Heavily redacted documents are released that detail a portion of the police’s surveillance of activists prior to Republican National Convention in New York City in August 2004. [NYTimes]

* * * A new book on anarchist history is scheduled for release this August: Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (Oakland: AK Press, 500 pages). The description says: “Black Flame is the first of two volumes that reexamine anarchism’s democratic class politics, its vision of a decentralized planned economy, and its impact on popular struggles in five continents over the last 150 years. From the nineteenth century to today’s anticapitalist movements, it traces anarchism’s lineage and contemporary relevance. It outlines anarchism’s insights into questions of race, gender, class, and imperialism, significantly reframing the work of previous historians on the subject, and critiquing Marxist approaches to those same questions.” Authors Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt both live in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Anyone with an interest in New York’s radical history–or that of American cities generally–will welcome the publication of the following two books:

* Resistance: A Radical Political and Social History of the Lower East Side by Clayton Patterson (Editor) (New York: Seven Stories Press, April 2007)

This 624 page, large format anthology is a real treasure. It documents the radical history of the Lower East Side, focusing particularly on the 1980s, one of the most dynamic and least documented periods in the history of urban opposition. The book is divided into six sections (history, housing/squats, Tompkins Square, media, biography, and AIDS). Many of the contributors will be familiar to participants in and students of rebellion in the Big Apple: Bill Weinberg, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Seth Tobocman, Sarah Ferguson, and others make an appearance.

Here’s a quote from the Foreword by Jeff Farrell:

Rarely does a book come along with politics as vivid as its people. Clayton Patterson and the many contributors to Resistance pull it off. With a fine mix of fondness, humor and critique, they document the hodgepodge of incendiary politics and interpersonal engagement that defined decades of New York’s Lower East Side. More to the point, they show us that for the Lower East Side at its best the people were the politics. Making your way through Resistance, you might as well be wandering the political landscape of the neighborhood back in the day, stopping to dig the street players, putting up a poster or pushing a copy of the Shadow newspaper, pitching in to defend a squat or collective garden, cutting through the crowd in Tompkins Square Park, sidestepping a junkie or a cop. Resistance swarms with the movement and emotion of the Lower East Side’s people, revealing a politics invented out of the daily battles with police, landlords, developers–hell, sometimes with each other. Reading the book, you feel like a flanuer, lost to the rhythms of the neighborhood streets and learning something new at every turn.

* The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror by Beverly Gage (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

This book explores a key moment in the history of social discontent in New York City: the 1920 bombing of Wall and Broad streets, which killed 40 people and injured hundreds more. Though no one was ever charged with the crime, Paul Avrich and many other historians believe that Mario Buda, a local anarchist of Italian extraction, bore responsibility. (This incident is the source of the title of Mike Davis’s new and interesting book, Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (New York: Verso, 2007).)

Anarchists played a pivotal role in the early phase of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, particularly in Catalonia. They led the resistance to Franco’s forces, their organizations and unions structured social life during the tumult, and they alone had a strong vision of what type of society they wanted to create.

To some militants in the CNT and FAI, it seemed that the time to declare libertarian communism had arrived: they could finally begin building the new world that they had been dreaming of during their nearly seventy years of organizing. They were on the threshold, they believed, of a truly anarchist society.

Others disagreed. The fact that the majority of anti-fascists—not to mention the majority of Spaniards—were hostile to the anarchists meant that they would need to rule against their opponents if they attempted to institute their utopian ideals. They would, in parlance of the day, have to impose an “anarchist dictatorship” if they tried to “go for everything.” Many found this possibility intolerably frightening and contradictory.

But there was another option: they could cooperate with the other anti-fascist forces—some of whom were bitterly anti-anarchist—and try to garner enough support to later realize their maximal program on a more consensual basis. This way they could avoid the obvious dilemmas of an “anarchist dictatorship,” although it would mean pushing their revolutionary aspirations into the (potentially very distant) future.

They decided to collaborate, as is well known, and by doing so set the parameters of their intervention for the remainder of the civil conflict.

The following article offers insight why they made this fateful choice, describes their decisive first encounter with the President of Catalonia, and details the activity of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, the institutional framework for their cooperation with the other anti-fascists tendencies. It is one of few accounts of anarchist activity during the early period of the war written by a direct participant.

The essay (“Los Organismos Revolucionarios: El Comité Central de las Milicias Antifascistas de Cataluña,” in Spanish) was first printed in Solidaridad Obrera and later republished as a chapter in a book titled De julio a Julio: un año de lucha (Barcelona: Tierra y Libertad, 1937). It appears in English here for the first time. (Chuck Morse authored this preface and the translated the piece). Continue Reading »

Chuck Morse

Anarşistler 1905′den 1930′a kadar Çin kültürü ve siyaseti üzerinde geniş bir etki alanına sahiptiler. Dönemin, ortaya çıkmaya başlayan toplumsal radikalizminde merkez bir konuma sahiptiler ve etkinlikleri daha sonraki onyıllarda gelişen devrimci hareketler üzerinde önemli izler bıraktı. Çin anarşist hareketi üzerinde İngilizce literatürde ürün veren pek az tarihçiden biri olan Dirlik, konuyu pek çok yazısında inceledi ve çözümledi. Dirlik buna ek olarak radikal siyaset ve kuramdaki güncel sorunlar üzerinde de pek çok araştırma gerçekleştirdi. Kendisiyle 19 Mayıs 1997′de yaptığım söyleşide kendisine Çin Anarşizmi, radikal bir sosyal kuramcı olarak üniversitede yaşadığı deneyim ve gelecekteki çalışmaları hakkında sorular sordum.

Arif Dirlik: Kısa Bir Biyografi ve Seçilmiş Kitaplar Continue Reading »

[Vertaling: Johny Lenaerts]

De abstractheid en programmatische leegte die zo kenmerkend zijn voor de hedendaagse radicale theorie duiden op een ernstige crisis bij links. Het impliceert het opgeven van het geloof dat het ideaal van een coöperatieve, egalitaire samen- leving kan gerealiseerd worden in de huidige maatschappelijke verhoudingen. Het is alsof – in een periode van verandering en demobilisatie – vele radicalen het recht en de mogelijkheid om de maatschappij te veranderen overgelaten hebben aan de bedrijfs- en staatshoofden.

Janet Biehl’s nieuwe boek, The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism, gaat tegen deze stroming in. Het daagt de politiek geresigneerden uit met een gedetailleerde, historisch gesitueerde anti-statelijke en anti-kapitalistische politiek voor de tegenwoordige tijd.

Ik vroeg Biehl naar haar nieuwe werk in de herfst van 1997 door middel van e-mail. ~ Chuck Morse Continue Reading »

Janet Biehl heeft altijd tegen de stroom in geroeid. Ze is geboren in 1953 in Cincinnati, Ohio, en sloot zich niet aan bij de radicale bewegingen van de zestiger jaren, zoals vele van haar leeftijdsgenoten. Ze beschrijft zichzelf daarentegen in deze periode als ‘rather straight’.

In het begin van de zeventiger jaren, toen velen het culturele radicalisme achter zich lieten, werd Biehl geïnsprireerd door avant-garde performance groepen als het Living Theater en ze behaalde een graad in theaterwetenschappen aan de Wesleyan University.

De wens om actrice te worden bracht haar naar New York City, waar Biehl zich begon te interesseren voor radicale theorie en politiek. Alhoewel Nieuw Links nu tot het verleden behoorde, maakte de verkiezing van Ronald Reagan en haar groeiende ontgoocheling in de kunst dit tot een natuurlijke keuze.

Terwijl ze studeerde voor een Master of Arts aan het CUNY-center kwam ze in contact met Murray Bookchin’s werk en volgde ze een cursus aan het Institute of Social Ecology in 1986.

Bookchin’s werk stond Biehl toe haar radicaal engagement op een nieuwe wijze te formuleren. Korte tijd nadien verhuisde ze naar Burlington, Vermont, om hechter met Bookchin samen te werken, en ze werd zijn metgezel en meest hechte medewerkster. Momenteel leeft en werkt ze met hem, en komt aan de kost als freelance copy editor. In tegenstelling tot vele generatiegenoten – wier levens een lange terugtocht uit hun jeugdig radicalisme betekenen – is Biehl op een consequente manier in de andere richting geëvolueerd.
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Janet Biehl è sempre andata controcorrente. Nata nel 1953 a Cincinnati, nell’Ohio, non ha partecipato ai movimenti degli anni sessanta come molti dei suoi coetanei. Parlando di se stessa in quel periodo si definisce una persona senza grilli in testa.

Invece, all’inizio degli anni settanta, quando molti abbandonavano le posizioni del radicalismo culturale, Biehl fu attirata dai gruppi teatrali d’avanguardia come il Living Theatre e successivamente si laureò in teatro alla Wesleyan University.

Desiderando fare l’attrice, si trasferì a New York, dove cominciò a interessarsi delle teorie radicali e di politica. Anche se la Nuova Sinistra apparteneva oramai al passato, l’elezione di Ronald Reagan e il crescente disincanto nei confronti dell’arte la spinsero a fare la scelta più naturale.

Mentre preparava un master in scienze umane al centro CUNY, venne a conoscenza dell’opera di Murray Bookchin e nel 1986 frequentò l’Institute for Social Ecology.

Il lavoro di Bookchin le servì per dare un senso più completo al suo impegno politico. Poco dopo si trasferì a Burlington, nel Vermont, per lavorare a stretto contatto con Bookchin, diventandone la compagna e la più stretta collaboratrice. Oggi vive e lavora con lui e si mantiene con l’attività di redattrice indipendente. A differenza di molt i della sua generazione, la cui biografia è un continuo arretramento rispetto al radicalismo giovanile, Janet Biehl si è mossa con coerenza nella direzione opposta.

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