negations

All radicals go through ups and downs. It is exhilarating when you are part of a movement that is changing the world. You are in the news and influencing debates on issues that you care about; your relationships with friends (and enemies) become more impassioned; and unanticipated political and personal opportunities open up before you. All the years spent on the margins of political life seem to be vindicated. Suddenly everything makes sense.

But then there are the downs. Whether it is because of internal problems, an inability to respond to changes in the political landscape, or because you actually accomplished many of your aims, there is a sharp deceleration in activity. Attendance at your meetings drops, reporters stop calling, and your group turns inward. You are back on the fringes.

Although we “know” that our political fortunes will vacillate, dealing with a downward shift in movement activity is always tough. It is common to feel depressed, estranged from friends, and without a sense of purpose. In fact, many people drop out of politics altogether after a particularly sharp decline.

In my case, I struggled to remain focused after the disintegration of the environmental and anti-globalization movements (in the early 1990s and early 2000s, respectively). I got through it and remain committed, but it was a challenge.

During the process, I tried to reflect on what was happening and remain attentive to strategies that helped me cope. Below I’ve compiled a list of the five that I found most useful.
Continue Reading »

The good people at ChristieBooks continue to expand their magnificent online library of anarchist and otherwise revolutionary films. Important works that were once buried in distant archives or locked in dusty file cabinets are now available to anyone with an internet connection. Follow this link to see the full list.

Among other gems, there is an extensive collection of rare films about anarchist activity during the Spanish Civil War, a Russian language biopic on Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno (The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno), an interview with Gillo Pontecorvo on making The Battle of Algiers, and many more. A significant number of the films are in Spanish, although many are in English and many have subtitles.

ChristieBooks is an anarchist multimedia publisher sustained through the sale of its publications and posters and financial support from sympathetic donors. Please consider helping them continue and develop their project by either purchasing some of their books or posters or by donating to their sustaining fund. I just sent them $25 through Paypal (use this email address: christie@btclick.com) but you can also use regular mail (ChristieBooks, PO Box 35, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 2UX, United Kingdom).

They are presently uploading two or three films per week and, with our help, they will continue keep adding to that figure and enriching this wonderful resource for anarchist and libertarian video footage.

Here’s one of the films available on their site: The Take, by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis:

Last night, there was a very thoughtful discussion of one of New York’s most challenging, radical sons: Paul Goodman. The event was called “The Habits of Freedom: Legacies of Paul Goodman.” It was sponsored by the Libertarian Book Club and held at the new Living Theatre location.

Below are three photos from the evening:

Taylor Stoehr, author and Goodman’s literary executor, laying it all out. Continue Reading »

21st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalization and Environmentalism
by Giorel Curran (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 256 pages)

From the Publisher:

Anarchism has seldom had good press, and anarchists have always faced resistance to their political philosophy. Despite this, 21st Century Dissent contends that anarchism has considerably influenced the modern political landscape. Giorel Curran explores the contemporary face of anarchism as expressed via environmental protests and the anti-globalization movement. She contends that anti-capitalist protest has propelled an invigorated – but reconceptualized – anarchism into the heart of 21st century dissent.

Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: THEORIZING CONTEMPORARY ANARCHISM
Anarchism Old and New
Movements of Anti-Globalization
Technologies of Dissent
Ecology and Anarchy
PART TWO: PRACTISING CONTEMPORARY ANARCHISM
The Politics of Zapatismo
Greening Anarchy: Social Ecology
Reclaim the Streets
Earth First!
Conclusion: Towards 21st Century Dissent

Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation: Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Politics by Jesse S. Cohn (Susquehanna University Press, 2007, 328 pages)

The publisher writes:

Contemporary theorists from Gilles Deleuze to Rochard Rorty have raised a radical question: on what grounds can we claim that any “representation”- whether scientific, aesthetic, or political – adequately stands for its objects, authorizing some of us to speak for others? While some hail this contestation as liberatory, others object that it leaves us bereft of viable practical alternatives, issuing in a general “crisis of representation.”

The book responds to the challenge. Rather than seeking to defend a discredited “representationalism” against these critiques, it seeks a more robust critical framework in a forgotten tradition which has resurfaced in today’s global justice movement: anarchism. Drawing on a wealth of heretofore overlooked material (including a number of seminal texts never before translated into English), Cohn argues that anarchism can help us to rethink the foundations of hermeneutic understanding, aesthetic creation, and political economy itself.

Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation is intended to provide readers of literary criticism, art history, political philosophy, and the social sciences with a fresh perspective from which to revisit dead-end theoretical debates over concepts such as “agency,” “essentialism,” and “realism”-and, at the same time, to offer a new take on anarchism itself, challenging conventional readings of the tradition. The anarchism that emerges from this reinterpretation is neither a musty rationalism nor a millenarian irrationalism, but a living body of thought that points beyond the sterile antimonies of post-modern and Marxist theory.