negations

The first issue of Resistance Studies has just been made available online. You can find it in PDF format here and read a press release about the project here.

The following is a summary of its content (provided by the publishers):

The article by Karl Palmås discusses the possible rupture in the strategies of activist groups, where the abstract mechanism of the motor is replaced by another abstract mechanism – the computer model. Palmås draws from contemporary debates in philosophy and sociology, as well as from recent societal and economical developments. In his case study of the Adbusters movement, he notices a shift in how the practice of resistance is modelled. Instead of “jamming” or “blocking” capitalism, Adbusters have turned to a computer-like model where capitalism is “hacked” or “re-written” just like software. This, in turn, leads to a new agenda for resistance, an agenda which works by making new arrangements instead of blocking the old ones. Palmås’ text introduces an interesting perspective on resistance and social change, which instructs us to look at the abstract mechanisms and models, both in order to understand resistance as such, but also to understand power.

Tim Gough’s “Resistance: Under what Grace” is another theoretical article on how to understand the concept of resistance. He invokes the paradoxical nature of resistance, and its relationship towards the existing prevailing order. When an order is opposed and changed, and resistance triumphs, it immediately turns into a new order, which in turn may be resisted. Since this paradoxical logic is always at work, we must displace the question of a beginning and an end in terms of our common-sense understanding of the concept of time.

Instead of separating resistance and order, Gough suggests an “awareness which in the context this cunning and simultaneity becomes the act of a being which, in its difference, makes that difference an issue for it; this folded characteristic being the very possibility of resistance”.

Jeffrey Shantz too challenges the grand theories of revolution, and instead discusses how anarchist futures are made right now. He draws his examples from the “anarchist transfer culture”, which is attempting at building sustainable communities within the context of the old society. Instead of purely speculative social analysis, the desirable society must be made, and the only way of doing that is to learn the practices. The capitalist relations between consumers and producers, for example, can be overturned, at least on a small scale, by developing gift-economies. We have seen this trend on a large scale in computer software and copyleft media. However, this model is also applicable in building alternative forms of welfare based on mutual aid and autonomous networks, which could endure the trends of the market or the budget of the State. The concept of resistance, then, turns into something readily available in everyday life, not merely reacting against obvious structures of power, but primarily with a potential positive task of building new arrangements. This is why, Shantz argues, the anarchist futures need to be understood in a present tense, since they are already in the making right now.

Patit Paban Mishra rounds up this issue with the historical case of the Orissa tribals in India, which resisted the 1874 revenue settlement imposed by the colonial rule. The settlement led to poverty and misery or the tribal society. However, in heterogeneous constellations the struggle continued up until 1946, displaying the ever-changing dynamic of oppression and resistance.

For more information, visit this link.

I apologize to regular Negations readers for the lack of new posts recently. I certainly haven’t lost interest in this blog or run out of ideas, but I have been very busy with other things. I have been working hard on my entries for The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest and also doing research for potential, future publications (for instance, I just read Fernando Lopez and Veronica Diz’s Resistencia Liberteria; Warren Belasco’s Appetite for Change: How the Counter-Culture Challenged the Food Industry; and David Graeber’s Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology).

I have also been pondering the implications of a new opportunity that just opened up for me: AK Press, the venerable anarchist publishing and distribution house in Oakland, California, recently decided to pay me to do freelance acquisitions for them. Specifically, I will search out writers with promising projects and help them prepare a book proposal for AK, who will remunerate me with a small sum every time that they agree to publish a work that has passed through my hands.

This is very exciting to me. I spent a lot of time cultivating authors during my years with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and The New Formulation (among other projects) and it is something that I genuinely enjoy doing. I love helping a writer clarify his or her ideas, develop his or her voice, and ultimately make a contribution to the anarchist vision. Doing this has always been deeply satisfying for me.

I am also eager to work closely with AK, a project that I hold in the highest regard. I first got to know AK people in the early 1990s through the anarchist scene, our links deepened as the Institute for Anarchist Studies gathered momentum in the latter part of that decade, and our bonds grew stronger still after they asked me to translate Abel Paz’s Durruti in the Spanish Revolution. I have found AK collective members to be among the most committed, friendly, hard-working, patient, disciplined, and fun militants around. And there is no doubt that their efforts have had an extremely positive impact on the American anarchist movement and the left generally: the excellent books that they publish, and the vast amounts of radical literature that they distribute, has raised the level of discussion about the anarchist alternative immeasurably. I, for one, am deeply grateful for all the contributions that they have made.

At present, I am familiarizing myself with AK’s operations and more immediate publishing goals. This month I will participate in a conference call with Zach, Lorna, and Charles, AK’s publishing team, who will fill me in on key details. The four of us also hope to have a short retreat this March, immediately after the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, during which I will learn even more. I hope to be more or less up to speed by April.

Nonetheless, I don’t believe that it’s too early to put out my first call for manuscripts: please contact me if you have a book that you are working on (or considering working on) that you think might be a good fit for the AK catalog! I would be happy to discuss this with you and hopefully help guide you through the process of submitting a proposal.

Two historians remember and analyze Resistencia Libertaria, an anarchist group active in the 1970s whose members were largely
“disappeared” by the state. Looking at its organizational methods and differences with other groups, they provide
insight into this generally unknown period of activism in Argentina.

By Laura Vales

Translated to English by Chuck Morse

From Página/12 (November 26, 2007)

Resistencia Libertaria was an anarchist group active in the 1970s. It dedicated itself to community and labor organizing and also had a military wing with which it carried out actions designed to finance the organization. Structured as a cadre group, it grew to between one hundred and 130 members, most of whom would be “disappeared” during the dictatorship. Its history is now coming to light thanks to Fernando López Trujillo and Verónica Diz, authors of a new book about this practically unknown topic. López Trujillo, a historian, was a member of Resistencia Libertaria and, in 1997, a co-founder of the Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierda Center for the Documentation and Investigation of Left Culture). Diz is a journalist and history professor. She belongs to the generation that became politicized in the 1990s and her work has focused feminism and anarchism.

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- Why is so little known about this period of anarchist activity?

Fernando Lopez and Veronica Diz, authors of Resistencia Libertaria

Fernando López Trujillo: – One of the reasons is how it ended: the organization was destroyed and the survivors left the country. Terror is also an issue, given that about 80 percent of the group were incarcerated in the state’s clandestine detention centers.

- Where did Resistencia Libertaria come from?

- Many new anarchist groups appeared between 1971 and 1973, products of the turbulence of the era.

- You point out in your book that the new militants did not have strong links with the pre-existing anarchist organizations.

- They didn’t have contact with the old mainstays of the movement. There were three or four centers, which still exist today, representing what remained of movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The new formations were born outside of them and, in general, didn’t have a good relationship with them.

- Why?

- Above all, because most of the old groups survived on the basis of not engaging social life and saw the newcomers as a threat.

Verónica Diz:- There’s a split that repeats itself historically: the view of anarchism as an activist, social tradition, that’s engaged and works with others, versus the “I’m not getting mixed up with anybody” stance, which always ends up hurling accusations at the other side.

- Such as?

Continue Reading »

One could be excused for thinking that Latin American revolutionaries were all authoritarians in the 1960s and 1970s. Leading figures like Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Savlador Allende were deeply committed to a state-centered, top down approach to social change and groups like Uruguay’s Tupamaros or Brazil’s MR-8, which might have seemed more libertarian, were devoted Marxist-Leninists. It would appear that anarchists had no presence during the period.

The truth is that they were quite active and made important contributions to the battles being waged against the military dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. While their efforts are largely not reflected in the historical record, this omission says more about biases among historians, and the fear of disclosure that many survivors have inherited from the era, than anarchists’ real significance to the march of events during those terrifying decades.

This is why the recent publication of Verónica Diz and Fernando López Trujillo’s Resistencia Libertaria is such a good thing. Their (Spanish-language) book is the first comprehensive study of Resistencia Libertaria (RL) in any language and will hopefully help bring anarchists into the picture. RL was a clandestine Argentine anarchist organization founded shortly before the Argentine military seized power in 1976. It was active in the student, labor, and neighborhood movements of the time and also had a military wing with which it defended and financed its activities. The group had between 100 and 130 members at its peak as well as a much larger circle of supporters. The state crushed the organization in 1978 and 80 percent of its militants suffered the dictatorship’s concentration camps and torture chambers.

López and Diz qualify their work as a “first approximation” of RL’s history. Their book covers the origins of the group, some of its activities prior to the dictatorship, and the generalized crisis that erupted after the 1976 military coup. It also has five appendices which contain relevant historical documents as well as related articles.

The authors: Fernando López, a historian, is one of the few surviving RL members and author of Vidas en rojo y negro: Una historia del anarquismo en la década infame (Letra Libre, 2005). Verónica Diz is a journalist and professor of history whose work has focused on the relationship between anarchism and feminism.

English readers interested in learning more about Resistencia Libertaria should check out an interview that I conducted with López in 2002: “Resistencia Libertaria: Anarchist Opposition to the Last Argentine Dictatorship.” Spanish readers might wish to download the prologue and first chapter of López and Diz’s book from the publisher’s website. Those interested in contemporary Argentine anarchism may be interested in López’s “Some Notes on the Argentine Anarchist Movement in the Emergency“; for the movement’s early years, see the growing archive of Latin American anarchist material on this site.

Below is a short video documenting the creation of a mural in honor of disappeared members of Resistencia Libertaria. The mural was a project of Argentina’s Organización Socialista Libertaria and the muralists were known as the “Unidad Muralista Hermanos Tello,” a name evoking the memory of the three Tello brothers, who were leading members of RL and are all disappeared.

An exciting, new project recently came to my attention: The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500 – Present. Edited by Immanuel Ness, this eight-volume, 5,000-page, peer-reviewed work will be published by Blackwell next year and is sure to become the definitive reference work for students of social radicalism.

The publication will be unique not only because of its length but also because of its extensive coverage of the global anarchist movement: it is scheduled to contain a total of 200,000 words (i.e., hundreds and hundreds of pages!) on the topic. It will include entries on the movement in specific countries, biographies of individual anarchists, discussions of key events and themes in the movement’s history, as well as explorations of various tendencies, tactics, institutions, and organizations. Jesse Cohn, author of Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation, is the Associate Editor in charge of anarchist content.

Encyclopedia editors are still looking for writers to pen entries on many of the anarchist-related topics that they intend to treat in the book. I recently agreed to write entries on anarchism in Argentina, Mexico, and Puerto Rico (respectively), but many topics remain unassigned. Below is a list of unclaimed entries as of December 18, 2007. Please contact Jesse Cohn if you are interested in taking on one of them. Continue Reading »

It can be hard for someone interested in anarchist theory to find a good forum for their writing these days. Anarchist publications are often very anti-intellectual and theoretical publications tend to be highly anti-anarchist. Sometimes it seems like there is no middle ground.

I haven’t figured out how to resolve this problem, but I was encouraged by two journals that I read about recently. They are:

The Journal for the Study of Radicalism

The Journal for the Study of Radicalism engages in serious, scholarly exploration of the forms, representations, meanings, and historical influences of radical social movements. With sensitivity and openness to historical and cultural contexts of the term, we loosely define “radical,” as distinguished from “reformers,” to mean groups who seek revolutionary alternatives to hegemonic social and political institutions, and who use violent or non-violent means to resist authority and to bring about change. The journal is eclectic, without dogma or strict political agenda, and ranges broadly across social and political groups worldwide, whether typically defined as “left” or “right.” We expect contributors to come from a wide range of fields and disciplines, including ethnography, sociology, political science, literature, history, philosophy, critical media studies, literary studies, religious studies, psychology, women’s studies, and critical race studies. We especially welcome articles that reconceptualize definitions and theories of radicalism, feature underrepresented radical groups, and introduce new topics and methods of study.

Future issues will include themes like the re-conceptualization of “left” and “right,” radical groups typically ignored in academic scholarship, such as deep ecologists, primitivists, and anarchists, the role of science and technology in radical visions, transnational and regional understandings of radicalism, and the relationships of radical movements to land and environment.

City: Analysis of Urban trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action

City is a journal of provocative, cutting-edge and committed insights into, analysis of, and commentary on the contemporary urban world. We record and analyse cities and their futures, and urbanization from multiple perspectives including: the information and digital revolutions, war and imperialism, neoliberalism and gentrification, environment and sustainability, resistance and social movements, regeneration, resurgence and revanchism, race, class and gender, multi-culturalism and post-colonialism. City combines an analysis of trends, culture, policy and action, and features both historical and theoretical work alongside detailed case studies, policy commentary and open debate.

Besides regular papers and special features, City sections include: ‘Alternatives’ showcasing radical, ‘Grassroots’ approaches; ‘Voices’ featuring literary and ethnographic interpretations; ‘Forum’ presenting commentary on contemporary policy; ‘Prospects and Retrospects’ as well as reviews and Debates.

City is multi-, trans-disciplinary and holistic, drawing on work from academics in geography, the social sciences, political economy, philosophy, cultural studies, and the humanities, as well as from policy makers, the multitude of actors–including practitioners, activists, organizers, writers, artists, ecologists, planners, and architects–who play key roles in sustaining and constructing cities and urban futures.

Among the approximately two dozen individuals involved in the magazine, I note that Paul Chatterton is a “Senior Deputy Editor” and in charge of the “Alternatives” section. He does valuable work on contemporary, direct action movements and is rumored to be seeking anarchist contributors to the publication. I also see that Manuel Castells is an Associate Editor.

In the mid-1960s, a loose band of artists, hippies, and anarchists burst onto the political stage in the Netherlands. Known as the Provos (as in to provoke), they led a mini-rebellion against the established order that rattled elites and left behind an inspired legacy of anti-authoritarian activism.

Richard Kempton documents this legacy in his recently released, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt, the first book-length history of the group in English. He traces the emergence, highpoints, and decline of the Provos, in addition to providing tangential but interesting appendices on topics such as the relationship between the Provos and the Situationists, the history of anarchism in Amsterdam, and others. He does a good job at placing the group in the context of the radical currents from which it emerged and at relating the Provos’ trajectory to some of the political peculiarities of the Netherlands. While a deeper examination of the group’s ideas and internal organization would have enriched the book, I found it to be thoughtful, informative, and fun to read. (For a quick introduction to the Provos, you may wish to check out this article as well as this one.)

Kempton illustrates the Provos’ extraordinary ability to expose the contradictions of the liberal democratic society in which they lived while making authorities look absurd in the process. Of their many feats that he records, their “White Bicycle Plan” is surely the most famous. It began as a response to the traffic jams and air pollution plaguing Amsterdam: instead of passively accepting the automobile’s toxic domination of urban life, the Provos pressed the municipal government to give out vast numbers of unlockable, white bikes throughout the city. These cycles–easily identifiable due to their color–would be available to any passerby who felt like riding one. He or she could take it to his or her destination but, once there, would be obliged to leave it for other citizens. This ingenious plan was clearly a sensible, low-cost, and environmentally friendly way to meet at least some of Amsterdam’s transportation needs.

The Provos distributed fifty bikes at their own expense to jump start the program but immediately ran into problems with the police, who objected to their attempt to socialize the means of transportation. In fact, the cops impounded the bikes furnished by the Provos on the pretext that doling out unlocked bicycles “encouraged theft.” In other words, they took bicycles to prevent them from being taken!

The Provos were naturally delighted to find the police offering Amsterdamers such a concrete lesson in the bankruptcy of the criminal justice system: thanks to their unintentional complicity in the Provos’ scheme, the city became a classroom in which attentive residents could learn a lesson normally buried in obscure anarchist pamphlets and disquisitions: the cops’ primary objective is not to serve the people but rather to protect the status quo, no matter how noxious and irrational it might be.

The “White Bicycle Plan” was one among multiple Provo “plans,” all designed to push people toward cooperative, ecological solutions while undermining the legitimacy of the established order. They outlined many of these in a brochure entitled What the Provos Want , which they released in 1966, shortly before successfully competing for a seat on Amsterdam’s City Council (”Vote Provo for a Laugh!” was one of their campaign slogans). Kempton summarizes key points:

• The White Bicycle Plan: In an effort to address traffic congestion in the center of the city, white bicycles would become the common property of all the people of Amsterdam. Automobiles would be excluded from the center of the city.

• The White Chimney Plan: A mandate that chimneys have special built-in incinerators to combat air pollution; with fines for infractions.

• The White Chicken Plan: Amsterdam’s police force should be recast as unarmed friendly social workers with candy and band-aids in their pockets.

• The White Dwelling Plan: In an effort to ease the city’s housing shortage the city government would publish a weekly list of empty buildings so people without homes could squat them.

• The White Wives Plan: Developed by Irene Donner-Van der Wetering, this plan called for sex education for young people. Among other things it mandated information on contraception, medical clinics for young girls, and teaching family planning.

• The White Schools Plan: Students would have a say in expanding opportunities for democratically organized study and discussion.

• The White City Plan: Amsterdam would become the first urban area committed to implementing Constant Nieuwenhuis’s New Babylon.(1)

After reading these “plans,” I found myself surprised to realize that today, approximately forty years later, many of their demands (”plans”) have become non-controversial elements of mainstream social policy. For example, numerous cities have experimented with free bicycle programs (such as Portland, Madison, and Barcelona), and bike paths and restrictions on vehicular traffic are common in American cities. Likewise, controls on air pollution are pervasive; young people often receive some degree of sex education; and students frequently play a role in setting academic policy at the college and sometimes high school level. Obviously, aspects of their program remain unrealized–I know of no city that publishes lists of squatable buildings, for instance–but, nonetheless, much of the Provo platform has lost its controversial, provocative quality.

This raises a difficult question about the meaning of the Provos’ legacy. What if the Provos (and corresponding groups like the Yippies in the United States) ultimately need to be understood less as anarchist instigators than as the avant-garde of a more lenient, culturally flexible, and ecologically friendly capitalism? While it’s true that they set stodgy authorities into a frenzy four decades ago, it may be that those authorities were simply anachronistic obstacles and that the Provos actually helped modernize capitalism by undermining their legitimacy.

Issues such as these are beyond the scope of Kempton’s book and, for that matter, most works on the history of anarchism. However, I believe that they are worth pursuing and I hope that the publication of this long overdue book on the Provos indicates that a more serious, complicated engagement with our past is on the horizon.

1. Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007), 81.

Today, white bicycles are used to designate the site of a fatal collision between an automobile and a cyclist. For example, the one in the photo to the right identified the place where a hit-and-run driver mowed down Jen Shao, a 65 year-old grandmother, in New York City’s financial district in 2005. Memorials such as these are sadly a common sight in American cities, if not elsewhere. Their colorlessness suggests the grief one feels when the world is drained of a loved one’s flesh and blood and, by disrupting the conventional iconography of the city, they register a protest against the irrationality of our transportation practices. They express outrage, sadness, and loss.

However, the white bike had a very different meaning in the 1960s and 1970s, thanks specifically to the Provos and their anarchist adventurism. At that time, it was a counter-cultural icon that conveyed adventure, defiance, and fun. One can see this in the following three music videos, which also document a curious example of anarchist influence on popular culture.

The psychedelic rock group Tomorrow recorded the following song in 1968 under the inspiration of the Provos:

An international mailing list has been setup recently for Asian anarchists and those interested in the practice of anarchism in Asia. People have been sending in introductions and members hail from all over: Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, etc. Follow this link to subscribe: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/a_a_n

Those interested in this topic may wish to check out two resources on this site: Libero International & Resources on Asian Anarchism and my “Dimensions of Chinese Anarchism: An Interview with Arif Dirlik”.

Anarchist film buffs have a lot to be happy about these days: Sacco and Vanzetti and Salvador just came out; Anarchism Revisited: Voices and Visions and Growing up with Paul Goodman should be released soon; and the good people at ChristieBooks have been hard at work expanding their remarkable online archive of films.

And now we can add a new film to the catalogue: Lucio, directed by Aitor Arregi and José Mari Goenaga. This Spanish language documentary tells the dramatic story of Lucio Urtubia, a sort of anarchist Robin Hood whose militancy brought him into contact with some of the most significant events of our era. Although the film does not have subtitles, English readers can check out its synopsis (which I have translated and copied below) and watch its trailer (which has subtitles and is also below).

SYNOPSIS: LUCIO

There have been–and are–many anarchists. Quite a few of them have had to commit robberies or manufacture contraband for the cause. A much smaller number have talked strategy with Che or helped Eldridge Cleaver (the leader of the Black Panthers). But there is only one who, in addition to all of the above, put the world’s most powerful bank on the ropes by producing massive amounts of counterfeit Traveler’s Cheques while also not missing a single day at his bricklayer’s job. His name is Lucio Urtubia.

Lucio presently lives in retirement in Paris. During his life, he witnessed–and often participated actively in–some of the most important events of the second half of the 20th century. He experienced the tumult of May ‘68 from within, actively supported the Castro regime during its initial stages, and engaged in a whole range of anti-Franco endeavors. However, his biggest “job” took place in the latter part of the 1970s, a time when he was known in the press as “the good bandit” or “the Basque Zorro.” He defrauded the First National Bank (now Citibank) of 3,000 million pesetas in order to finance causes that he supported. Amazingly, his “career” only cost him a few months in prison.

The film’s official site, which contains photographs and other information, is here.