Anarchist history is often remembered by the dates of revolutionary deeds, but between these mome... more Anarchist history is often remembered by the dates of revolutionary deeds, but between these moments of revolt, anarchists found themselves struggling to hang on to their ideals and identities amid an everyday life defined by Capital and the State. In response to this tension, they created a richly-textured “resistance culture” – anarchist presses and social spaces, outrageous pageants and didactic films, satirical songs and utopian iconographies – that would enable them to prefigure a post-revolutionary world in the present, to experience a certain escape from domination even while enmeshed in it. This alternative symbolic world, often constructed by ordinary men and women on the move, seeking work or escaping repression, assumed a truly globalized character. Tracing the restless migration of anarchist resistance culture from Barcelona to Buenos Aires and from Shanghai to San Francisco, Underground Passages reconstructs its evolution, examines its challenges, and illuminates its enduring strengths.
<jats:p>Dora Marsden significantly influenced the aesthetics of Anglo-American Modernism la... more <jats:p>Dora Marsden significantly influenced the aesthetics of Anglo-American Modernism largely through her creation of a series of journals.</jats:p>
“Anarchism” and “religion” are categories of belonging that serve as tools for identification – b... more “Anarchism” and “religion” are categories of belonging that serve as tools for identification – both of oneself and of others. Yiddish-speaking anarchism is overwhelmingly remembered as an antireligious movement, a characterization drawn from its early experiences in the immigrant communities of the U.S. (circa 1880–1919). However, this obscures the presence of competing definitions of both religion and anarchism within the Jewish anarchist milieu and fails to take into account the social character of processes of identification unfolding over time. A generation after its circulation peaked, in a context of declining Jewish anarchist “groupness” (1937–1945), the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime hosted debates over religion which reveal a far broader spectrum of interpretations than were apparent in the earlier period. Examining these debates demonstrates the subversive fluidity more than the rigidly bounded character of anarchist and religious identities alike, as an emergent consensus among Jewish anarchists names domination rather than religion per se as the common enemy.
... Anderson. Reading their work in relation to technology and the processes ofcommodification, N... more ... Anderson. Reading their work in relation to technology and the processes ofcommodification, Noland traces a trajectory from the avant-garde poetry of Arthur Rimbaud through to the experimental practices of Smith and Anderson. ...
Is anarchism itself a form of what Jerome J. McGann called “romantic ideology,” privileging passi... more Is anarchism itself a form of what Jerome J. McGann called “romantic ideology,” privileging passion over reason, the affective over the cognitive? An answer is more difficult to give than might be readily apparent. On the one hand, anarchists have defined their political identity against romanticism as the literature of “tender, delicate, distinguished souls, aspiring to heaven, and living on earth as if in spite of themselves (Bakunin).” However, the anarchist tradition does betray a certain romantic genealogy, and anarchists such as Louise Michel, Gustav Landauer, and Rudolf Rocker have often evinced fascination with what Proudhon lambasted as a “literature of decadence.” Ultimately, rather than rendering a definitive political judgment on romanticism, anarchists come to enlist elements of its poetry and philosophy to organize affects in response to changing historical conditions.
‘We need form, not formlessness!’ In Gustav Landauer’s plaintive cry echoes a century-old controv... more ‘We need form, not formlessness!’ In Gustav Landauer’s plaintive cry echoes a century-old controversy among the most singular minds of an entire generation of anarchists — Otto Gross, Erich Mühsam, Margarethe Hardegger — over sexuality and the ‘new science’ of psychoanalysis. At stake in the dispute are questions that continue to haunt anarchist thought and practice in the 21st century: What ‘forms’ can and ought libertarian sexual culture take? What constitutes a libertarian politics of marriage and the family? Does psychoanalysis constitute a complement to the anarchist tradition, a crucial supplement to its logic, or a perilous substitute?
Contemporary American women fiction writers: an A-to- …, Jan 1, 2002
JANE SMILEY (1949-) Jesse Cohn BIOGRAPHY Jane Smiley was born on September 26, 1949, in Los Angel... more JANE SMILEY (1949-) Jesse Cohn BIOGRAPHY Jane Smiley was born on September 26, 1949, in Los Angeles, California, to Frances Smiley, a journalist, and James LaVerne Smiley, a World War II veteran working as an engineer. After the breakup of her parents&#x27; ...
While definitions of post-soul, at least those posited by those who have staked their own generat... more While definitions of post-soul, at least those posited by those who have staked their own generational sense of identity on it, have tended to suspend such judgments of value, to affect a kind of diffidence over whether essences or truths exist, whether African-Americans can or should have any all-encompassing collective project, or what such a project could possibly be founded upon, it seems to me that Whitehead’s writings betray a sense of anxiety over the source of cultural value, of guilty indebtedness to the past.
For all of its narrative complexity, Ben Katchor's The Jew of New York is tightly structured arou... more For all of its narrative complexity, Ben Katchor's The Jew of New York is tightly structured around a central motif: "mimetic catastrophe," or the production of likenesses (imitations, resemblances, mimicries, and simulacra) in close and consistent association with disaster (exiles, degradations, murders, and conflagrations). This essay probes the possible significances of this motif in light of a number of important theories of mimesis, from ancient Jewish iconoclasm, for which representation blasphemes against a primary reality, to the varieties of postmodernism for which representation itself is the primary reality.
Anarchist history is often remembered by the dates of revolutionary deeds, but between these mome... more Anarchist history is often remembered by the dates of revolutionary deeds, but between these moments of revolt, anarchists found themselves struggling to hang on to their ideals and identities amid an everyday life defined by Capital and the State. In response to this tension, they created a richly-textured “resistance culture” – anarchist presses and social spaces, outrageous pageants and didactic films, satirical songs and utopian iconographies – that would enable them to prefigure a post-revolutionary world in the present, to experience a certain escape from domination even while enmeshed in it. This alternative symbolic world, often constructed by ordinary men and women on the move, seeking work or escaping repression, assumed a truly globalized character. Tracing the restless migration of anarchist resistance culture from Barcelona to Buenos Aires and from Shanghai to San Francisco, Underground Passages reconstructs its evolution, examines its challenges, and illuminates its enduring strengths.
<jats:p>Dora Marsden significantly influenced the aesthetics of Anglo-American Modernism la... more <jats:p>Dora Marsden significantly influenced the aesthetics of Anglo-American Modernism largely through her creation of a series of journals.</jats:p>
“Anarchism” and “religion” are categories of belonging that serve as tools for identification – b... more “Anarchism” and “religion” are categories of belonging that serve as tools for identification – both of oneself and of others. Yiddish-speaking anarchism is overwhelmingly remembered as an antireligious movement, a characterization drawn from its early experiences in the immigrant communities of the U.S. (circa 1880–1919). However, this obscures the presence of competing definitions of both religion and anarchism within the Jewish anarchist milieu and fails to take into account the social character of processes of identification unfolding over time. A generation after its circulation peaked, in a context of declining Jewish anarchist “groupness” (1937–1945), the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime hosted debates over religion which reveal a far broader spectrum of interpretations than were apparent in the earlier period. Examining these debates demonstrates the subversive fluidity more than the rigidly bounded character of anarchist and religious identities alike, as an emergent consensus among Jewish anarchists names domination rather than religion per se as the common enemy.
... Anderson. Reading their work in relation to technology and the processes ofcommodification, N... more ... Anderson. Reading their work in relation to technology and the processes ofcommodification, Noland traces a trajectory from the avant-garde poetry of Arthur Rimbaud through to the experimental practices of Smith and Anderson. ...
Is anarchism itself a form of what Jerome J. McGann called “romantic ideology,” privileging passi... more Is anarchism itself a form of what Jerome J. McGann called “romantic ideology,” privileging passion over reason, the affective over the cognitive? An answer is more difficult to give than might be readily apparent. On the one hand, anarchists have defined their political identity against romanticism as the literature of “tender, delicate, distinguished souls, aspiring to heaven, and living on earth as if in spite of themselves (Bakunin).” However, the anarchist tradition does betray a certain romantic genealogy, and anarchists such as Louise Michel, Gustav Landauer, and Rudolf Rocker have often evinced fascination with what Proudhon lambasted as a “literature of decadence.” Ultimately, rather than rendering a definitive political judgment on romanticism, anarchists come to enlist elements of its poetry and philosophy to organize affects in response to changing historical conditions.
‘We need form, not formlessness!’ In Gustav Landauer’s plaintive cry echoes a century-old controv... more ‘We need form, not formlessness!’ In Gustav Landauer’s plaintive cry echoes a century-old controversy among the most singular minds of an entire generation of anarchists — Otto Gross, Erich Mühsam, Margarethe Hardegger — over sexuality and the ‘new science’ of psychoanalysis. At stake in the dispute are questions that continue to haunt anarchist thought and practice in the 21st century: What ‘forms’ can and ought libertarian sexual culture take? What constitutes a libertarian politics of marriage and the family? Does psychoanalysis constitute a complement to the anarchist tradition, a crucial supplement to its logic, or a perilous substitute?
Contemporary American women fiction writers: an A-to- …, Jan 1, 2002
JANE SMILEY (1949-) Jesse Cohn BIOGRAPHY Jane Smiley was born on September 26, 1949, in Los Angel... more JANE SMILEY (1949-) Jesse Cohn BIOGRAPHY Jane Smiley was born on September 26, 1949, in Los Angeles, California, to Frances Smiley, a journalist, and James LaVerne Smiley, a World War II veteran working as an engineer. After the breakup of her parents&#x27; ...
While definitions of post-soul, at least those posited by those who have staked their own generat... more While definitions of post-soul, at least those posited by those who have staked their own generational sense of identity on it, have tended to suspend such judgments of value, to affect a kind of diffidence over whether essences or truths exist, whether African-Americans can or should have any all-encompassing collective project, or what such a project could possibly be founded upon, it seems to me that Whitehead’s writings betray a sense of anxiety over the source of cultural value, of guilty indebtedness to the past.
For all of its narrative complexity, Ben Katchor's The Jew of New York is tightly structured arou... more For all of its narrative complexity, Ben Katchor's The Jew of New York is tightly structured around a central motif: "mimetic catastrophe," or the production of likenesses (imitations, resemblances, mimicries, and simulacra) in close and consistent association with disaster (exiles, degradations, murders, and conflagrations). This essay probes the possible significances of this motif in light of a number of important theories of mimesis, from ancient Jewish iconoclasm, for which representation blasphemes against a primary reality, to the varieties of postmodernism for which representation itself is the primary reality.
Over the course of its history, the anarchist movement has produced a form of literary theory – a... more Over the course of its history, the anarchist movement has produced a form of literary theory – a critical aesthetics and epistemology grounded in its emancipatory ethics. In sketching an outline of this body of thought, this essay attempts to call attention to several aspects which offer a promising alternative to the sterility of the modes of theory dominant within the academy.
In the dark year of 1939, having fought for the anarchist CNT-FAI in Spain, Félix Martí Ibáñez (1... more In the dark year of 1939, having fought for the anarchist CNT-FAI in Spain, Félix Martí Ibáñez (1911-1972) – physician, sexologist, novelist – went into exile in the United States. What might have become a classic case of the Fitzgeraldian rule that there are No Second Acts In American Life in fact presents an astonishing case of self-reinvention: in the Forties and Fifties, Martí Ibáñez the exile emerges as a prolific, entrepreneurial writer-salesman, a popularizer of science and impresario of medicine with a literary sideline. But this glamorous public persona concealed two realities: his continuing engagement with the Spanish anarchist cause (speaking against the Franco dictatorship and writing for España Libre and Solidaridad Obrera), and his growing involvement in pay-to-play promotions for the pharmaceutical industry – an increasingly shady business that would result in his being summoned before a Congressional inquest in 1960. How to understand the coexistence of these disparate and conflicting identities – the scientist and man of letters, the loyal militant in exile, and the self-interested huckster? Which was the true, the underlying reality, and which a disguise? Can all of them have been “true”? Or might all have been “false”? How might these questions of identity have been complicated by a shifting political landscape, as the U.S., a potential ally in the anti-fascist cause, came to embrace Franco as an ally against Communism?
Francis Shor captures something essential about the way that anarchist iconography frequently wor... more Francis Shor captures something essential about the way that anarchist iconography frequently works: in posters, poetry, and video posts, we have tended to emphasize figures of the “virile body,” linking ideas of energy and resistance to masculinity and able-bodied embodiment. This has had a kind of utility — and in some ways, the notion of “virility” might have gone beyond masculinity per se — but it also imposes limitations, and to some extent, those limitations still dog our resistance culture. I’d like to look at the ways that gender and disability questions intersect in the body-images through which anarchists imagine their own capacity for transformation, speculating about some ways in which we might transform those images and our embodied selves.
The American comics creator Chris Ware (1967-) and the less well-known Scottish artist Chad McCai... more The American comics creator Chris Ware (1967-) and the less well-known Scottish artist Chad McCail (1961-) are rarely subjected to comparison. However, they not only work with a strikingly similar stylistic vocabulary, blending realistic attention to the details of appearance with a high degree of abstraction (clear line, flat color), they both produce a kind of visual narrative combining elements of comics’ “linear” grammar – panels designed to be read in a sequence – with the non-linear organization of the diagram. In declining to subject the reading paths taken by the viewer to a predetermined route or a “hierarchy of salience,” diagrams are perhaps the most anarchic form of mise en page (Kress and Van Leeuwen). Yet while the political commitments of McCail’s work are highly visible, it would be difficult to characterize Ware as any kind of anarchist. How do two artists employ such similar narrative strategies to such different political effects? I want to argue that some answers are to be found through an examination of the ways in which Ware and McCail narrate the relationships between sex and temporality.
Recent studies of the origins of the modernist avant-gardes trace key elements of their aesthetic... more Recent studies of the origins of the modernist avant-gardes trace key elements of their aesthetics – their elision of communication, their hermetic, fragmentary character – to anarchist influences. Where communism proposed rigorous representational codes (propaganda art, socialist realism), anarchist aesthetics declared war on representation. However, as critics such as Joan Ramon Resina and Lily Litvak have pointed out, this reading seems to ignore the calls of anarchists, beginning with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, for a “social art” which would “represent labor, working life, and the proletarian struggle.”
Michael Seidman argues that this is exactly what the anarchists produced in Spain: a profusion of “productivist” images of happy, block-shouldered workers marching in unison toward a radiant future. In short, for Seidman, the aesthetics of the CNT-FAI merely mirrored those of their Stalinist rivals. Indeed, he traces this “workplace utopianism” to Proudhon’s writings.
Are these oppressive geometries really the final horizon of Spanish anarchist graphics, literature, and film? Can they really be taken as the practice of Proudhon’s theory, as enunciated in his posthumous work, El principio del arte y su destino social – a text which was indeed widely disseminated and discussed among Spanish anarchists? How might Spanish anarchist theorists and practicioners of art, from the early propagandist Teobaldo Nieva to cenetista filmmaker Mateo Santos, have modified, adapted, distorted, and/or misread Proudhon’s aesthetics? What really distinguishes Spanish anarchist aesthetics from those of avant-garde modernism, on the one hand, and socialist realism on the other? These are some of the questions this presentation will attempt to address.
A Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism from Proudhon to Deleuze
Daniel Colson
Translated by ... more A Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism from Proudhon to Deleuze Daniel Colson Translated by Jesse Cohn
A provocative exploration of hidden affinities and genealogies in anarchist thought
Is the thought of Gilles Deleuze secretly linked to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s declaration: “I am an anarchist”? Has anarchism, for more than a century and a half, been secretly Deleuzian? In the guise of a playfully unorthodox lexicon, sociologist Daniel Colson presents an exploration of hidden affinities between the great philosophical heresies and “a thought too scandalous to take its place in the official edifice of philosophy,” with profound implications for the way we understand social movements.
“In a creative and yet precise way, Daniel Colson brings together two lines of thought – philosophy from Spinoza to Leibniz – and anarchism from Proudhon to the present day. At their intersection he discovers an affirmative and expressive anarchism that rejects all forms of resentment and negativity. This is anarchism as joy and empowerment rather than sadness and accusation.” – Todd May, author of The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism
“Colson’s Lexicon is an inspiring resource for conceptualizing anarchism: it offers new, exciting paths for exploring anarchism with French thought and French thought with anarchism.” – Iwona Janicka, author of Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism
“This is a fantastic (and anarchist) way to arrange a book. Reading these various entries in any order offers a line of thinking that connects disparate thinkers ranging from Proudhon to Simondon to Nietzsche to Deleuze within the term anarchism. This is done not to bind these thinkers with the kinds of straightjackets that names – even the name anarchism – often perform but rather to associate, interconnect and arrange these thinkers in a way that speaks across several centuries, practices and ways of thinking. What emerges is a radical challenge to the insistence on dialectic resolution, to occult left teleologies, and to the certainty that past anarchists have nothing to say to contemporary anarchists (and visa versa). In his claim that anarchism first of all is a “rejection of first principles,” Colson shows how, far from being disabling and rendering the world incoherent, this understanding recognizes the affirmative nature of an anarchism that has not ceased to function amidst between and even through myriad forms of capitalist and archist oppression.” – James Martel, author of The Misinterpellated Subject
Bio: Daniel Colson is a professor of sociology at the Université de St.-Étienne in Lyon. He is the author of Trois Essais de Philosophie Anarchiste: Islam, Histoire, Monadologie (2004) as well as several studies of French labor history.
Jesse Cohn is an associate professor of English at Purdue University Northwest. He is the author of Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation: Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Politics (2006) and Underground Passages: Anarchist Resistance Culture, 1848–2011 (2014).
In Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies (2013.2): 121-137. Originally published as “Critiqu... more In Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies (2013.2): 121-137. Originally published as “Critique de l’ontologie étatique et devenir-anarchie,” in Jean-Christoph Angaut, Daniel Colson, Mimmo Pucciarelli (s.d.), Philosophie de l’anarchie (Lyon: Atelier Création Libertaire, 2012).
Explores the relationship between modern (Western, liberal, individualist) conceptions of subject... more Explores the relationship between modern (Western, liberal, individualist) conceptions of subjectivity and those emerging from three distinct anarchist traditions: individualist anarchism, libertarian communism, and anarcho-syndicalism.
Your browser does not appear to support JavaScript, or JavaScript is currently disabled. This pag... more Your browser does not appear to support JavaScript, or JavaScript is currently disabled. This page uses JavaScript for certain types of content, so we strongly recommend that you enable JavaScript for browsing this site. ... From Case, planche, récit: lire la bande dessinée ...
ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, Jan 1, 2007
For instance, we could consider Peeters&amp;#x27;s formalist contrast between the &amp;qu... more For instance, we could consider Peeters&amp;#x27;s formalist contrast between the &amp;quot;narrative&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;composition&amp;quot; in comics, or between what he calls (following Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle) the &amp;quot;linear&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;tabular&amp;quot; aspects of the comics page. This seemingly commonsensical ...
Excerpted from Essai sur la révolution sexuelle après Reich et Kinsey (Paris: Belfond, 1963). A r... more Excerpted from Essai sur la révolution sexuelle après Reich et Kinsey (Paris: Belfond, 1963). A reinterpretation of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's well-known misogyny as a symptom of repressed homosexual desires. Daniel Guérin (1904-1988), was also author of Homosexualité et révolution (1953) and the widely read Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (1965/1970).
Philosophical considerations, from an anarchist perspective, on the nature of power, the symbolic... more Philosophical considerations, from an anarchist perspective, on the nature of power, the symbolic, and the social. Originally presented in Barcelona, 1993.
Stowasser, Horst. “El ‘proyecto A.’” In Murray Bookchin, Domenico Liguri, and Horst Stowasser, L... more Stowasser, Horst. “El ‘proyecto A.’” In Murray Bookchin, Domenico Liguri, and Horst Stowasser, La utopía es posible: experiencias posibles (Buenos Aires: Tupac Ediciones, 2004), 11-65. Translated by Jesse Cohn.
From a lecture given on May 4, 1986 in Room 218 of the Melbourne College of Advanced Education on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the anarchist movement in Australia, slightly modified.
For discussion of B. Traven's "The Kidnapped Saint," "Conversion of Some Indians," "A New God Was... more For discussion of B. Traven's "The Kidnapped Saint," "Conversion of Some Indians," "A New God Was Born," etc.
An introduction to the reading of several stories by Ret Marut/B. Traven, including "The Actor an... more An introduction to the reading of several stories by Ret Marut/B. Traven, including "The Actor and the King," "My Visit to the Writer Pguwlkschrj Rnfajbzxlquy," "A Writer of Serpentine Shrewdness," "Assembly Line," "The Kidnapped Saint," "Conversion of Some Indians," "A New God Was Born," and "The Night Visitor."
Draft notes for presentation at roundtable, "Anarchist Aesthetics Today," Association for the Stu... more Draft notes for presentation at roundtable, "Anarchist Aesthetics Today," Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present/ASAP 9, Oakland, Ca., Oct. 28, 2017
Draft translation of an essay by the sociologist Daniel Colson (Université de Saint-Étienne, Lyon... more Draft translation of an essay by the sociologist Daniel Colson (Université de Saint-Étienne, Lyon) on the radical events of 2011.
Original translation of Edouard Jourdain, “Justice et utopie: Lire ensemble Ricœur et Proudhon,” ... more Original translation of Edouard Jourdain, “Justice et utopie: Lire ensemble Ricœur et Proudhon,” published in Philosophy Today 58.4 (2014): 527-544. Abstract: Ricoeur ends his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia by analyzing the works of Saint-Simon and Fourier through the lens of the idea of utopia. In taking up these thinkers whom Engels labeled "utopian" socialists, we note that Ricoeur did not deal equally with the work of another important socialist: Proudhon. My hypothesis is that it is possible to read Proudhon using Ricoeur in that their approaches are similar on a number of points. Fruitful connections can be drawn between the dialectic of the real and ideal developed by Proudhon and Ricoeur's dialectic of ideology and utopia. Both thinkers deal with justice in the form of a certain tension: a tension that for Ricoeur (beyond the deontology and teleology found to some extent in the dialectic of ideology and utopia) requires practical wisdom, and a tension that for Proudhon (beyond the ideal and the real) requires an equilibrium of social and political forces.
An original translation of Philippe Corcuff's essay, “La ‘synthèse’ divine des progressistes: Qua... more An original translation of Philippe Corcuff's essay, “La ‘synthèse’ divine des progressistes: Quand Proudhon, Merleau-Ponty et Lévinas font leur cinéma contre Hegel,” published in La Sœur de l’Ange 4 (2006): 112-120. Three critiques of Hegelian notions of progress (particularly "totality" and "synthesis") are considered in connection with Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia" (2002).
A controversy surrounding the use of the term " race " has emerged in anarchist circles in France... more A controversy surrounding the use of the term " race " has emerged in anarchist circles in France. Those who use such a notion are called " racialist " and likened to racists. This particularly affects the concept of " intersectionality " that comes from the social sciences and has been taken up by activists in order to better articulate our thoughts about different forms of oppression, such as gender, race, and class. Recently, the anarchist group Regard Noir [Black Gaze] (since voluntarily dissolved) published, with the Anarchist Federation, a pamphlet titled Classe, genre, race et anarchisme [Class, Gender, Race and Anarchism], featuring translations of short texts from the The Women's Caucus of the British Anarchist Federation which help to reflect on the concept – and the phenomenon – of " privileges. " Grand Angle [Wide Shot], a site for anarchist discussion, wished to propose a conversation among anarchists and social scientists, to clear up certain misunderstandings and compare the French and Québécois activist and intellectual contexts.
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Open access via https://doi.org/10.16993/bas.b
Open access via https://doi.org/10.16993/bas.b
Michael Seidman argues that this is exactly what the anarchists produced in Spain: a profusion of “productivist” images of happy, block-shouldered workers marching in unison toward a radiant future. In short, for Seidman, the aesthetics of the CNT-FAI merely mirrored those of their Stalinist rivals. Indeed, he traces this “workplace utopianism” to Proudhon’s writings.
Are these oppressive geometries really the final horizon of Spanish anarchist graphics, literature, and film? Can they really be taken as the practice of Proudhon’s theory, as enunciated in his posthumous work, El principio del arte y su destino social – a text which was indeed widely disseminated and discussed among Spanish anarchists? How might Spanish anarchist theorists and practicioners of art, from the early propagandist Teobaldo Nieva to cenetista filmmaker Mateo Santos, have modified, adapted, distorted, and/or misread Proudhon’s aesthetics? What really distinguishes Spanish anarchist aesthetics from those of avant-garde modernism, on the one hand, and socialist realism on the other? These are some of the questions this presentation will attempt to address.
Daniel Colson
Translated by Jesse Cohn
A provocative exploration of hidden affinities and genealogies in anarchist thought
Is the thought of Gilles Deleuze secretly linked to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s declaration: “I am an anarchist”? Has anarchism, for more than a century and a half, been secretly Deleuzian? In the guise of a playfully unorthodox lexicon, sociologist Daniel Colson presents an exploration of hidden affinities between the great philosophical heresies and “a thought too scandalous to take its place in the official edifice of philosophy,” with profound implications for the way we understand social movements.
“In a creative and yet precise way, Daniel Colson brings together two lines of thought – philosophy from Spinoza to Leibniz – and anarchism from Proudhon to the present day. At their intersection he discovers an affirmative and expressive anarchism that rejects all forms of resentment and negativity. This is anarchism as joy and empowerment rather than sadness and accusation.” – Todd May, author of The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism
“Colson’s Lexicon is an inspiring resource for conceptualizing anarchism: it offers new, exciting paths for exploring anarchism with French thought and French thought with anarchism.” – Iwona Janicka, author of Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism
“This is a fantastic (and anarchist) way to arrange a book. Reading these various entries in any order offers a line of thinking that connects disparate thinkers ranging from Proudhon to Simondon to Nietzsche to Deleuze within the term anarchism. This is done not to bind these thinkers with the kinds of straightjackets that names – even the name anarchism – often perform but rather to associate, interconnect and arrange these thinkers in a way that speaks across several centuries, practices and ways of thinking. What emerges is a radical challenge to the insistence on dialectic resolution, to occult left teleologies, and to the certainty that past anarchists have nothing to say to contemporary anarchists (and visa versa). In his claim that anarchism first of all is a “rejection of first principles,” Colson shows how, far from being disabling and rendering the world incoherent, this understanding recognizes the affirmative nature of an anarchism that has not ceased to function amidst between and even through myriad forms of capitalist and archist oppression.” – James Martel, author of The Misinterpellated Subject
Bio: Daniel Colson is a professor of sociology at the Université de St.-Étienne in Lyon. He is the author of Trois Essais de Philosophie Anarchiste: Islam, Histoire, Monadologie (2004) as well as several studies of French labor history.
Jesse Cohn is an associate professor of English at Purdue University Northwest. He is the author of Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation: Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Politics (2006) and Underground Passages: Anarchist Resistance Culture, 1848–2011 (2014).
From a lecture given on May 4, 1986 in Room 218 of the Melbourne College of Advanced Education on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the anarchist movement in Australia, slightly modified.
Abstract: Ricoeur ends his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia by analyzing the works of Saint-Simon and Fourier through the lens of the idea of utopia. In taking up these thinkers whom Engels labeled "utopian" socialists, we note that Ricoeur did not deal equally with the work of another important socialist: Proudhon. My hypothesis is that it is possible to read Proudhon using Ricoeur in that their approaches are similar on a number of points. Fruitful connections can be drawn between the dialectic of the real and ideal developed by Proudhon and Ricoeur's dialectic of ideology and utopia. Both thinkers deal with justice in the form of a certain tension: a tension that for Ricoeur (beyond the deontology and teleology found to some extent in the dialectic of ideology and utopia) requires practical wisdom, and a tension that for Proudhon (beyond the ideal and the real) requires an equilibrium of social and political forces.
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