Anarchism’s Posthuman Future (original) (raw)

Complexity, ecologism, and posthuman politics

Review of International Studies, 2012

Theorisations of the political in general, and international politics in particular, have been little concerned with the vast variety of other, non-human populations of species and ‘things’. This anthropocentrism limits the possibilities for the discipline to contribute on core issues and prescribes a very limited scope for study. As a response to this narrow focus, this article calls for the development of a posthuman approach to the study of international politics. By posthuman, we mean an analysis that is based on complexity theory, rejects Newtonian social sciences, and decentres the human as the object of study. We argue for a decentring of ‘the human’ in our scholarship as imperative to understanding the complexity of the world. However, this approach also has a political incentive, which we describe as ‘complex ecologism’.

The Political Ecology of Human Supremacy

Undoing Human Supremacy: Anarchist Political Ecology in the Face of Anthroparchy, 2021

The Earth is in crisis. We know this. We have known this for a long time. In the throes of the unfolding nightmare we call “capitalism” it is not hard to see and hear the violence that is being enacted against the planet. If we are to move beyond the idea that humanity is tasked with expressing our dominion over nature and towards a renewed integral understanding of humanity as firmly located within the biosphere, as an anarchist political ecology demands, then we have to start interrogating the privileges, hierarchies, and human-centric frames that guide our ways of knowing and being in the world. This volume centers around the idea that anarchism, as a conceptual framework, encourages us to contend with the multiple lines of difference, the various iterations of privilege, and the manifold set of archies that undergird our understandings of the world, and crucially, our place within it.

Critical Political Ecology and the Seductions of Posthumanism

2014

"Posthumanist" theories have become increasingly popular among scholars in political ecology and other fields in the human sciences. The hope is that they will improve our grasp of relations between humans and various nonhumans and, in the process, offer the means to recompose the "social" and the "natural" domains. In this paper, I assess the merits of posthumanisms for critical scholarship. Looking specifically at the work of Bruno Latour (including his latest book, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence) and Donna Haraway, I argue that posthumanist thinking offers not only analytical but normative advantages over conventional and even Marxian approaches. But these newer frameworks contain their own ethico-political limitations and, to the extent that they are useful for addressing conditions of injustice, they continue to depend upon conceptual resources from their precursors. For this reason, a critical political ecology would best be served by preserving a tension between humanist and posthumanist methods.

Anarchism and Political Theory: Contemporary Problems

lightofthegnosis.com

This thesis explores contemporary anarchism, in its re-emergence as a social movement and political theory over the past decade. Its method combines cultural sociology and philosophical argumentation, in a participatory research framework. The first part, “Explaining Anarchism”, argues that it should be addressed primarily as a political culture, with distinct forms of organisation, of campaigning and direct action repertoires, and of political discourse and ideology. Largely discontinuous with the historical workers’ and peasants’ anarchist movement, contemporary anarchism has fused in the intersection of radical direct-action movements in the North since the 1960s: feminism, ecology, and the resistance to nuclear energy and weapons, war, and neoliberal globalisation. Anarchist ideological discourse is analysed with attention to key concepts such as “domination” and “prefigurative politics”, emphasising the avowedly open-ended, experimental nature of the anarchist project. The second part, “Anarchist Anxieties”, is a set of theoretical interventions in four major topics of controversy in anarchism today. Leadership in anarchist politics is addressed through sustained attention to the concept of power, proposing an agenda for equalising access to influence among activists, and an “ethic of solidarity” around the wielding of non-coercive power. Violence is approached through a recipient-based definition of the concept, exploring the limits of any attempt to justify violence and offering observations on violent empowerment, revenge and armed struggle. Technology is subject to a strong anarchist critique, which stresses its inherently social nature, leading to the exploration of Luddism, the disillusioned use of ICTs, and the promotion of lo-tech, sustainable human-nature interfaces as strategical directions for an anarchist politics of technology. Finally, the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used to address anarchist dilemmas around national liberation, exploring anarchist responses in conflict-ridden societies, and direct action approaches to peacemaking.

Reconsidering Poststructuralism and Anarchism

Post-Anarchism: A Reader, ed. Duane Rousselle and Süreyyya Evren, 2011

The concept of representation looms large in post-structuralist philosophy. For Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze representation is arguably the principal vehicle by which relational concepts are subordinated to totalizing concepts: difference to identity, play to presence, multiplicity to singularity, immanence to transcendence, discourse to knowledge, power to sovereignty, subjectivation to subjectivity, and so on. Representation plays a similar role in anarchist critique, which is one reason that Lewis Call (2003) counts 'classical anarchism' among the historical precursors of post-structuralism. Call was not, however, the first scholar to make this association. Gayatry Spivak and Michael Ryan (1978), 24 years earlier, published a groundbreaking analysis of the connections between post-structuralist philosophy (including that of Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari) and the nouvel anarchisme of 1968. This was followed 14 years later by Todd May's seminal work The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (1994), which presented the first book-length argument that the political philosophy of Deleuze, Foucault and Lyotard represents a new kind of anarchism. 1 May was followed by Saul Newman (2001) (who refers to 'postanarchism') as well as Lewis Call (who refers to 'postmodern anarchism'). The common theme of these and related works is that post-structuralist political philosophy is an anarchism, one that consciously or unconsciously borrows several key ideas from 'classical anarchism' and proceeds to reaffirm, elaborate and ultimately 'improve' these ideas. My own position is that (a) the so-called 'classical anarchists' had already discovered several of the insights attributed to post-structuralists more than a century before the latter appeared on the scene; (b) that anarchism, consequently, is a postmodern political philosophy and not (or not just) the other way around; (c) that post-structuralist political philosophy, particularly as developed by Deleuze and Foucault, indeed elaborates, expands, and even (to a certain extent) 'improves' upon 'classical' anarchist ideas, but not in the way, or for the reasons, that May and others suggest; and (d) that rather than regard post-structuralist political philosophy as a totally new and ready-made form of anarchism, it is better to view post-structuralist ideas as potential ingredients for the development of new anarchist recipes. As I have already offered considerable support for (a) and (b) elsewhere, I will

An Other State of Mind is Possible: Anarchism and Psychology

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7/8(2013):513-525

When order is presumed to rely upon centralised authority, anarchy is assumed to mean violent chaos. However, anarchists have long argued, and demonstrated, that other forms of order are both possible and beneficial: ecologically, socially and psychologically. While anarchism has been influential in the development of psychology and is currently being taken up in related disciplines, with the exception of Dennis Fox's body of work anarchism has yet to be taken seriously in contemporary psychology. Drawing on anarchist, poststructuralist and feminist theory as well as personal experience, this paper offers an introduction to anarchism as not only a public social practice, but also an inner state of mind. This is offered in contrast to the state of mind which underpins the state as institution. The statist state of mind is characterised by representation over and above direct experience, an attraction to domination and control, and a continual reliance on fear. An other state of mind, necessary for and produced by anarchist(ic) social relations, is characterised by vitality (freedom-equality), non-attachment to memory and love. Such a state of mind, I argue, is cultivated through (spiritual) practice both internally and through free, equal and loving relations with others. Such nano- and mico-level processes networked together potentially result in the macro-level anarchist social relations more commonly associated with anarchist thought.