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Renewing the Anarchist
Tradition
Archive: Summer Conference 2004 ...
September 26th
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to Friday & Saturday schedules |
During
the conference be sure to check out Tara Jensen's ongoing interactive
installation "The Museum of Gender". And make sure
to visit War of the Worldz.com by John Lawson. Book, infoshop,
and media tables - including AK Press, Raven Used Books, the
Institute for Anarchist Studies, CKUT radio of Montreal, May
Day Books, Just Seeds - and a variety of free literature will
also be available. |
Sunday, September 26th
- 10:00 to 11:45 am
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Confronting Borders, States, & Apartheid:
The Practice of Anarchism Jaggi Singh
Using international migration
as the point of departure, this presentation will provide a framework
for understanding emerging and current movements for refugee
rights, from an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist, and anti-racist
perspective. From some of the frontlines of the struggle against
"Fortress North America" and the "war on terror"-sanctuaries,
detention centers, modern underground railways, courtrooms, etc.-there
emerges important ideas about anarchism as a theory and organizing
practice. The core argument-that anarchism is only meaningful
within the lived struggle for social justice and dignity by self-organized
communities-will be examined with reference to the self-determination
struggles of migrants.
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The Anarchism of Fools: Conspiracy Theory
as a Substitute for Social Critique
Peter
Staudenmaier
Conspiracy theory continues
to enjoy a generally positive reception within many sectors of
the contemporary North American anarchist movement. As this presentation
will argue, conspiracy models of social reality consistently
distort and obfuscate the power relations they purport to explain.
Instead of examining or refuting specific instances of conspiracy
thinking within the popular anarchist milieu, this analysis will
concentrate on the logical structure of conspiracy theory as
such, and attempt to illuminate its psychological, political,
philosophical, and historical roots.
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The State in the Global Economy
Stephen
Shukaitis, Will Weikart,
& Cindy Milstein
With the emergence of a globalized
economy, questions surrounding the state's relevance have arisen.
This panel will consider whether the state is becoming less important
or is undergoing fundamental transformations in the new global
economy, and whether anarchists need to "update" their
critique of statecraft. Questions that panelists might raise
include, Is globalization really occurring, and if so, in what
ways? and Has the globalized economy changed the way the we understand
the nature of the state?
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- 1:30 to 2:45 pm
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Is There an Anarchist Economics?
J.J.
McMurtry & Bill
Barrett
While anarchism has over its
history been associated with a number of different scholarly
disciplines-from aesthetics to social theory, from political
philosophy to cultural studies-one area that remains largely
unfamiliar is economics. Usually, if there is any economic theory
associated with anarchism, it is imported wholesale from other
disciplines-namely, Marxist economics or capitalism. This panel
intends to explore whether or not one can develop an outline
of anarchist economics from the theoretical principles of anarchism,
and what nascent (for instance, cooperatives) or future ideal
forms (for example, Parecon) an anarchist economics might take.
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Freedom Suites: Post-Bop Jazz, R&B,
and the Anti-Authoritarian Imagination
Kazembe
Balagoon
The mid- to late 1960s witnessed
an explosion of militant compositions by jazz artists as well
as direct actions. From Cecil Taylor and Charles Mingus's attempts
to create a counter-concept to the Newport Jazz Festival to Max
Roach's zapping of a South African benefit concert, jazz became
the form and sound track of black liberation and revolution.
Post-bop also became the siren call of the students during the
May-June uprising and in Prague Spring. In this workshop/lecture/listening
party, we will explore the legacy of post-bop jazz and R&B
(free jazz) from the militancy of Archie Shepp to the Afro-Futurism
of Sun Ra and John Coltrane to the current musings of anarchist
jazz musician Daniel Carter. The presentation will also explore
how musicians sought to construct autonomous spaces for individual
artistic expressions and collective liberation.
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A Renaissance of Specters: Autonomism
& Anarchism
Jack
Bratich
With the release of Multitude,
Michael Hardt and Toni Negri add to the ongoing renaissance of
autonomism in U.S. intellectual circles. And once again, this
version of autonomist thought draws from anarchist thought/practice
while simultaneously caricaturing that very tradition. This presentation
will examine this appropriation, and the effects it has on constituting
an anarchist tradition. Anarchism, while celebrating its own
legacy and history, also puts the very notion of tradition into
question. Anarchism is the black thread throughout history of
struggles, but one that has never been established, institutionalized,
settled. This "unhomeliness" of anarchism is our challenge
for renewing a tradition. Given its occulted presence in dominant
leftism, perhaps tradition is an inheritance of specters as well.
Finally, how does anarchism's renewal differ from this other
renaissance? And what kind of innovative possibilities arise
from mutual rebirths (especially around concepts like "labor"
and "desire")?
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Self-Determination in the Context of
War & Globalization
Bronwyn
Lepore
This presentation will address
the sometimes vague and often liberal use of the term "self-determination"
in antiwar activism today, and the need (for anarchists and others
on the Left) to engage in deeper discussions of what it is we
mean when we talk about the right to self-determination. While
progressives, Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists all
emphasize the importance of self-determination, all are obviously
not coming from the same place. This discussion will focus on
historical definitions of self-determination (including UN definitions)
as well as political debates over the term-Trotskyist/anarchist,
for example-current definitions as well as different levels/interpretations
of self-determination and their relatedness-personal, social,
national, global, etc.-and look at particular examples-Iraq,
Brazil-to try and come to a more critical understanding of the
possibilities for self-determination in the current global picture.
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The 2004 World Social Forum: A Left-Libertarian/
Ecological/ Feminist Critique
Regina
Cochrane
One of the major venues for
the contemporary anti-globalization movement is the annual World
Social Forum. Initiated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, as
a counter to the World Economic Forum, the 2004 WSF was held
in the globalized megacity of Mumbai, India. This presentation,
which will be based on Regina's own "participant-observer"
research at the 2004 WSF, will examine some of the main issues
discussed at this forum, the types of political tendencies represented
there, and some central contradictions in the social forum process
itself.
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- 3:00 to 4:30 pm
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The Challenges of Horizontalism in Argentina
Graciela
Monteagudo
This presentation will explore
the challenges of nonhierarchical, horizontal organizing through
actual lived experiences in Argentina over the past few years.
The talk will take a critical look at the popular assemblies
and the unemployed workers organizations in today's Argentina.
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The Transubstantiation of Queer Identity
in Postmodern Capitalism, or How Makeovers Do Not a Revolution
Make
Charlie
Clements
This presentation will use
the television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy as an icon
for the commodification of queer identity. It will compare French
philosopher Michel Foucault's conception of power as it relates
to identity creation and resistance, with a traditional Marxian
view of identity commodification. This talk hopes to question
whether or not a commodified identity, or any identity, can ever
be liberatory. We will look at both the gaining of recognition
and acceptance, but also the presupposition of some certain reification.
Through so doing, this presentation will attempt to both undercut
some of the more optimistic elements in contemporary queer theory,
while opening discourse on commodification to a more hopeful
field.
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Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land:
U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
( 80-minute video, 2004
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Presented & facilitated by John Petrovato
This pivotal video exposes
how the foreign policy interests of U.S. political elites-working
in combination with Israeli public relations strategies-exercise
a powerful influence over news reporting about the Middle East
conflict. Combining U.S. and British television news clips with
observations of analysts, journalists, and political activists,
Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land provides a striking
media comparison and an examination of factors that have distorted
U.S. media coverage and, in turn, U.S. public opinion.
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