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Renewing the Anarchist
Tradition
Archive:
Summer Conference 2006
Saturday, September 30th
- 9:15 to 10:30 pm
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Anarchists on the
Road: Moving within and without the Movement
Lynn Owens
From summit
to train hoppings, anarchists are on the
move. But how do their movements affect
the anarchist movement? Despite anarchism's
history of traveling culture, radical travel
remains contested. Supporters claim travel
embodies anarchism's dynamicism and global
reach, raises consciousness, and links communities.
Critics argue these "activist tourists"
do more harm than good: disrupting and displacing
local communities, privileging wealthy,
white actors, and stressing escape over
engagement. But the situation is more complex.
Travel connects people across places and
places across people, thereby offering a
means of bridging diffuse global anarchist
networks with dense local anarchist networks,
pulling the two toward each other. This
is not seamless, however, creating new tensions
and contradictions. Increasingly, movement
is also complicated by the growing security
apparatuses, both of the state and protest
groups. What kind of practices and knowledges
does travel produce or obstruct? Is the
growth of traveling culture a rejection
or reflection of the forces of globalization?
When anarchists hit the road, where will
they end up?
Lynn
teaches sociology at Wesleyan University,
writes about squatters, anarchists, and
tourists (sometimes at the same time), and
plays cello, ride bikes, and herds cats
(although rarely at the same time).
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The Stirner That
Eats Gods
Alejandro de Acosta
This talk
seeks to resituate Max Stirner's writings
in relation to contemporary anarchism. The
guiding idea is to find a way to animate
the concept of self in Stirner beyond its
"egoistic" caricatures. This self
has two dimensions: an absolutely historical
and contingent one, a self defined only
as what it owns or has (and thus including
the possibility of having nothing, that
is, being nothing); provisionally, we might
define this self as passive, affected by
power and desire. The other dimension is
a transhistorical, creative self, in a complicated
relation to the first, which is or strives
to be active with respect to what it is/owns,
overcoming its own limitations in a constant
movement of consumption. This second dimension
is what continues to be most fertile in
Stirner for anarchism: the multiple subjectivities
at play on the field of "ownness,"
this I that continually builds and destroys
its territories, as a lesson in identity
and difference from the perspective of a
"creative nothing."
Alejandro
lives in Austin, Texas, and teaches philosophy
at Southwestern University. His current
projects are the micropress mufa::poema
and the contemplation of a decentralized
federation of ontologies.
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Rethinking Individualist
Anarchism: Josiah Warren and Stephen Andrews
Dan Wessel
Often termed
the progenitors of individualist anarchism
by scholars and anarchists alike, this labeling
belies the theoretical contributions about
community both Warren and Andrews made to
anarchism and social thought in the nineteenth
century. By examining a wide range of their
written work, I will attempt to complicate
the standard narrative of individualist
anarchism by emphasizing how the theory
of "Sovereignty of the Individual"
could only be constituted for Warren and
Andrews by a conception of being with. Both
Warren's theories of exchange and Andrews's
"Science of Universology" rested
not on an absolute, monopoly conception
of sovereignty but on an always already-available
idea of being together. I hope to offer
a point of continuity between purportedly
individualist anarchism and anarcho-communism.
Moreover, I believe that the deep concern
for both community and individual liberty
that Warren and Andrews displayed has much
to offer current anarchist theory and practice.
Dan is
a PhD student in the history department
at SUNY Buffalo. His dissertation focuses
on anarchist social thought in the United
States during the nineteenth century and
its connections to other philosophical trends
of the period.
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Animals, Anarchism,
and Capitalism
Jenna
Torres, Bob Torres, Ramsey Kanaan, and Heather
Fife
Anarchist
theory has been variously offered as a solution
for the problem of the human domination
of nature, though few have discussed the
ways in which anarchist theory might offer
a critical pathway for the liberation of
animals. This panel will consider how the
domination of animals might, or might not,
be addressed by an anarchist vision. Seeing
themselves as facilitators in a larger conversation,
the panelists will offer brief reflections
and debate on these issues, and then open
up the floor for a collaborative conversation
on the questions at hands.
Jenna
is a visiting assistant professor of Spanish
at St. Lawrence University, and is the coauthor
of Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan
World.
Bob is
an assistant professor of sociology at St.
Lawrence University in Canton. He is working
on a book with AK Press on anarchism, animals,
capitalism, and the politics of veganism
(fall 2007).
Ramsey
is a founder (and current collective member)
of AK Press, has been a member of the Bound
Together Anarchist Bookstore for the last
twelve years, and is a founder (and current
organizer) of the annual San Francisco Bay
Area Anarchist Bookfair.
Heather
is a student at St. Lawrence University,
majoring in sociology and minoring in film.
She also works at the local food co-op,
and enjoys knitting and hanging out with
her cats .
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The Promise and
Peril of the "Political"
Arthur Foelsche
The term
politics has long troubled anarchism. As
an antistatist political philosophy, anarchism
has allowed the definition of political
to range from economic structures to what
might loosely be called the revolution of
everyday life, creating a myriad of contradictory
positions all falling under the same banner.
To a degree - perhaps because of this - anarchism's
revolutionary subject has remained both
obscured and contested. This talk aims to
examine the problems and possibility of
existential politics through Carl Schmitt,
Hannah Arendt, and Murray Bookchin. By exploring
the recent Vermont anti-GMO town-to-town
campaign, the talk hopes to illuminate a
conjunction between anarchism and existential
politics as a way to focus the revolutionary
subject of anarchism.
Arthur
is a member of the Free Society Collective
and Black Sheep Books collective, and has
been involved in work on genetic engineering
through the Institute for Social Ecology's
Biotechnology project. He has been involved
in anti-globalization organizing through
a variety of media and educational projects,
and programs for a living.
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- 10:45 am to 12:00 pm
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Anarchism of the
Other Person
Mitchell Verter
Throughout
his writing, the French ethical philosopher
Emmanuel Levinas uses the term "anarchy"
to critique different modes of temporal,
thematic, and political ordering. For Levinas,
anarchy indicates a responsibility that
arises before history, an obsession that
imposes itself before self-consciousness,
and a debt that is incurred before ownership
of personal private property. The political
ramifications of Levinas's distinction between
autarchy, the selfish assertion of absolute
ownership, and anarchy can be illuminated
by comparison with the works of anarchists
such as Kropotkin, Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin,
and Malatesta. Lastly, Levinas employs the
notion of anarchy specifically to critique
philosophical "antihumanism," such as Deleuze
and Guattari's notion of "desiring machines."
Against these philosophies, Levinas insists
that before one has made any choice or been
determined by any force, one is already
anarchically committed to the humanism of
the other person.
Mitchell
is the author of Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo
Flores Magon Reader (AK Press), and is developing
"The Anarchism of the Other Person" (www.waste.org/~roadrunner/writing/).
He is in the social and political thought
program at York University.
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A Conversation
on Words and Revolution
Alexis Bhagat
This workshop
is an open conversation. Mostly, the presenter
has questions, and few answers: Do we say
what we know, or rather do we know what
we say? What do we know besides, beyond,
or beneath words? The meanings of words
change: Are current changes peculiar? What
condition is the redefinition of a word
like "freedom" symptomatic of?
Are we experiencing a revolution? Is it
simply a revolution of words, or are words
particularly instrumental to a wider revolution?
During this conversation, we will read "Revolutionary
Propositions" by Jerome Rothenberg.
This text should provide a strong spring
for new departures, and a recurrent path
for the wildest tangents to return to.
Alexis
is a writer dedicated to the destruction
of authorship and authority through the
cultivation of new forms for radically polyvocal
sound, transmission of promiscuous conversation,
and obsessive never-ending correspondence.
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Anarchists Rethinking
Self-Defense
Ariel and Leona
What do the
green scare, intimate violence, advertising,
and gentrification have in common? They
are ways that we are threatened as individuals
and group members. What does it mean to
be under attack? How does this perspective
help us to determine the best course(s)
of action for ourselves and the groups that
we're in? Community is a big word these
days, posited as the solution to an overwhelmingly
alienated and alienating world. What are
the ramifications of taking community seriously,
of treating it as something worthy of defense,
as worthy of defense as our bodies and self-respect?
We will look at self-defense using an inclusive
definition of self and from a variety of
perspectives - philosophical, physical, and
social - for the individual, social scene,
and small group.
Ariel
has helped organize the Berkeley Anarchist
Students of Theory and Research and Development
(BASTARD) anarchist theory conference, taught
classes in Girl Army (women's self-defense)
as well as firearm practice and safety,
is a member of Anarchist People of Color,
and contemplates the possibility of anarchist
economics.
Leona
has been around the anarchist scene for
decades; has worked extensively on understanding
and addressing domestic violence, environmental
issues, and racism; believes in being opinionated
and flexible; is a member of a ten-year-old
weekly anarchist reading group; and secretly
fetishizes Voltairine de Cleyre .
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Lebanon-Quebec:
Working in Solidarity with Islamic-Based
Popular Movements
Mary Foster
In Lebanon,
resistance to imperialism and the fight
for self-determination is directed by an
Islamic-based popular movement. As the necolonial
incursions into the Middle East intensify,
anarchists and antiauthoritarians in North
America serious about developing an anti-imperialist
movement here must find ways of building
relations of solidarity with these movements.
This poses a series of challenges: clearing
away the racism in the North American movement
that either refuses a principled critique
of the "heroic" resistance or develops a
critique rooted in stereotypes that subtly
reinforce colonial attitudes; and dealing
with state targeting and social pressures
that complicate the involvement of profiled
Muslim communities in North American solidarity
movements. This workshop will provide a
historical overview of the lead up to the
recent assault on Lebanon and a forum to
discuss these issues, based on the experiences
of Tadamon! Montreal, an antiauthoritarian
solidarity group working with the Lebanese
communities in Montreal and remaining in
direct communication with allies in Beirut.
Mary
is a political organizer based in Montreal.
She has been working with Tadamon! - an antiauthoritarian,
anticapitalist collective that aims to build
links of solidarity between social justice
movements in Quebec and Lebanon - since its
start in fall 2005.
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Debord, Ressentiment,
and Revolutionary Anarchism
Aragorn!
The Situationist
International, and Guy Debord specifically,
have offered contemporary anarchism its
harshest comradely criticism. This is articulated
in chapter 4 of Debord's The Society of
the Spectacle. Of particular interest here
is the discussion about the role of revolutionary
theory and the critique of anarchists as
specialists of freedom. Divisions within
anarchism can be understood in relationship
to these questions. This workshop will evaluate
Guy's critique, and then present some of
the theoretical responses to its questions,
including those of Jacques Camatte, Cathy
Levine, Saul Newman, and John Moore.
Aragorn!
is a member of the Anarchy: A Journal of
Desire Armed collective, organizes "eight
days of anarchy" events in the Bay Area,
along with the Berkeley Anarchist Students
of Theory and Research and Development (BASTARD)
conference. He has written pamphlets on
race, nihilism, and raccoons. He also provides
Web-centric technical services to many radical
projects.
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- 2:00
to 3:30 pm
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Radical Ontology,
Anarchism, and Autonomism: Why Immanence?
Jack Z. Bratich, Will Weikart,
Stevphen Shukaitis, Richard Day, and Francesca
Manning
What is ontology
and why should we take it seriously? What
are the practical ramifications of the different
implicit and explicit ontologies that we
hold on to? Can anarchist practice and theory
become more efficacious by reexamining its
ontological baggage? What new tools might
we have at our disposal as we explore new
ontologies? The panelists will discuss distinct
but highly interrelated topics:
- The practical
aspects of the dialectics versus immanence
debates - what is at stake, how ontology
affects everyday life, and why anarchists
(and everyone) should care.
- Feminist
autonomism (e.g., Silvia Federici, Leopoldina
Fortunati, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and
Alisa Del Re), rethinking labor, and a(e)ffective
insurgency.
- Power
and bodies through the lens of Spinozian
ontology: practical examples of activist
cartographies and organizational structures
for getting beyond a "model"
of activism toward things like feedback
loops, immanent learning, and pattern
recognition for a networked ontos.
- Exodus
and the production of revolutionary subjectivities:
how do we lengthen and combine the lines
of flight associated with autonomous zones
and space without falling into either
a pure nomadism or a return to Oedipalized
spaces and subjects?
Jack
is an assistant professor of journalism
and media studies at Rutgers University.
He has written articles that apply autonomist
thought to such topics as audience studies,
reality TV, secession, and popular secrecy,
and has taught in the Bluestockings Popular
Education program. His book, Conspiracy
Panics: Political Rationality and Popular
Culture, is due out on SUNY Press (2007).
Stevphen
is a research fellow at the University of
London, Queen Mary, and a member of the
Autonomedia Editorial Collective. For more
about his writing and projects, see www.refusingstructures.net.
Will is a sociology student at CUNY Graduate
Center. He lives in Brooklyn and is a dog
walker. His favorite food is garlic.
Richard
is an anarchist activist and theorist based
in Kingston, Ontario. He teaches at Queen's
University, and is associated with the Marble
Rock Cooperative Centre for Rural Living
and Education.
Francesca
lives, studies, works, and argues with her
neighbors and co-conspirators in Montreal
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The Anarchism That
Failed: And Isn't It about Time We Started
Winning
Ramsey Kanaan
Anarchism
is a pretty neat idea. And over the last
150-odd years, it's had some great theories,
a glorious history, heroic battles, unsung
martyrs, the occasional practical solution,
. . . and we don't seem to have progressed
very far beyond that. This (hopefully!)
short(ish) talk will attempt to introduce
some ideas, critiques, tensions, and debate
into our understanding of where anarchism
is today - both as a theory and a practice - and
how we might actually use it to change the
world and empower a rather large section
of those who inhabit the said world to do
the same. Drawing on some of my experiences
in twenty-five or so years of anarchist
activism and my reading of history, I'll
attempt to shed a little light on such concepts
as class, self-management, propaganda, vanguards,
self-emancipation, the bourgeois influences
on anarchism, activism, and probably a bunch
more.
Ramsey
discovered anarchism and punk rock at age
thirteen. He's a founder and collective
member of AK Press, a member of Bound Together
Anarchist Bookstore, and a founder and organizer
of the annual San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair.
He is now definitely middle aged, and finds
his class antagonisms expanding with his
waistline.
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The Kindred and
Guiding Spirit of Gloria Anzaldúa
Hilton Bertalan
Opening up,
being vulnerable and humble, making better
versions of ourselves, shifting perspectives,
embracing the multiple, the ambiguous, the
spiritual, the erotic, all the while working
with a radical oppositional consciousness
that struggles, takes positions, transgresses,
interconnects, and constructs alternatives.
Such is the ethico-theoretical world occupied
by Anzaldúa and so many other transnational,
postcolonial, and queer feminists. It has
been expressed in many ways: "poetics
of love" (Chela Sandoval), "collective
sites of continuous political labor"
(Judith Butler), "blurring boundaries
without burning bridges" (Rosi Braidotti),
"ever-increasing hunger" (Elizabeth
Grosz), "yearning" (Jacqui Alexander),
"radical interconnectedness" (Analouise
Keating), and "state of perpetual transition"
(Anzaldúa). Here we can find our
anarchist/antiauthoritarian kindred spirits.
When we turn to them for guidance, however,
we find that we have a great deal to learn
about the ways we envision social and personal
transformation. Though this discussion will
focus primarily on Anzaldúa and certain
aspects of her thought, I would like to
also speak about the place of gender and
feminist thought in contemporary activism.
Hilton
is a graduate student from Toronto who considers
activism and vegan baking to be his most
important work - both of which can be sweetly
satisfying or flavorless. While he's always
developing new intellectual crushes, he
is nonmonogamously committed to Anzaldúa.
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Anarchism, Aesthetics,
and Literary Fashion
Joel Kuszai (moderator), Rachel
Levitsky, and Bill Marsh
Like those
on the Left, poetry communities argue about
the nature of art and the role of the poet
in their commitment to radical social change.
Poets, frustrated by the conservative aesthetic
views of many activists, are also accused
of elitism, obscurantism, and so on. With
the gentrification of anarchist-inspired
contemporary experimental poetry by the
academic publishing racket, a dilemma faces
the thoughtful revolutionary culture worker.
How to prevent an explicitly anarchist poetics
from becoming just another aesthetic fashion?
(Note to punk!) And what would an anarchist
poetry look like? Is it a question of style,
or more about social organization? After
a brief introductory rehearsal of some of
the conflicts, the panelists will discuss
proposals at the heart of two contemporary
cultural organizations, Belladonna* (an
event and publishing series), and Factory
School (a learning and production collective)..
Joel
has been involved in independent publishing
for twenty years, and cofounded Factory
School. He resides in New York City, where
he teaches cultural rhetoric and researches
student writing cultures.
Rachel
founded Belladonna*, a matrix of discussions,
readings, and publications by feminist writers,
as a way to address the experiential gap
between her involvement with leftist activism
and her work as an experimental poet. She
writes poetry, prose, and an occasional
play. Her book, Under the Sun, was published
by Futurepoem (2003).
Bill
is a college writing teacher based in New
York City. As one of the founding members
of Factory School, he currently edits the
Heretical Texts poetry series. He also writes
about plagiarism and anti-plagiarism devices
in relation to past and current "social
remediation" campaigns in education.
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Solidarity:
A Three-Part Series
Part
1: International Solidarity - Inside Fortress
North America
Stefanie Gude (Urban Settler
Solidarity with the Six Nations Land Reclamation),
Frank Yong (Solidarity with Grassy Narrows
First Nation Antiboreal Forest Clear-cutting),
and Onto (Migrant Justice)
At best,
international solidarity work attempts to
radically transform imperialist power relations
between people(s) across national and state
boundaries. For anarchists, solidarity generally
denotes a horizontal relationship that is
both the end goal of solidarity work and
integral to its exercise. Solidarity work
does not just seek to support the life-and-death
struggles for survival, autonomy, dignity,
and self-determination of a given national
or subaltern group; practicing solidarity
is also an attempt to continually forge
and re-create a notion of a shared humanity,
an international basis for common survival.
The structures of domination on which global
apartheid is founded and sustained - capitalism,
racism, colonialism, and neocolonialism
- crush and reconfigure to undermine this
sort of horizontality. These two panels
- one focused on work within Fortress North
America, and one on solidarity that reaches
beyond its borders - will raise questions
that must be debated in order for anarchist
and antiauthoritarian solidarity movements
to effectively counter these structures.
At a time when occupation at home and abroad
seems more brutal and fighting it seems
more urgent than ever before: What is the
relationship between anti-imperialism and
antiauthoritarianism? What have been the
implications of the "anti-globalization
movement's" "local versus global"
debate for contemporary internationalism
and struggles here at home? What are the
roles of diaspora communities in solidarity
building? What does it mean to stand in
(critical) solidarity with organizations
and movements that have distinctly nonanarchist
long-term political visions? These are not
academic questions. Part 3, a plenary, will
provide a space for a facilitated discussion
with all the panelists and inviting your
participation. We will focus on articulating
strategies for a multifaceted, effective,
sustainable, antiauthoritarian anti-imperialist
movement.
Stefanie
is a member of and organizer with the Ontario
Coalition Against Poverty, in Toronto. She
works to support the struggle of nonstatus
people against the policies of Immigration
Canada as well as broader work around welfare,
housing, and policing issues. Her OCAP work
strives to be grounded in the downtown neighborhoods,
but is also rooted in alliance building
with other community organizing in towns
and First Nations territories beyond provincial
and national borders.
Frank
is a researcher/activist on environment/human
rights from Canada/Malaysia. He has worked
on international campaigns against the logging
of the tropical rain forests of indigenous
peoples, was an environmental policy researcher
at the Institute of Strategic and International
Studies Malaysia, and engaged in self-study
at the University of Toronto and Anarchist
Free University of Toronto.
Onto
is from the borderlands of San Diego/Tijuana,
where he worked with the organic collective
and a plurality of no borders affinity groups
trying to delete the border every single
day. Now in New York City, he's working
with antiauthoritarians in NYMAA, a child
care collective, and that strange thing
called the immigrant rights movement .
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- 4:00
to 5:30 pm
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Creative Disruptions
of Space, Memory, and Power
Bettina Escauriza and Dara Greenwald
Public space
is highly scripted. As users of space, we
are constantly receiving cues on how to
behave and make use of space. This scripting
occurs due to pressures from agents of repression
(capitalism, the state, sexism, and so on),
which in turn aid in the construction of
identities. We are interested in raising
questions around how we comply and sometimes
reinforce the different ways that power
emerges in public space, asking what public
space is anyway, and discussing strategies
of how we might resist these dominant and
pervasive scripts on our behavior. In this
talk, we will present several creative projects
that have attempted to challenge the scripting
of public place and public memory through
autonomous interventions, including performance,
landmarking, modification of structures,
media, and messages. We will do a multimedia
presentation that will include video and
images.
Bettina
was born in Paraguay and immigrated with
her family in the late 1980s to Miami. She
is interested in making art and public interventions
that contest the coercive power of the built
environment.
Dara
is a media artist living in Troy, New York.
She has been committed to participating
in collaborative and political cultural
work for many years.
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Militant Investigations,
Radical Research
Erika Biddle, Sandra Jeppesen,
and Stevphen Shukaitis
What would
a horizontal and participatory approach
to knowledge creation and radical theorization
look like? Just as narratives are used to
construct and deconstruct the social world,
so narratives about forms of politics open
up or delimit possibilities for organization.
But the relation of radical academics and
intellectuals and the social movements we
work with (or more often talk about with
little real connection) has had a tenuous
and not always positive history. Far too
often radical theorists have used their
knowledge or ideas to claim leadership roles
and positions of power within movements.
The practices of the interwoven strands
of the global justice movement, creating
and enacting horizontal networks instead
of top-down structures like states, parties,
or corporations, demand that radical theorists
and academics critically rethink their role
in and relation to movements, and the nature
of intellectual practice itself. This panel
will explore forms of participatory knowledge
creation, theorization, research, and experimentation,
drawing from existing research collectives
and educational projects.
Erika
is a founding member of the collective Artists
in Dialogue. She can often be found tweaking
text for Autonomedia and Perspectives, the
biannual journal of the Institute for Anarchist
Studies. She is also on the board of the
IAS. One of these days she's going to lose
her mind, remember how to write, and become
a full-time poet.
Sandra
has a PhD in English from York University.
Her first published novel is Kiss Painting
(Gutter Press, 2003), and she has been a
member of several anarchist collectives,
including Uprising, the Toronto Anarchist
Bookfair, and the Anarchist Free University.
Stevphen
is a research fellow at the University of
London, Queen Mary, and a member of the
Autonomedia Editorial Collective. For more
about his writing and projects, see www.refusingstructures.net
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Multicultural Feminism
and Anarchism
Anjali Nath
Many people
of color discard anarchism as women of color
in the United States have discarded hegemonic
feminisms. This presentation proposes a
transformation of the approach to anarchism
in the United States through a multicultural
feminist analysis. If white individuals
seemingly void of any racial consciousness
are the only widespread representation of
anarchism, then it is understandable how
the movement may be perceived as exclusionary
and lacking in diversity. This work addresses
the need for anarchists to illustrate anarchism
as a viable and vibrant political framework
to a broader and more colorful audience.
It does not endeavor to alter the definition
of anarchism but extends it in a way that
would be more racially inclusive. Meaningful
lessons on diversifying anarchism in the
United States can be learned through an
understanding of multicultural feminism,
and much of this wisdom will be discussed.
Anjali
is a student of women's studies, political
science, and philosophy at California State
University Fullerton. She serves on the
board of the university Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
Alliance and Women's Studies Student Association.
She is also a member of the Los Angeles
chapter of Critical Resistance.
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Power, Revolution,
and Autonomy
Wayne Price, Seth Weiss, and Graciela
Monteagudo
What is the
relation of power to autonomy and revolution?
Should we seek to "take power"? Or should
we try, as John Holloway advocates in a
recent book, to "change the world without
taking power"? Do we need a revolution?
Do we need a state? In our exploration of
these questions, we will discuss Holloway's
work as well as the experience of the autonomist
movements that have emerged in Argentina
since 2001.
Wayne
was a member of the Love & Rage Anarchist
Federation, and is now a member of the Northeastern
Federation of Anarchist-Communists. He is
also a member of the NY Metropolitan Anarchist
Alliance, and is active in opposition politics
in the NYC teachers union. He writes monthly
for www.Anarchismo.net.
Seth
is a founder of the New SPACE, a new anticapitalist
educational project in New York City (http://new-space.mahost.org/).
He is also a supporter of the National Organization
for the Iraqi Freedom Struggles (http://no-ifs.org).
Graciela
is an Argentine activist and community artist.
Lately, she has been touring internationally
with multimedia presentations about Argentina's
social movements, and is currently a PhD
student in anthropology at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also editing
a book on recovered factories in Argentina
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Solidarity:
A Three-Part Series
Part
2: Across Borders
Jonah Gindin (Venezuela),
Mostafa Henaway (Egypt), and Mark Lance
(Palestine)
... for description, see Part
I above ...
Jonah
is an independent journalist, researcher,
and activist. He spent two years in Venezuela,
where he wrote on U.S.-Venezuelan relations,
grassroots organizing, and media for Web
and print publications. He is a member of
the In the Name of Democracy collective
and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.
He is currently solidarizing with Venezuela
and the Six Nations of the Grand River land
reclamation.
Mostafa
is based in Montreal, where he works with
Solidarity Across Borders. He recently lived
in Toronto, where he organized with the
Toronto Coalition of Concerned Taxi Drivers
as a member of the Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty.
Mark
is a professor of philosophy as well as
justice and peace at Georgetown University,
and teaches and writes on philosophy of
language, logic, moral theory, and anarchism.
He has long been involved in social justice,
antiwar, and international solidarity activism.
Mark is cochair of the U.S. Campaign to
End the Israeli Occupation's national steering
committee and an IAS board member .
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- 8:00
to 9:15 pm
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Burn!
Kazembe Balagun
Directed
by Italian partisan Gillo Pontecorvo, Burn
is a cinematic meditation on race, colonialism,
and resistance. The film takes place on
the fictional island of Queimada. William
Walker (Marlon Brando) is sent to the island
to ferment rebellion among the slaves and
mixed-race property owners - not for their
liberation but in the interest of the British
Crown. He befriends Jose Delores (Evaristo
M‡rquez), who leads a slave rebellion. Convincing
Delores that blacks aren't able to govern
themselves, the rebels put down their guns
and Britain wins a sphere of influence.
All goes well until Walker is summoned to
the island to quell another rebellion by
Delores, who promises to "stop cutting
cane and start cutting heads." Filmed
during the Vietnam War's height, Burn is
reminiscent of the current occupation of
Iraq. It also speaks to the nature of the
state, the role of race in revolution, and
the dialectics of history. A brief talk
will take place before the film, with a
discussion after (may run past 9:15 p.m.).
Kazembe
is a writer/cultural historian whose work
has been featured in Left Turn, PopMatters,
and Working USA. He writes for the NYC Indypendent,
and is an instructor at the Brecht Forum/New
York Marxist School. He is also working
on "Queering the X" (spring 2007) and a
history of black communist organizer Bill
Epton.
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The Roots of Postanarchism:
Revolution as Festival
Gavin Grindon
Much recent
critical discussion has focused on the idea
of "postanarchism," defined broadly
as both the work of academics such as Saul
Newman and Todd May as well as the more
polemical writings of people like Bob Black
and Hakim Bey. This presentation will look
at one of the possible roots of postanarchist
theory in a line of thought that associated
revolutions with festivals in an attempt
to synthesise Marxism and Surrealism. Looking
at the work of the College of Sociology
of the 1930s and the Situationist International
of the 1960s, I will point to some of the
contradictions of the Marxist-Surrealist
concept of festival, and how this concept
has since been appropriated and employed
in various ways in the context of anarchist
theory.
Gavin
is dragging himself through the final year
of his PhD at the University of Manchester,
England, where he is studying the development
of the concept of carnival as a form of
radical activism. He was involved in last
year's protests against the G8 in Scotland,
and the Matilda social center in Sheffield,
until its recent eviction.
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Propaganda and
the Anarchist Revolution
Charles Weigl (moderator), Erika
Biddle, Kyle Harris, and Isaac Ontiveros
For many
anarchists, "propaganda" is a
dirty word. Once used proudly by revolutionaries,
it has taken on overtones of manipulation,
deceit, and power. Yet the anarchist fear
of being (or being considered) a vanguard
flies in the face of the concurrent belief
that we have something important to communicate
to "the people." We oscillate
schizophrenically between the utopian idea
that if the way is cleared, people will
naturally organize themselves in an egalitarian
manner, and the belief that they need an
outline of, or at least suggestions for,
how to best move forward. How do anarchists
promote anarchism as a movement of individuals,
working collectively, to administer society
without the state, capitalism, or social
hierarchy? What is the relationship between
message and movement? What are current commitments
of anarchist writing and activism, and do
they promote anarchism as an appealing ideal?
What would enchant people with the idea
of libertarian revolution? How can we promote
a coherent anarchist ideal, rather than
the insular, detached social scene we now
have? This discussion, organized by AK Press,
will try to address the propaganda mission,
its contradictions and challenges, and come
up with some constructive solutions - and
maybe an ongoing project or two for communicating
effectively with the masses.
Charles
is a member of the AK Press collective in
Oakland.
Erika
is a founding member of the collective Artists
in Dialogue, which is committed to the coarticulation
of radical art and politics; she can often
be found tweaking text for Autonomedia and
Perspectives, the biannual journal of the
IAS, for which she is also a board member.
Kyle
programs films and videos for Free Speech
TV. His videos and collective art projects
have shown in festivals, museums, galleries,
bars, living rooms, and infoshops all over
the world. He is finishing an anarcho-eco
epic film called The Patriarchs, and is
editing Advertising Anarchism: The Pitfalls
and Possibilities of Propaganda.
Isaac,
a member of the AK Press collective, also
works with Freedom Archives and makes video.
He lives and works in Oakland .
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Anarchist Perspectives
on Prisoner Solidarity
Helen Hudson, Sara Falconer, and
Mostafa Henaway
In thinking
through notions of power and freedom, it
is hard to ignore that most obvious of freedom-robbing
institutions: the prison. Many anarchists
work for prison abolition, pointing to the
countless ways the prison system is used
to oppress the people at large. Among this
wider prisoner population are political
prisoners and prisoners of war: those persons
imprisoned for their conscious political
activities. Anarchist POW Ojore Lutalo has
stated, "Any political movement that
does not support its political internees
is a sham movement!" But who are "our
prisoners," when we consider this quote
as anarchists in North America? How do political
prisoners' struggles interrelate with the
anarchist movement, not just as an area
of work but as a political principle? What
are the confluences and distinctions between
political prisoner solidarity, and broader
prisoner justice and prison abolition movements?
How can the praxis of political prisoner
solidarity strengthen other aspects of our
organizing? Following an interactive exchange
among the panelists on these questions,
the floor will be opened to discussion among
workshop participants at large.
Helen
has been organizing in urban Canada for
over a decade. She combines internal movement-strengthening
work based in popular education with frontline
struggles including political prisoner support
work, migrant solidarity, antisexism, and
queer liberation. A member of the Montreal
Anarchist Bookfair Collective and the IAS
board of directors, she is ostensibly taking
time off to pursue a degree in nursing.
Sara
is a journalist and facilitator of alternative
media projects with prisoners. She formed
the current Montreal Anarchist Black Cross
Federation collective, and has worked to
raise prisoners' voices in outside movements
with www.4strugglemag.org, an online and
print zine featuring analysis by North American
political prisoners. She is also a member
of the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective,
and helped produce the 2007 Freedom for
Political Prisoners Calendar.
Mostafa,
currently based in Montreal, works with
CKUT, a community radio station that emphasizes
being part of movements and a voice to the
voiceless, which will always mean prisoners.
He has also worked with the Toronto Coalition
of Concerned Taxi Drivers as a member of
the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty .
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COLLAPSE
Elisita Balbontin, Ben Florencio,
Nick Sullivan, Will Weikart, and Anicka
Yi
Join us for
a rare public appearance of the cryptonomous
supergroup COLLAPSE, from Brooklyn. This
is their second public appearance in this
configuration, having also performed under
the moniker "Oyster." They have
a number of other musical side projects,
and a wide range of influences and backgrounds
spanning rock subgenres to various experimental
and improvised musics, visual art, film,
theory, mythscience, intermedia, garlic,
drone consciousness, and performance. Members
have performed and/or collaborated with
groups such as Confetti System, Ass-Traffick,
W.A.D., Bruises, Psycho-motor Retardation,
and Roxy Pain, among others. Expect the
unexpected.
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the 29th / on to Sunday
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