“We rarely know how to achieve any continuity from one generation to the next within the alienation and scarcity of capitalism, so we commit the same mistakes again and again. And under the colonial spirituality of rationalism we have forgotten that the real world cannot exist without imaginary worlds. We let capitalism do all our…
Category: governance
“The Revolutionary Temper” (2023) by Robert Darnton reviewed
Darnton “suggests that between the end of the war of the Austrian succession in 1748 and the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the French population underwent a series of convulsions, some as molten as others were icy, which resulted in a subtle but powerful molecular shift.”
Michael A. Allen & Julie VanDusky-Allen: “The ‘Barbie’ and ‘Star Wars’ universes”
Both “Barbie” and “Andor” are useful for those who want to understand why revolutions happen and what it takes for them to happen. Their fundamental point: Before the start of any revolution, the oppressed have to first recognize their oppression.
Kristin Ross interviewed: The commune as a form of life
“For me, Les Soulèvements de la Terre are a contemporary example of a Commune form because they have managed to create a common front, and they have created it from very different groups and people. It’s a very specific form. It’s not a political party, it’s not a class- or ethnicity-based organisation, and yet it’s…
Shelton Stromquist: “The Paris Commune Was a Unique Experiment in Running a City for Its People”
“Before the Commune’s demise, the people of Paris had set about reconstructing authority and governance in the city along unprecedentedly revolutionary lines, grounded in the popular euphoria surrounding the central government’s retreat from Paris on March 18, 1871. Despite near-constant threats to the Commune’s existence from the rival government occupying Versailles, the audacious common folk…
Giorgio Agamben: “On Anarchy Today”
“Anarchy, therefore, is first and foremost the radical disavowal not so much of the state or simply of administration but rather of power’s claim to make the state and administration coincide in the government of men. It is against this claim that the anarchist fights, in the name ultimately of the ungovernable, which is the…
Laura Vicente: “Mujeres Libres: A genealogy of anarchist feminism”
‘This was “their revolution of life”, a long-term transformation that began to change ways of life, personal relationships, work, “care” and an endless number of other aspects, paying attention to the small, to the quiet, to the intimate, to the breath of each body. These women glimpsed other possible worlds and, despite the defeat, they…
Catherine Malabou: Two video interviews on anarchism and philosophy
“We revisit the arguments for ontological anarchism and attempt to elucidate a bridge between anarchy in philosophy and politics. Catherine also shares her views on cryptocurrency, AI, and other technological trends as they relate to the prospect of a “dawning anarchy”. Moreover, we explore the distinction between liberatory and libertarian anarchisms as they both emerge…
Alain Badiou: “Thirteen theses and some comments on politics today”
“We could thus define the maximum ambition of future political work: to realise for the first time in history the first hypothesis, so that revolution will prevent war, rather than the second, i.e. that war will provoke revolution.”
Casey Harison: “The Crowd in History and the January 6, 2021 Attack on the US Capitol”
“Indeed, for those familiar with the history of crowds, January 6 has real similarities with a pattern of collective action that happened across the Atlantic World dating from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”