Anarchist Essays

Essay #9: Dani Spinosa, 'Theft on the Ground Floor'

In this essay, Dani Spinosa reads the contemporary campus as a non-place for the precarious labourer. She considers the role of labour relations and the remote teaching of the pandemic to consider how and where the precariat can work against this dislocation. 
Dani Spinosa is adjunct faculty at three different institutions in southern Ontario, Canada. She is the Managing Editor of the Electronic Literature Directory, a Fellow of the Electronic Literature Organization, and a co-founding editor of the feminist micropress Gap Riot. She is the author of Anarchists in the Academy (U of Alberta P, 2018) and OO: Typewriter Poems (Invisible Publishing, 2020). Her recent work considers feminist and anarchist themes in contemporary avant-garde and visual poetry, including studies of revisionist mythmaking and materialities of digital literary texts. 
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
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Essay #8: Marcus Collins, 'Were the Beatles anarchists?'

In this essay, Marcus Collins considers what the Beatles thought about anarchists and what anarchists thought about the Beatles in sixties Britain. He identifies curiosity and ambivalence on both sides, as anarchists sought to contend with the strange phenomena of Beatlemania, the counterculture and pop stars engaged in political campaigns.
Marcus Collins is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History at Loughborough University. He is author of The Beatles and Sixties Britain (2020), Modern Love (2003), co-author of Why Study History? (2020) and editor of The Permissive Society and Its Enemies (2007). He is currently writing the second volume of his study of the Beatles (The Beatles’ World) and a short history of British documentaries about lesbians and gay men (Arrested Development: Broadcasting and Homosexuality from Wolfenden to AIDS) as well as embarking on a collaborative project on attitudinal change in the global sixties.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
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Essay #7: Geoffrey Swain, 'The Russian Anarchists and the Treaty of Brest Litovsk'

In this essay, Geoffrey Swain looks at the impact of the Brest Litovsk Treaty (3 March 1918) on the fragile relationship between the Russian Anarchists and the Bolsheviks. The Russian Anarchists had welcomed Russia’s First Revolution of 1917, when the Tsar was overthrown; they were prepared to work with the Bolsheviks during the Second Revolution, the October insurrection which brought Kerensky’s Provisional Government to an end; however, they reserved the right to start a Third Revolution when the statism inherent in Bolshevik thinking became a threat to worker self-government. That moment came with Lenin’s decision to sign the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. 
Geoffrey Swain is Professor Emeritus of the University of Glasgow and spent his career writing on the history of Russia and Eastern Europe. Major publications include The Origins of the Russian Civil War (1996) and Trotsky (2006), and a second edition of his Short History of the Russian Revolution will be published by Bloomsbury later this year. For more information see University of Glasgow - Schools - School of Social & Political Sciences - Our Staff - Prof Geoffrey R Swain. 
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
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Essay #6: Tom Goyens, 'Frederico Kniestedt and the Possibilities of Resistance'

In this essay, Tom Goyens takes a look at anarchist possibilities in the face of transnational militarism and fascism during the 1920s and 1930s through the largely forgotten figure of Frederico Kniestedt, a German-born anarchist and labour activist in Brazil who set out to fight the Kaiser and ended up fighting Hitlerism through peaceful direct action and the printed word. 
Tom Goyens is an Associate Professor of History at Salisbury University in Maryland, USA. His research focuses on immigrant anarchism in the United States. He is the author of Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 (2007) and editor of Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab's Saloon to Occupy Wall Street (2017). He is currently writing a new biography of Johann Most. For more information see https://txgoyens.wixsite.com/tomgoyens 
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
Artwork by Sam G: https://www.instagram.com/passerinecreations
 

Essay #5: Catherine Oliver, 'More-than-Human Precarity'

In this essay, Catherine Oliver takes a look at the world beyond the human through a critical lens of precarity in Britain, exploring how humans’ lives with other species have been destroyed, and the consequences of this for the flourishing of more-than-human communities.  
Catherine Oliver is a postdoctoral researcher, currently working with rehomed commercial ex-laying hens in London as part of the ERC-funded project Urban Ecologies at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. She completed her PhD on historical and contemporary veganism in Britain in 2020. She can be found on twitter at @katiecmoliver and more on her work is available here: https://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/oliver/. 
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
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Essay #4: Constance Bantman, 'Militant Afterlives: Jean Grave after 1918'

In this essay, Constance Bantman argues that looking at periods of defeat and isolation in militant careers is important, and explores these perspectives through the example of the French anarchist Jean Grave (1854-1939).
Constance Bantman is a Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Surrey, UK. Her research focuses on the history of the French anarchist movement (1870-1939), with a focus on transnational perspectives (for a publication list on these themes, see: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/constance-bantman). 
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
Artwork by Sam G: https://www.instagram.com/passerinecreations

Bonus: Call for Papers: Anarchism & Punk

Anarchism and Punk - Call for Chapters We are inviting chapter submissions for an edited volume on the interrelationships between anarchism and punk. Send 250-300 abstracts to Will Boisseau (will.boisseau@hotmail.com), Caroline Kaltefleiter (Caroline.Kaltefleiter@cortland.edu), and Jim Donaghey (j.donaghey@qub.ac.uk) by 20 January 2021. More details here: https://jimdonaghey.noblogs.org/anarc...
Timeline: 23 November 2020 – Call for Chapters disseminated. 20 January 2021 – Please send 250-300 word abstracts to the editors by (to the email addresses given above). 21 June 2021 – Subsequently invited chapters, of between 5,000 and 8,000 words, to be written with a general readership in mind. Winter 2021/22 – After review and revisions process, the book is under agreement to be published with a well respected radical (and punk friendly) publisher. Details to be announced. Some thought-provoking questions, to which you might respond or take as a point of departure: - What lessons can other milieus of the anarchist movement draw from punk’s longevity and impressive global spread?- Is the relationship between punk and anarchism substantially distinct in ‘other’ world contexts (especially in the ‘Global South’)? - Can punk’s success in ‘taking back the means of cultural production’ be replicated in other realms of production (whether social or material)? - Is punk well-placed to respond to, or resist, or escape, the neoliberal capitalist world? Or is punk just another harbinger of neoliberalism’s seemingly irresistible advance? - How do punk scenes respond to life under socialist/communist states and governments? Or to life under fascist/authoritarian/totalitarian states and governments? - What intervention can punk culture (or punk counter-culture) make in the ‘culture wars’? - In our era of perpetual crisis, what role can/do punk scenes play in providing focal points for resistance and mutual aid? - How has punk responded to radical ideologies other than anarchism (Marxism, autonomism, socialism, feminism, environmentalism)? - How has punk interacted with specific social movements (Black Lives Matter, antifa, Extinction Rebellion, trans rights, anti-globalisation, Occupy, disability rights, Food Not Bombs, LGBT, squatting)? - How does punk challenge, or fail to challenge, the patriarchy? Does queer punk look different in diverse global contexts? - What does the prevalence of veganism in punk culture tell us about tensions between individual consumer choices and activism? How do other punk behaviours and consumption practices relate to anarchism? - In what ways does the prevalence of anti-theism in punk reflect anarchist anti-theism and anti-clericalism? - How does the relationship between punk and anarchism compare with other anarchist-associated music cultures or art movements? (Hip-hop, rap, dance, rave, folk, anti-folk, metal, jazz, kraut rock, ska, avant-garde, rebetiko, corridos, no wave, Irish rebel music, ad nauseam!). Please feel free to expand beyond these questions in your contributions.

Essay #3: James Gifford, 'Rue Sainte-Ursule'

In this work of creative non-fiction, James Gifford explores how narrative form can engage with anarchism by looking for evanescent moments of freedom between reactionary nostalgia for the past and prefigurative utopianism for the future.
James is Professor of Literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Director of FDU Press. His work is on anarchism, literary modernism, and popular culture, and his recent books are A Modernist Fantasy: Anarchism, Modernism, & the Radical Fantastic and Personal Modernisms: Anarchist Networks & the Later Avant-Gardes. For his latest article see 'Goblin Modernism: Modernism, Anarchism, and the Radical Fantastic'
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
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Essay #2: Ole Birk Laursen, 'Decolonising Anarchism: M.P.T. Acharya, Anticolonialism, and Anarchism, 1922-1954

In this essay, Ole Birk Laursen looks at the Indian anarchist M.P.T. Acharya (1887-1954), his activities within the international anarchist movement, and his attempt to bring anarchism into India's independence struggle and the post-colonial era in order to think more closely about decolonising anarchism.
Ole is a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University (https://www.iias.asia/profile/ole-birk-laursen). His research focuses on anticolonialism, anarchism, and socialism, and he is the editor of M.P.T. Acharya, We Are Anarchists (AK Press, 2019) and Lay Down Your Arms (OOOA! Publishing, 2019). For a recent publication on Acharya, see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688790.2020.1751914.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
Artwork by Sam G: https://www.instagram.com/passerinecreations
 

Essay #1: Lisa Matthews, 'Solidarity, the Sea, and Subverting State Power'

In this essay, Lisa Matthews looks at examples of refugee and migrant solidarity, the importance of that solidarity not being limited to nation-states and citizenship, and the sea as a site of potential subversion and opportunity.
Lisa is a Coordinator at Right to Remain. Working with grassroots asylum and migrant groups in the UK, Right to Remain help people navigate the UK asylum and immigration system and campaign for positive change in the asylum and immigration system. For more information, visit www.righttoremain.org.uk
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365
Artwork by Sam G: https://www.instagram.com/passerinecreations