Anarchist Essays
Brought to you by Loughborough University’s Anarchism Research Group (ARG), Anarchist Essays presents leading academics, activists, and thinkers exploring themes in anarchist theory, history, and practice. For more on the ARG, please visit https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ and follow us on Twitter at @arglboro
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Episodes
Monday Jun 03, 2024
Monday Jun 03, 2024
In this essay, David Christopher explores and unpacks the mutually anarchistic and apocalyptic propensities in the early films of David Cronenberg. Christopher positions Cronenberg's films as exemplary of an innovative new methodology of cinema analysis for films following Cronenberg's influence. For more on these topics, see Anarchist Studies 32.1.
Dr Christopher is a Lecturer in Popular Screen Cultures at the University of Leicester for the School of Arts, Media, and Communication.
David's most recent publications are:
Flexing Armageddon: Displacing Climate Change Anxiety through Soft Power Nationalist Interests in GuoFan’s The Wandering Earth, Brill - Youth and Globalization Journal: Cultural Production in Asia, Spring 2024. DOI - tba.
Horror and the Cube Films: An Unlikely Vehicle for the Negotiation of Nationalist-Cultural Ideologies, Mutual Images – On Politics of Visual Media, Issue 11 (2023-24): pp. 139-170. (Co-edited and with and Introduction by Dr. David Christopher and Dr. Marco Pellitteri, pp. 53- 59). https://www.mutualimages-journal.org/index.php/mi/issue/view/11/14.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday May 20, 2024
Monday May 20, 2024
In this essay, Andrew Whitehead examines the two most lethal incidents linked to anarchism in London's history: the murder of three police officers during an attempted armed robbery at Houndsditch in December 1910 and the ensuing siege of Sidney Street in Stepney. He looks particularly at the links between the mainly Latvian perpetrators and three anarchist luminaries then living in exile in London, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta and Rudolf Rocker.
Andrew Whitehead is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham and an associate editor of History Workshop Journal. His latest book A Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney Street, was published by Reaktion Books in March 2024.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday May 06, 2024
Monday May 06, 2024
In this essay, Jayne Malenfant and Hannah Brais unpack an anarchist approach to confronting housing precarity by bringing together existing anarchist scholarship while proposing housing interventions that support agency, anti-colonial work, and justice. They confront the inadequacy of existing housing interventions and propose an alternative vision that aligns with anarchist values of solidarity, agency, prefigurative politics, and harm reduction.
Jayne Malenfant is an Assistant Professor at McGill University in Tio'tia:ke/Montreal. Their work focuses on housing, homelessness, community-led research and anarchist education.
Hannah Brais is a doctoral candidate at McGill University in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Her work focuses on improving practices and policies for people experiencing homelessness.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Apr 22, 2024
Monday Apr 22, 2024
This essay examines the rise of 'direct action' as a key concept in anarchist and radical politics over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces the transnational arguments, texts and networks that made this possible.
Sean Scalmer is a Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. This essay is a greatly edited version of a recent article: 'Direct Action: Invention of a Transnational Concept', International Review of Social History, vol. 68, no. 3, December 2023, pp.357-87. (An open access version is here).The research and the essay forms part of a research project on 'Direct Action and Democracy: Utopia, Experience, Threat', funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Apr 08, 2024
Monday Apr 08, 2024
In this essay, adapted from his recently published book, Sam C. Tenorio (he/they) reconsiders the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and its ruinous disruptions, like arson, theft, and vandalism, as a cataclysm that clears material and discursive ground and proffers its own questions of property. It argues that the cataclysmic vantage of the Watts rebellion overflows on a state narrative meant to misapprehend both the political subjectivity of Black people and their conditions of possibility.
Sam C. Tenorio is Assistant Professor in African American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. He writes about carcerality and black radical practice as well as black trans and trans of color critique. His most recent publications are Jump: Black Anarchism and Antiblack Carcerality (NYU Press) and “White Carceral Geographies” (South Atlantic Quarterly).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Mar 25, 2024
Monday Mar 25, 2024
In this essay, Nolan Bennett traces through Alexander Berkman's 1912 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist an unresolved tension between two approaches to the prison: advocacy for political prisoners and advocacy against the politics of prisons. Berkman's ambivalence between these approaches amid his memoirs and later activism signify the book's importance and point toward enduring tensions in contemporary prison politics.
Nolan Bennett is a political theorist and assistant professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Nolan's most recent publications are "The Ambivalence of Alexander Berkman's Anti-Prison Anarchism" and "George Jackson's Perfect Disorder."
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Mar 11, 2024
Monday Mar 11, 2024
In this essay, Peterson Silva talks about metaphors for freedom among anarchists. He particularly discusses a metaphor concerning failure in complex systems, pointing out that anarchists relate freedom to the deep transformation of social patterns. A list of the references he cites in this episode is available here.Peterson Silva is a writer, translator, and PhD student of Sociology and Political Science in Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. Peterson Silva's most recent publications are Modelos anarquistas de legitimidade [Anarchist models of legitimacy] and A posição anarquista nos debates sobre privatização, burocracia e meritocracia [Anarchists on privatisation, bureaucracy, and meritocracy].
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Feb 26, 2024
Monday Feb 26, 2024
In this essay, Chris Robé explores the origins of video activism from the ecology, women’s liberation, and anarchist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He then traces the state’s increasing surveillance of video activism and recent debates regarding the value of such activism among participants of the Stop Cop City movement.
Chris Robé is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies. He writes about media activism of all varieties and has recently published Abolishing Surveillance: Digital Media Activism and State Repression with PM Press. He occasionally writes film reviews for PopMatters. He is also vice-president for his faculty union, pushing back against the attacks against academic freedom while pursuing creating a quality and free public higher education for all.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Feb 12, 2024
Monday Feb 12, 2024
In this essay, Pranay Somayajula critically examines the anarchist movement’s relationship to anticolonial politics. Drawing on a rich history of anticolonial movements, from the Kurds in Rojava to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who have sought national liberation and self-determination without being confined by the nation-state, he argues for an anarchist politics of anticolonial solidarity rooted in a radical conception of nationhood without nationalism.
Pranay Somayajula is an Indian-American writer, researcher, and cultural critic currently based in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in outlets including Jacobin, The Nation, and The Drift, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock. He can be found on Twitter at @p_somayajula.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Monday Jan 29, 2024
In this essay, Christopher Powell examines how sovereign statehood generates an economy of shame that fosters identification with the imagined sovereign. Achieving anarchy requires a shift in who is shamed and for what, shifting self-worth from ‘higher' ideals to horizontal solidarity.
Christopher Powell is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. His most recent publication is “Radical Complexity: Using Complex Systems Theory to Think About Social Transformation” in New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.