Anarchist Essays

Essay #54: Chris Rossdale, ‘The Limits of Rebellion’

In this essay, Chris Rossdale reflects on the status of rebellion as a political concept. While Extinction Rebellion have been the most prominent advocates of rebellion in recent times, the essay also looks at right-wing mobilisations in order to situate rebellion as entangled with liberal citizenship and bourgeois freedom. Nevertheless the essay closes by arguing that rebellion is essential to anarchist politics, turning to Black Anarchism for a more radical conception.
Chris is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Bristol. They write about social movements, rebellious politics, and militarism and state violence. Their recent publications have engaged with the Black Panther Party as radical theorists of racial militarism and security, and explored the continuities between the arms trade and police power. They tweet at @crossdale.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
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Essay #53: Charlotte Lowell, ‘Is Love a Synonym for Anarchism?’

Saidiya Hartman asks, “Is love a synonym for abolition?”. bell hooks writes that “true love requires an ongoing commitment to constructive struggle and change”. This essay proposes that anarchism is a practice of honest, dedicated and expansive love that opens our lives and our political societies to the possibility of transformation.
Charlotte Lowell is an undergraduate student at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, where they investigate ‘how things change’ in the context of love, physics and anarchism.
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Essay #52: Nora Ziegler, ‘Radical Hospitality’

In this essay, Nora Ziegler critically explores “radical hospitality” as a diversity of tactics that co-construct relationships of mutual aid across differences of power. Her reflections are based on her experience of living and working in the London Catholic Worker’s house of hospitality for migrants with no recourse to public funds.
Nora Ziegler is an independent researcher and writer, active in mutual aid and union organising. Her most recent publications are “Power Relations in Grassroots Groups: An Anarchist Dialectics” and “Herd Mentality, Deathbed Radicalism and Other Things On My Not-To-Do List”.
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Essay #51: Kiara Mohamed Amin & Priya Sharma, ‘Psychedelic Liberation’

In this essay, Kiara Mohamed Amin and Priya Sharma explore the liberatory potential of psychedelic trips, arguing that such practices possess the potential to humanise parts of the self that have been dehumanised by capitalist systems of living. 
Kiara Mohamed Amin is a trans, Somali multidisciplinary artist based in Toxteth, Liverpool. His work focuses on what it means to live at the intersections of marginalisation and still choose joy, healing and community as an act of radical living and dreaming. He uses different mediums to explore intergenerational trauma and looks to see where we are in eternity through astrology, somatic movements and divination.
Priya Sharma is a Lecturer in Arts Management, Policy and Practice at the University of Manchester. Her research explores articulations of feminist and queer British South Asian identity on social media platforms. Her research interests include radical politics, diaspora experiences and the social impact of new media technologies.
The authors' first co-authored publication 'Trip where you stand: Towards psychedelic liberation' will be published in July 2023 by Feminist Review. 
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group.
Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Essay #50: Dai O’Brien & Steve Emery, ‘Deaf People and Anarchism’

In this podcast, Dai and Steve discuss the issues that deaf people and deaf communities face in capitalist society and the ways in which deaf people have traditionally framed their engagement and resistance to these issues. We discuss the issues that anarchists need to consider when reflecting on how anarchist spaces can be more accessible to deaf people.
For a video of this talk in British Sign Language, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9_Z6nkFUqwFor a text version, see the Anarchist Studies blog: https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/post/2023/01/16/anarchism-and-deaf-people/
Dai O’Brien is an Associate Professor in BSL and Deaf Studies in York St John University. His most recent papers are M Chua, Maartje De Meulder, Leah Geer, Jonathan Henner, Lynn Hou, Okan Kubus, Dai O’Brien and Octavian Robinson (2022) ‘1001 Small Victories: Deaf Academics and Imposter Syndrome’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education, and ‘Theorising the deaf body: using Lefebvre and Bourdieu to understand deaf spatial experience’ in Cultural Geographies. 
Steve is a Lecturer in BSL and Deaf Studies at York St John University. His most recent papers are: Emery, S. D., & Iyer, S. (2021) ‘Deaf migration through an intersectionality lens’. Disability & Society, 1-22; and Emery, S.D. (2016) 'Deaf Rights Activism, Global Protest', in G. Gertz & P. Boudreault (eds) The SAGE Deaf Studies Encyclopedia, SAGE: C.A., 266-271. He has written a joint chapter and contributed to the others in the forthcoming publication: Kusters, A., Moriarty Harrelson, E., Le-Marie, A., Iyer, S., Emery, S. D. (2023) International Deaf Mobilities. Gallaudet University Press: Washington D.C.
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Essay #49: Kim Kelly, ‘Guns aren’t just for right-wingers’

In this essay, Kim Kelly discusses her opinions and experiences with the past and present of leftist gun ownership and armed self-defense. 
Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist, and author of FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor. 
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.
 

Essay #48: Gloria Truly Estrelita, ‘A Short History of Anarchism in Indonesia’

In this essay, Gloria Truly Estrelita provides an overview of the history of anarchism in Indonesia. Co-authored with Jim Donaghey, Sarah Andrieu and Gabriel Facal, this essay discusses the early roots of anarchist movements in the archipelago in the context of anti-colonialism and nationalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s; details the abolition of leftist movements, including anarchism, in the 1960s; traces the re-emergence of anarchism as part of protest and counter-cultural movements in the 1990s; highlights the shifting forms of state repression in the 2010s; and points to the importance of anarchist critique for the contemporary Indonesian context.
Gloria Truly Estrelita is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Civilisation at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France. Member of Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE), she is also one of the founders of AlterSEA, Observatory of Political Alternatives in Southeast Asia (GT Estrelita's most recent publication is an article on GIS Asie: 'Can progressive thinking exist in contemporary Indonesia?'
For the English version: 0:46 – 19:03For the Bahasa Indonesian version: 19:09-37:32
For text versions of these essays, see the Anarchist Studies blog:
English - https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/article-a-brief-history-of-anarchism-in-indonesia/Bahasa Indonesian - https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/article-sejarah-singkat-anarkisme-di-indonesia/
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Essay #47: Jim Donaghey, ‘Smash All Systems!’

In this essay, Jim Donaghey reads the introductory chapter to the newly published book Smash The System! Punk Anarchism as a Culture of Resistance, edited by Jim Donaghey, Will Boisseau and Caroline Kaltefleiter, and published by Active Distribution in December 2022. The volume includes 18 chapters, offering a snapshot of anarchist punk as a culture of resistance across the globe. In these diverse and internationalist contexts we witness struggles against racism and colonialism in South Africa, resistance to neo-liberalism and state oppression in Latin America, resistance to police brutality and capitalism in Western, Central and Southeast Europe, struggles for equality and against patriarchy in the US, and anarchist resistance against injustice and authoritarianism in Asia. 
Smash The System! is the first volume in the Anarchism and Punk Book Project series.
A written version of this essay is available on the Anarchist Studies blog.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Essay #46: Maia Ramnath, ‘The Not So Postcolonial and the Racial Capitalocene’

In this essay, Maia Ramnath discusses the concept of the racial capitalocene as a framework for linking anticolonialism and climate justice.  As part of a critical dialogue across time with earlier movements, in this case the Progressive Writers Association in South Asia, this framework offers a global context in which to place specific liberation struggles that's appropriate to the present day, as anti-fascism and Afro-Asian solidarity did for the PWA at key periods in the 20th century.
Maia Ramnath is an independent scholar based in New York City. Occupations include writing, research, teaching, tour guiding, organizing, performing and choreographing (dance and aerial). Maia’s most recent publications are Art for Life: Conversations with the Progressive Writers Moment: on Pens, Swords, and Internationalism, from Antifascism to Afro-Asian Solidarity; "The Other Aryan Supremacy," in the collection No Pasaran!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis, and "Reawakening Asia Jaag Utha," in the forthcoming Lateral forum "Toward Third Worlding."
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.

Special episode: Black Autonomy Podcast, ‘Black Anarchism Across the Generations’

This special issue of the Anarchist Essays podcast features a discussion between JoNina Ervin, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, and William C. Anderson. It originally appeared on the Black Autonomy Podcast.
In October 2021, Pluto published the definitive edition of Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. The book first connected Black radical thought to anarchist theory in 1979, and now amidst a rising tide of Black political organizing, this foundational classic has been republished with a wealth of original material, including forewords by William C. Anderson and Joy James.
This episode of Black Autonomy Podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the Pluto Press podcast 'Radicals in Conversation,' in which JoNina Ervin hosts a discussion between Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and William C. Anderson about Black anarchism across the generations.
Ervin and Anderson discuss the reasons for the continued relevance and increasing popularity of Black anarchism today, what an ‘ungovernable’ radical movement might look like, and the contradictions inherent to single-issue and state-orientated political projects from the left. They also discuss Black nationalism, and put Anderson's book The Nation on No Map in conversation with Anarchism and the Black Revolution.
This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays’ was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Artwork by Sam G.