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 Jul 31, 2023
Monday Jul 31, 2023
In this essay, Chi Shing LEE discusses the relationship between anarchism and nationalism. He introduces the anarchist thought of Ng Chung-yin, an important anarchist figure in Hong Kong during the early 1970s, and elaborates how his anarchism exposes the contingency of the concept of national origin.
Chi Shing LEE is a PhD Candidate at Chinese University of Hong Kong. His most recent publication is "The utopian homeland: new left internationalism, diasporic Chinese nationalism, and anarchism in Hong Kong, 1969–1973.” The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal 16 (1): 1-21.
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.
Monday Jul 17, 2023
Monday Jul 17, 2023
In this essay, adapted from his recently published book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, DaN McKee reflects on his personal experiences with the inner conflict of being an anarchist teacher working within a school-system built on discipline and control. He looks back on his misguided attempts to subvert such systems through strict adherence to their absurd rules, and the more successful moments of subversion that came when he restored humanity and horizontalism to his classroom.
DaN McKee received his PhD from Cardiff University in 2009 and is currently Head of Theology and Philosophy at a secondary school in the West Midlands. Alongside Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher: A Memoir of Struggle, Grief, Philosophy and Hope (out now on Earth Island), his recent publications include Authentic Democracy: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism and ‘Character Flaws – An Anarchist Critique of Character Education in England’s Secondary Schools’ in Anarchist Studies. His forthcoming paper, ‘An Error of Punishment Defences in the Context of Schooling’ will be published in the Journal of Philosophy of Education soon. DaN also produces music under the name of Strangely Shaped By Fathers and runs the websites www.philosophyunleashed.com and www.everythingdanmckee.com
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.
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Monday Jul 03, 2023
In this essay, Pablo Angel Lugo analyzes the involvement of anarchists in assisting illegal immigrants through the production of forged documents, facilitating their lawful settlement in the UK between 2015 and 2019.
Pablo Angel Lugo is the sole judicial expert in Public Art in Mexico. His recent publications include "Theft, Plagiarism, and Destruction: Violated Creators and Artists" and "Practices of Disobedience and Clandestine Citizenship: A Proposal Towards an Anarchist Theory of Art." The latter examines a phenomenon that occurred in the UK between 2015 and 2019, where a group of anarchists assisted illegal immigrants by producing forged documents that facilitated their legal settlement in the country.
00.38 -14:43 English14:48 – 28:42 Spanish
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.
Monday Jun 05, 2023
Monday Jun 05, 2023
In this essay, Richard White encourages us to think about why anarchists should embrace the plight of farmed animals, insects and more than human worlds. If anarchism is a understood as a ‘purity of rebellion’ then how might we reflect this more fully in own praxis?
Richard is a Reader in Human Geography at Sheffield Hallam University. Richard’s most recent publications are ‘Critical Animal Studies and Activism’ (2023) and ‘Vegan Geographies: Spaces beyond violences, ethics beyond speciesism’ (2022). Details of these and other publications can be found here.
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.
Monday May 15, 2023
Monday May 15, 2023
In this essay, Jesse Cohn reconsiders the European anarchist tradition's place in modernity. How might our commitments to modernity's foundations compromise our alliances with peoples whom modernity has marginalized? Can we disentangle anarchism from those assumptions?
Jesse Cohn teaches English at Purdue Northwest in Indiana. His most recent publications are his translation of Daniel Colson's A Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism from Proudhon to Deleuze and (with Eugene Kuchinov) a translation of Abba Gordin's revolutionary fable, Why? Or, How a Peasant Got Into the Land of Anarchy.
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.
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Monday Apr 17, 2023
In this essay, Spencer Beswick argues that anarchist infrastructure, values, and tactics played a key role in the development of militant antifascism in the late twentieth century United States. He explores how anarchists in Anti-Racist Action (1987-2013) and Love and Rage (1989-1998) confronted fascists in the streets while also organizing radical movements that sought to address the root causes of the broader social crisis.
Spencer Beswick is a PhD Candidate at Cornell University writing a dissertation titled “Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century.” His most recent publications are “From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s)” in Anarchist Studies and “Defending Democracy Through Elections Won’t Be Enough to Stop Fascism” in Truthout.
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.
Monday Apr 03, 2023
Monday Apr 03, 2023
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
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday Mar 06, 2023
Monday Mar 06, 2023
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.
Monday Feb 13, 2023
Monday Feb 13, 2023
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.
Monday Jan 30, 2023
Monday Jan 30, 2023
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.