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
Listen on:
Episodes
Monday May 16, 2022
Monday May 16, 2022
In this essay, Elizabeth Vasileva discusses what kind of ethics are compatible with anarchist principles and makes the case for joyful, relational ways of being together.
Elizabeth Vasileva is a lecturer at the Free University of Brighton. Her PhD is available to download from your usual choice of legal-grey-zone book repository.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, click here. You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more here.
Artwork by Sam G.
Monday May 02, 2022
Monday May 02, 2022
In this essay, Mark Bray discusses propaganda by the deed and the roles of human rights and 'terrorism' in the anarchist-led transnational campaigns against the "revival of the Inquisition" in Spain at the turn of the twentieth century.
Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, political violence, and radicalism in Modern Europe at Rutgers University. Bray's most recent publications are The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists, and Martyrs in Spain and France (Cornell UP) and Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House).
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
Monday Apr 18, 2022
Monday Apr 18, 2022
In this essay, Alice Béja discusses how Emma Goldman and other anarchists "Americanized" anarchism in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, using national tropes and references to counter government repression while maintaining their internationalist beliefs. The essay is based on the article "Dreaming (Un)American Dreams"; Anarchists and the Struggle to Define Americanism" (Journal for the Study of Radicalism, vol. 13, Number 1, Spring 2019).
Alice Béja is Associate Professor in American Studies at the Lille Institute of Political Science (Sciences Po Lille) and a researcher at CERAPS-CNRS. Her most recent publications are "Left-Wing Radicalism in the United States: A Foreign Creed?" (Transatlantica journal of American studies) and "Emma Goldman" (in J-N Ducange, R. Keucheyan, S. Roza, eds, Histoire globale des socialismes, XIXè-XXIè siècles, Presses Universitaires de France, 2021).
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
Monday Mar 21, 2022
Monday Mar 21, 2022
In this essay, Chantelle Gray talks about algorithmic governance - a new art of governing and government that treats individuals as data and the social world as a problem of big data sets - and the effects this is having on politics. Drawing on Tiqqun's The Cybernetic Hypothesis (2020), she thinks about anarchist responses to one of the most pressing issues of our time, namely how to prefigure social consistency in such a way that it produces conditions counter to algorithmic governmentality.Chantelle Gray is an Associate Professor in Philosophy. Her most recent publications are "Fabulation in a Time of Algorithmic Ecology: Making the Future Possible" (with Aragorn Eloff) in Technology, Urban Space and the Networked Community (edited by Saswat Samay Das and Ananya Roy Pratihar) and Anarchism after Deleuze and Guattari: Fabulating Futures.
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
Monday Feb 14, 2022
Monday Feb 14, 2022
In this essay, Michael A. Denner explores anarchism’s aesthetic attitude towards reality: What does anarchism "look like" in art? Using examples drawn from texts by two Russian thinkers, Leo Tolstoy and Viktor Shklovsky, Denner tries to answer the question: Why is art so important to the politics of anarchism?
Michael Denner is devourer of universes at Stetson University, DeLand Florida (that's the USA... not far from Disney!) His most recent research is in film studies (What do cowboys eat?). He makes boots and raises bees.
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
Monday Jan 24, 2022
Monday Jan 24, 2022
In this essay, Anthony Ince explores how a state-centric understanding of the world, how it fits together, and our place in it, limits both popular and academic ideas of what forms of societal organisation are possible or desirable. Taking the geographical concept of territory as an example, the essay considers what could be done to reimagine the space of our world, to undermine the hegemonic grip of the state and imagine alternatives that operate against and beyond it.
Anthony Ince is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University. His research cuts across geography and political/social theory through an interest in how grassroots forms of collective power interact with large-scale social processes, including recent publications on anti-fascist spatial strategy and neighbourhood-scale legacies of urban riots.
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
Monday Jan 10, 2022
Monday Jan 10, 2022
In this essay, Eric Laursen discusses the roots of the climate change crisis in the forces driving the modern State. He lays out an analysis that locates overreliance on fossil fuels in the State's partnership with capital and their mutual focus on promoting rapid economic growth at any cost.
Eric Laursen is an independent scholar, journalist, and longtime anarchist activist, based in Massachusetts. He is the author, most recently, of The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the State (AK Press, 2021), and The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort (AK Press, 2018).
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
Monday Jan 03, 2022
Monday Jan 03, 2022
In this essay, Jeff Ferrell discusses his lifelong practice of ‘dumpster diving’ (trash picking, skip diving) as a form of anarchist direct action. He argues that dumpster diving constitutes a direct intervention into consumer waste, environmental harm, and economic inequality, while also helping to shape networks of anarchist mutual aid.
Jeff Ferrell is a retired professor of criminology and sociology. His latest books are Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge, published by University of California Press, and the forthcoming Last Picture, a collection of dumpster dived photographs, published by Atopia Projects.
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
Monday Dec 20, 2021
Monday Dec 20, 2021
In this essay, Hayyim Rothman discusses religious Jewish anarchism. Beginning with a survey of its historical and some of its theological foundations, he proceeds to highlight central themes in the work of one of its proponents, Rabba Avraham Heyn (1878-1957).
Hayyim Rothman is an independent scholar of modern Jewish thought; his most recent publications include No Masters but God: Portraits of Anarcho-Judaism, and Knesset Yisrael ve-Milhamot ha-Goyim.
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
Monday Dec 13, 2021
Monday Dec 13, 2021
In this essay, Adam Barker discusses recurrent problems around non-Indigenous anarchists involved in land reclamation actions, along with Audra, a Kanonsionni'on:we (Ga-noon-soon-knee-on-way) resident of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and Delee, a Wet’suwet’en activist who has been involved in ongoing struggles in several communities. Audra and Delee's experiences and encounters with anarchists seeking to work in solidarity with Indigenous land reclamation struggles reveal patterns of patriarchal aggressions, disruptions of community relationships and internal dynamics, and poor reputation among Indigenous communities, but with suggestions for how some groups have done better solidarity work that can inform anarchist activists.
Adam Barker is a Research Assistant in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. Adam's most recent publication is Making and Breaking Settler Space: Five Centuries of Colonization in North America, with UBC Press.
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
Your Title
This is the description area. You can write an introduction or add anything you want to tell your audience. This can help potential listeners better understand and become interested in your podcast. Think about what will motivate them to hit the play button. What is your podcast about? What makes it unique? This is your chance to introduce your podcast and grab their attention.