Michel Onfray: Postanarchism explained to your grandmother

According to a recent addition to wikipedia: "Recently, the french hedonist philosopher Michel Onfray has embraced the term postanarchism to describe his approach to politics and ethics. He advocates for an anarchism in line with such intellectuals as 'Orwell, Simone Weil, Jean Grenier, Foucault, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Guattari, Lyotard, Derrida and theorists of May 1968' which for him was 'a nietzschetian revolt in order to put an end to the One truth, revealed, an to put in evidence the diversity of truths, in order to make disappear ascetic christian ideas and to help arise new possibilities of existence"

Here is a rough babelfish translation of a news piece from www.maglm.fr. I take full responsibility for any errors in translation. For more information on Michel Onfray see his wikipedia page here.


Postanarchism Explained to Your Grandmother

Last Thursday, the Renaud-Barrault room of the theatre of the Roundabout was full. Michel Onfray gave an conference presentation called "Postanarchism explained to my grandmother". Onfray made fun of the popular books of postanarchist thought and the history of ideas that ntellectuals make regularly with few expenses; addressing adult readers as they would do to children.

Rejecting this kind of simplistic step, Michel Onfray, in the spirit of the Popular university of Caen, intends to revisit the history of anarchistic thought--multiplicitous and contradictory though it may be--by asserting a right of inventory: to retain the ideas which still seem to him of value today and to push back the unacceptable and/or considerably dated standpoint.

While following this logic, the author of Contre histoire de la philosophi (Against a history of philosophy) traces the contours of postanarchism, a current which also exists on the other side of the Atlantic. It starts by sweeping without care a certain number of dogmas (one of its great businesses) of anarchistic thought: the rejection of State; the refusal of elections; the idea according to which capitalism would be overcome in a cataclysmic unfolding on a global scale. On the contrary, for the philosopher, the State is useful, to vote makes it possible to express a power struggle and capitalism is the substantial shape of the world - it is only liberal capitalism which is to be denounced.

Michel Onfray then moved onto a screening of the writings of authors known as anarchistic to make his statement: exit stage the positions of warmongers, homophobes and the male chauvinist pigs of Proudhon, and say yes to pragmatism; exit stage the Christianity of Tolstoï and the negativity of those which became anarchistic by bitterness; and say yes to positivity, and with all that which is likely to develop the life instinct; yes in the place of the Justice defended by Louise Michel, with the categorical imperative of Boétie -- "Be solved not to be useful more and you will be free" -- reactivated by Thoreau, with the phalansteries of Furrier, the anarcho-syndicalism of Albert Camus in The Revolted man, with education, the pleasures of the body, etc.

If the anarchistic thought were bled by the Commune then by the War of 14-18, before the triumph of the Marxism, the author thinks that anarchism for a time disappeared in the sea and then reappeared. He regards May 1968 as a Nietzschean revolt which put an end to the Truth by highlighting the diversity of multiple truths, and erasing the Christian ascetic ideals thereby marking the emergence of new possibilities for existence.

Michel Onfray proposes a post-anarchism for the past; for today and for tomorrow. Read more...

Post-Anarchism at NAASN

Michael Truscello has graciously provided us with an audio copy of the panel "Visions of Post-Anarchism" from the first ever North American Anarchist Studies Conference. Panelists included Michael Truscello and Thomas Nail. For more information (bios) please visit the website.

Audio File: Visions of Post-Anarchism

Thanks for the file. The presentations and discussions were excellent and insightful. Both speakers have chapters in the book "Postanarchism: A Reader", forthcoming 2010 from Pluto Press.

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Saul Newman: Postanarchism between Politics and Anti-Politics

I would like to share a string of videos of a Saul Newman talk from Sept 2 - 4 at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. I would also like to apologize that many of these posts are exceedingly long. I am working on hacking the blogspot template to allow for a "Read More" link. Enjoy.

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Post-Anarchism at NAASN

Please join us at the first ever North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference. Our panel is called "Visions of Post-Anarchism":

Roger Farr, Michael Truscello, Thomas Nail, (Duane Rousselle)

In a yet to be released essay from Lewis Call (author of “Postmodern Anarchism”, Lexington Books, 2002), it is argued that a sort-of “post-anarchist” moment has finally arrived (Post-Anarchism: A Reader, forthcoming) and yet equally, there appears to be growing sentiment that the post-anarchist critique has been somewhat internalized in the minds of many anarchist researchers and therefore rendered stagnant as an independent position that one can argue either 'for' or 'against'. What is the place of post-anarchism today? Can it still be defined largely by its critique of traditional anarchism or are there other ways of interpreting it? Have we possibly moved beyond post-anarchism and, if so, does it continue to cast a shadow on the way we study anarchism? This panel begins with three paper presentations on particular post-anarchist interventions and then moves into a discussion on their points of connection and difference (between the panelists and the participating audience). The Visions of Post-anarchism panel represents an attempt to outline what post-anarchism means for anarchist researchers today and what it may mean tomorrow.

Individual paper outlines follow:

Michael Truscello will examine the concept of necessity as a reference to the means by which revolutionaries could survive in the context of continuing revolution. This meaning of necessity divided the earliest socialists and anarchists. As Murray Bookchin writes, “The problem of dealing with want and work—an age-old problem perpetuated by the early Industrial Revolution—produced the great divergence in revolutionary ideas between socialism and anarchism. Freedom would still be circumscribed by necessity in the event of a revolution. How was this world of necessity to be 'administered'? (2004: 46). Marxists proposed the state as the means by which necessity could be administered and revolution could persist, and anarchists offered the solution of free communities (Bookchin, 2004: 46). “The problem of want and work,” writes Bookchin, “was never satisfactorily resolved by either body of doctrine in the last century" (2004: 47). Bookchin's own solution was "social ecology," which required technology to "replace the realm of necessity by the realm of freedom" (2004: 48), a proposal met with derision by anarcho-primitivists. The problem of necessity in the period of late capitalism is intimately bound to the problem of technology, since most people who live in industrial societies depend on massive technological systems for sustenance, and since the current population of the planet greatly surpasses the number that could be supported by living as hunter-gatherer societies, the primitivist ideal. To revolt against these technological systems from within industrial societies would seem to be an act of self-destruction; to preserve these systems would be equal folly. For anarchists, the problem of the technological society therefore necessitates a paradoxical solution. I will discuss the possibility that this paradoxical solution might resemble Saul Newman's concept of "unstable universalities."

Thomas Nail argues that poststructuralist philosophy, anarchism, and radical politics share a similar commitment against statism, capitalism vanguardism, and economic reductionism, but share an ambivalence toward more positive visions of today's radical and anarchist organizations. If, following Todd May, one understands post-anarchism as the dual commitment to “anti-authoritarianism” and the “affirmation of difference,” how are we to understand the concrete consistency of political experimentations beyond their mere potentiality to “become different than they are.” That is, what would a post-anarchist political analysis look like took seriously the concrete analysis of specific anarchist practices and their organization? In this paper I argue that while anti-authoritarianism and potentiality are crucial for understanding the core of radical politics today, they are ultimately insufficient for understanding the consistency and organization of today’s actual alternatives to capitalism and domination. What I will begin to develop in this paper instead is a vision of post- anarchism amended by a philosophical constructivism of the concrete conditions, elements, and agencies that compose post-anarchist political experimentations. In particular I will exemplify this analysis in the case of one of the first post-anarchist revolutions: Zapatismo.

Roger Farr investigates the increasingly common demands in various anarchist periodicals for greater clarity and accessibility in movement discourse. A recent issue of Rolling Thunder, for instance, argues that the “exclusive language” of certain milieus is unable to “make a welcoming space for a broad range of participants,” and that these “obscurantists” should rather express themselves “in the language they use when they talk with their neighbors or relatives.” While debates around language use have been, and continue to be, critically important for anarchists, we need to move beyond the “clarity good / jargon bad” binary that too frequently provides a structure for the discussion, which in the end usually leads to vague indictments of “in-group” languages and “exclusionary” linguistic practices, in favour of what sounds very much like a call for even more anonymous, mass communication. Drawing on Alice Becker-Ho’s work on argot – “the language of the dangerous classes” – this talk asks what anarchists might learn from the study of such “anti-languages,” and argues that in the struggle over our language we arrive at “the heart of all the struggles between the forces striving to abolish the present alienation and those striving to maintain it.”

Duane will provide an overview at the end and stimulate discussion.

Biographies:

Roger is the author of a book of poetry, SURPLUS (Line Books, 2006), a contributor to the co-research project N 49 19. 47 - W 123 8.11 (Recomposition, 2008), and is the editor of the sporadically published journal PARSER: New Poetry and Poetics. His writing on social movements and the avant-garde has appeared or is forthcoming in Anarchist Studies, Fifth Estate, Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, The Poetic Front, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. His critical introduction to a new English translation of Alice Becker-Ho’s The Essence of Jargon is forthcoming from Autonomedia. He teaches in the Creative Writing and Culture and Technology Programs at Capilano University in Vancouver, BC.

Michael is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His work has focused on the postanarchist politics of digital culture (especially software), and has been featured in journals such as Postmodern Culture, Technical Communication Quarterly, and TEXT Technology.

Thomas is a visiting scholar at CERIS—The Ontario Metropolis Centre in Toronto, Canada. He has written on the post-structuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Alain Badiou. Awarded a U.S. Fulbright scholarship to complete his dissertation in Canada, he is currently writing his Ph.D in philosophy (University of Oregon) on the concept of revolution in the political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. He was the assistant editor for the journal, Environmental Philosophy 5:2 (2008) and 6:1 (2009).

Duane is embarrassingly undecided. He is the editor of the forthcoming book “Post-Anarchism: A Reader” and a decidedly excommunicated anarchist.

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Post-Anarchism: A Reader [updated!]

Despite many obstacles, the Post-Anarchism Reader project continues (I will address these obstacles both in the book and on this blog in the future). Although I have had a contract on my desk for the last few months, I feel that it is more important to continue to negotiate with Pluto Press at this time [you may note that Pluto published Uri Gordon's Anarchy Alive! (2007), Richard Day's Gramsci is Dead (2005), John Moore and Spencer Sunshine's edited volume I am not a man, I am dynamite! (2004), Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone (2004), John Holloway's Change the world without taking power (2005), Daniel Singer's Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 (2003), Joanne Richardson's Anarchitexts.] The latest update, from Pluto, is that all three peer reviews came back positive (very positive), I have responded to them and await a full decision in the very near future. For now, I hope that the table of contents is at least somewhat useful/interesting to you folks.

Preface - Duane Rousselle
Introduction - Sureyyya Evren

I - Anarchism After Post-structuralism/Post-Modernism
May, Todd -Is post-structuralist political theory anarchist?
Koch, Andrew - Post-structuralism and the epistemological basis of anarchism
Bey, Hakim - Post-anarchism anarchy
Newman, Saul - Anarchism, Marxism and the bonapartist state
de Rota, Antón Fernendez - Acracy_Reloaded@post1968/1989: Reflections on Postmodern Revolutions

II - Movements
Day, Richard J.F. - From hegemony to affinity
Mueller, Tadzio - Empowering anarchy: Power, hegemony, and anarchist strategy
Adams, Jason - The constellation of oppositions
Truscello, Michael - Imperfect necessity and the mechanical continuation of everyday life: A postanarchist politics of technology

III - Reactions
Cohn, Jesse., & Wilbur, Shawn - What’s wrong with postanarchism
Franks, Benjamin - Postanarchism: A partial account
Jeppesen, Sandra - Things to do with post-structuralism in a life of anarchy: Relocating the outpost of post-anarchism
Saint Schmidt - Postanarchism is not what you think: The role of postanarchist theory after the backlash

IV - Lines of Flight
Heckert, Jamie - Sexuality as state-form
Bertalan, Hilton - Emma Goldman: The postanarchist
Farr, Roger - Anarchist Poetics
Call, Lewis - Buffy the Post-Anarchist Vampire Slayer

V – The Future of Radical Politics
de Acosta, Alejandro - Anarchist Meditations, or: Three Wild Interstices of Anarchism and Philosophy
Nail, Thomas - Constructivism and the future anterior of radical politics
Evren, Sureyyya - Currently Untitled
Newman, Saul - Postanarchism and radical politics today

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Selected Bibliography
Index Read more...

Special issue of Critical Horizons on Simon Critchley's Neo-Anarchism

Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory
Editor(s): Jay M. Bernstein, Emmanuel Renault, John Rundell
Print ISSN: 1440-9917
Online ISSN: 1568-5160
Institutional Price (Print and Online): £110.00
Individual Price: £30.00

VOLUME 10 (2009) ISSUE 2

**SPECIAL ISSUE**
Ethics of Commitment and Politics of Resistance:
Simon Critchley’s Neo-Anarchism
Edited by Robert Sinnerbrink and Philip A. Quadrio

Contents

Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance: Simon Critchley’s
Infinitely Demanding
Robert Sinnerbrink and Philip A. Quadrio

On Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment,
Politics of Resistance
Alain Badiou

Neo-Anarchism or Neo-Liberalism? Yes, Please! A Response to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding
Robert Sinnerbrink

“Critchley is Zizek”: In Defence of Critical Political Philosophy
Matthew Sharpe

The Common Root of Commitment, Resistance and Power
Karin de Boer

Speaking to the People: Critchley, Rousseau and the Deficit in Practical Rationality
Philip A. Quadrio

Which Anarchism? On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Infinity for (Political) Life: A Response to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding
Nina Power

A Plea for Prometheus
Alberto Toscano

Humorous Commitments and Non-Violent Politics: A Response
to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding
Fiona Jenkins

Mystical Anarchism
Simon Critchley Read more...

Imperceptible Strategies, Unidentified Autonomous Organizations

:: A Drifting Seminar :: London, October 23rd,2009 ::

Anarchist and autonomous politics are often associated, in a kneejerk way, with a celebration of chaos and disorder: a rejection of all forms of organization. The reduction of radical politics to a cheap joke (‘anarchist organization, what’s that?’) comes to substitute for an actual understanding of autonomous organizational practices. Far from rejecting organization all together, the history of autonomous politics contains a wealth of different modes of organizing, from the formation of temporary autonomous zones to affinity group models, maroon communities to networks and collectives.

These are forms of organizing that not always acknowledged as being organizations because they do not conform to what it is assumed organizations necessarily are: durable, static, and hierarchical. This understanding of organization obscures and makes difficult an actual engagement with the merits and weaknesses of different forms of organizing. But what would be found if rather than working from a fixed and unchanging concept of organization, one that excludes temporary forms of organization from consideration, it was attempted to tease out the organizational dynamics from all the temporary alliances and alliances that appear and disappear?

Might it be possible that we are already enmeshed in a world of unidentified autonomous organizations, a milieu of potential liberation that has remained imperceptible because of a narrow understanding of what organizations are? And might it not be that this imperceptibly, rather than being a condition to be addressed as a problem, could rather be part of building of what Robin D.G. Kelley calls an infrapolitical sphere: a space for politics coming out of people’s everyday experiences that do not express themselves as radical political organization at all.

The aim of this encounter is to explore the connections between anarchism, autonomism, and the revolutions of everyday life, drawing out conceptual tools useful to developing and deepening the politics of these infrapolitical spaces and organization. How can we strategize and build from the connections and movements of the undercommons, working from everyday encounters to compose new forms of social movement? How can we connect and work between spontaneous forms of resistance without forcing them into some larger form that ossifies them?

This event will not be based around formal presentations, but rather will rather take the form of a drifting seminar. Participants will be asked to read several pieces of text that will form the basis of discussion and exploration.

Registration for the event will be approximately 10 quid. There will be some limited travel funding available. If you wish to be considered for this funding indicate this when you register.

For registration and information contact: stevphen [NO SPAM] autonomedia [DOT] org / Sponsored by the Anarchist Studies Network & Minor Compositions

Sponsored by the Anarchist Studies Network (www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk) & Minor Compositions (www.minorcompositions.info).


SCHEDULE:
To be posted shortly. Begins at 12pm outside Pogo Café in Hackney.

READINGS:
Roger Farr (2007) “The Strategy of Concealment.”
Stefano Harney (2008) “Governance and the Undercommons.”
The Invisible Committee (2007) The Coming Insurrection.
Dimitris Papadopoulos (2006) “Who’s Afraid of Immaterial Workers? Embodied Capitalism, Precarity, Imperceptibility.”
Dimitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson, and Vassilis Tsianos (2008) Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st Century. London: Pluto Press. Read more...