Best Sophie Peterson Podcasts (2024)

1
Essay #85: Alex Doyle, ‘Anarchism and the Nation in Cuba’ 19:48

5d ago19:48

19:48

In this essay, Alex Doyle examines how anarchists in late 19th and early 20th century Cuba grappled with thorny issues of the nation and nationalism in their pursuit of social revolution. Contrary to common assumptions about anarchism which posit that the movement wholly rejects and ignores the nation, the anarchists in Cuba, through their discours…

1
Essay #84: Diogo Duarte, ‘Anarchy in the Streets’ 20:34

13d ago20:34

20:34

In this essay, Diogo Duarte proposes a different look at the history of the State, urban planning and social housing in Portugal, by bringing into the picture the often forgotten presence of a significant anarchist movement in the country. As he suggests, to fully understand some of the social and political processes that were underway in Portugal …

1
Essay #83: Joshua Newmark & Sophie Turbutt, ‘Introduction: Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth-Century History’ 22:18

27d ago22:18

22:18

This essay introduces a short series of podcasts emanating from last year's 'Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth Century History' special issue. Joshua Newmark highlights some of the parallels and linkages between the Spanish and Portuguese anarchist movements, while Sophie Turbutt explores the key themes emerging from the special issue and what they co…

1
Essay #82: David Christopher, ‘Early Cronenberg and the Anarchist Apocalypse’ 18:39

1M ago18:39

18:39

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…

1
Essay #81: Andrew Whitehead, ‘The Anarchist Big Three and the Siege of Sidney Street’ 21:19

2M ago21:19

21:19

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 …

1
Essay #80: Jayne Malenfant & Hannah Brais, 'An Anarchist Approach to Housing Precarity' 17:43

2M ago17:43

17:43

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…

1
Essay #79: Sean Scalmer, ‘Direct Action: The Invention of a Transnational Concept’ 32:13

3M ago32:13

32:13

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…

1
Essay #78: Sam C. Tenorio, ‘Black Cataclysm: Anarchism and Ruination’ 18:48

3M ago18:48

18:48

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 o…

1
Essay #77: Nolan Bennett, ‘Alexander Berkman’s Anti-Prison Anarchism’ 24:37

4M ago24:37

24:37

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 importanc…

1
Essay #76: Peterson Silva, ‘Mechanical Failures and Anarchist Freedom’ 17:15

4M ago17:15

17:15

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, tran…

1
Essay #75: Chris Robé, ‘Anarchism, Video Activism and State Repression’ 16:13

5M ago16:13

16:13

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…

1
Essay #74: Pranay Somayajula, ‘Nationhood Beyond Nationalism: Towards an Anarchist Politics of Anti-Colonial Liberation’ 17:59

5M ago17:59

17:59

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 anarc…

1
Essay #73: Christopher Powell, ‘Shame Economies’ 23:46

6M ago23:46

23:46

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 …

1
Essay #72: Elena Pagani, ‘Interpersonal Freedom as Pluralist Radical Horizontality’ 37:14

6M ago37:14

37:14

In this essay, Elena Pagani presents theorising and practices of freedom as interpersonal and intersubjective. She does this through the conceptions of agonistic self-creation and agonistic empathy in conversation with empirical findings from a militant research of radical worker co-operatives in Greece. Her presentation invites us to imagine and p…

1
Essay #71: Deric Shannon, ‘The Anarchist Critique of Capitalism’ 16:30

7M ago16:30

16:30

In this essay, Deric Shannon outlines the anarchist analysis and critique of capitalism. He also gives some potential explanations for capitalism's resilience. Deric Shannon is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University's Oxford College. His most recent books are The State of State Theory: State Projects, Repression, and Multi-sites of…

1
Essay #70: Sonia Hernández, ‘For a Just and Better World’ 26:27

7M ago26:27

26:27

In this essay, Sonia Hernández describes the central role Mexican women played in the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist organizing during the early 20th century. She examines the emergence of transnational feminism influenced by anarchist ideas in the Gulf of Mexico region - such women's labor activism left an indelible mark on the greater history o…

1
Essay #69: Benjamin Franks, ‘Anarchism and Elections’ 25:59

8M ago25:59

25:59

In this essay, Benjamin Franks identifies the core principles that lead anarchists to reject participation in democratic elections. It then explores the occasions where anarchists have engaged in different forms of electoral engagement and showing the particular conditions that make some constitutional interventions compatible with anarchist princi…

1
Essay #68: Carne Ross, ‘Anarchy is Love’ 8:28

8M ago8:28

8:28

In this essay, Carne explores the spiritual dimension of anarchism, which he once assumed was more a ‘political’ philosophy about how people make decisions and transact business. He concludes that there is indeed a vital spiritual element and moreover that anarchism centres love and human connection at its core. Carne Ross is a writer. His most rec…

1
Essay #67: William Marling, ‘Anarchism and Rhetoric’ 23:44

9M ago23:44

23:44

In this essay, William Marling asks why there seems to be so much rhetoric in/about anarchism. He digs for an answer in his recent book on Ammon Hennacy, finding an answer in the practice of "parrhesia," or speaking truth to power. William Marling is Professor of American Literature and Film at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, US…

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Essay #66: Rhiannon Firth, ‘Disaster Anarchy’ 11:29

9M ago11:29

11:29

In this essay, Rhiannon Firth reads from an article published in DOPE Magazine issue 22, which is part 2 of a 2-part summary of her latest book, Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action, published by Pluto Press last Autumn. In it, she offers a response to the question: Do anarchist approaches to disaster relief have more to offer beyond sta…

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Essay #65: Gabriele Montalbano, ‘Anarchism and Labour Movements in Tunisia’ 31:16

10M ago31:16

31:16

In this essay, Gabriele Montalbano considers the Italian-speaking anarchists of the end of the nineteenth century and their involvement and legacy in trade union movements and strikes in Tunis during the first decade of the twentieth century. This essay demonstrates the connection between diasporas, anarchism, and labour movements, and the place of…

1
Essay #64: Javier Sethness Castro, ‘Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography’ 14:07

10M ago14:07

14:07

In this essay, Javier Sethness Castro presents a new, queer reading of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy's life and art. By referencing homoeroticism in Tolstoy's diaries and comparing the anarchist writer's libidinal and political desires with historical and literary examples of uprisings and revolts, Sethness highlights the liberatory potential of qu…

1
Essay #63: Ryan Essex, ‘Anarchy, and Why It Matters for Health’ 14:13

11M ago14:13

14:13

In this essay, Ryan Essex considers what anarchy could do for health and healthcare. Drawing on a number of historical and contemporary examples he argues that anarchist thinking and praxis is too often overlooked and has the potential to radically alter how we approach health. Ryan Essex is a Research Fellow at the University of Greenwich. His mos…

1
Essay #62: Clara Vlessing, ‘Remembering Louise Michel: From Anarchist Assassin to Banksy Boat’ 17:16

11M ago17:16

17:16

In this essay, Clara Vlessing looks at the cultural memory of Louise Michel (1830-1905). The essay compares Michel’s domestic remembrance with her international afterlives to explore how an anarchist individual is adopted, appropriated or taken as the nominal leader for many different causes. Clara Vlessing is a lecturer in comparative literature a…

1
Essay #61: Robert Leach, ‘Subverting Good Order’ 18:14

12M ago18:14

18:14

In this essay, Robert Leach discusses the gradual awakening of British radicals after the sleepy 1950s, especially some of the festivals that they mounted. Robert Leach is former lecturer at Edinburgh and Birmingham Universities, freelance theatre director, and writer. His most recent works include the two-volume Illustrated History of British Thea…

1
Essay #60: Chi Shing LEE, ‘Anarchism and Nationalism: Ng Chung-yin’s Anarchist Envisioning of Hong Kong in the Early 1970s’ 18:55

12M ago18:55

18:55

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 Uni…

1
Essay #59: DaN Mckee, ‘Anarchist: Subverting the System from Within’ 33:46

1y ago33:46

33:46

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…

1
Essay #58: Pablo Angel Lugo, ‘Practices of Disobedience and Clandestine Citizenship: A Proposal Towards an Anarchist Theory of Art’ 28:42

1y ago28:42

28:42

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 Destruc…

1
Essay #57: Richard White, ‘A Purity of Rebellion: Anarchism, Animals, and More Than Human Worlds’ 20:41

1y ago20:41

20:41

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 mo…

1
Essay #56: Jesse Cohn, ‘White Anarchism’s Trouble with Modernity’ 13:32

1y ago13:32

13:32

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 publi…

1
Essay #55: Spencer Beswick, ‘Anarchist Anti-Fascism’ 16:24

1+ y ago16:24

16:24

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…

1
Essay #54: Chris Rossdale, ‘The Limits of Rebellion’ 22:21

1+ y ago22:21

22:21

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 c…

1
Essay #53: Charlotte Lowell, ‘Is Love a Synonym for Anarchism?’ 18:06

1+ y ago18:06

18:06

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 Low…

1
Essay #52: Nora Ziegler, ‘Radical Hospitality’ 14:21

1+ y ago14:21

14:21

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 …

1
Essay #51: Kiara Mohamed Amin & Priya Sharma, ‘Psychedelic Liberation’ 13:01

1+ y ago13:01

13:01

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 foc…

1
Essay #50: Dai O’Brien & Steve Emery, ‘Deaf People and Anarchism’ 23:08

1+ y ago23:08

23:08

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 …

1
Essay #49: Kim Kelly, ‘Guns aren’t just for right-wingers’ 10:59

1+ y ago10:59

10:59

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 com…

1
Essay #48: Gloria Truly Estrelita, ‘A Short History of Anarchism in Indonesia’ 38:16

1+ y ago38:16

38:16

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 abolitio…

1
Essay #47: Jim Donaghey, ‘Smash All Systems!’ 14:34

1+ y ago14:34

14:34

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 cultur…

1
Essay #46: Maia Ramnath, ‘The Not So Postcolonial and the Racial Capitalocene’ 26:05

1+ y ago26:05

26:05

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 s…

1
Special episode: Black Autonomy Podcast, ‘Black Anarchism Across the Generations’ 40:33

1+ y ago40:33

40:33

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 ra…

1
Essay #45: Hannah Kass, ‘Food Anarchy and the State Monopoly on Hunger’ 19:20

2y ago19:20

19:20

In this essay, Hannah Kass discusses how the state, capitalism, and property are interconnected systems, working together to produce peasant dispossession and hunger. To challenge these systems and their social relationships, she proposes food anarchy: a new pathway for the food sovereignty movement to wield in their struggle to challenge the curre…

1
Essay #44: Jennifer Cole, ‘Social Kropotkinism: The Best New Normal for Survival’ 19:41

2y ago19:41

19:41

In this essay, Jennifer Cole discusses how Peter Kropotkin's early writings on mutualism sit alongside Charles Darwin's writings on human evolution and underpin current interests within evolutionary anthropology on how human psychology, altruism and morality developed. Kropotkin is largely ignored within biological and evolutionary academia, howeve…

1
Essay #43: Laura Galián, ‘Anarchism in the South of the Mediterranean’ 29:12

2y ago29:12

29:12

In this essay, Laura Galián delves into the history of anarchism in the south of the Mediterranean from a historical and historiographical perspective by reviewing the anti-authoritarian geographies of the southern shore of the Mediterranean and reassessing the postcolonial status of these emancipatory projects. For the English version: 0.40-14:10 …

1
Essay #42: Sophie Scott-Brown, ‘Adventures in Anarchist Autobiography’ 19:01

2y ago19:01

19:01

In this essay, Sophie Scott-Brown explores the life and times of anarchist autobiography. From Proudhon to Kropotkin, Goldman to Read, many anarchists have written their life stories and provided generations of readers an intimate glimpse of the radical life, but what else motivates this sort of memory making? Moreover, how has it changed over time…

1
Essay #41: Nathaniel Andrews, ‘Anarchist Children and Childhoods in the ‘Argentinian Barcelona’’ 16:34

2y ago16:34

16:34

In this essay, Nathaniel Andrews explores both the role of children within anarchist activism, and anarchist understandings of childhood, focusing specifically on the Argentinian city of Rosario, in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Nathaniel Andrews is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute. His …

1
Essay #40: Sarah Gelbard, ‘Practicing Performances of Punk Anarchism in the Academy’ 14:10

2y ago14:10

14:10

In this essay, Sarah Gelbard reflects on the messy relationship between punk, anarchy, and anarchism and ways it can be conceived of as identity, politics, scene, performance, and/or practice. For punks in academia and academics studying punk, how do we position ourselves in relation to the work, to power, and with our comrades? Sarah Gelbard is a …

1
Essay #39: Frankie Hines, ’Anarchism, Literature, and the Problem of Representation’ 13:13

2y ago13:13

13:13

In this essay, Frankie Hines argues that an anarchist literary theory requires engaging with the anarchist critique of representation and considering possibilities for non-representational literary modes. Rather than looking for representations of reality, he argues anarchist literature should instead be read for the political effects it produces; …

1
Essay #38: Dorian Wallace, ‘Liberation Music Therapy’ 19:50

2y ago19:50

19:50

In this essay, Dorian Wallace discusses the use of music as a source of emancipatory inspiration, revolutionary practice, and transformational communal healing. He addresses the interconnections between music therapy, political music, and liberation psychology as the first step toward deeper exploration and discourse. Dorian Wallace is a composer, …

1
Essay #37: Janet Biehl, ‘Their Blood Got Mixed’ 18:06

2y ago18:06

18:06

In this essay, Janet Biehl discusses her new graphic memoir, Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS, an exploration of the Rojava revolution as of the spring of 2019. She gives an overview of the revolution and the many and varied people she interviewed, explains how she came to write and illustrate the book, and offers her…

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