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
…
continue reading
1
Essay #89: Jon Burke, ‘Qalang Smangus: Successful Aboriginal Christian Anarchism in Taiwan’
15:31
15:31
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
15:31
In this essay, Jon Burke describes Qalang Smangus, an aboriginal village in Taiwan which has been collectively organized. Jon makes a case for identifying it as an intentional Christian anarcho-collectivist community, assesses its success, and identifies its internal and exernal challenges. Jon is a former lecturer in photography and media studies …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #88: Jess Dillard-Wright & Danisha Jenkins , ‘Dangerous and Unprofessional Content: Anarchist Dreams for Alternate Nursing Futures’
18:39
18:39
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
18:39
In this essay, Jess Dillard-Wright and Danisha Jenkins make the case for an anarchist approach to nursing. Part love note to a problematic profession we love and hate, part fever dream of what could be, we set out to think about what nursing and care might look like after it all falls down, because it is all falling down. Jess Dillard-Wright is an …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #87: Cahal McLaughlin, ‘Participatory Filmmaking: Anarchist Principles and Practices’
16:50
16:50
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
16:50
In this essay, Cahal McLaughlin reflects on the influence of anarchist principles on his documentary filmmaking practices in societies affected by state violence, using case studies from South Africa, Haiti, Brazil and Ireland. Cahal McLaughlin is Professor of Film Studies, Queen's University Belfast. His recent publications include Challenging the…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #86: Henry Brown, ‘Anarchists in Epaulettes’
16:35
16:35
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
16:35
In this essay, Henry Brown examines the controversial participation of anarchists in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War (1936-9). Despite the universal association of anarchism with antimilitarism, the Spanish anarchists responded to the demands of antifascist war in a nuanced fashion, creating a distinctive military subculture based …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #85: Alex Doyle, ‘Anarchism and the Nation in Cuba’
19:48
19:48
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #84: Diogo Duarte, ‘Anarchy in the Streets’
20:34
20:34
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #83: Joshua Newmark & Sophie Turbutt, ‘Introduction: Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth-Century History’
22:18
22:18
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #82: David Christopher, ‘Early Cronenberg and the Anarchist Apocalypse’
18:39
18:39
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #81: Andrew Whitehead, ‘The Anarchist Big Three and the Siege of Sidney Street’
21:19
21:19
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #80: Jayne Malenfant & Hannah Brais, 'An Anarchist Approach to Housing Precarity'
17:43
17:43
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #79: Sean Scalmer, ‘Direct Action: The Invention of a Transnational Concept’
32:13
32:13
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #78: Sam C. Tenorio, ‘Black Cataclysm: Anarchism and Ruination’
18:48
18:48
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #77: Nolan Bennett, ‘Alexander Berkman’s Anti-Prison Anarchism’
24:37
24:37
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #76: Peterson Silva, ‘Mechanical Failures and Anarchist Freedom’
17:15
17:15
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #75: Chris Robé, ‘Anarchism, Video Activism and State Repression’
16:13
16:13
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #74: Pranay Somayajula, ‘Nationhood Beyond Nationalism: Towards an Anarchist Politics of Anti-Colonial Liberation’
17:59
17:59
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #73: Christopher Powell, ‘Shame Economies’
23:46
23:46
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #72: Elena Pagani, ‘Interpersonal Freedom as Pluralist Radical Horizontality’
37:14
37:14
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #71: Deric Shannon, ‘The Anarchist Critique of Capitalism’
16:30
16:30
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #70: Sonia Hernández, ‘For a Just and Better World’
26:27
26:27
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #69: Benjamin Franks, ‘Anarchism and Elections’
25:59
25:59
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #67: William Marling, ‘Anarchism and Rhetoric’
23:44
23:44
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #66: Rhiannon Firth, ‘Disaster Anarchy’
11:29
11:29
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #65: Gabriele Montalbano, ‘Anarchism and Labour Movements in Tunisia’
31:16
31:16
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #64: Javier Sethness Castro, ‘Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography’
14:07
14:07
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #63: Ryan Essex, ‘Anarchy, and Why It Matters for Health’
14:13
14:13
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #62: Clara Vlessing, ‘Remembering Louise Michel: From Anarchist Assassin to Banksy Boat’
17:16
17:16
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #61: Robert Leach, ‘Subverting Good Order’
18:14
18:14
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #60: Chi Shing LEE, ‘Anarchism and Nationalism: Ng Chung-yin’s Anarchist Envisioning of Hong Kong in the Early 1970s’
18:55
18:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #59: DaN Mckee, ‘Anarchist: Subverting the System from Within’
33:46
33:46
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #58: Pablo Angel Lugo, ‘Practices of Disobedience and Clandestine Citizenship: A Proposal Towards an Anarchist Theory of Art’
28:42
28:42
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #57: Richard White, ‘A Purity of Rebellion: Anarchism, Animals, and More Than Human Worlds’
20:41
20:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #56: Jesse Cohn, ‘White Anarchism’s Trouble with Modernity’
13:32
13:32
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #55: Spencer Beswick, ‘Anarchist Anti-Fascism’
16:24
16:24
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #54: Chris Rossdale, ‘The Limits of Rebellion’
22:21
22:21
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #53: Charlotte Lowell, ‘Is Love a Synonym for Anarchism?’
18:06
18:06
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #52: Nora Ziegler, ‘Radical Hospitality’
14:21
14:21
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #51: Kiara Mohamed Amin & Priya Sharma, ‘Psychedelic Liberation’
13:01
13:01
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #50: Dai O’Brien & Steve Emery, ‘Deaf People and Anarchism’
23:08
23:08
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #49: Kim Kelly, ‘Guns aren’t just for right-wingers’
10:59
10:59
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #48: Gloria Truly Estrelita, ‘A Short History of Anarchism in Indonesia’
38:16
38:16
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #47: Jim Donaghey, ‘Smash All Systems!’
14:34
14:34
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #46: Maia Ramnath, ‘The Not So Postcolonial and the Racial Capitalocene’
26:05
26:05
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Special episode: Black Autonomy Podcast, ‘Black Anarchism Across the Generations’
40:33
40:33
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #45: Hannah Kass, ‘Food Anarchy and the State Monopoly on Hunger’
19:20
19:20
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #44: Jennifer Cole, ‘Social Kropotkinism: The Best New Normal for Survival’
19:41
19:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #43: Laura Galián, ‘Anarchism in the South of the Mediterranean’
29:12
29:12
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Essay #42: Sophie Scott-Brown, ‘Adventures in Anarchist Autobiography’
19:01
19:01
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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…
…
continue reading
1
Essay #41: Nathaniel Andrews, ‘Anarchist Children and Childhoods in the ‘Argentinian Barcelona’’
16:34
16:34
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
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 …
…
continue reading