#postanarchy

[ahumourlessworld]

“What contributes to our anxiety – and we should note that anxiety, along with other mental disorders, is becoming more prevalent today – is the situation of economic precariousness that most of us find ourselves in; haunted by the spectre of unemployment, debt and poverty, we cling on to what we have, terrified of losing our jobs, of sinking into financial oblivion. Therefore we work longer and harder than ever, and, with modern communications technology, we are always at work, always contactable, always willing to do whatever is asked of us. So the precarious subject is also a docile and obedient subject; the spectre of economic destitution, of descending into ‘bare life’, as well as the threat of an increasingly punitive state, works to keep us in line.” - Saul Newman, ‘Postanarchism’ (2015)

[plataniaqueen]

Foto previa a mi golpe de Estado. #Anarchy #postpunk #postanarchy #acratex https://www.instagram.com/p/BzskZd1iJFR/?igshid=n60xvqcg0sue

[spoonandstick-blog]

Down in the dirt

The more I think about the post-structural critique of anarchy, the less convinced I am. There is a very real separation between the world of ideas and the physical reality around us. This isn’t to say that the critique is invalid. I think there is a real problem with the place of power for anarchists. But this problem won’t be solved in a book. It will be solved with praxis, reflection, and empiricism. Deleuze, Guattari, Stirner, and Newman certainly have much to offer.  But sometimes I forget that what I read doesn’t need to direct what I do.  Stirner writes as if he has discovered a death sentence for anarchism in his analysis of a few century+ old texts. But the world we live in isn’t a world of ideas. We live in the pit, sludging through the mud where ideals, ideas, and forms are brought down from the clouds and given form. Not everything we humans do is logical, expected, or follows intuition or common sense. There have been societies which provided desirable alternatives to authoritarianism. Maybe they disperse the place of power. Maybe they consider and interact with it in a vastly different way than we do. I’m not sure. But what I am sure of is that they were the same human beings we are – different maybe but not in an irreconcilable way. We will find our way.

                Post anarchy is interesting to think about and it certainly has created some interesting questions for me. It’s led me to think about things in a different way and has certainly changed my ideas. But its aloofness makes it, in some ways, irrelevant. Its theorizing isn’t tied to the lives of those who crave and work towards anarchy. Post anarchy is tied to the world of academia. Saul Newman certainly does a good job of explaining the work of impenetrables like Lacan and Deleuze and Guattari but the text is not one meant to be digested by the rest of us. It is for a small enclave of academics. Post anarchy may give us some tools and methods, insight and awareness but (I) I am not convinced it provides a damning critique of anarchism. It may provide a damning critique of a limited reading of Kropotkin/Bakunin’s logic. Anarchism has changed in the last few hundred years though and it will continue to change. And lest we forget the logic of the text is not the logic of our lives. Theory and praxis are different for a reason. (II) I do not believe post anarchy has filtered down from the academics to the people on the streets. I certainly would like to see what those people have to say about it.

                Something I need to remind myself of is that experiment, discussion, and reflection will guide us out of the darkness. There is much outside the text.