very interesting text, reading it i was thinking about the most obvious no true scotsman response that could come to it : "well surely a person who does any of what you condemn can't be an anarchist because it's no the anarchist thing to do" which is a response that necessarily ignores the fact that those political traditions like anarchism are not just research programmes but ethical frameworks shared through social contexts and are therefore charged with other associations, behaviors, etc.
I'm thoroughly under-read on the history of nationalisms in general and in the regions you talk about in particular, do you have texts or concepts that could help bridge the gap and also get a sense of how you conceptualize the nation and nationalism in the text ?
thanks for this text, there's a lot to think about.
it is true that the european anarchist tradition is dominated by white men - as is any european tradition except feminism. but what i appreciate about anarchism (and there are many types) is precisely its lack of reverence for father figures. i don't think one can be a marxist without reading marx, but it is perfectly possible to identify as anarchist without having read proudhon or bakunin.
some more recent white male anarchists (chomsky, graeber) have argued that anarchism is not so much a school of thought as a tendency that manifests itself in different ways all over the world; less a set of ideas than a practice, perhaps. that is not to say that the problem of eurocentrism is solved - it isn't. but i don't think many anarchists today feel that anarchism is a european export product, or that it is something that arrives after industrialization. if we see it as the art of living without violence and authority, it clearly goes back thousands of years.
i think there is an example of a non-european struggle affecting anarchist activism in europe and the US: the zapatista uprising sparked the (largely anarchist) alterglobalization movement in the 90s. one could make the same argument about the arab spring sparking occupy and the movement of the squares.
very interesting text, reading it i was thinking about the most obvious no true scotsman response that could come to it : "well surely a person who does any of what you condemn can't be an anarchist because it's no the anarchist thing to do" which is a response that necessarily ignores the fact that those political traditions like anarchism are not just research programmes but ethical frameworks shared through social contexts and are therefore charged with other associations, behaviors, etc.
I'm thoroughly under-read on the history of nationalisms in general and in the regions you talk about in particular, do you have texts or concepts that could help bridge the gap and also get a sense of how you conceptualize the nation and nationalism in the text ?
thanks for this text, there's a lot to think about.
it is true that the european anarchist tradition is dominated by white men - as is any european tradition except feminism. but what i appreciate about anarchism (and there are many types) is precisely its lack of reverence for father figures. i don't think one can be a marxist without reading marx, but it is perfectly possible to identify as anarchist without having read proudhon or bakunin.
some more recent white male anarchists (chomsky, graeber) have argued that anarchism is not so much a school of thought as a tendency that manifests itself in different ways all over the world; less a set of ideas than a practice, perhaps. that is not to say that the problem of eurocentrism is solved - it isn't. but i don't think many anarchists today feel that anarchism is a european export product, or that it is something that arrives after industrialization. if we see it as the art of living without violence and authority, it clearly goes back thousands of years.
i think there is an example of a non-european struggle affecting anarchist activism in europe and the US: the zapatista uprising sparked the (largely anarchist) alterglobalization movement in the 90s. one could make the same argument about the arab spring sparking occupy and the movement of the squares.