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"The very best and most fruitful interrogations of political life often come from a deep and scrupulous plunge into a single event. So it is with Markus Lundström's brilliant analysis of the battle in the streets of Husby in 2013. The result is a subtle, philosophically informed and original understanding of the possibilities for enacting the promise of anarchism." -Professor James C. Scott, Yale University, USA "This is movement-based theorizing at its best. Lundström offers a compelling genealogy that details how anarchism might radicalize democracy, or might have to move entirely beyond it. This is an important book for those wondering what comes next, after alterglobalization, after Occupy, for activists in Europe and North America." -Associate Professor Richard Day, Queen's University, Canada "This book takes seriously tensions within anarchism between making democracy more participatory vs making a more radical arrangement beyond democracy. Lundström exemplifies these tensions, and appeals to a variety of anarchist writers for the theoretical tools to think this tension productively." -Professor Kathy E. Ferguson, University of Hawai'i, USA "Advancing on the anarchist tradition, Lundström's argument is timely, compelling, and deeply grounded in the collective experience of radical democratic contestation. This book deserves wide attention from scholars and activists alike." -Assistant Professor Uri Gordon, University of Nottingham, UK This book addresses the conflictual nature of radical democracy. By analyzing democratic conflict in Husby, a marginalized Stockholm city district, it exposes democracy's core division - between governors and governed - as theorized by Jacques Rancière. Tracing the genealogy of that critique, the book interrogates a historical tradition generically adverse to every form of governance, namely anarchism. By outlining the divergent and discontinuous relationship between democracy and anarchy - within the history of anarchist thought - the author adds to democratic theory 'The Impossible Argument': a compound anarchist critique of radical democracy.
In spring of 2013, a wave of urban riots swept across Sweden after police shot an elderly man in his own home. When community residents from his marginalized city-district demanded an official apology, they were ignored. The anti-police insurgences that followed addressed deep problems of the Swedish welfare state, and the official responses revealed glitches built into democracy itself. In this updated edition of Anarchist Critique of Radical Democracy: The Impossible Argument, sociologist and historian Markus Lundström explores the boundaries of Swedish democracy. He probes in-depth interviews with community residents to explain how the 2013 riots intensified a profound, democratic conflict: the social divide between the governors and the governed. Resistance to this divide is then traced through the defiance of governance and approaches to democracy in the history of anarchist thought. This book offers an original introduction to anarchism. It relates the diversity of anarchist thought to anti-police riots and the radicalization of democracy.
The Anarchist Roots of Geography sets the stage for a radical politics of possibility and freedom through a discussion of the insurrectionary geographies that suffuse our daily experiences. By embracing anarchist geographies as kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for nonhierarchical connections between autonomous entities, Simon Springer configures a new political imagination. Experimentation in and through space is the story of humanity’s place on the planet, and the stasis and control that now supersede ongoing organizing experiments are an affront to our survival. Singular ontological modes that favor one particular way of doing things disavow geography by failing to understand the spatial as a mutable assemblage intimately bound to temporality. Even worse, such stagnant ideas often align to the parochial interests of an elite minority and thereby threaten to be our collective undoing. What is needed is the development of new relationships with our world and, crucially, with each other. By infusing our geographies with anarchism we unleash a spirit of rebellion that foregoes a politics of waiting for change to come at the behest of elected leaders and instead engages new possibilities of mutual aid through direct action now. We can no longer accept the decaying, archaic geographies of hierarchy that chain us to statism, capitalism, gender domination, racial oppression, and imperialism. We must reorient geographical thinking towards anarchist horizons of possibility. Geography must become beautiful, wherein the entirety of its embrace is aligned to emancipation.
Inspired to contribute to the symbiotic relationship between the academic and activist worlds, Day has decided to pick up the pen instead of the Molotov cocktail. The result is this brilliant book. Ann Hansen: Ann was sentenced to life imprisonment for blowing up a cruise-missile component factory, and is the author of Direct Action: The Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla. Gramsci and the concept of hegemony cast a long shadow over radical political theory. Yet how far has this theory got us? Is it still central to feminism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anarchism, and other radical social movements today? Unlike previous revolutionary movements, Day argues, most contemporary radical social movements do not strive to take control of the state. Instead, they attempt to develop new forms of self-organisation that can run in parallel with -- or as alternatives to -- existing forms of social, political, and economic organization. This is to say that they follow a logic of affinity rather than one of hegemony. This book draws together a variety of different strands in political theory to weave together aninnovative new approach to politics today. Rigorous and wide-ranging, Day introduces and interrogates key concepts. From Hegel's concept of recognition, through theories of hegemony and affinity to Hardt and Negri's reflections on Empire, Day maps academia's theoretical and philosophical concerns onto today's politics of the street. Ideal for all students of political theory, Day's fresh approach combines Marxist, Anarchist and 'Post-structuralist theory to shed new light on the politics and practice of contemporary social' movements.
How Not to Be Governed explores the contemporary debates and questions concerning anarchism in our own time. The authors address the political failures of earlier practices of anarchism, and the claim that anarchism is impracticable, by examining the anarchisms that have been theorized and practiced in the midst of these supposed failures. The authors revive the possibility of anarchism even as they examine it with a critical lens. Rather than breaking with prior anarchist practices, this volume reveals the central values and tactics of anarchism that remain with us, practiced even in the most unlikely and 'impossible' contexts.
Civil disobedience, the refusal to obey certain laws, is a method of protest famously articulated by philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau believed that protest became a moral obligation when laws collided with conscience. Since then, civil disobedience has been employed as a form of rebellion around the world. But is there a place for civil disobedience in democratic societies? When is civil disobedience justifiable? Is violence ever called for? Furthermore, how effective is civil disobedience?
Utopia has long been banished from political theory, framed as an impossible—and possibly dangerous—political ideal, a flawed social blueprint, or a thought experiment without any practical import. Even the "realistic utopias" of liberal theory strike many as wishful thinking. Can politics think utopia otherwise? Can utopian thinking contribute to the renewal of politics? In Political Uses of Utopia, an international cast of leading and emerging theorists agree that the uses of utopia for politics are multiple and nuanced and lie somewhere between—or, better yet, beyond—the mainstream caution against it and the conviction that another, better world ought to be possible. Representing a range of perspectives on the grand tradition of Western utopianism, which extends back half a millennium and perhaps as far as Plato, these essays are united in their interest in the relevance of utopianism to specific historical and contemporary political contexts. Featuring contributions from Miguel Abensour, Étienne Balibar, Raymond Geuss, and Jacques Rancière, among others, Political Uses of Utopia reopens the question of whether and how utopianism can inform political thinking and action today.
"One of the chosen few: an enduring contribution to democratic thought."—Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University
Radical Democracy addresses the loss of faith in conventional party politics and argues for new ways of thinking about diversity, liberty and civic responsibility. The cultural and social theorists in Radical Democracy broaden the discussion beyond the conventional and conservative rhetoric by investigating the applicability of radical democracy in the United States. Issues debated include whether democracy is primarily a form of decision making or an instrument of popular empowerment; and whether democracy constitutes an abstract ideal or an achievable goal.
Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like. In recent years, such chants - in the main aimed at democratically-elected governments by free citizens - have become common in anti-government protests across the world. Something is clearly amiss with democracy. In Authentic Democracy, this democratic deficit is exposed. By unpacking the underlying arguments and assumptions which justify the current political order, Authentic Democracy shows that the existing democracies are in fact highly undemocratic; and that anarchism is what authentic democracy looks like. "Dan McKee offers an engaging and accessible case for anarchism, deeply rooted in ethics and powerfully responding to conventional defences of authority. This book is an original and valuable contribution which deserves a wide audience." - Uri Gordon, author of Anarchy Alive!