The Anarchist Imagination

This is a broad ranging introduction to twenty-first-century anarchism which includes a wide array of theoretical approaches as well as a variety of empirical and geographical perspectives. The book demonstrates how the anarchist imagination has influenced the humanities and social sciences including anthropology, art, feminism, geography, international relations, political science, postcolonialism, and sociology. Drawing on a long historical narrative that encompasses the 'waves' of anarchist movements from the classical anarchists (1840s to 1940s), post-war wave of student, counter-cultural and workers' control anarchism of the 1960s and 1970s to the DIY politics and Temporary Autonomous Zones of the 1990s right up to the Occupy! Movement and beyond, the aim of this volume is to cover the humanities and the social sciences in an era of anarchist revival in academia. Anarchist philosophy and anarchistic methodologies have re-emerged in a range of disciplines from Organization Studies, to Law, to Political Economy to Political Theory and International Relations, and Anthropology to Cultural Studies. Anarchist approaches to freedom, democracy, ethics, violence, authority, punishment, homelessness, and the arbitration of justice have spawned a broad array of academic publications and research projects. But this volume remembers an older story, in other words, the continuous role of the anarchist imagination as muse, provocateur, goading adversary, and catalyst in the stimulation of research and creative activity in the humanities and social sciences from the middle of the nineteenth century to today. This work will be essential reading for scholars and students of anarchism, the humanities, and the social sciences.

From the early cinema of Griffith and René Clair, to the work of Godard, Lina Wertmuller and Ken Loach, this book offers a comprehensive survey of anarchism in film.

Bearded bomb-throwers, self-indulgent nihilists, dangerous subversives.these characteristic clichés of anarchists in the popular imagination are often reproduced in the cinema. In Film and the Anarchist Imagination, the first comprehensive survey of anarchism in film, Richard Porton deconstructs such stereotypes while offering an authoritative account of films featuring anarchist characters and motifs. From the early cinema of Griffith and René Clair, to the work of Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Lizzie Borden and Ken Loach, Porton analyzes portrayals of anarchism in film, presenting commentaries and critiques of such classics as Zéro de Conduite, Tout Va Bien, and Love and Anarchy. In addition, he provides an excellent guide to the complex traditions of anarchist thought, from Bakunin and Kropotkin to Emma Goldman and Murray Bookchin, disclosing a rich historical legacy that encompasses the Paris Commune, the Haymarket martyrs, the anarcho-syndicalists of the Spanish Civil War, as well as more familiar contemporary avatars like the Situationists and the enragés of May 1968.

Anarchy. The word alone conjures strong emotional responses. Anarchism is one of the most important, if maligned, radical social movements. In the 21st century, anarchist politics have enjoyed a significant revival, offering a positive vision of social change and an alternative to the injustice and inequality associated with states and corporate dominance. Yet anarchism remains misunderstood and misrepresented in mass media and government accounts that associate the term with chaos and disorder. Despite the negative portrayals anarchism, in fact, has always been a movement of intense creativity. More than a political movement, anarchism has, for over a century, made important contributions to cultural developments, especially in literature and art. Often overlooked are the vital creative expressions of anarchism. This lively volume featuring works by innovative scholars presents the compelling potency of anarchist literature through distinct voices. Anarchism has greatly influenced literary production and provided inspiration for a diversity of writers and literary movements. Edited by a longtime anarchist theorist, this exciting collection of engaging works highlights the rich articulations of anarchism and literary creations. It places anarchism at the center of analysis and criticism. Authors examined include Octavia Butler, John Fowles, James Joyce, Ursula LeGuin, Eugene O’Neill, B. Traven, and Oscar Wilde, among others. The collection shows the richness of anarchist movements in politics and culture. Specters of Anarchy examines critically the generally overlooked intersections, engagements, debates and controversies between literature and criticism and anarchist theories and movements, historically and in the present period. Synthesizing literary criticism with the theory and practice of anarchism, this book offers a re-reading of important literary and political works. Anarchist politics is a major, and growing, contemporary movement, yet the lack of informed analysis has meant that the actual perspectives, desires and visions of this movement remain obscured. Lost in recent sensationalist accounts are the creative and constructive practices undertaken daily by anarchist organizers imagining a world free from violence, oppression and exploitation. An examination of some of these constructive anarchist visions, which provide examples of politics grounded in everyday resistance, offers insights into real world attempts to radically transform social relations in the here and now of everyday life.

In this sparkling new work, Benedict Anderson provides a radical recasting of themes from Imagined Communities, his classic book on nationalism, through an exploration of fin-de-siecle politics and culture that spans the Caribbean, Imperial Europe and the South China Sea. A jewelled pomegranate packed with nitroglycerine is primed to blow away Manila's 19th-century colonial elite at the climax of El Filibusterismo, whose author, the great political novelist Jose Rizal, was executed in 1896 by the Spanish authorities in the Philippines at the age of 35. Anderson explores the impact of avant-garde European literature and politics on Rizal and his contemporary, the pioneering folklorist Isabelo de los Reyes, who was imprisoned in Manila after the violent uprisings of 1896 and later incarcerated, together with Catalan anarchists, in the prison fortress of Montjuich in Barcelona. On his return to the Philippines, by now under American occupation, Isabelo formed the first militant trade unions under the influence of Malatesta and Bakunin. Anderson considers the complex intellectual interactions of these young Filipinos with the new "science" of anthropology in Germany and Austro-Hungary, and with post-Communard experimentalists in Paris, against a background of militant anarchism in Spain, France, Italy and the Americas, Jose Marti's armed uprising in Cuba and anti-imperialist protests in China and Japan. In doing so, he depicts the dense intertwining of anarchist internationalism and radical anti-colonialism. Under Three Flags is a brilliantly original work on the explosive history of national independence and global politics.

Hailed since its initial release, Film and the Anarchist Imagination offers the authoritative account of films featuring anarchist characters and motifs. Richard Porton delves into the many ways filmmakers have portrayed anarchism’s long traditions of labor agitation and revolutionary struggle. While acknowledging cinema’s predilection for ludicrous anarchist stereotypes, he focuses on films that, wittingly or otherwise, reflect or even promote workplace resistance, anarchist pedagogy, self-emancipation, and anti-statist insurrection. Porton ranges from the silent era to the classics Zéro de Conduite and Love and Anarchy to contemporary films like The Nothing Factory while engaging the works of Jean Vigo, Jean-Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Yvonne Rainer, Ken Loach, and others. For this updated second edition, Porton reflects on several new topics, including the negative portrayals of anarchism over the past twenty years and the contemporary embrace of post-anarchism.

The Anarchy of the Imagination colects the most important interviews, essays, and working notes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the most influential cultural figures to emerge from postwar Germany. Whether reflecting on his won work oir writing about other directors, whether describing his discovery of actress Hanna Schygulla or speaking out in favor of political film making, Fassbinder's perspective is radical, subjective, and challenging. The writing in this volume-nearly all presented here for the first time in English-are an essential part of Fassbinder's legacy, the remarkable body of work in which present-day German reality finds brilliant expression.