Postanarchism

What shape can radical politics take today in a time abandoned by the great revolutionary projects of the past? In light of recent uprisings around the world against the neoliberal capitalist order, Saul Newman argues that anarchism - or as he calls it postanarchism - forms our contemporary political horizon.

In this book, Newman develops an original political theory of postanarchism; a form of anti-authoritarian politics which starts, rather than finishes, with anarchy. He does this by asking four central questions: who are we as subjects; how do we resist; what is our relationship to violence; and, why do we obey? By drawing on a range of heterodox thinkers including La Boetie, Sorel, Benjamin, Stirner and Foucault, the author not only investigates the current conditions for radical political thought and action, but proposes a new form of politics based on what he calls ontological anarchy and the desire for autonomous life. Rather than seeking revolutionary emancipation or political hegemony, we should affirm instead the non-existence of power and the ever-present possibilities of freedom.

As the tectonic plates of our time are shifting, revealing the nihilism and emptiness of our political and economic order, postanarchism?s disdain for power in all its forms offers us genuine emancipatory potential.

Saul Newman is a Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London

Auteur
Saul Newman is a Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London

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Preface

What shape does radical politics take today? What sort of imaginary, which political and ethical horizon, animates contemporary struggles? What kinds of alternatives to our current political and economic order are being proposed and fought for?

Asking such questions usually elicits either cynical disdain or sighs of resignation. Everywhere the regime of neoliberal capitalism appears to have prevailed. Even in the wake of its most serious crisis since the Great Depression, when its catastrophic structure was laid bare for all to see, when it seemed to be at its weakest and most vulnerable, global finance capitalism, propped up with massive state support, was resurrected from its apparent demise and now takes on a strange new life. Perhaps this life is an afterlife, but afterlives have an unfortunate tendency to last a long time. Not only has the ongoing economic crisis not brought about the end of neoliberal capitalism, but it has proved merely grist to its mill, allowing, in the form of policies of austerity, even greater incursions of market rationality into everyday life and even more obscene levels of wealth accumulation by a global class of plutocrats. Our lives are increasingly dominated by the dictates of the market, by the imperatives of work, by the spectre of precariousness, poverty and debt. Yet, an inexplicable compulsion to continue as usual grips hold of us, and all the while we are haunted by the ever-present spectre of catastrophe. Alternative horizons seem obscure, almost impossible to imagine. Brief flickerings of resistance appear to have died down or been snuffed out. A great Nothingness engulfs the already exhausted political imagination - an abyss which is in danger of being filled by new and violent forms of reactionary, populist and fascist mobilization.

So where do we look for signs of hope? Despite the apparent bleakness of the current moment, this book does not counsel pessimism or despair. Rather, its aim is to explore the contours of a new kind of political terrain, one that is opened up by the nihilism of the contemporary condition. I want to suggest that, notwithstanding the ambiguous and dangerous ground that we stand on and the seemingly insurmountable nature of the powers we confront, we are nevertheless witness to the emergence of a new paradigm of radical political thought and action, one that takes the form of an autonomous insurrection. Let me be bolder still and say that, if we turn our gaze away from the empty spectacle of sovereign politics, we can glimpse an alternative and dissenting world of political life and action which can only be described as anarchistic. By this I intend to convey the idea of a mode of politics in which self-government and free and spontaneous organization, rather than organization by and through the state, are central.
Autonomous political life

Exemplary of this autonomous form of politics, notwithstanding its relatively short-lived existence and ambiguous and uncertain future, would be the movements of Occupation that have appeared around the world in recent times. The unexpected gathering of ordinary people in squares and public places around the world - from Tahrir Square, to Wall Street, to Gezi Park in Istanbul and the streets of Hong Kong - embodies a wholly new form of political activity, in which the construction of autonomous, self-managed spaces and relations was more important than the presentation of specific demands and agendas to power. While these events took place in different political contexts, they were linked by the common claim of ordinary people to the right to political life in opposition to regimes and systems of power which denied this to them. In doing so, they rejected the usual channels of political communication and representation. The cry of the Indignants in the plazas of Spain was, 'You do not represent us!' This has a double meaning that must be

Contenu

• Preface

• 1 From Anarchism to Postanarchism

• 2 Singularities

• 3 Insurrection

• 4 Violence against Violence

• 5 Voluntary Inservitude

• 6 Thinking from the Outside

• Notes

• References