Our Lost Continent and the Journey Back Project Page: Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1837–1936 RELATED: “Our Lost Continent” (April 4, 2015) “The ‘Benthamite’ anarchism and the origins […]
Our Lost Continent and the Journey Back Project Page: Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1837–1936 RELATED: “Our Lost Continent” (April 4, 2015) “The ‘Benthamite’ anarchism and the origins […]
After a couple of decades in the wilderness of history, in search of the elusive headwaters of the anarchist tradition, you stop beside some particularly active mountain spring and think that, while no serious seeker would every claim a single source for that tradition, you’ve probably been in the right neighborhood for some time now. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about the return trip. […]
RELATED: “Our Lost Continent” (April, 2015) “Looking Forward—Mapping Our Lost Continent” (April, 2018) “Neo-Proudhonian Anarchism (A Step toward Synthesis)” (April 19, 2018) “Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1840–1934” […]
RELATED: “Our Lost Continent” (April, 2015) “Looking Forward—Mapping Our Lost Continent” (April, 2018) “Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1840–1934” (May, 2019) However cautious I might be about some […]
As tools for historical and cultural understanding, metaphors are obviously in the “use with great care” category and, as often as not, reveal more about our interpretive preconceptions than they do about the material we seek to interpret. But sometimes that’s just what is called for, as what needs to be more closely examined is at least as much the lens through which we are looking as it is the object of our scrutiny. […]
My understanding of anarchist history is clearly—and quite consciously—the product of certain trajectories through the field of anarchist studies and through the sectarian landscape of the anarchist milieus. It is perhaps important to underline this fact, particular as it is such a central point of my analysis that the dominant narratives regarding anarchist history have a similar character—and that “anarchist history” might, through relatively small changes in the times and places where it was told, have looked very different and perhaps gone by different names. […]
My argument about the anarchist tradition, in its most modest form, is that there is nothing about the history of variously “anarchist” ideas—particularly when the tale begins in 1840 or before—that precludes a real, future convergence toward an anarchism that both focuses on anarchy (in its strongest senses) and provides a vehicle for the sort of social reforms that have most often been promoted in the name of “anarchism.” […]
The initial task in these Extrications is analytic: we want to pull things apart a bit, enough to see if we can’t isolate some terms and make some useful distinction. I want to set aside this notion of the anarchist milieu as our intentionally vague term for the thing that we are examining and pulling apart. Let’s just say for now that the milieu is the social space occupied by anarchism and anarchists—and hopefully, with a little care and luck, we’ll be able to say something a bit more definite before too long. […]
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