Anarchist Thought, Art, and Action

Anarchy is Order!” proclaims the modern anarchist movement. The anarchist values not violence and chaos, but democracy, solidarity, and freedom from all forms of coercion. The ideal society is antiauthoritarian and decentralized, comprised of voluntary associations of free and equal individuals. In this course we will dissect these ideas, debating anarchist conceptions of freedom, authority, and human nature, beginning with late 18th-19th c. figures (Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy) and ending with more recent developments in this tradition (ecological thought, indigeneity, gender). We will engage with these ideas as expressed in political essays, but also in art (drama, poetry, visual art, fairytales, children’s literature, science fiction), and in autobiographical writing. How, we may ask, are anarchist values and critique formulated differently in these different modes of expression? What is the place of art and aesthetic experience in a radically liberatory movement? Readings will be studied in their historical contexts, especially moments of revolutionary action: across Europe in 1848, in Russia and Ukraine (1917-1921), during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), led by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico (1994-). There are no prerequisites for this class; all readings will be available in English.