Anarchist Studies |
The paper looks at works written by Ito Noe (1895-1923), concentrating particularly on those published late in her life. In it I argue that individualistic or egoistic anarchism informed her construction of her Self in these essays about love, marriage and the family; conditioned her ultimate feminist standpoint; and also contributed to the form in which she wrote. Her gender, her feminism and her radical individualism, I contend, converged to render it well-nigh inevitable that the style in which she wrote social criticism would be intimately personal (-political) or autobiographical. The paper begins with a brief account of the early twentieth-century anarchist and feminist movements. I then set the scene for a discussion of Ito's egoism by commenting on Japanese state policies toward women from the late nineteenth-century and on the hegemonic ideal of the 'good wife, wise mother'. After offering a reading of Ito's egoistic feminist resistance to this, particularly in narratives or essays focused on her 'free love' partnership, I end with some reflections on the relation to the liberal-humanist genre of autobiography of her 'out-law' autobiographical style.
Murray Bookchin dedicated his celebrated book Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971) in part to 'Josef Weber', who 'formulated more than twenty years ago the outlines of the utopian project developed in this book'. The present article reconstructs the links between Weber (1901-1959) and Bookchin. It focuses especially on Weber's political theory and on the activities of the international Movement for a Democracy of Content (1947-1964), which he inspired and in which Murray Bookchin participated during a number of years.
The question of the State, political power and resistance, is central to anarchism, and yet its importance appears to be diminishing theoretically and politically. I try to give fresh impetus to this debate by exploring the convergence between the nineteenth century individualist-anarchist Max Stirner, and the twentieth century poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze, on the question of the State. Stirner's critique of the State anticipates Deleuze's later poststructuralist rejection of State thought. The State is seen as more than just a political institution, but rather as an abstract principle of power and domination, inextricably linked to rational thought, identity and desire. Stirner and Deleuze both go beyond the paradigm of Enlightenment humanism, unmasking these links between power and human essence, and showing that desire can sometimes desire its own repression. They declare conceptual war on the State. Moreover their post-humanist anti-authoritarianism transcends and, thus allows us to reflect upon, the limits of classical anarchism.
Kropotkin has often been dismissed as a crude positivist. This article challenges this view and suggests that the Russian anarchist repudiated many of the essential tenets of positivism, and expressed in embryonic form a new philosophy of nature - evolutionary holism. This philosophy advocated both scientific materialism and implied a dialectical approach to nature, although Kropotkin was always critical of Hegelian metaphysics. The article concludes by affirming the contemporary relevance of Kropotkin's thought in the development of social ecology and anarchist theory
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |