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Underground Passages: Anarchist Resistance Culture, 1848-2011
“There is, quite literally, nothing like this book available. Various studies of anarchist culture do exist, some quite good, but none approach the breadth or depth of Jesse Cohn’s study. He is able to do something explore what forms of anarchist resistance culture in different places and times have had in common, and therefore what made them specifically anarchist. —Kenyon Zimmer, author of Immigrants against the Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America
“Readers [of Underground Passages ] will appreciate how anarchist culture (poetry, songs, fiction, plays, illustrations, and films) was by no means monolithic in approach or rationale, since different anarchist creators at different times saw the importance of making anarchist resistance culture relevant to particular settings or ‘deterritorializing’ it to give it a more global feel that fit with the transnational and internationalist dimensions of global anarchism.” —Kirwin Shaffer, author of Black Flag Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897–1921
What anarchists demanded from art was what they demanded from all aspects of their political that it should, as much as possible, embody the principle in the practice, the end in the means. While prefiguring a post-revolutionary world, anarchists simultaneously created a richly textured "resistance culture" to sustain their ideals and identities amid everyday lives defined by capital and the state, allowing an escape from domination even while enmeshed in it. Underground Passages investigates and interrogates these creations across the history of the movement. Whether discussing famous artists like John Cage or Diane DiPrima or unknown and anonymous anarchist writers, Cohn shows how aesthetic shifts both reflected and influenced and political and economic ones. This is cultural criticism at its best—and most useful.
Jesse Cohn is the author of Anarchism and the Crisis of Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Politics , and an associate professor of English at Purdue University North Central in Indiana.
“Readers [of Underground Passages ] will appreciate how anarchist culture (poetry, songs, fiction, plays, illustrations, and films) was by no means monolithic in approach or rationale, since different anarchist creators at different times saw the importance of making anarchist resistance culture relevant to particular settings or ‘deterritorializing’ it to give it a more global feel that fit with the transnational and internationalist dimensions of global anarchism.” —Kirwin Shaffer, author of Black Flag Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897–1921
What anarchists demanded from art was what they demanded from all aspects of their political that it should, as much as possible, embody the principle in the practice, the end in the means. While prefiguring a post-revolutionary world, anarchists simultaneously created a richly textured "resistance culture" to sustain their ideals and identities amid everyday lives defined by capital and the state, allowing an escape from domination even while enmeshed in it. Underground Passages investigates and interrogates these creations across the history of the movement. Whether discussing famous artists like John Cage or Diane DiPrima or unknown and anonymous anarchist writers, Cohn shows how aesthetic shifts both reflected and influenced and political and economic ones. This is cultural criticism at its best—and most useful.
Jesse Cohn is the author of Anarchism and the Crisis of Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Politics , and an associate professor of English at Purdue University North Central in Indiana.
375 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2014
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About the author
Jesse Cohn
6 books12 followersJesse Cohn is a board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies. He teaches English at Purdue University Northwest in Indiana, on land belonging to the Potawatomi. His research currently focuses on contemporary science fiction and fantasy, particularly as developed by Black and Indigenous authors.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 7, 2016
Although some of us (read: definitely me) associate anarchist writing with highbrow political and social theory like Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Bakunin, it’s important every now and then to back up that one can implement anarchist values in all aspects of life. Underground Passages tries to focus on the much overlooked fact that anarchist ideas are prevalent in much more than the political aspects in our society, but are also present in literature, poetry, music, and cinema.
Underground Passages tries early on to clarify that these anarchists works don’t just implement anarchism and anarchists, but try to present the ideas of an anarchist society to the public for their consideration. They are by admitted anarchists, and serve to present their vision of an anarchist world.
Although these criteria are stuck to rather vaguely, Jesse Cohn does a respectable job of discussing the anarchist literature, art, poetry, comics, and film that has appeared over the years. Cohn also tries to go a little in depth at the artistic motivation and approach of all these works, giving this book a bit of a highbrown artsy angle that you can take or leave (I could have done without it, personally). These works are interesting in their own way and share an urgent element to them that is consistent with the anarchist movement in general. Although Cohn could have painted a broader stroke, focusing mostly on works that appeared in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and for some reason, and deciding to skip the anarcho-punk movement in total. I’m sure the anarchist ideas are more prevalent now than they ever have been.
So yeah, although I wish the focus of the book to have been a little different, Underground Passages is still an interesting little book. It gets the point across that anarchism is all around us.
Underground Passages tries early on to clarify that these anarchists works don’t just implement anarchism and anarchists, but try to present the ideas of an anarchist society to the public for their consideration. They are by admitted anarchists, and serve to present their vision of an anarchist world.
Although these criteria are stuck to rather vaguely, Jesse Cohn does a respectable job of discussing the anarchist literature, art, poetry, comics, and film that has appeared over the years. Cohn also tries to go a little in depth at the artistic motivation and approach of all these works, giving this book a bit of a highbrown artsy angle that you can take or leave (I could have done without it, personally). These works are interesting in their own way and share an urgent element to them that is consistent with the anarchist movement in general. Although Cohn could have painted a broader stroke, focusing mostly on works that appeared in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and for some reason, and deciding to skip the anarcho-punk movement in total. I’m sure the anarchist ideas are more prevalent now than they ever have been.
So yeah, although I wish the focus of the book to have been a little different, Underground Passages is still an interesting little book. It gets the point across that anarchism is all around us.
March 13, 2016
As I read this in small snatches of time before work most mornings, it did take months to finish. I think taking it in small bites was a good thing--if I had attempted a sit down and read through, I would have gotten frustrated and probably bored.
To say its academic might indicate certain things to you--not all of them bad or good or true--but what I mean by that is this: the writing style favors constant quotes from other works and footnotes on nearly every page that disrupt the narrative flow. There's actually almost no flow and it is hard to read if one isn't already schooled in the "style." A lot of these quotes or citations may not have been necessary. For example, he quotes a woman's dissertation for the phrase "DIY, cut and paste." Dude, she didn't come up with that one! You can use it freely!
Which is too bad, because the breadth of scholarship here is remarkable as he covers anarchist art and what anarchists have thought about art over a 150 year span--and from around the globe. Brazil, North America, Spain, Europe, Russia, Japan and Korea--many areas and eras are covered at least briefly.
What mainly emerges is a collection of historical literary criticism focusing on anarchists and their artistic outputs and, importantly, how this all connects to their struggles and movements. Fascinating, really, and I recommend this.
To say its academic might indicate certain things to you--not all of them bad or good or true--but what I mean by that is this: the writing style favors constant quotes from other works and footnotes on nearly every page that disrupt the narrative flow. There's actually almost no flow and it is hard to read if one isn't already schooled in the "style." A lot of these quotes or citations may not have been necessary. For example, he quotes a woman's dissertation for the phrase "DIY, cut and paste." Dude, she didn't come up with that one! You can use it freely!
Which is too bad, because the breadth of scholarship here is remarkable as he covers anarchist art and what anarchists have thought about art over a 150 year span--and from around the globe. Brazil, North America, Spain, Europe, Russia, Japan and Korea--many areas and eras are covered at least briefly.
What mainly emerges is a collection of historical literary criticism focusing on anarchists and their artistic outputs and, importantly, how this all connects to their struggles and movements. Fascinating, really, and I recommend this.
July 13, 2019
This was an educational, insightful, and thoughtfully researched and written book. The author provides an extensive and detailed international history of anarchist culture, and by proxy the anarchist movements and major historical moments that surrounded them. The lens of "resistance" helps highlight the ongoing struggle for purpose and results that pit different waves of theory and cultural production against one another. It is divided into examinations of different forms, literature, film, etc. across the timeframe defined by Cohn, with quite a bit of coverage from Spain around the Civil War. Aside from history it stands as an excellent work of anarchist cultural criticism, and as a framework for future cultural "reading" projects from this perspective.
April 1, 2016
Fascinating!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews