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Postanarchism
Newman pisze dla tych, którzy czują zmęczenie dotychczasowym sposobem myślenia o polityce, jako o elitarnej grze pomiędzy partiami, których działania uświęca się w dniu wyborów. To prawdziwa, jakby powiedział Gilles Deleuze, skrzynka z narzędziami zarówno dla aktywistów, jak i akademików. Newman proponuje bowiem za pomocą swojej interpretacji anarchizmu – jako politycznej wrażliwości i możliwości tworzenia – zmianę społecznej optyki, niezogniskowanej już wokół ostatecznego „celu” rewolucji czy politycznego programu, lecz na działaniu opartym o przypadkowe i niespodziewane sojusze. Taka perspektywa nie jest całkowicie obca polskim czytelniczkom i czytelnikom, ponieważ jej polityczne możliwości eksplorowała Rebecca Solnit w swoich esejach Nadzieja w mroku. Filozoficzno-polityczne analizy Newmana świetnie korespondują z zarysowanymi przez amerykańską eseistkę diagnozami dotyczącymi sprawczości oddolnej organizacji. Ponadto, Postanarchizm może przyczynić się do poszerzenia naszego myślenia o tym, co polityczne i o samym anarchizmie, który – w myśl autora – określany jest jako „zróżnicowana i heterogeniczna wielość idei, wrażliwości moralnych, praktyk i historycznych ruchów oraz walk, ożywianych przez coś, co można nazwać antyautorytarnym impulsem”.
180 pages, Paperback
Published December 2, 2015
11 people are currently reading
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About the author
Saul Newman
32 books59 followersNewman coined the term "post-anarchism" as a general term for political philosophies filtering 19th century anarchism through a post-structuralist lens, and later popularized it through his 2001 book From Bakunin to Lacan. Thus he rejects a number of concepts traditionally associated with anarchism, including essentialism, a "positive" human nature, and the concept of revolution. The links between poststructuralism and anarchism have also been developed by thinkers like Todd May and Lewis Call.
Newman is currently Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He received his B.A. from the University of Sydney, and his Ph.D in political science from the University of New South Wales. His work has been translated into Turkish, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and Serbo-Croatian, and has been the subject of a number of debates amongst anarchist theorists and activists as well as academics.[I]
Newman is currently Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He received his B.A. from the University of Sydney, and his Ph.D in political science from the University of New South Wales. His work has been translated into Turkish, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and Serbo-Croatian, and has been the subject of a number of debates amongst anarchist theorists and activists as well as academics.[I]
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 7, 2019
Postanarchism, a relatively short text by Saul Newman, is not really do different from Tiqqun's Introduction to Civil War in terms of its ideas. You may notice I gave that book one star but I am giving this one four. Why? I think a lot of that is down to the way Postanarchism is written. While Newman juggles some fairly heavy philosophical concepts in the book, he does so in a much more accessible and methodical way than Tiqqun do in their works. This is a work of post-anarchism to be taken out of the library and read rather than one to be debated by university student groupuscules. And in my opinion that makes it infinitely more valuable than Introduction to Civil War.
What exactly is post-anarchism? It seems to be a reinvention of anarchist theory and practice for the post-modern age. While the post-structuralists of the sixties and seventies set their sites on questioning and troubling old Marxist narratives, the classical anarchist narratives of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin were left mostly unscathed, which this book notes is problematic. If we abandon Leninist tropes, established in the first quarter of the twentieth century, as outdated, then how much more outdated must be the classical anarchist tropes, established in the fifty years or so prior? The kinds of state sovereignty that the classical anarchists were inveighing against no longer exist in this age of increasingly proliferating power relations across the social body. This is what makes post-anarchism necessary to contemporary anti-authoritarian radicals.
What post-anarchism departs from according to Newman is "ontological anarchy," or what Newman explains as beginning with or departing from anarchy rather than seeing anarchy as the conclusion of an endless struggle. So-called prefigurative politics has a long tradition within anarchist theory, and Newman brings this to the front: according to Newman we should act not using means to an (ever-delayed) end but act with pure means. In the words of Michel Foucault: "It is not a question of having in view, at the end of a project, a society without power relations. It is rather a matter of putting non-power or the non-acceptibility of power, not at the end of the enterprise, but rather at the beginning of the work in the form of a questioning of all the ways in which power is in actual fact accepted."
Newman elucidates what a position of "non-power" might look like in subjectivity, in practice, and with respect to violence. It is with these points that we find the biggest weaknesses in the book. In the fields of subjectivity, practice, and violence, we are given sort of vague guidelines but with precious few examples of how these concepts might play out in real life. The main practices that Newman comes back to are the Occupy movement, whether Occupy Wall Street or the "Arab Spring" protestors of Tahrir Square, as well as Anonymous, Wikileaks, etc. In my view Newman is a bit over-optimistic about the possibilities of these phenomena: Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous, Wikileaks, etc., while having done some important things, have also proved rife with conspiracist and even outright reactionary elements that have seriously mitigated the good they could do. Any radical anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian movement must grapple with these issues.
Nonetheless, I think Newman is seriously onto something with this work. This is a valuable introductory work (at fewer than 150 pages) especially given my own intellectual trajectory as a post-Marxist who has also become skeptical of the classical anarchist narratives. Maybe it is true that our current political horizon is anarchic, as Newman argues. It certainly seems more hopeful than Tiqqun's fetishization of civil war.
What exactly is post-anarchism? It seems to be a reinvention of anarchist theory and practice for the post-modern age. While the post-structuralists of the sixties and seventies set their sites on questioning and troubling old Marxist narratives, the classical anarchist narratives of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin were left mostly unscathed, which this book notes is problematic. If we abandon Leninist tropes, established in the first quarter of the twentieth century, as outdated, then how much more outdated must be the classical anarchist tropes, established in the fifty years or so prior? The kinds of state sovereignty that the classical anarchists were inveighing against no longer exist in this age of increasingly proliferating power relations across the social body. This is what makes post-anarchism necessary to contemporary anti-authoritarian radicals.
What post-anarchism departs from according to Newman is "ontological anarchy," or what Newman explains as beginning with or departing from anarchy rather than seeing anarchy as the conclusion of an endless struggle. So-called prefigurative politics has a long tradition within anarchist theory, and Newman brings this to the front: according to Newman we should act not using means to an (ever-delayed) end but act with pure means. In the words of Michel Foucault: "It is not a question of having in view, at the end of a project, a society without power relations. It is rather a matter of putting non-power or the non-acceptibility of power, not at the end of the enterprise, but rather at the beginning of the work in the form of a questioning of all the ways in which power is in actual fact accepted."
Newman elucidates what a position of "non-power" might look like in subjectivity, in practice, and with respect to violence. It is with these points that we find the biggest weaknesses in the book. In the fields of subjectivity, practice, and violence, we are given sort of vague guidelines but with precious few examples of how these concepts might play out in real life. The main practices that Newman comes back to are the Occupy movement, whether Occupy Wall Street or the "Arab Spring" protestors of Tahrir Square, as well as Anonymous, Wikileaks, etc. In my view Newman is a bit over-optimistic about the possibilities of these phenomena: Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous, Wikileaks, etc., while having done some important things, have also proved rife with conspiracist and even outright reactionary elements that have seriously mitigated the good they could do. Any radical anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian movement must grapple with these issues.
Nonetheless, I think Newman is seriously onto something with this work. This is a valuable introductory work (at fewer than 150 pages) especially given my own intellectual trajectory as a post-Marxist who has also become skeptical of the classical anarchist narratives. Maybe it is true that our current political horizon is anarchic, as Newman argues. It certainly seems more hopeful than Tiqqun's fetishization of civil war.
August 31, 2021
Postanarchism is a tight argument for autonomy and 'inservitude' to resist the totalizing effects of modern reactionary and neoliberal governance.
Newman states the problem: "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."
And he offers a postanarchist worldview to begin to orient a resistance. The greatest problem, perhaps, is the focus on the 'singularity' (a variation of the individual) with little guidance for 'co-appearance' or solidarity. In other words, how do people prevent an 'exhausted political imagination' from being filled by 'fascist mobilization'?
Nonetheless, the insurrectionary light of this book shines through.
Newman states the problem: "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."
And he offers a postanarchist worldview to begin to orient a resistance. The greatest problem, perhaps, is the focus on the 'singularity' (a variation of the individual) with little guidance for 'co-appearance' or solidarity. In other words, how do people prevent an 'exhausted political imagination' from being filled by 'fascist mobilization'?
Nonetheless, the insurrectionary light of this book shines through.
November 2, 2023
Good theory, but nothing new. Its agai about new world and its speach. How we lose compas, fredom of speech even in anarchy
April 10, 2019
The Russians have lived Communism. And now they live in a post-Communist regime, although the general concepts are the same. Some other country, Newman fails to mention its name, has lived the pure Anarchism, and not the badly interpreted versions of Libya, Somalia, etc, and now Humanity is in post-Anarchism. So it makes sense to have the cover painted red.
July 9, 2022
napisana straszniez nadętym i akademickim językiem książka teoretyka, który udaje, że wie, czym jest działanie oddolne i pomoc wzajemna. plus, bardzo nie podoba mi się negowanie istotności queerowej tożsamości i teksty o tym, że opowiadanie o przemocy, która kogoś dotknęła to "narcystyczne skupianie się na własnych krzywdach".
November 19, 2017
Central to Newman's description of autonomy in Postanarchism is the Stirnerian notion of "ownness" as opposed to our common understanding of "freedom" in democratic politics (61). Newman creates a compelling case describing the poverty of the latter: "insofar as democracy is a form of popular sovereignty, it implies a subordination of the individual to not simply to the majority will but to an abstract and alienating fixed idea, a spectral collectivity which stands outside the power of the individual.... Democratic sovereignty and autonomy are therefore two very different principles" (133-4). Nominal freedom actually constrains the full search space of human action and human organization; depending on where we draw our comparison even in its purest realization our politics is tragic.
There is a lot here: beyond his articulation of autonomy, Newman explores why we accept our own subjugation and muses on the forms that postanarchist insurrection can take.
It is pretty abstract. I would have loved more grounding of his theorizing in real, current and historical examples. To Newman's credit it is not all in the clouds, but much of it is.
He uses the word "rhizomatic" eight times (I counted).
There is a lot here: beyond his articulation of autonomy, Newman explores why we accept our own subjugation and muses on the forms that postanarchist insurrection can take.
It is pretty abstract. I would have loved more grounding of his theorizing in real, current and historical examples. To Newman's credit it is not all in the clouds, but much of it is.
He uses the word "rhizomatic" eight times (I counted).
April 21, 2016
half good, half watered down lifestylist liberalism
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews