The Art of Freedom: A Brief History of the Kurdish Liberation Struggle

by Havin Güneşer, Andrej Grubačić, Sasha Lilley

The Revolution in Rojava captured the imagination of the Left, sparking a worldwide interest in the Kurdish Freedom Movement. The Art of Freedom demonstrates that this explosive movement is firmly rooted in several decades of organized struggle. In 2018, one of the most important spokespersons for the struggle of Kurdish Freedom, Havin Guneser, held three groundbreaking seminars on the historical background and guiding ideology of the movement. Havin Guneser has provided an expansive definition of freedom and democracy and a road map to help usher in a new era of struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and the State.

Genres: History, Politics

192 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2021

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most accessible, complete book I've read about the Kurdish liberation struggle. I'd write more, but my finger is broken. Read this book.

[Natú · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot to like about this book. As a series of lectures and an interview, it is a bit more digestible than a lot of stuff written from the theoretical end of the revolution in NES. It offers a good outline of the Kurdish liberation struggle and how its ideology and strategy have morphed over time, including clarifications of the process of critique and self-critique that allowed the movement to change so radically over the last half a century, and about the process of constructing democratic confederalism, which the movement understands as a battle against the "societycide" of the state.

In particular, though, this book helped me to better grasp the underlying logic of jineologî. Öcalan asserts that, unlike the Marxist view that the birth of class society marked the beginning of humans oppressing fellow humans and the divide from which all forms of oppression (including not just class domination but racism, patriarchy, etc), it is rather the oppression of women that marks the initial divide and is the real wellspring of oppression. It is through this alienation of women and the hegemonic ideology that developed around patriarchal society to provide superstructural support to it, that capitalism, as the socioeconomic expression of the dominant male, is born and maintained. However, the fracturing and compartmentalization of all existence as part of the positivist scientific ideology of patriarchal capitalism, marking man as the prototypical "subject" and woman the "object" (a man-made dichotomy which is subsequently mapped on to racialized and class-dominated groups and the environment) comes around and bites man in the end. This is because, though positivist science denies the dialectical interconnectedness of all things, instead upholding a metaphysical theory of isolated and self-existing objects, all things are indeed connected, and thus man suffers from the alienation and exploitation of women, the environment, and the "other." We can understand this as similar to the Marxist view that communism liberates not only the workers, peasants, and marginalized, but the bourgeoisie and co-dominators as well by resolving the contradiction at the heart of class society and freeing them from the constant combat they too find themselves locked in. This is why jineologî is the science of women AND life (jin/ژن and jiyan/ژیان). Liberating women entails liberating all of life from objectification, which renders nothing sacred and everything exploitable, a process whose trial run was the objectification of women).

Hence Öcalan's assertion in Liberating life: Women's Revolution:

The extent to which society can be thoroughly transformed is determined by the extent of the transformation attained by women. Similarly, the level of woman’s freedom and equality determines the freedom and equality of all sections of society. . . . For a democratic nation, woman’s freedom is of great importance too, as liberated woman constitutes liberated society. Liberated society in turn constitutes democratic nation. Moreover, the need to reverse the role of man is of revolutionary importance. [5]

Overall, this book is good place to start for grasping some of the more theoretical aspects of Öcalan's thought and the ideology of AANES and the broader Kurdish liberation movement.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a relatively accessible book about the revolution taking place in Northeast Syria, often referred to as Rojava.

The book compiles a series of three lectures along with Q&As about the development of the Kurdish Freedom struggle from a Marxist-Leninist armed struggle to the present ideology which posits that the oppression of women is the first and oldest oppression and must be dealt with for true liberation.

This book also provides a valuable explanation of how Democratic Confederation can work, a non-State solution that provides an answer to the failure of national liberation struggles of the 1960-1970s.

I find the ideas presented in this book fascinating and exciting.

[Gustavo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Encontrei esse livro procurando por um ponto de entrada pra entender melhor a Revolução Curda e ele se encaixou perfeitamente. Acessível, mas completo, ele abrangente tanto os princípios básicos da obra de Ocalan quanto a história recente da luta do povo Curdo.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biji Rojava! So inspiring - but where and how will us Americans join the struggle for a democratic society given our central position in the auto-exploiting order of neoliberalism?