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Anarchafeminism
How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their turn? How can we create a feminism that doesn't turn into yet another tool for oppression? It has become commonplace to argue that, in order to fight the subjugation of women, we have to unpack the ways different forms of oppression intersect with one class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and ecology, to name only a few. By arguing that there is no single factor, or arche , explaining the oppression of women, Chiara Bottici proposes a radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major that there is something specific to the oppression of women, and that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. Anarchism needs feminism to address the continued subordination of all femina , but feminism needs anarchism if it does not want to become the privilege of a few. Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and deimperial position and for a renewed awareness of the somatic communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In this new revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the liberation of the lucky few, but liberation for all living creatures from both capitalist exploitation and an androcentric politics of domination. Either all or none of us will be free.
360 pages, Hardcover
Published December 2, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 15, 2022
Hmmmm.
Have not fully finished this book, but have read as much as I'm going to for a while, so marking where I'm at atm.
I don't think this book lives up to its ambitious title, as it reads like someone who is new to anarchism writing for her marxist colleagues. Academics do need to walk that edge.
One example:
This is what Anzaldúa called “la facultad.” “Those who are punched on the most have it the strongest—the females, the homosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign.” This is no faculty born out of pure intellectual exercise: It is very impure and very embodied, because it is born in pain. When you suffer repeated forms of oppressions, when they accumulate onto your body like different layers of skin, either you become incapable of feeling any pain, or you become hypersensitive to its presence—a slap in your face, either physical or mental, could come any moment and from any angle. You want to avoid yet more pain, and you learn how to sense it around every corner. You therefore become capable of perceiving not just the violence you have suffered, but all possible violence that might be suffered. And then feeling becomes an intuition—a capacity to see what those who have always inhabited the position of the oppressors cannot see.
She immediately follows this straight-up maoist explanation with a concluding paragraph that refutes the above. This, added to the mystification of her coining words that don't seem to mean anything new (though perhaps I'm just missing the full point of transindividualism), makes this a confusing read.
There are also odd flows (or lacks thereof), like in chapter 8 (Somatic Communism and the Capitalist Mode of [Re]Production) when she suddenly starts talking about the Great Male Renunciation, which was someone's name for when men stopped wearing colorful and dramatic clothing. I mean, I enjoyed reading about that, but the placement of it was just odd.
She cites many dozens of people (this is a feature, obviously, not a bug, but) SO FEW of them are anarchists, and almost all the anarchists she cites are way historical, Proudhon and Emma era...
So this is yet another example of a hyphenated anarchism getting short shrift compared to its modifier. I'd say the feminism here is solid, and I was introduced to some feminist authors who I will definitely be checking out (most excited about Oyeronke Oyewumi--missing diacritics I don't know how to add, sorry--and He Zhen).
One final sad note is about the copy editing. Chapter 8 in particular has multiple obvious mistakes. The obviousness of them makes them easy to read around, but does make me wonder if other places in the book are harder to understand because the errors are harder to see.
All that aside, there are valuable concepts/terms in this book. None of them are wildly exciting--some of them are in fact off-putting, like "somatic communism"--but potentially useful nonetheless. (If you're curious, somatic communism is all the ways other than politically that people are "communist.")
So if your tolerance for academic speak is fairly high, and you see this on a friend's bookshelf, by all means, borrow it.
Have not fully finished this book, but have read as much as I'm going to for a while, so marking where I'm at atm.
I don't think this book lives up to its ambitious title, as it reads like someone who is new to anarchism writing for her marxist colleagues. Academics do need to walk that edge.
One example:
This is what Anzaldúa called “la facultad.” “Those who are punched on the most have it the strongest—the females, the homosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign.” This is no faculty born out of pure intellectual exercise: It is very impure and very embodied, because it is born in pain. When you suffer repeated forms of oppressions, when they accumulate onto your body like different layers of skin, either you become incapable of feeling any pain, or you become hypersensitive to its presence—a slap in your face, either physical or mental, could come any moment and from any angle. You want to avoid yet more pain, and you learn how to sense it around every corner. You therefore become capable of perceiving not just the violence you have suffered, but all possible violence that might be suffered. And then feeling becomes an intuition—a capacity to see what those who have always inhabited the position of the oppressors cannot see.
She immediately follows this straight-up maoist explanation with a concluding paragraph that refutes the above. This, added to the mystification of her coining words that don't seem to mean anything new (though perhaps I'm just missing the full point of transindividualism), makes this a confusing read.
There are also odd flows (or lacks thereof), like in chapter 8 (Somatic Communism and the Capitalist Mode of [Re]Production) when she suddenly starts talking about the Great Male Renunciation, which was someone's name for when men stopped wearing colorful and dramatic clothing. I mean, I enjoyed reading about that, but the placement of it was just odd.
She cites many dozens of people (this is a feature, obviously, not a bug, but) SO FEW of them are anarchists, and almost all the anarchists she cites are way historical, Proudhon and Emma era...
So this is yet another example of a hyphenated anarchism getting short shrift compared to its modifier. I'd say the feminism here is solid, and I was introduced to some feminist authors who I will definitely be checking out (most excited about Oyeronke Oyewumi--missing diacritics I don't know how to add, sorry--and He Zhen).
One final sad note is about the copy editing. Chapter 8 in particular has multiple obvious mistakes. The obviousness of them makes them easy to read around, but does make me wonder if other places in the book are harder to understand because the errors are harder to see.
All that aside, there are valuable concepts/terms in this book. None of them are wildly exciting--some of them are in fact off-putting, like "somatic communism"--but potentially useful nonetheless. (If you're curious, somatic communism is all the ways other than politically that people are "communist.")
So if your tolerance for academic speak is fairly high, and you see this on a friend's bookshelf, by all means, borrow it.
February 23, 2025
No me gusta calificar este tipo de libros de corte académico.
Si puedo dar una perspectiva sobre él.
En particular disfruté su lectura, es una prosa sencilla aunque la información que se esté desarrollando no lo sea. Lo quiero decir, la forma en que está escrito no es la dificultad principal, sino lo que se escribe. Por momentos, se profundiza en aspectos que hace que no sea un libro de feminismo de fácil acceso (que lo hay y que son claves dentro del movimiento), este libro proyecta un lector con conocimientos básicos y no tan básicos de ciencias humanas , filosofía, geografía y biología. Por lo tanto, hay momentos en que se puede hacer realmente difícil seguir el hilo. Pero es realmente interesante lo que se propone, es un libro actual, que habla del ahora y, de manera magistral, retoma todas las grandes bases, defendiendo su propia postura de "cultura colectiva".
Se desarrolla todo lo necesario: anarquismo, feminismo y actualidad pero por momentos de manera confusa, es una realidad. Veo la necesitad de la autora de abarcar todo los temas, sin embargo, cuando lo hace michas veces se va por las ramas y parece perder el propio hilo de lo que esta exponiendo, en lo personal no me aprecio del todo molesto ya que todo lo que se decía era interesante. Peor puedo comprender que si uno busca una definición clara y concisa sobre algo, esto nunca será el caso.
Fue desafiante y hasta por momentos gracioso, y, en lo personal, un cariño para la mente y el espíritu (que es lo mismo).
Recomiendo antes de leerlo leer:
Emma Goldman
Silvia Federici
Simone de Beauvoir
Si puedo dar una perspectiva sobre él.
En particular disfruté su lectura, es una prosa sencilla aunque la información que se esté desarrollando no lo sea. Lo quiero decir, la forma en que está escrito no es la dificultad principal, sino lo que se escribe. Por momentos, se profundiza en aspectos que hace que no sea un libro de feminismo de fácil acceso (que lo hay y que son claves dentro del movimiento), este libro proyecta un lector con conocimientos básicos y no tan básicos de ciencias humanas , filosofía, geografía y biología. Por lo tanto, hay momentos en que se puede hacer realmente difícil seguir el hilo. Pero es realmente interesante lo que se propone, es un libro actual, que habla del ahora y, de manera magistral, retoma todas las grandes bases, defendiendo su propia postura de "cultura colectiva".
Se desarrolla todo lo necesario: anarquismo, feminismo y actualidad pero por momentos de manera confusa, es una realidad. Veo la necesitad de la autora de abarcar todo los temas, sin embargo, cuando lo hace michas veces se va por las ramas y parece perder el propio hilo de lo que esta exponiendo, en lo personal no me aprecio del todo molesto ya que todo lo que se decía era interesante. Peor puedo comprender que si uno busca una definición clara y concisa sobre algo, esto nunca será el caso.
Fue desafiante y hasta por momentos gracioso, y, en lo personal, un cariño para la mente y el espíritu (que es lo mismo).
Recomiendo antes de leerlo leer:
Emma Goldman
Silvia Federici
Simone de Beauvoir
March 9, 2023
4.5 stars
This is a very engaging book that deals with transindividual philosophy and politics. The transindividual emphasis is to distinguish it from the focus on the individual to instead emphasize the greater social-ecological interdependence in which society navigates. Her theories are grounded in the metaphysics of Spinoza, gender, and queer theory through the lens of the anarchist gaze of non-hierarchy. Bottici's book is very theory-driven but never devolves into incomprehensible academic drivel. This book kept me engrossed and stimulated both my intellect and imagination.
This is a very engaging book that deals with transindividual philosophy and politics. The transindividual emphasis is to distinguish it from the focus on the individual to instead emphasize the greater social-ecological interdependence in which society navigates. Her theories are grounded in the metaphysics of Spinoza, gender, and queer theory through the lens of the anarchist gaze of non-hierarchy. Bottici's book is very theory-driven but never devolves into incomprehensible academic drivel. This book kept me engrossed and stimulated both my intellect and imagination.
November 14, 2022
DNF about 70%
An attempt to make a grand theory (though mind you, anarchafeminism has existed for a long time) out of many admittedly potent sources which never really gelled. I put it down a ways in and have no desire to revisit it.
An attempt to make a grand theory (though mind you, anarchafeminism has existed for a long time) out of many admittedly potent sources which never really gelled. I put it down a ways in and have no desire to revisit it.
February 25, 2024
Beyond obsessed withn this book - incredibly dense in parts and took me a long old time to read, but utterly in love with so many points mentioned in & so many of the means to liberate the collective of the second sexes.
May 25, 2023
I didn't read this book word-for-word. I enjoyed the section on relational ontology, the section about transhumanism, and the final section about queer ecologies.
August 7, 2023
An inspired and breathtakingly contemporary anarchist feminism that offers a way out of several philosophical and political binds
October 16, 2023
Información fuera de la caja! Muy interesante, me pareció bastante aterrizado! Buen contexto histórico al analizar fenómenos sociales
July 13, 2024
idk if the 5 is warranted but it's not not warrented
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews