Post-anarchism and Philosophy

2019
Contents
Postanarchism in a Nutshell 7
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Notes on Post-Anarchism 19

Post-Anarchism Anarchy 27

Post-anarchism Today 31
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Politics of Postanarchism 41

The Anarchist Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
New Paradigms of the Social: Postsructuralism and Discourse
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The Postanarchist Problematic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
New Challenges: Bio-Politics and the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Anarchism, Marxism and the Bonapartist State 59

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2. Bonapartism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3. Autonomous or determined state? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4. The anarchist theory of the state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

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 5. The problem of economic reductionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6. Sovereignty and bio-politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
7. Anarchism and post-Marxism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
8. The politics of contingency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Postanarchism from a Marxist Perspective 93

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
The Place of Marxism within Postanarchism . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Post-Structuralism and Marxism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Power and Subjectivity in Marxism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

What’s Wrong With Postanarchism? 117

Spectres of Freedom in Stirner and Foucault: A Re-

sponse to ”Solitude and Freedom” 131
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Solitude and Freedom A Response to Saul Newman on

Stirner and Foucault 143
I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

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Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority 157
Deconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Inversion/subversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
The end(s) of man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Beyond poststructuralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Differance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
The ‘outside’ of ethical responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Law, justice and authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
The politics of emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Derrida’s an-archy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Anarchist Meditations, or: Three Wild Interstices of

Anarchism and Philosophy 183
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Failure and the Third . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Dramatization: Wild Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
First Wild Style: Daydream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Second Wild Style: Field Trip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Third Wild Style: Psychogeography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Interstices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Buffy the Post-Anarchist Vampire Slayer 207

‘WE’VE GOT IMPORTANT WORK HERE. A LOT OF FILING,
GIVING THINGS NAMES.’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Post-Anarchist Themes in Late Season Four of Buffy . . . . 213
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

5
Postanarchism in a Nutshell

Jason Adams

2003
 In the past couple of years there has been a growing interest in what
some have begun calling “postanarchism” for short; because it is used to
describe a very diverse body of thought and because of its perhaps unwar-
ranted temporal implications, even for those within this milieu, it is a term
that is more often than not used with a great deal of reticence. But as a
term, it is also one which refers to a wave of attempts to try to reinvent an-
archism in light of major developments within contemporary radical the-
ory and within the world at large, much of which ultimately began with
the Events of May 1968 in Paris, France and the intellectual milieu out of
which the insurrection emerged. Indeed, in the preface to Andrew Feen-
berg’s recent book on the events, When Poetry Ruled the Streets, Douglas
Kellner points out that poststructuralist theory as it developed in France
was not really a rejection of that movement as is sometimes thought, but
for the most part was really a continuation of the new forms of thought,
critique and action that had erupted in the streets at the time. As he puts it,
“the passionate intensity and spirit of critique in many versions of French
postmodern theory is a continuation of the spirit of 1968 Baudrillard, Ly-
otard, Virilio, Derrida, Castoriadis, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, and other
French theorists associated with postmodern theory were all participants
in May 1968. They shared its revolutionary elan and radical aspirations
and they attempted to develop new modes of radical thought that carried
on in a different historical conjecture the radicalism of the 1960s” (2001,
p. xviii).
Thus, whether it is fully self-conscious of this fact or not, it is ultimately
against this background that “postanarchism” has recently emerged as an
attempt to create a hybrid theory and practice out of the most compelling
elements of early anarchist thought as well as more recent critical theo-
ries that have emerged out of this and similar milieus around the world,
thus reinvigorating the possibility of a politics whose primary slogan is
“all power to the imagination” in our own time. It should come as no sur-
prise that this would eventually take place since it is well-known that
anarchism was a major element of the events; this is evidenced not only
in Raoul Vaneigem’s statement that “from now on, no revolution will be
worthy of the name if it does not involve, at the very least, the radical
elimination of all hierarchy” (2001, p. 78) but also in a remarkably reso-
nant statement by Michel Foucault a decade later, in which he stated that

9
“where Soviet socialist power was in question, its opponents called it to-
talitarianism: power in Western capitalism was denounced by Marxists as
class domination; but the mechanics of power in themselves were never
analyzed. This task could only begin after 1968, that is to say on the basis
of daily struggles at the grass roots level, among those whose fight was
located in the fine meshes of the web of power” (Gordon, 1980, p. 116).
These are just two of the most obvious examples of this legacy, but
countless others like this could easily be dug up to make the case fur-
ther — even if it might be countered that many of the participants were
also largely influenced by existentialism, phenomenology, the Frankfurt
School and Western Marxism in general, it is undeniable that a strong an-
archistic, anti-hierarchical ethic permeated the entire affair just as it has
the theorists who emerged out of it. Thus it can clearly be seen how anar-
chism has, though perhaps indirectly, nevertheless been a major influence
on many of these thinkers, all of whom produced the main body of their
works in the aftermath of the events. Paul Virilio for instance, has often
directly expressed his affinity with anarchism, citing his participation as
one major reason for this. Despite widespread delusions asserting the con-
trary, poststructuralists did not simply “give up” on insurrectionary and
other social movements after May ’68 either.
Virilio’s involvement, along with that of Foucault, Deleuze, and Guat-
tari in the Autonomia and free radio movements in Italy and France in the
late 1970s, Foucault’s engagement with queer liberation and prison aboli-
tion movements in the 1980s, Luce Irigiray and Judith Butler’s connection
with third-wave feminism in the 1990s and Derrida and Agamben’s work
with the Sans Papiers/No Border movement as well as Hardt and Negri’s
extensive ties with the antiglobalization movement of the past several
years should alone be more than enough evidence to destroy that myth.
Further absurd critiques that are sometimes heard, which seek to take a
rather unique example such as cyberfeminist Donna Haraway to argue
that poststructuralists are universally uncritical of technology or a neo-
nihilist like Jean Baudrillard to prove that they unwaveringly reject the
possibility of resistance are also quite ignorant since the flip side of such
untrue and totalizing statements is that a politics of “resistance” was a
central element throughout the entire corpus of Foucault’s work, just as
the relentless critique of “the art of technology” in all its forms ranging

10
from military ordnance to television has been crucial throughout Virilio’s
work.
Indeed, far from the images some would give of it, poststructuralism
emerged out of a much larger anti-authoritarian milieu which began by
taking what up to that point had existed as radical, but still abstract theo-
ries and put them into practice in the streets of Paris; for all its limitations
over the years, because its origins are to be found here, it nevertheless
contains many strong anarchistic elements that are not found elsewhere;
therefore, it would seem obvious that amongst these thinkers there would
likely be a great deal of radical theory that would be of use to anarchists
today who wish to keep their theory relevant to the contours of a struc-
ture of domination that does not exist outside of space and time but which
is constantly in a state of flux and transformation.
As mentioned, the term “postanarchism” has emerged recently as a
term that could be used to describe the phenomenon whereby this rad-
ically anti-authoritarian poststructuralist theory has developed and mu-
tated and split off into dozens of hybrid critical theories over the past
three decades, finally coming back to inform and extend the theory and
practice of one of its primary roots.
Anarchism seems to perpetually forget the lessons of recent events that
have shaped the lived present we inhabit daily, all to the unhappy ends of
a fetishization of on the one hand the “proud tradition” of the past and on
the other the “glorious promise” of the future. As we have seen in the ex-
ample of the anarchistic events of May ’68, it is not simply poststructural-
ism that is informing anarchism today, but in fact the reverse is and has
certainly been the case as well, despite this having been largely ignored by
almost everyone — until recently. In order to understand what the emerg-
ing phenomena of postanarchism “is” in the contemporary moment, first
of all one should consider what it is not; it is not an “ism” like any other —
it is not another set of ideologies, doctrines and beliefs that can be laid out
positively as a bounded totality to which one might conform and then agi-
tate amongst the “masses” to get others to rally around and conform to as
well, like some odd ideological flag. Instead, this profoundly negationary
term refers to a broad and heterogeneous array of anarchist theories and
practices that have been rendered “homeless” by the rhetoric and practice
of most of the more closed and ideological anarchisms such as anarchist-

11
syndicalism, anarchist-communism, and anarchist-platformism as well as
their contemporary descendants, all of which tend to reproduce some
form of class-reductionism, state-reductionism or liberal democracy in a
slightly more “anarchistic” form, thus ignoring the many lessons brought
to us in the wake of the recent past.
Postanarchism is today found not only in abstract radical theory but
also in the living practice of such groups as the No Border movements,
People’s Global Action, the Zapatistas, the Autonomen and other such
groups that while clearly “antiauthoritarian” in orientation, do not explic-
itly identify with anarchism as an ideological tradition so much as they
identify with its general spirit in their own unique and varying contexts,
which are typically informed by a wide array of both contemporary and
classical radical thinkers.
Interestingly enough, all of this is to a surprising degree quite in
line with the very origin of the term in Hakim Bey’s 1987 essay “Post-
Anarchism Anarchy”. In this essay, he argues that the thing that is keep-
ing anarchism from becoming relevant to the truly excluded of society,
which is also the thing driving so many truly anti-authoritarian people
away from anarchism, is that it has become so caught up in its own tightly
bordered ideologies and sects that it has ultimately mistaken the various
doctrines and “traditions” of anarchism for the lived experience of anar-
chy itself. Between the dichotomous prison of a tragic past and impossible
future, he says that anarchism has become an ideological doctrine to be
adhered to rather than as a living theory with which to gum up the de-
centered works of the postindustrial society of control, all of this result-
ing in the universal foregoing of any real politics of the present, a point
also made by Raoul Vaneigem in May ’68, but in regards to society in gen-
eral. Bey goes on to emphasize the various ideological anarchisms’ lack of
attention to real desires and needs as being as reprehensible as their reti-
cence in the face of more recent radical theory, those challenging thoughts
and ideas that might appear to be “risky” or uncomfortable at first glance,
especially to an anarchism increasingly comfortable in its form, not unlike
the post-industrial temp worker, who at the end of the day plops down
into the Lay-Z-Boy and stays there out of sheer exhaustion; if we were
to resist this temptation and open anarchism up to an engagement of this
sort, he argues, “we could pick up the struggle where it was dropped by

12
Situationism in ’68 & Autonomia in the seventies & carry it to the next
stage” (1991, p. 62) far beyond where the grassroots radicals, anarchists,
existentialists, heterodox Marxists and poststructuralists have ever taken
it in the past.
But for Bey, a postanarchist politics would really only become possi-
ble if anarchists could somehow find the will to abandon a whole host of
leftover fetishisms which have kept anarchism in its own private little net-
work of self-imposed ideological ghettoes, including all types of ideologi-
cal purity, conceptions of power as simply blatant and overt, fetishisms of
labor and work, biases against cultural forms of resistance, secular cults
of scientism, anti-erotic dogmas which keep sexualities of all forms in
the closet, glorifications of formal organization to the detriment of spon-
taneous action and territorialist traditions that link space and politics,
thus ignoring the possibility of nomadic praxis. Fourteen years later, after
some important foundational work by radical theorists such as Andrew
Koch, and Todd May, this schematic formulation of ‘postanarchism’ reap-
peared under the same sign but in a rather different and more fleshed-out
concept developed by the Australian political theorist Saul Newman in his
book “From Bakunin to Lacan: Antiauthoritarianism and the Dislocation
of Power”.
Here the term refers to a theoretical move beyond classical anarchism,
into a hybrid theory consisting of an synthesis with particular concepts
and ideas from poststructuralist theory such as post-humanism and anti-
essentialism; Newman explains that “by using the poststructuralist cri-
tique one can theorize the possibility of political resistance without es-
sentialist guarantees: a politics of postanarchism…by incorporating the
moral principles of anarchism with the postructuralist critique of es-
sentialism, it may be possible to arrive at an ethically workable, polit-
ically valid, and genuinely democratic notion of resistance to domina-
tion…Foucault’s rejection of the ‘essential’ difference between madness
and reason; Deleuze and Guattari’s attack on Oedipal representation and
State-centered thought; Derrida’s questioning of philosophy’s assump-
tion about the importance of speech over writing, are all examples of this
fundamental critique of authority” (2001, p. 158).
As is implied in Hakim Bey’s conception of postanarchism, here too
it is obvious how the antiauthoritarianism which Newman sees running

13
throughout poststructuralist theory would have emerged originally in the
world-historic social movements at the end of the 1960s; in the process,
the radically anti-authoritarian spirit of anarchism, as one of the primary
elements of these milieu, mutated into a thousand different miniviruses,
infecting all of these critical theories in many different ways that are
only now really being rediscovered. Yet, although he is critical of the es-
sentialism which he sees as endemic within the thought of canonic an-
archists like Kropotkin and Bakunin, Newman’s conception of postanar-
chism does not reject all early anarchist thought; his embrace of Stirner’s
egoism as the most important precursor to a politics of this sort illustrates
this quite clearly. Finally, it should be noted that it is precisely in this sense
that Newman’s conception is actually quite similar to the “postmarxism”
of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, in that while it is postanarchist
it is also postanarchist (2001, p. 4) in that it is by no means a total re-
jection of early anarchisms but rather a step beyond the limits defined
for them by the Enlightenment thought which had not yet really been
subjected to a great deal of critique, while simultaneously embracing the
best elements produced by that same revolution in human consciousness
including such obvious aspects as the ability of people to govern them-
selves directly without a sovereign lording over them; the viral strains of
a mutant poststructuralism suddenly reappearing in a new form after a
long and nomadic exile.
Since the publication of Newman’s book in 2001, there have been sev-
eral attempts to articulate a conception of postanarchism that would bring
on board many of his specific ideas regarding the anarchistic elements of
radical poststructuralist thought yet which would also bring it back out of
the halls of academia and into broader, more diverse, and more flammable
environments, much as Bey had originally described his conception of the
term in 1987. Earlier this year, I started a listserv and website by the name
of postanarchism which was intended to do just that; I advertised its ex-
istence on Indymedia websites all over the world, on Infoshop’s bulletin
board and on multiple radical activist and anarchist listservs all of which
drew hundreds of anarchists, activists and intellectuals, most commonly
attracting those who somehow find a way to be all three simultaneously.
Since that time there has emerged an increasingly dynamic discussion
which has ranged from the activist topic of social movements like the No

14
Borders movement which has taken on board the ideas of critical theo-
rists like Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Jacques
Derrida, to the more strictly intellectual question of the extent to which
early anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin and Kropotkin were essentialist
in their conceptions of the human subject to the more explicitly anarchist
discussion of what tendencies in contemporary anarchism, such as insur-
rectionary anarchism, social ecology or anarchist-feminism might be the
most relevant in the contemporary world order.
There is now even talk of a postanarchism anthology which would col-
lect the dozens of essays that have been circulating around the internet
and bring them all together in one place; so far the anthology will likely
include such interesting proposals as one by former Black Panther mem-
ber Ashanti Alston on the outlines of what he conceives as a poststruc-
turalist African anarchism, combining the thought of Wole Soyinka, Sam
Mbah, Todd May and Saul Newman as well as another by Jesse Cohn and
Shawn Wilbur which would critique Newman’s conception of postanar-
chism, arguing that even Bakunin and Kropotkin were far less essential-
ist and more far critical of scientism than he generally allows. As can
easily be discerned by examining this trajectory, the result of this list-
serv, website and ensuing anthology is that not only has the discussion
and the definition of postanarchism now become a hybrid of Bey’s and
Newman’s conceptions of the term, but it has also become that of dozens
of others who have been writing about the intersections between anar-
chism, poststructuralism and other critical theories since at least the early
1990s, with a pace and dynamism that has been steadily increasing on
into its crescendo in the present moment. In this often unknowingly si-
multaneous endeavor, anarchists from all kinds of backgrounds with all
kinds of ideas have sought to make contemporary anarchisms relevant
to them in their own unique situations, often going beyond poststruc-
turalism itself, borrowing liberally from the best of contemporary radical
theory including phenomenology, critical theory, Situationism, postcolo-
nialism, autonomism, postmodernism, existentialism, postfeminism, and
Zapatismo amongst others. Andrew Koch for instance argues that post-
feminists such as Helene Cixous, Luce Irigiray and Julia Kristeva all have
a great deal to teach contemporary anarchists about the authoritarian el-
ements of patriarchal foundationalism; Ricardo Dominguez uncovers po-

15
etic revelations in the links between Zapatista strategies of decentered
netwar and eleuzo-Guattarian rhizomatic forms of resistance to the State
form, neither of which he reminds us, need be “plugged in” to be effective.
Thus, it should be clear from all of this that the other than opposition
to all forms of domination, the only thing all of these theorists share is
an extreme lack of consensus over what it means to combine anarchism
with these extremely divergent philosophies; in fact, while some have
used it as an excuse to whole-heartedly write off earlier tendencies such
as anarchist-syndicalism, ironically some of the main theorists touted as
exemplary by such postanarchists, including Paul Virilio, Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri have all flirted with versions of that exact tradition in
various parts of their works, even using terms like “general strike”, (Vir-
ilio, 1997, p. 41) “anarcho-syndicalist” (Armitage, 2001, p. 19) and “One
Big Union” all in the positive (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 206).
What this means then, is that radical theory, just like the world in which
it has emerged, is always in a perpetual state of flux, a nomadism that
never settles down, never completely hardens into one particular shape
and in which the “past” eternally returns in new and unexpected ways in
the present; many poststructuralist intellectuals, for instance, after hav-
ing been denounced as increasingly apolitical and obscurantist have paid
heed to these calls by using much clearer language and actively trying to
engage their theories with the practice of actually existing social move-
ments.
This recent tendency, exemplified most clearly in certain works of Paul
Virilio, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, can thus be seen as a return to the roots of poststructuralism in the
Events of May ’68 when intellectuals revolted against their roles as the
organizers of the cybernetic society and together with millions of workers,
immigrants, women and others, turned this world upside down, if only
for a few brief, blissful moments. It is in this way that the appearance
of postanarchism in recent years can also be seen as an aspect of this
return of the recently forgotten past, at least partially as a result of the
return of a world-historical social movement that has been challenging all
forms of technocratic domination, carrying the struggle of May ’68 and
the Italian Autonomia to the next stage as Bey had hoped; a phenomena
perhaps best summed up, at least for the moment, by the proclamation,

16
“neither the normalization of classical anarchism nor the depoliticization
of poststructuralism!”
To visit the postanarchism clearinghouse website or to join the postan-
archism listserv, which now has several hundred members from all over
the world engaging in discussions like this, please visit the “postanar-
chism” link at www.spooncollective.org

References
• Armitage, John 2001. Virilio Live: Selected Interviews. London: Sage
Publications.

• Bey, Hakim, 1991. TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontologi-

cal Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.

• Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman, 2001. When Poetry Ruled the
Streets: The French May Events of 1968. Albany: SUNY Press.

• Gordon, Colin, ed., 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and

Other Writings 1972–1977, Michel Foucault. New York: Pantheon
Books.

• Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Har-

vard University Press.

• Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, 2001. Hegemony and Socialist

Strategy. London: Verso.

• May, Todd, 1994. The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anar-

chism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

• Newman, Saul, 2001. From Bakunin to Lacan: Antiauthoritarianism

and the Dislocation of Power. Lanham: Lexington Books.

• Vaneigem, Raoul, 2001. The Revolution of Everyday Life. London:

Aldgate Press.

• Virilio, Paul, 1997. Pure War. New York: Semiotext(e)

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 Retrieved on June 12th , 2009 from info.interactivist.net

18
 Notes on Post-Anarchism

Süreyyya Evren

2008

There is a postanarchist reduction of classical anarchism seen in texts of

some key writers on post-anarchism (like Todd May, Saul Newman, Lewis
Call or more recently Richard Day).1 Up until now, this feature of the
postanarchist tendency has been criticized by various anarchists. But ac-
tually, ‘anarchists’ should admit that, ‘post-anarchists’ didn’t invent this!
‘Post-anarchists’ have been using the common anarchist history writing
on classical anarchism which can be found anywhere in any reference
book. The problem is, because of the reference to poststructuralism, they
could be expected not to rely on that canonized history of anarchism with-
out interrogating it, without questioning it at all.
When post-anarchists take the findings of a modernist, Eurocentric
history writing of anarchism as a given truth and start working on this
ground, it is likely to see them (post-anarchists) reproduce many prob-
lems already existing in this practice of history writing. (Jason Adams has
given a basic critical questioning of this while he was talking on the “con-
structed history of anarchism”2 ). As someone working on post-anarchism
as well, what Adams did in this early article was quite a good start — you
have to turn your critical investigation to the given history of anarchism
1
This text is shorter and partially differently structured version of the text “Nietzsche, Post-
Anarchism and the Senses”, first published at Siyahi magazine, no 7, Spring 2006, Istanbul.
2
“Postanarchism in a Nutshell”, Jason Adams, info.interactivist.net, accessed on 15 / 11/ 2007.

19
as well. Before comparing classical anarchism with poststructralist philos-
ophy, or before making a genealogy of affinity in the realm of ‘classical
anarchism’ (that’s what Day does in “Gramsci is Dead”3 ) one must first
endeavor to make a genealogy of the anarchist ‘canon’. These questions
should be asked: how did the anarchist history writing developed? When
and how were the main anarchist writers selected? Who were the fathers
of the ‘fathers of anarchy’? Were there different tendencies in describing
the main body of ‘classical anarchism’ and which tendency dominated
the resulting history and how? How were the classical anarchists repre-
sented? Can we trace any hierarchy in these histories; were they mod-
ernist in their approach; can we trace any kind of discrimination?
Prejudice about a modernist anarchism is so strong that when these
writers see an anti-modernist aspect of Bakunin for example, they either
take it as an exception or something said inadvertently, or worse, as a
contradiction! For example for Call, “Bakunin provides us, perhaps quite
inadvertently, with a point of departure for postmodern anarchism.” Here,
Bakunin says science was marred by a dangerous and disturbing statism.
So when Bakunin talks against science, he is talking inadvertently”, but
when he talks for science, that should be what he actually believes hole-
heartedly. Why is that? Why then the ‘Bakunin effect’, the ‘Bakunin her-
itage’ is not the effect of a ‘science admirer’ but a creative man of deed and
anarchist theory? How do we know if he said this inadvertently or not?
Similarly, when Newman finds out that Kropotkin and Bakunin seemed
anti-essentialist in some of their claims, he interprets these as ‘contradic-
tions’! Whereas, the only contradiction is between the modernist image
of anarchism and the real ‘anarchist effect’.
There is an assumption that both Marxism and anarchism are modernist
political movements suffering the same modernist weaknesses, while an-
archism has some potential to get out of this trap. Thus, to realize this we
will have to eliminate modernist issues from classical anarchism (which
is indeed the greater part of its political philosophy) and use remaining
aspects that are in harmony with today’s post-modern/poststructuralist
perspective.

3
Especially see Chapter 4 (“Utopian Socialism Then…) in Richard J. F. Day, Gramsci is Dead, Anar-
chist Currents in the Newest Social Movements, Pluto Press, London 2005.

20
 Well, that was not really true, so let’s go back and start the discus-
sion from there. Anarchism was not a modernist political movement, like
Marxism, from the beginning it was an anti-modernist modern move-
ment, and has been an important example of the modern radical move-
ments. (‘Classical anarchism’ was not a Le Corbusierist movement but a
Dadaist movement.) Modernist aspects in anarchism, on the contrary, are
the minority, and ‘classical anarchism’ is mostly an anti-modernist cur-
rent, there is little to eliminate in ‘classical anarchism’ and a lot to take if
you are talking about a post-anarchism of today.
As it is with the history of anarchism, what I understand from post-
anarchism has many folds, and one crucial fold is about anarchist history
writing, a new post-anarchist thinking should bring a new anthology, a
new history of anarchism. At least, a new sensibility towards existing
anarchist histories.
Many accuse Newman or Day of ‘abusing’ anarchist tradition, as it is
quite easy to recognize that their relation with the anarchist history is not
sufficient on many levels — but on the other hand, what they are trying
to do, especially Newman, is to bring anarchism into today’s political and
theoretical agenda as something more powerful. This shouldn’t be under-
estimated. And I think they are trying the correct door for this — maybe
they haven’t found the correct keys yet (maybe, it is time to make the
keys collectively today).

***

When politicians see the anarchist embracing everything as political,

struggling against every tiny possibility of domination, they regard this
as an absence of something. Either a lack of passion for economics or a
lack of passion for politics. What they don’t get is that everything is polit-
ical with the anarchist and deserves the same passion. As the poet Ilhan
Berk said in an interview “everything is political, even water flows polit-
ically.” Even water flows politically — thus, anarchist politics is a politics
of life, of culture, anarchism is a raven knocking on the window to invite
you. A libertarian party has begun! Anarchists are de facto pan-anarchists.
Anarchist politics lies in the multiplicity of non-politics. The core is not
fixed.

21
 ***

Can it be true that some anarchist principles became generally accepted

principles in some Western cultural environments? While discussing the
post-Seattle anti-globalization movements, I always tried to ask: where
did these protestors who want to organize in an anarchistic way come
from? Are they products of anarchistic propaganda? Not likely. My as-
sumption is Western societies (and also many world cities in different
parts of the world) are today able to produce ‘anarchistic subjects’, sub-
jects who would only be interested in politics if it is done according to
‘anarchist principles’ or a ‘logic of affinity’. This is because when these
people wanted to get politicized there was no other way for them outside
the anarchistic way — they wouldn’t accept being part of a Marxist party
machine, wouldn’t accept orders, wouldn’t accept being represented by
some revolutionary, and yet they still want to engage in something po-
litical — what is left for a person like that? Only anarchism or an unla-
beled mode of organization which has anarchistic principles and which
uses the logic of affinity. Another option is to get in touch with a Marxist
faction which has openly declared that they will follow anarchistic prin-
ciples (Holloway, Negri, etc.) that won’t frustrate ‘anarchistic subjects’ in
the West. There may be something very fundamental for post-anarchism
here. The question of “how did the postanarchist subjects appear” also
goes back to May 68.

***

If we go back to the pre-1994 period of EZLN, we can remember that

Marcos didn’t go to Chiapas for a post-revolution, he went there to orga-
nize a modernist-type revolution. Before 1994, EZLN happened through
a process of mutuality in Chiapas. Not ended with an utopian heaven, but
had a heavenly effect for the Left world. If we can lay aside political cor-
rectness for a moment, we can dare say that, although the Mexican gov-
ernment also had a paramilitary branch which killed and wounded many,
there were very few countries that would let a Marcos be as he liked with
his EZLN in 1994 and afterwards. For example it wouldn’t be possible
in the USA, Peru, Russia, China, Turkey or UK. It wouldn’t happen in a

22
‘real democracy’ (which can’t endure strong oppositions as we recently
witnessed when Western governments showed their brutal side to anti-
globalisation protestors early in the 2000s in Gothenburg and in Italy) or
in a ‘totalitarian country.’ Mexico was an exceptional zone. And from the
beginning, in order not to let this exceptional state become isolated and
eventual fade away, EZLN/Marcos described it not as a form and not as
an ideology, but as an understanding, as an approach to politics. Isn’t this
the core principle of ‘new anarchism’ today as well?

***

If we are bound to compare anyway, instead of comparing only Deleuze

with Kropotkin, why don’t we compare Emma Goldman with Helene
Cixous and Irigaray. Voltairine de Cleyre with Butler and Flores Magon
with Homi Bhabha. Why Russian anarchists in the anarchist canon are al-
ways Russian anarchists outside of Russia? Why is nobody taking serious
anarchists in the Russian revolution — the worse decision of a Russian an-
archist was not to leave Russia then, the best and only way to be known
as a Russian anarchist was to leave Russia⁈ Let’s go back to Avrich’s ‘The
Anarchists in the Russian Revolution’ and the inspiring “Pan-Anarchist
Manifesto”.

***

Call and Newman suggest that anarchism starts from its anti-state po-
sition. So for them, anarchism is first of all a political stance against all
states, an anti-statism and everything comes after or from this. That’s ob-
viously not what many anarchists will understand by anarchism. We think
that anarchism is pananarchism4 in nature, a rejection of all authority, hi-
erarchy and representation. Being anti-state is a form of anti-hierarchy,
anti-authoritarianism at the nation scale. On the other hand, anarchism
carries politics outside the area of a fight for state power. It is always grass-
roots in this sense as well. You do not first reject the state. You first reject
authority, hierarchy, pyramidal societies, representation and domination.
4
For the pananarchist manifesto see Paul Avrich’s Anarchism in the Russian Revolution, Thames
and Hudson, 1973.

23
Then, as such a person, when the issue comes to states, you of course also
reject the state and think of something different like federations, etc.
And the reason that all these start from post-anarchism lies in the role
of poststructuralist theories of philosophy and history in this intersec-
tional web of resistance movements. Post-anarchism does not present a
new anarchism to us. But it can create a resistance power against mod-
ernist categorizations of anarchist history and concepts. And moreover,
it can be an embracement of poststructuralist philosophical contributions
to the anarchist movement. Post-anarchism for me is just anarchism but
stronger, joining forces with its relatives, network neighbours today and
in history, in culture and in daily life. So this is an experiment in under-
standing anarchism (in its stronger post-anarchist form) as a world wide
anti-modernist modern political movement which has existing or poten-
tial connections with other anti-modernist modern movements in differ-
ent disciplines today and in history.

***

At one given time there are more than one centre of power, and if you
want to resist them, you have to shape your resistance accordingly —
which means, against many places of power, you need many places of
resistance. In both approaches (understanding one central place of power
or accepting that there are many centres) we anticipate that the resistance
would mirror the structure of the supposed power. Is this a must? Usually
yes, or usually the answer is yes. But we shouldn’t forget that not always.
Here I should admit that this was a must for me for a long time and it
was one of the reasons that led me to post-anarchism. For example in my
first written account of “postmodernism and anarchism” in 1994, I basi-
cally said that if a libertarian left would emerge in Turkey it could only do
that in the vast fields of postmodernism. Because representation has been
generally collapsed after postmodernism. We are all in it with no way to
escape, but we can choose what kind of a postmodernism we would apply,
and this could be a anarcho-postmodernism. I was giving talks on “post-
modernism and the left” and the main argument I was so confident about,
was the same “don’t you see the places of power are postmodernistic, so
to neutralize them we have to mirror them from the other angle, which

24
is anarcho-postmodernism”. Today I wouldn’t find this so convincing, as
I will try to show here, there is no ‘must’ in mirroring the actual power
structures to overcome them. Understanding the structure of the places
of power do not necessarily determine the structure of resistance against.
For example, you can accept that power is reducible, works with one de-
cisive centre at one time, understand it as a pyramidal structure, but you
can still fight this structure through anarchistic principles, using ‘tactical
political philosophy’, or the logic of affinity. For example guerrilla strug-
gles in many occasions deploy this, even Nechaev’s cell structure deploys
a network structured movement, and it was not mirroring the structure
it was fighting with. Even some global justice movement elements are in
this category — take a demonstration against a summit. Making a demon-
stration against a G8 meeting means that you understand G8 leadership
as the core of world power relations at the time. So you find it crucial
and decisive for all the world’s power relations and existing domination
structures. But you organise anarchistically, use tactics of micro politics,
and attack a routine gathering of world’s power-core. You are somehow
like anarchistic assassins — where you kill a king but not as a soldier of an
army — like an oppositional revolutionary structure, but as an individual,
obviously without mirroring the dominating structure.
These movements are so close to a kind of post-anarchist, Deleuzeian
way of rhizomatic organising, etc., and are against every little domination
that can be detected — be it an inside movement or outside — yet, when it
comes to putting a stance against world politics, you do not have a floating
Empire without a centre in these people’s agenda; instead you have a clear
set of countries, organisations and elites, leaders there, obvious cores of
world power. It shows that when it comes to political action, activists do
not insist that no power relation is reducible — even activists who explore
various tactical, anarchistic principles of organisation and politics.

***

Nowadays, it is so common to see someone condemning animosity or

anger. Whatever you do, you are expected to do it in a normal, civilised
mood. Don’t lose your temper, don’t hate the evil. Don’t nail the Satan.
Calmly, vote against the Satan. Or better, despise voting, and demonstrate

25
against Satan, very rationally. Know your reasons well, keep your argu-
ments strong, measure your methods well, and do not make anything you
haven’t planned before. Don’t bring delirium to the stage. Don’t create a
scene when it is not collectively decided to create one.
But then, how will we deal with the history of worldwide resistances,
revolutions, revolts, insurrections? A strong element of anger has always
been central in all of those. Passionate subjects, obsessive moments, sac-
rifice, regret, grief, all kinds of emotions — not only affirmative ones.
Clutching on to an affirmative perspective does not require turning into
affirmative robots. Politics is full of people in anger. Transforming the
world is an idea full of all kinds of emotions. Angry women, angry men,
angry queers, angry children, angry elders, all are welcome in a resistance.
Resistance, insurrection, a new world, a better world, transforming the
world, are not really projects of social engineers, calm planners, but they
are ideas coming from life moments where pain was dominant.
Maybe we need an affirmation of anger. An affirmation of anger, in-
surgence, resistance, denial. ‘Enough is enough’ is an affirmation of re-
sistance. In whatever form. Anger is not despair. It is not depression. It is
not envy or jealousy. Affirmation became an anti-political tool today. Neo-
liberal discourse prefers affirmative language to the language of negation.
Advertisements are affirmative. They may be based on jealousy but they
are not based on anger.

In Talk on Anarchism (2008) Group for Logistical Support. Belgrade.

26
 Post-Anarchism Anarchy

Hakim Bey

1987

The Association for Ontological Anarchy gathers in conclave, black tur-

bans & shimmering robes, sprawled on shirazi carpets sipping bitter cof-
fee, smoking long chibouk & sibsi. Question: What’s our position on all
these recent defections & desertions from anarchism (esp. in California-
Land): condemn or condone? Purge them or hail them as advance-guard?
Gnostic elite… or traitors?
Actually, we have a lot of sympathy for the deserters & their various
critiques of anarchism. Like Sinbad & the Horrible Old Man, anarchism
staggers around with the corpse of a Martyr magically stuck to its shoul-
ders — haunted by the legacy of failure & revolutionary masochism —
stagnant backwater of lost history.
Between tragic Past & impossible Future, anarchism seems to lack a
Present — as if afraid to ask itself, here & now, what are my true desires?
— & what can I do before it’s too late ?… Yes, imagine yourself confronted
by a sorcerer who stares you down balefully & demands, “What is your
True Desire?” Do you hem & haw, stammer, take refuge in ideological
platitudes? Do you possess both Imagination & Will, can you both dream
& dare — or are you the dupe of an impotent fantasy?
Look in the mirror & try it…(for one of your masks is the face of a
sorcerer)…

27
 The anarchist “movement” today contains virtually no Blacks, Hispan-
ics, Native Americans or children… even tho in theory such genuinely
oppressed groups stand to gain the most from any anti-authoritarian re-
volt. Might it be that anarchism offers no concrete program whereby the
truly deprived might fulfill (or at least struggle realistically to fulfill) real
needs & desires?
If so, then this failure would explain not only anarchism’s lack of appeal
to the poor & marginal, but also the disaffection & desertions from within
its own ranks. Demos, picket-lines & reprints of 19th century classics don’t
add up to a vital, daring conspiracy of self-liberation. If the movement is
to grow rather than shrink, a lot of deadwood will have to be jettisoned
& some risky ideas embraced.
The potential exists. Any day now, vast numbers of americans are going
to realize they’re being force-fed a load of reactionary boring hysterical
artificially-flavored crap. Vast chorus of groans, puking & retching… an-
gry mobs roam the malls, smashing & looting… etc., etc. The Black Banner
could provide a focus for the outrage & channel it into an insurrection of
the Imagination. We could pick up the struggle where it was dropped by
Situationism in ’68 & Autonomia in the seventies, & carry it to the next
stage. We could have revolt in our times — & in the process, we could
realize many of our True Desires, even if only for a season, a brief Pirate
Utopia, a warped free-zone in the old Space/Time continuum.
If the A.O.A. retains its affiliation with the “movement,” we do so not
merely out of a romantic predilection for lost causes — or not entirely. Of
all “political systems,” anarchism (despite its flaws, & precisely because
it is neither political nor a system) comes closest to our understanding
of reality, ontology, the nature of being. As for the deserters… we agree
with their critiques, but note that they seem to offer no new powerful
alternatives. So for the time being we prefer to concentrate on changing
anarchism from within.
Here’s our program, comrades:

1. Work on the realization that psychic racism has replaced overt dis-
crimination as one of the most disgusting aspects of our society.
Imaginative participation in other cultures, esp. those we live with.

28
2. Abandon all ideological purity. Embrace “Type-3” anarchism (to use
Bob Black’s pro-tem slogan): neither collectivist nor individualist.
Cleanse the temple of vain idols, get rid of the Horrible Old Men,
the relics & martyrologies.
3. Anti-work or “Zerowork” movement extremely important, includ-
ing a radical & perhaps violent attack on Education & the serfdom
of children.
4. Develop american samizdat network, replace outdated publishing/
propaganda tactics. Pornography & popular entertainment as vehi-
cles for radical re-education.
5. In music the hegemony of the 2/4 & 4/4 beat must be overthrown.
We need a new music, totally insane but life-affirming, rhythmically
subtle yet powerful, & we need it now.
6. Anarchism must wean itself away from evangelical materialism &
banal 2-dimensional 19th century scientism. “Higher states of con-
sciousness” are not mere spooks invented by evil priests. The orient,
the occult, the tribal cultures possess techniques which can be “ap-
propriated” in true anarchist fashion. Without “higher states of con-
sciousness,” anarchism ends & dries itself up into a form of misery,
a whining complaint. We need a practical kind of “mystical anar-
chism,” devoid of all New Age shit-&-shinola, & inexorably hereti-
cal & anti-clerical; avid for all new technologies of consciousness &
metanoia — a democratization of shamanism, intoxicated & serene.
7. Sexuality is under assault, obviously from the Right, more subtly
from the avant-pseud “post-sexuality” movement, & even more sub-
tly by Spectacular Recuperation in media & advertising. Time for a
major step forward in SexPol awareness, an explosive reaffirmation
of the polymorphic eros — (even & especially in the face of plague
& gloom) — a literal glorification of the senses, a doctrine of delight.
Abandon all world-hatred & shame.
8. Experiment with new tactics to replace the outdated baggage of
Leftism. Emphasize practical, material & personal benefits of radi-

29
 cal networking. The times do not appear propitious for violence or
militancy, but surely a bit of sabotage & imaginative disruption is
never out of place. Plot & conspire, don’t bitch & moan. The Art
World in particular deserves a dose of “Poetic Terrorism.”

9. The despatialization of post-Industrial society provides some bene-

fits (e.g. computer networking) but can also manifest as a form of
oppression (homelessness, gentrification, architectural depersonal-
ization, the erasure of Nature, etc.) The communes of the sixties
tried to circumvent these forces but failed. The question of land re-
fuses to go away. How can we separate the concept of space from
the mechanisms of control? The territorial gangsters, the Nation/
States, have hogged the entire map. Who can invent for us a cartog-
raphy of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires?

Anarchism ultimately implies anarchy — & anarchy is chaos. Chaos is

the principle of continual creation…& Chaos never died.

— A.O.A. Plenary Session

March ’87, NYC

Retrieved on 23 November 2010 from www.tsuibhne.net

30
Post-anarchism Today

Lewis Call

2010
 Welcome to Post-anarchism Today. This is certainly not USA Today, et
ce n’est certainement pas Aujourd’hui en France. Indeed, it is a refreshing
antidote to all such discourses of modern state capitalism. During its short
but colourful existence, post-anarchism has always been libertarian and
socialist in its basic philosophical outlook: that’s the anarchism part. But
post-@ has also maintained its independence from modern rationalism
and modern concepts of subjectivity: that’s the post- part. As I survey
post-anarchism today, I find to my surprise and delight that both parts
are stronger than ever. It’s now clear that post-@ is a part of anarchism,
not something that stands against it. It’s equally clear that post-@ has
changed anarchism in some interesting and important ways.
I speak of post-anarchism today because I believe that we are living
through a post-anarchist moment. I know, I know: the owl of Minerva
flies only at dusk, so how can I claim to understand the moment I’m living
in? But one of the many great things about post-@ is that it means we can
be done, finally, with Hegel. Minerva’s owl needs to get a job. We need a
new bird, faster, more intuitive, more open source: something more like
the Linux penguin. Things happen faster than they used to, and the rate of
change is accelerating. Our ability to comment on these things must also
accelerate. Thus I maintain that we may, in fact, study our own political
and intellectual environment. Indeed, I feel that we must do this, or risk
being overtaken by events. Post-anarchism waits for no one.
When I speak of post-anarchism today, I also imply that there was post-
anarchism yesterday. Here I invoke the peculiar, powerful alchemy of the
historian: I declare that there is an object of study called post-anarchism,
and that this object already has a history. An outrageously brief narra-
tive of that history might go something like this: post-@ was born in the
mid-1980s, in Hakim Bey’s ‘Temporary Autonomous Zone’. Throughout
the 90s it grew and prospered in that era’s distributed, rhizomatic net-
works, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Post-@ went to school in
the pages of journals like Britain’s Anarchist Studies and Turkey’s Siyahi.
Todd May gave it a philosophy. Saul Newman gave it a name and an in-
terest in psychology. I encouraged post-@ to take an interest in popular
culture (and vice versa). Richard J.F. Day introduced post-@ to the newest
social movements: the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Thoughtful crit-
ics like Benjamin Franks developed intriguing critiques of post-anarchism

33
(Franks, 2007). Duane Rousselle and Süreyyya Evren gave post-@ a Reader.
And now, here we are! Using this crazy little thing called post-anarchism
to inaugurate a bold new journal, one which promises to examine the
cultural environment of our postmodern age through an anarchist lens!
But wait just a minute. May, Day, Newman and Call sounds more like
a law firm than a revolution. Indeed, early post-@ was justly criticized as
another ivory tower phenomenon for white, male, bourgeois intellectu-
als. Luckily, post-anarchism today is nothing like that. It’s transnational,
transethnic and transgender. It speaks in popular and populist voices, not
just on the pages of academic journals like this one. Post-anarchism today
is a viral collection of networked discourses which need nothing more
in common than their belief that we can achieve a better world if we
say goodbye to our dear old friend the rational Cartesian self, and em-
brace instead the play of symbol and desire. All the kids are doing it these
days: the Black Bloc, the queers, the culture jammers, the anti-colonialists.
Post-anarchism today is a set of discourses which speaks to a large, flexi-
ble, free-wheeling coalition of anarchist groups: activists, academics and
artists, perverts, post-structuralists and peasants. As Foucault once said,
‘don’t ask who we are and don’t expect us to remain the same’. We are
the whatever-singularity that lurks behind a black kerchief. We might
look like Subcommander Marcos, or Guy Fawkes, or your weirdo history
professor. We are everybody and we are nobody. We can’t be stopped,
because we don’t even exist.
When I review the brief but exciting history of post-anarchism in this
way, it suddenly seems that post-@ might possess everything it needs
to constitute not merely a moment, but an actual movement. Franks (2007)
has suggested that such a movement might be emerging. In the past I have
hesitated to agree. After all, one doesn’t like to be accused of overblown,
breathless revolutionary rhetoric. But the existence of this journal, Anar-
chist Developments in Cultural Studies, has convinced me that the time to
hesitate is through. A decade into the third millennium, post-anarchism
has become a self-realizing desire, a kind of Deleuzian desiring machine.
According to the Deleuzian theories which inform most of the essays
in this volume, such machines actually produce reality (Deleuze, 1983).
Like all good desiring machines, post-@ operates by multiplicity. In these
pages, scholars of many different nationalities, languages, ethnicities, gen-

34
ders, sexualities and theoretical perspectives have come together to talk
about post-anarchism, its promise, its potential, its problems. This journal
contains thoughtful, passionate defences of post-anarchism, and equally
insightful, equally passionate critiques of it. Some of the essays in this vol-
ume are not particularly post-anarchist in their outlook or method, yet
even these share certain concerns with post-@: concerns, for example,
about architecture, territories, the organization of space. These essays fol-
low lines of flight which sometimes intersect with post-anarchism, and
these points of intersection are rich with potential.
At least four of the articles in this issue occupy the terrain of anar-
chist political philosophy, which suggests that post-@ has by no means
abandoned the central concerns of traditional anarchism. Saul Newman’s
essay examines one of the most serious obstacles to any anarchist rev-
olution: self-domination, or the desire we feel for our own domination.
Drawing on the radical psychoanalytic tradition, Newman argues com-
pellingly that any effective anarchist politics must directly address our
psychic dependence on power. Newman’s critical project is vitally impor-
tant, in that it motivates us to seek strategies by which we may overcome
our complicity with political and economic power. Thus I have argued,
for example, that the practices of BDSM or “kink” might satisfy our need
for power without reproducing statist or capitalist power structures (Call,
2011b).
Thomas Swann’s essay extends an intriguing debate about moral uni-
versalism. Post-@ undeniably includes a dramatic critique of such univer-
salism. Benjamin Franks (2008) has responded to this critique by deploy-
ing a “practical anarchism,” but Swann suggests that such an anarchism
must either appeal to universalism or risk collapsing into moral relativism.
Franks and his colleagues may yet find a third way, but Swann’s critique
provides the important service of identifying the current limits of practi-
cal anarchism.
Thomas Nail’s remarkable essay argues that, having already established
itself as a valid political philosophy, post-@ must now find a way to en-
gage with the actual post-capitalist and post-statist society which is al-
ready coming into existence before our very eyes! Nail interprets Zap-
atismo as another kind of Deleuzian machine, the “abstract machine.” This
machine is a self-initiating political arrangement which requires no pre-

35
conditions other than itself. As Nail convincingly argues, such machines
indicate that the post-anarchist revolution has already happened.
Simon Choat performs the extremely valuable task of reinterpreting
post-anarchism from a Marxist perspective. As he correctly points out,
early post-@ was theoretically fragmented. May, Newman and I all had
different names for this thing we now call post-anarchism. Newman rec-
ognized the importance of Lacanian psychoanalysis, while I, at first, did
not. (I have since tried to correct that oversight; cf., Call, 2011a.) Choat
demonstrates that opposition to Marxism was fundamental to the original
articulation of post-anarchism. But he also shows the danger of such op-
position. It may be that there is a kind of anti-essentialist Marxism which
is compatible with post-structuralism and therefore with post-anarchism
as well. So while Choat is right to say that ten years ago I feared the
colonizing tendencies of Marxist theory, I don’t fear Marxism any more.
Post-anarchism today is too mature and too strong to be threatened by
Marxism, and we should welcome theoretical allies wherever we can find
them.
I am especially happy to see that this issue contains a couple of queer
interventions. Mohamed Jean Veneuse offers a groundbreaking account
of transsexual politics in the Islamic world. Veneuse makes it clear that
the figure of the transsexual can radically destabilize essentialist concepts
of gender; what’s more, Veneuse identifies the benefits which this desta-
bilization might offer to anarchism. The rejection of fixed identities and
binary concepts of gender suggests that gender might be better under-
stood as a project of becoming. By viewing gender more as a verb than
a noun, we avoid the authoritarianism of stable subject positions. This
project has clear affinities with post-@.
Meanwhile, Edward Avery-Natale offers a very different kind of queer
anarchism. Avery-Natale shows how Black Bloc anarchists who might
normally identify themselves as straight can temporarily and tactically
embrace a queer subject position. This suggests that “queer” has become
much more than a sexuality. “Queer” now names a subject position so flex-
ible that it threatens to reveal the emptiness of subjectivity itself. Subjec-
tivity then collapses into what Avery-Natale, following Giorgio Agamben,
calls the “whatever-singularity.” Queerness here refers to the negation of
identity itself. Again, this project is entirely compatible with post-@. Post-

36
anarchism shares with the “queer” Black Bloc the goal of destroying not
just capital and the state, but the “anarchist subject” as such. In the words
of Alan Moore’s anarchist freedom fighter V, “Let us raise a toast to all
our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable. Let’s
drink their health […] then meet with them no more” (Moore & Lloyd,
1990: 248).
In the long run, the interdisciplinary focus of Anarchist Developments
in Cultural Studies may well turn out to be its strong suit. I am delighted to
see that this inaugural issue contains both anarchist architectural theory
and anarchist film criticism. Alan Antliff gives us a fascinating study of
Adrian Blackwell’s “anarchitecture.” Blackwell’s architecture attempts to
engineer a radical perspective shift which might render static power re-
lations more open and fluid. The result, as Antliff compellingly argues, is
a unique form of anarchist architecture which refuses to remain trapped
within the cultural logic of capitalism.
Meanwhile, Nathan Jun offers a very ambitious anarchist film theory,
one which undertakes to reveal the “liberatory potential of film.” Echo-
ing (once again) Gilles Deleuze, Jun argues that a “genuinely nomadic
cinema” is not only possible but inevitable, and that such a cinema will
emerge at the juncture between producer and consumer, while blurring
the distinction between the two. One need only look at the viral prolifera-
tion of quality amateur video productions on YouTube and other sites for
evidence that this is already happening.
That just leaves three wild essays, one of which contains within itself
(in proper fractal fashion) “Three Wild Interstices of Anarchism and Phi-
losophy.” Alejandro de Acosta suggests that anarchism “has never been
incorporated into or as an academic discipline” — though I would hasten
to add, it’s certainly not for lack of trying. De Acosta makes anarchism’s
apparent theoretical weakness into a virtue, arguing that anarchism really
matters not as a body of abstract theory, but as a set of concrete social
practices. De Acosta offers provocative examples of these practices: the
meditative affirmations of the “utopians,” a speculative anthropology of
geographical spaces, and a Situationist psychogeography.
These last two “wild styles” dovetail nicely with the concerns of Xavier
Oliveras González, who gives us a dramatic critique of statist metageog-
raphy, and simultaneously suggests an alternative. Oliveras shows the

37
power of the high-level assumptions we make about geographic space and
the ways in which it can be organized. Whoever controls metageography
controls the territories it defines, and so far the state has controlled these
things. But anarchist geographers like Kropotkin have been critiquing this
statist metageography for over a century now. As Oliveras demonstrates,
it is now possible, at last, for us to imagine a metageography which will
be liberated from statist assumptions.
Finally, Erick Heroux offers us a very useful “PostAnarchia Repertoire.”
Heroux thinks through the implications of today’s postmodern networks.
These networks feature extensive cooperating techniques which directly
implement the anarchist principle of mutual aid. Shareware, freeware and
open source software represent clear alternatives to the economic logic
of capitalism. Like Thomas Nail, Heroux suggests that we are no longer
anticipating a future postanarchist revolution. Rather, we are studying the
emergence of “an actual postanarchist society.”
So this is post-anarchism today. We offer no more visions, no more
predictions, no more half-baked utopian dreams. Post-anarchism today
describes the world we actually live in. It offers innovative, effective strate-
gies for us to understand that world and engage with it. For a philosophy
that was built, in part, on the renunciation of reality, post-anarchism has
become surprisingly real. So use it and re-use it. Apply it and deny it. Re-
vise it and recycle it. Let it speak to you, my fellow anarchists, and make
it listen to you. Post-anarchism may not be here to stay, but it is here now,
and anarchism is richer for that.

References
Call, Lewis. (2011a) “Buffy the Postanarchist Vampire Slayer.” In Post-
anarchism: A Reader (Duane Rousselle & Süreyyya Evren, Eds.). London:
Pluto Press.
— . (2011b) “Structures of Desire: Postanarchist Kink in the Speculative
Fiction of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany.” In Anarchism and Sexual-
ity: Ethics, Relationships and Power (Jamie Heckert & Richard Cleminson).
New York: Routledge.

38
 Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari. (1983) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. (R. Hurley et al., Trans.) Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press.
Franks, Benjamin. (2007) “Postanarchism: A Critical Assessment.” Jour-
nal of Political Ideologies (12)2: 127–45.
— . (2008) “Postanarchism and Meta-Ethics.” Anarchist Studies (16)2:
135–53.
Moore, Alan & David Lloyd. (1990) V for Vendetta. New York: DC
Comics.

Editorial of Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Volume 2010.1

39
The Politics of Postanarchism

Saul Newman
 In recent years radical politics has been faced with a number of new
challenges, not least of which has been the reemergence of the aggressive,
authoritarian state in its new paradigm of security and bio-politics. The
‘war on terror’serves as the latest guise for the aggressive reassertion of
the principle state sovereignty, beyond the traditional limits imposed on
it by legal institutions or democratic polities. Coupled with this has been
the hegemony of neo-liberal projects of capitalist globalization, as well
as the ideological obscurantism of the so-called Third Way. The profound
disillusionment in the wake of the collapse of Communist systems nearly
two decades ago has resulted in a political and theoretical vacuum for the
radical Left, which has generally been ineffective in countering the rise
of the Far Right in Europe, as well as a more insidious ‘creeping conser-
vatism’ whose dark ideological implications we are only just beginning
to see unfold.

The Anarchist Moment

It is perhaps because of the disarray that the Left finds itself in today,
that there has been a recent revival of interest in anarchism as a possible
radical alternative to Marxism. Indeed, anarchism was always a kind of
‘third way’ between liberalism and Marxism, and now, with the general
disenchantment felt with both ‘free-market’ style liberalism and central-
ist socialism, the appeal of, or at least interest in, anarchism is likely to
increase. This revival is also due to the prominence of the broadly termed
anti-globalization movement. This is a movement which contests the dom-
ination of neo-liberal globalization in all its manifestations — from corpo-
rate greed, to environmental degradation and genetically-modified foods.
It is based around a broad social protest agenda which incorporates a mul-
titude of different issues and political identities. However, what we are
witnessing here is clearly a new form of radical politics — one that is fun-
damentally different to both the particularized politics of identity that has
generally prevailed in Western liberal societies, as well as to the old style
Marxist politics of class struggle. On the one hand, the anti- globalization
movement unites different identities around a common struggle; and yet
this common ground is not determined in advance, or based on the pri-

43
ority of particular class interests, but rather is articulated in a contingent
way during the struggle itself. What makes this movement radical is its
unpredictability and indeterminacy — the way that unexpected links and
alliances are formed between different identities and groups that would
otherwise have little in common. So while this movement is universal,
in the sense that it invokes a common emancipative horizon which con-
stitutes the identities of participants, it rejects the false universality of
Marxist struggles, which deny difference, and subordinate other strug-
gles to the central role of the proletariat — or, to be more precise, to the
vanguard role of the Party.
It is this refusal of centralist and hierarchical politics, this openness
to a plurality of different identities and struggles, that makes the anti-
globalization movement an anarchist movement. It is not anarchistic just
because anarchist groups are prominent in it. What is more important
is that the anti-globalization movement, without being consciously anar-
chist, embodies an anarchistic form of politics in its structure and organi-
zation5 — which are decentralized, pluralistic and democratic — as well as
in its inclusiveness. Just as classical anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin
insisted, in opposition to Marxists, that the revolutionary struggle could
not confined or determined by the class interests of the industrial pro-
letariat, and must be open also to peasants, the lumpenproletariat, and
intellectuals déclassé, etc, so too the contemporary movement includes a
broad range of struggles, identities and interests — trade unions, students,
environmentalists, indigenous groups, ethnic minorities, peace activists,
and so on.
As post-Marxists like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argue, the
radical political horizon is no longer dominated by the proletariat and its
struggle against capitalism. They point to a whole series of new social
movements and identities — blacks, feminists, ethnic and sexual minori-
ties — which no longer fit into the Marxist category of class struggles: “The
common denominator of all of them would be their differentiation from
workers’ struggles, considered as ‘class’ struggles.”6 Class is therefore no
5
See David Graeber’s discussion of some of these anarchistic structures and forms of organization
in “The New Anarchists,”New Left Review 13 (Jan/Feb 2002): 61–73.
6
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Demo-
cratic Politics. London: Verso, 2001. p. 159.

44
longer the central category through which radical political subjectivity is
defined. Moreover, contemporary political struggles are no longer deter-
mined by the struggle against capitalism, but rather point to new sites
of domination and highlight new arenas of antagonism — racism, pri-
vatization, workplace surveillance, bureaucratization, etc. As Laclau and
Mouffe argue, these new social movements have been primarily strug-
gles against domination, rather than merely economic exploitation as the
Marxist paradigm would suppose: “As for their novelty, that is conferred
upon them by the fact that they call into question new forms of subordi-
nation.”7 That is to say, they are anti-authoritarian struggles — struggles
that contest the lack of reciprocity in particular relations of power. Here,
economic exploitation would be seen as part of the broader problematic
of domination — which would include also sexual and cultural forms of
subordination. In this sense, one could say that these struggles and antag-
onisms point to an anarchist moment in contemporary politics.
According to post-Marxists, contemporary political conditions sim-
ply can no longer be explained within the theoretical categories and
paradigms central to Marxist theory. Marxism was conceptually limited
by its class essentialism and economic determinism, which had the effect
of reducing the political to a site that was strictly determined by the cap-
italist economy and the dialectical emergence of what was seen as the
universal emancipative subject. That is to say, Marxism was unable to un-
derstand the political as a fully autonomous, specific and contingent field
in its own right, seeing it always as a superstructural effect of class and
economic structures. Thus, the analysis of politics was subordinated to the
analysis of capitalism. Because of this, Marxism simply has no theoretical
purchase on political struggles that are not based on class, and are no
longer centered around economic issues. The catastrophic failure of the
Marxist project — its culmination in the massive perpetuation and central-
ization of state power and authority — showed that it had neglected the
importance and specificity of the political domain. By contrast, contem-
porary post-Marxists asserts the primacy of the political, seeing it as an
autonomous field — one that, rather than being determined by class dy-

7
Ibid., p. 160.

45
namics and the workings of the capitalist economy, is radically contingent
and indeterminate.
What is surprising, then, is that post-Marxist theory has not recog-
nized the crucial contribution of classical anarchism in conceptualizing
a fully autonomous political field. Indeed, it is precisely this emphasis on
the primacy and specificity of the political that characterizes anarchism
and distinguishes it from Marxism. Anarchism offered a radical social-
ist critique of Marxism, exposing its theoretical blindspot on the ques-
tion of state power. Unlike Marxism, which saw political power as deriv-
ing from class position, anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin insisted that the
state must be seen as the main impediment to socialist revolution, and
that it was oppressive no matter what form it took and or which class
controlled it: “They (Marxists) do not know that despotism resides not so
much in the form of the State but in the very principle of the State and
political power.”8 In other words, domination existed in the very struc-
ture and logic of the state — it constituted an autonomous site or place
of power, one that must be destroyed as the first act of revolution. Anar-
chists believed that Marx’s neglect of this domain would have disastrous
consequences for revolutionary politics — a prediction that was proven all
too accurate by the Bolshevik Revolution. For anarchists, the centralized
political power could not be easily overcome, and was always in danger
of being reaffirmed unless addressed specifically. The theoretical innova-
tion of anarchism therefore lay in taking the analysis of power beyond
the economic reductionist paradigm of Marxism. Anarchism also pointed
to other sites of authority and domination that were neglected in Marxist
theory — for example, the Church, the family and patriarchal structures,
the law, technology, as well as the structure and hierarchy of the Marxist
revolutionary Party itself.9 It offered new theoretical tools for the analysis
of political power and, in doing so, opened up the site of the political as
a specific field of revolutionary struggle and antagonism, which could no
longer be subordinated to purely economic concerns.
Given anarchism’s contribution to radical politics and, in particular, its
theoretical proximity to current post-Marxist projects, there has been a
8
Mikhail Bakunin, Political Philosophy: Scientific Anarchism, ed. G. P Maximoff. London: Free Press
of Glencoe. p. 221.
9
See Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989. p. 188.

46
curious silence about this revolutionary tradition on the part of contem-
porary radical theory. However, I would also suggest that just as con-
temporary theory should take account of the intervention of anarchism,
anarchism itself could benefit greatly through an incorporation of con-
temporary theoretical perspectives, in particular those derived from dis-
course analysis, psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Perhaps we could
say that anarchism today has been more about practice than theory, de-
spite, of course, the interventions of a number of influential modern anar-
chist thinkers like Noam Chomsky, John Zerzan and Murray Bookchin.10
I have already pointed to the anarchy in action that we see in the new
social movements that characterize our political landscape. However, the
very conditions that have given rise to the anarchist moment — the plural-
ization of struggles, subjectivities and sites of power — are also the con-
ditions that highlight the central contradictions and limits of anarchist
theory. Anarchist theory is still largely based in the paradigm of Enlight-
enment humanism — with its essentialist notions of the rational human
subject, and its positivistic faith in science and objective historical laws.
Just as Marxism was limited politically by its own categories of class and
economic determinism, as well as by its dialectical view of historical de-
velopment, anarchism can also be said to be limited by its epistemological
anchoring in the essentialist and rationalist discourses of Enlightenment
humanism.

New Paradigms of the Social: Postsructuralism

and Discourse Analysis
The paradigm of Enlightenment humanism has been superseded by the
paradigm of postmodernity, which can be seen a critical perspective on
the discourses of modernity — an “incredulity towards metanarratives,” as
Jean-Francois Lyotard put it.11 In other words, what the postmodern con-
10
The last two in particular have remained resistant to poststructuralism/postmodernism. See, for
instance, John Zerzan, “The Catastrophe of Postmodernism,”Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (Fall
1991): 16–25.
11
See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Ben-
nington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.

47
dition puts in question is precisely the universality and absolutism of ra-
tional and moral frameworks derived from the Enlightenment. It unmasks
the very ideas that we have taken for granted — our faith in science, for
instance — showing their arbitrary nature, and the way they have been
constructed through the violent exclusion of other discourses and per-
spectives. Postmodernism also questions the essentialist ideas about sub-
jectivity and society — the conviction that there is a central and unchang-
ing truth at the base of our identity and our social existence, a truth that
can only be revealed once the irrational mystifications of religion or ideol-
ogy have been discarded. Instead, postmodernism emphasizes the shifting
and contingent nature of identity — the multiplicity of ways in which it
can be experienced and understood. Moreover, rather than history being
understood as the unfolding of a rational logic or essential truth — as in
the dialectic, for instance — it is seen from the postmodern perspective as
a series of haphazard accidents and contingencies, without origin or pur-
pose. Postmodernism therefore emphasizes the instability and plurality of
identity, the constructed nature of social reality, the incommensurability
of difference, and the contingency of history.
There are a number of contemporary critical theoretical strategies that
engage with the question of postmodernity, and that I see as having
crucial implications for radical politics today. These strategies would in-
clude poststructuralism, ‘discourse analysis’ and post-Marxism. They de-
rive from a variety of different fields in philosophy, political theory, cul-
tural studies, aesthetics and psychoanalysis, yet what they broadly share
is a discursive understanding of social reality. That is to say, they see so-
cial and political identities as being constructed through relations of dis-
course and power, and as having no intelligible meaning outside this con-
text. Furthermore, these perspectives go beyond a structural determinist
understanding of the world, pointing to the indeterminacy of the struc-
ture itself, as well as its multiple forms of articulation. There are several
key theoretical problematics that can be drawn out here, that are not only
central to the contemporary political field, but also have important impli-
cations for anarchism itself.
A) The opacity of the social. The socio-political field is characterized
by multiple layers of articulation, antagonism and ideological dissimula-
tion. Rather than there being an objective social truth beyond interpre-

48
tation and ideology, there is only the antagonism of conflicting articu-
lations of the social. This derives from the Althusserian (and originally
Freudian) principle of overdetermination — according to which meaning
is never ultimately fixed, giving rise to a plurality of symbolic interpre-
tations. Slavoj Zizek provides an interesting example of this discursive
operation through Claude Levi-Strauss’ discussion of the different per-
ceptions of the spatial location of buildings amongst members of a Win-
nebago tribe. The tribe, we are told, is divided into two groups — ‘those
who are from above’and ‘those who are from below.’ An individual from
each group was asked to draw the ground plan of his or her village on sand
or a piece of paper. The result was a radical difference between the repre-
sentations of each group. ‘Those who are from above’drew the village as
a series of concentric circles within circles, with a group of circles in the
center and a series of satellite circles clustered around this. This would
correspond with the ‘conservative-corporatist’ image of society held by
the upper classes. ‘Those who are from below’drew the village also as a
circle, but one that is clearly divided by a line into two antagonistic halves
— thus corresponding with the ‘revolutionary-antagonistic’ view held by
the lower classes. Zizek comments here:

the very splitting into the two ‘relative’perceptions implies

a hidden reference to a constant — not the objective, ‘ac-
tual’disposition of buildings but a traumatic kernel, a funda-
mental antagonism the inhabitants of the village were unable
to symbolize, to account for, to ‘internalize,’ to come to terms
with — an imbalance in social relations that prevented the
community from stabilizing itself into a harmonious whole.12

According to this argument, the anarchist notion of social objectivity

or totality would be impossible to sustain. There is always an antagonism
at the level of social representation that undermines the symbolic consis-
tency of this totality. The different perspectives and conflicting interpreta-
tions of the social could not be seen merely resulting from an ideological
distortion which prevents the subject from grasping the truth of society.
12
See Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Con-
temporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso. pp. 112–113.

49
The point here is that this differencein social interpretations — this incom-
mensurable field of antagonisms — is the truth of society. In other words,
the distortion here is not at the level of ideology, but at the level of social
reality itself.
B) The indeterminacy of the subject. Just as the identity of social may
be seen as indeterminate, so too is the identity of the subject. This de-
rives from a number of different theoretical approaches. Poststructuralists
such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, have attempted to see subjec-
tivity as a field of immanence and becoming that gives rise to a plurality
of differences, rather than as a fixed, stable identity. The supposed unity
of the subject is destabilized through the heterogeneous connections it
forms with other social identities and assemblages.13 A different approach
to the question of subjectivity can be found in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Here the identity of the subject is always deficient or lacking, because of
the absence of what Jacques Lacan calls object petit a — the lost object
of desire. This lack in identity is also registered in the external symbolic
order through which the subject is understood. The subject seeks recogni-
tion of himself through the an interaction with the structure of language;
however, this structure is itself deficient, as there is an certain element
— the Real — that escapes symbolization.14 What is clear in these two ap-
proaches is that the subject can no longer be seen as a complete, whole,
self- contained identity that is fixed by an essence — rather its identity
is contingent and unstable. Therefore, politics can no longer be based en-
tirely on the rational claims of stable identities, or on the revolutionary
assertion of a fundamental human essence. Rather, political identities are
indeterminate and contingent — and can give rise to a plurality of differ-
ent and often antagonistic struggles over precisely how this identity is
to be defined. This approach clearly calls into question the anarchist un-
derstanding of subjectivity, which sees it as being based on a universal
human essence with rational and moral characteristics.15
13
See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. R. Hur-
ley. New York: Viking Press, 1972. p. 58.
14
For a comprehensive discussion of the political implications of this Lacanian approach to identity,
see Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge, 1999. pp 40–70.
15
Peter Kropotkin, for instance, believed that there was an natural instinct for sociability in men,
which formed the basis for ethical relations; while Bakunin argued that the subject’s morality and ratio-
nality arises out of his natural development. See, respectively, Peter Kropotkin, Ethics: Origin & Develop-

50
 C) The complicity of the subject in power. The status of the subject is
further problematized by its involvement in relations of power and dis-
course. This was a problem that was explored extensively by Michel Fou-
cault, who showed the myriad ways in which subjectivity is constructed
through discursive regimes and practices of power/knowledge. Indeed,
the way that we come to see ourselves as self-reflexive subjects with par-
ticular characteristics and capacities is based on our complicity in rela-
tions and practices of power that often dominate us. This throws into
doubt the notion of the autonomous, rational human subject and its status
in a radical politics of emancipation. As Foucault says, “The man described
for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a
subjection much more profound than himself.”16 This has a number of ma-
jor implications for anarchism. Firstly, rather than there being a subject
whose natural human essence is repressed by power — as anarchists be-
lieved — this form of subjectivity is actually an effect of power. That is to
say, this subjectivity has been produced in such a way that it sees itself
as having an essence that is repressed — so that its liberation is actually
concomitant with its continued domination. Secondly, this discursive fig-
ure of the universal human subject that is central to anarchism, is itself a
mechanism of domination that aims at the normalization of the individ-
ual and the exclusion of forms of subjectivity that do not fit in with it.
This domination was unmasked by Max Stirner, who showed that the hu-
manist figure of man was really an inverted image of God, and performed
the same ideological operation of oppressing the individual and denying
difference.
D) The genealogical view of history. Here the view of history as the
unfolding of a fundamental law is rejected, in favor of one that empha-
sizes the ruptures, breaks and discontinuities in history. History is seen
as a series of antagonisms and multiplicities, rather than the articulation
of a universal logic, like the Hegelian dialectic, for instance. There is no
“timeless and essential secret” to history, but merely, as Foucault says, the
“hazardous play of dominations.”17 Foucault saw Nietzschean genealogy
ment. Trans., L.S Friedland. New York: Tudor, 1947; and Bakunin, Political Philosophy, op cit., pp. 152–157.
16
Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. Penguin: Lon-
don, 1991. p. 30.
17
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,”in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow. New

51
as a project of unmasking the conflicts and antagonisms, the “unspoken
warfare” that is waged behind the veil of history. The role of the geneal-
ogist is to “awaken beneath the form of institutions and legislations the
forgotten past of real struggles, of masked victories or defeats, the blood
that has dried on the codes of law.”18 In the institutions, laws and prac-
tices that we come to take for granted, or see as natural or inevitable,
there is a condensation of violent struggles and antagonisms that have
been repressed. For instance, Jacques Derrida has shown that the author-
ity of the Law is based on a founding gesture of violence that has been
disavowed. The Law must be founded on something that pre-exists it, and
therefore its foundation is by definition illegal. The secret of the Law’s be-
ing must therefore be some kind disavowed illegality, an original crime or
act of violence that brings the body of the Law into existence and which is
now is hidden in its symbolic structures.19 In other words, social and po-
litical institutions and identities must be seen as having political — that is
to say, antagonistic — rather than natural origins. These political origins
have been repressed in the psychoanalytic sense — that is, they have been
‘placed elsewhere’ rather than eliminated entirely, and can always be re-
activated once the meaning of these institutions and discourses is con-
tested.20 While anarchism would share this deconstructive engagement
with political authority — it rejected the social contract theory of the state,
for instance — it still subscribes to a dialectical view of history. Social and
political development is seen as determined by the unfolding of a rational
social essence and immutable natural and historical laws. The problem is
that if these immutable laws determine the conditions for revolutionary
struggle, then there is little room for seeing the political as contingent and
indeterminate. Moreover, the genealogical critique could also be extended
to the ‘natural’ institutions and relations that anarchists see as being op-
posed to the order of political power. Because genealogy sees history as
a clash of representations and an antagonism of forces, in which power

York: Pantheon, 1984. 76–100. p. 83.

18
Michel Foucault, “War in the Filigree of Peace: Course Summary,”trans. I. Mcleod, in Oxford Liter-
ary Review 4, no. 2 (1976): 15–19. pp. 17–18.
19
See Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority,’in Deconstruction and
the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell et al. New York: Routledge, 1992: 3–67.
20
See Jacob Torfing, New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Zizek, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

52
relations are inevitable, this would destabilize any identity, structure or
institution — even those that might exist in a post-revolutionary anarchist
society.
These four problematics that are central to poststructuralism/discourse
analysis, thus have fundamental implications for anarchist theory: if an-
archism is to be theoretically effective today, if it is to fully engage with
contemporary political struggles and identities, it must eschew the En-
lightenment humanist framework in which it is articulated — with its
essentialist discourses, its positivistic understanding of social relations
and its dialectical view of history. Instead, it must fully assert the con-
tingency of history, the indeterminacy of identity, and the antagonistic
nature of social and political relations. In other words, anarchism must
follow its insight about the autonomy of the political dimension to its log-
ical implications — and see the political as a constitutively open field of
indetermination, antagonism and contingency, without the guarantees of
dialectical reconciliation and social harmony.

The Postanarchist Problematic

Postanarchism may therefore be seen as the attempt to revise anarchist
theory along non- essentialist and non-dialectical lines, through the ap-
plication and development of insights from poststructuralism/discourse
analysis. This is in order to tease out what I see as innovative and seminal
in anarchism — which is precisely the theorization of the autonomy and
specificity of the political domain, and the deconstructive critique of polit-
ical authority. It is these crucial aspects of anarchist theory that must be
brought to light, and whose implications must be explored. They must be
freed from the epistemological conditions that, although they originally
gave rise to them now restrict them. Postanarchism thus performs a sal-
vage operation on classical anarchism, attempting to extract its central
insight about the autonomy of the political, and explore its implications
for contemporary radical politics.
The impetus for this postanarchist intervention came from my sense
that not only was anarchist theory in nuce poststructuralist; but also that
postructuralism itself was in nuce anarchist. That is to say, anarchism

53
allowed, as I have suggested, the theorization of the autonomy of the po-
litical with its multiple sites of power and domination, as well as its mul-
tiple identities and sites of resistance (state, church, family, patriarchy,
etc) beyond the economic reductionist framework of Marxism. However,
as I have also argued, the implications of these theoretical innovations
were restricted by the epistemological conditions of the time — essential-
ist ideas about subjectivity, the determinist view of history, and the ra-
tional discourses of the Enlightenment. Poststructuralism is, in turn, at
least in its political orientation, fundamentally anarchist — particularly
its deconstructive project of unmasking and destabilizing the authority of
institutions, and contesting practices of power that are dominating and
exclusionary. The problem with poststructuralism was that, while it im-
plied a commitment to anti-authoritarian politics, it lacked not only an
explicit politico-ethico content, but also an adequate account of individ-
ual agency. The central problem with Foucault, for instance, was that if the
subject is constructed through the discourses and relations of powerthat
dominate him, how exactly does he resist this domination? Therefore, the
premise for bringing together anarchism and poststructuralism was to
explore the ways in which each might highlight and address the theoreti-
cal problems in the other. For instance, the poststructuralist intervention
in anarchist theory showed that anarchism had a theoretical blindspot —
it did not recognize the hidden power relations and potential authoritar-
ianism in the essentialist identities, and discursive and epistemological
frameworks, that formed the basis of its critique of authority. The anar-
chist intervention in poststructural theory, on the other hand, exposed
its political and ethical shortcomings, and, in particular, the ambiguities
of explaining agency and resistance in the context of all-pervasive power
relations.
These theoretical problems centered around the question of power,
place and the outside: it was found that while classical anarchism was
able to theorize, in the essential revolutionary subject, an identity or place
of resistance outside the order of power, this subject was found, in the
subsequent analyses, to be embroiled in the very power relations it con-
tested; whereas poststructuralism, while it exposed precisely this complic-
ity between the subject and power, was left without a theoretical point of
departure — an outside — from which to criticize power. Thus, the theo-

54
retical quandary that I attempted to address in From Bakunin to Lacan,
was that, while we have to assume that there is no essentialist outside
to power — no firm ontological or epistemological ground for resistance,
beyond the order of power — radical politics nevertheless needs some the-
oretical dimension outside power, and some notion of radical agency that
was not wholly determined by power. I explored the emergence of this
aporia, discovering two central ‘epistemological breaks’ in radical polit-
ical thought. The first was found in Stirner’s critique of Enlightenment
humanism, which formed the theoretical basis for the poststructuralist
intervention, within the anarchist tradition itself. The second was found
in Lacanian theory, whose implications went beyond the conceptual lim-
its of poststructuralism21 — pointing to the deficiencies in the structures
of power and language, and the possibility of a radically indeterminate
notion of agency emerging from this lack.
Therefore, postanarchism is not so much a coherent political program,
but rather an anti- authoritarian problematic that emerges genealogically
— that is, through a series of theoretical conflicts or aporias — from a
poststructuralist approach to anarchism (or indeed, an anarchist approach
to poststructuralism). However, postanarchism also implies a broad strat-
egy of interrogating and contesting relations of power and hierarchy, of
uncovering previously unseen sites of domination and antagonism. In
this sense, postanarchism may be seen as an open- ended politico-ethical
project of deconstructing authority. What distinguishes it from classical
anarchism is that it is a non-essentialist politics. That is, postanarchism
no longer relies on an essential identity of resistance, and is no longer
anchored in the epistemologies of the Enlightenment or the ontological
guarantees of humanist discourse. Rather, its ontology is constitutively
open to other, and posits an empty and indeterminate radical horizon,
which can include a plurality of different political struggles and identities.
In other words, postanarchism is an anti-authoritarianism which resists
the totalizing potential of a closed discourse or identity. This does not
mean, of course, that post-anarchism has no ethical content or limits. In-
deed, its politico-ethical content may even be provided by the traditional
21
The question of whether Lacan can be seen as ‘poststructuralist’or ‘post- postructuralist’forms a
central point of contention between thinkers like Laclau and Zizek, both of whom are heavily influenced
by Lacanian theory. See Butler et al. Contingency, op. cit.

55
emancipative principles of freedom and equality — principles whose un-
conditional and irreducible nature was affirmed by the classical anarchists.
However, the point is that these principles are no longer grounded in a
closed identity but become “empty signifiers”22 that are open to a number
of different articulations decided contingently in the course of struggle.

New Challenges: Bio-Politics and the Subject

One of the central challenges to radical politics today would be the
deformation of the nation state into a bio-political state — a deformation
which, paradoxically, shows its true face. As Giorgio Agamben has shown,
the logic of sovereignty beyond the law, and the logic of bio-politics, have
intersected in the form of the modern state. Thus, the prerogative of the
state is to regulate, monitor and police the biological health of its internal
populations. As Agamben has argued, this function produces a particular
kind of subjectivity — what he calls homo sacer — which is defined by the
form of “bare life,” or biological life stripped of its political and symbolic
significance, as well as by the principle of legal murder, or murder with
impunity.23 Paradigmatic of this would be the subjectivity of the refugee,
and the refugee internment camps that we see springing up everywhere.
Within these camps, a new, arbitrary form of power is exerted directly
on the naked life of the detainee. In other words, the body of the refugee,
which has been stripped of all political and legal rights, is the point of ap-
plication of sovereign bio-power. However, the refugee is merely emblem-
atic of the bio-political status that we are all increasingly being reduced
to. Indeed, this points to a new antagonism that is emerging as central
to politics.24 A postanarchist critique would be directed at precisely this
22
This notion of the “empty signifier”is central to Laclau’s theory of hegemonic articulation. See
Hegemony, op. cit. See Ernesto Laclau, “Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?”in The Lesser Evil and
the Greater Good: The Theory and Politics of Social Diversity, ed. Jeffrey Weeks. Concord, Mass.: Rivers
Oram Press, 1994. 167–178
23
See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans., Daniel Heller- Roazen.
Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1995.
24
As Agamben argues: : “The novelty of coming politics is that it will not longer be a struggle for the
conquest or control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity)…”Giorgio
Agamben, The Coming Community, trans., Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993. p. 84.

56
link between power and biology. It is not enough to simply assert the hu-
man rights of the subject against the incursions of power. What must be
critically examined is the way in which certain human subjectivities are
constructed as conduits of power.
The conceptual vocabulary to analyse these new forms of power and
subjectivity would not have been available to classical anarchism. How-
ever, even in this new paradigm of subjectifying power, classical anar-
chism’s ethical and political commitment to interrogating authority, as
well as its analysis of state sovereignty — which went beyond class ex-
planations — continues to be relevant today. Postanarchism is innovative
precisely because it combines what is crucial in anarchist theory, with a
postsructuralist/discursive-analytic critique of essentialism. What results
is an open-ended anti-authoritarian political project for the future.
 

Retrieved on August 15, 2010 from www.scribd.com

57
Anarchism, Marxism and the
Bonapartist State

Saul Newman

2004
1. Introduction
It would seem that today, in the conditions of late capitalism and glob-
alisation, the modern state is becoming more dominant in political, social
and economic life, rather than less so. This can be seen particularly in
the current preoccupation with security and terrorism. The ‘war on ter-
ror’ serves as the latest ideological justification for the massive centrali-
sation and expansion of state power. This new paradigm of state power
opens the way for new political and social conflicts, radically different
from those that have arisen in the past. This suggests that the problem
of state power can no longer be explained in economic terms alone, but
rather constitutes its own specific theoretical and political conditions and
terms of reference. In other words, new domains and relations of power
are emerging — and indeed have been emerging for some time — that can
no longer be explained in economic terms, but rather require different
modes of analysis.
Because the problem of state power is more crucial now than ever for
radical politics, it would be worthwhile returning to one of the most de-
cisive theoretical and political debates over precisely this question. The
conflict between Marxism and anarchism over the power, function and
relative autonomy of the state, and its role in a social revolution, was a piv-
otal debate that shaped nineteenth century radical political thought. This
paper examines some of the key aspects of this conflict, focussing on the
‘Bonapartist moment’ in classical Marxism — that is, the emergence of the
theoretical conditions for the relative autonomy of the state. However, I
shall show that, despite this innovation, Marxist theory — Marx, as well as
subsequent Marxist interventions — was ‘in the last instance’ constrained
by the categories of class and economic relations. My contention here will
be that classical anarchism took the theory of Bonapartism to its logical
conclusion, and was able to develop a concept of the sovereign state as a
specific and autonomous site of power that was irreducible to capitalist
economic relations. In doing so, anarchism broke radically with Marxism.
Therefore, within the theory of Bonapartism lay the theoretical founda-
tions for an ‘epistemological break’ with Marxism itself, allowing for the
25
Some of these connections have been explored in Newman From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-
authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power (2001).

61
development of a new analytics of power — one that, to some extent, con-
tributes towards contemporary ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘post-Marxist’ ap-
proaches to this question.25 In this paper, I will examine the implications
of Bonapartism by exploring and developing the classical anarchist cri-
tique of Marxism, as well as examining its relevance for contemporary
radical political theory.

2. Bonapartism
Arguing against the Hegelian idea that the state embodies the general
good, Marx saw it always as a particular state, one which paints itself as
universal. Its universality and independence from civil society are only a
mask for the particular economic interests — such as private property —
that it serves (Marx 1970: 107). Marx was later to develop from this the
position that the state represented the interests of the most economically
dominant class — the bourgeoisie. For Marx, it was the economic forces
of society that determined all historical, political, cultural and social phe-
nomena:

the economic structure of society is the real basis on which

the juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to
which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the
mode of production determines the character of the social,
political and intellectual life…(1967: 182).

Marx therefore criticises Pierre-Joseph Proudhon for his suggestion

that political power could shape the economic system. According to Marx,
the state lacks this power because it exists as a mere reflection of the very
economic conditions that it is purportedly able to change (‘The German
Ideology’ in Marx and Engels 1976 vol. 5: 198).
However, while Marx saw the state as largely derivative of the eco-
nomic forces and class interests, he did at times allow it a substantial de-
gree of political autonomy. His work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte describes a coup d’etat in France in 1851, in which state forces
led by Louis Bonaparte seized absolute power, achieving not only a con-
siderable degree of independence from the bourgeoisie, but often acting

62
directly against its immediate interests. According to Marx, however, the
Bonapartist state served the long term interests of the capitalist system,
even if it often acted against the immediate interests and will of the bour-
geoisie:

…that the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit other

classes and to enjoy undisputed property, family, religion and
order that their class be condemned along with other classes
to similar political nullity; that, in order to save its purse, it
must forfeit the crown…(‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte’ in Marx and Engels 1976 vol.7: 143).

To what extent, however, does this account of the Bonapartist state

allow for the theorisation of the relative autonomy of the state in Marx-
ism? One of the central debates in Marxist theory has been on precisely
this question. David Held and Joel Krieger argue that there are two main
strands in the Marxist theory about the relation between classes and the
state. The first — let us call it (1a) — exemplified by Marx’s account of
Bonapartism, stresses the relative autonomy of the state. It sees state in-
stitutions and the bureaucracy as constituting a virtually separate site in
society — its logic is not determined by class interests and it assumes a
centrality in society. The second strand (2a) which Held and Krieger argue
is the dominant one in Marxist thought, sees the state as an instrument of
class domination, whose structure and operation are determined by class
interests (see ‘Theories of the State’ in Bornstein, et al: 4, 1–20).
Held and Krieger also argue that these two contrasting traditions in
Marxist thought correspond to two different revolutionary strategies in
regards to the state. The first position (1a) would allow the state to be
used as a force for revolutionary change and liberation (1b). Because the
state is seen as a neutral institution in the sense that it is not essentially
beholden to class interests, it can be used to revolutionise capitalism and
topple the bourgeoisie from its position of economic dominance. The sec-
ond position (2a) on the other hand, because it sees the state as essentially
a bourgeois state, an instrument of class domination, demands that the
state be destroyed as part of a socialist revolution (2b). This is the posi-
tion exemplified by Lenin in The State and Revolution. This interpretation

63
of the relation between the question of the autonomy of the state, and its
role in a socialist revolution, may be represented in the following way:

1 (a) Autonomous state ⇒ 1 (b) State as tool of revolution

2 (a) Determined state ⇒ 2 (b) State to be destroyed in revo-
lution
A Marxist model

Now it is this dichotomy of state theories and their concomitant revolu-

tionary strategies that could be questioned from an anarchist perspective.
It could be argued that it is precisely the second position (2a) — the view of
the state as determined by class — that entails the first revolutionary strat-
egy (1b) which allows the state to be used as a revolutionary tool of libera-
tion. Furthermore, one could see the first position (1a) — which allows the
state relative autonomy — as entailing the second revolutionary strategy
(2b) which calls for the destruction of the state in a socialist revolution.
This inversion of the traditional Marxist model would be characteristic of
an anarchist position:

1 (a) Autonomous state ⇒ 2 (b) State to be destroyed in revo-

lution
2 (a) Determined state ⇒ 1 (b) State as tool of revolution
An Anarchist Model

The reason for this rather radical overturning of the accepted logic is
that the first position (1a) comes closest to an anarchist theory of the state.
Anarchism sees the state as an autonomous institution — or series of in-
stitutions — that has its own interests and logic. It is precisely for this
reason that the state cannot be used as a neutral tool of liberation during
the time of revolution. Even if it is in the hands of a revolutionary class
like the proletariat — as Marx advocated — it still cannot be trusted be-
cause it has its own imperatives, beyond the control of the ‘ruling class’.
The time of revolution is when the state institution can least be trusted: it
will merely use the opportunity to perpetuate its own power. To regard
the state as neutral, then, as strategy (1a) does, is dangerous. According to

64
this anarchist logic, moreover, position (2a) — that which sees the state as
an instrument of the bourgeoisie — fundamentally misconstrues the na-
ture of state power, implying that the state is merely a neutral institution
subservient to the interests of the dominant class. It is this position which
would actually entail revolutionary strategy (1b) — the use of the state as
a tool of revolution once in the hands of the revolutionary class. It is really
a dispute over the meaning of neutrality: according to the Marxist logic,
neutrality would mean independence from class interests, whereas for an-
archists, neutrality would imply precisely the opposite — subservience to
class interests. This is because the view of state as determined by class
interests does not allow the state its own logic — it would appear as a
humble servant of class interests and could, therefore, be used as a neu-
tral tool of revolution if it was in the hands of the right class. On the other
hand, it is Marx’s Bonapartist version of the state — that which sees it as
a neutral institution not beholden to class interests — that is the precisely
the logic which, for anarchists, paradoxically denies the neutrality of the
state. This is because it allows it to be seen as an autonomous institution
with its own logic and which, for this very reason, cannot be seen as a
neutral tool of revolution.

It could be argued that anarchism pursues the logic of Bonapartism

much further than Marx himself was prepared to take it and, in doing
so, entirely turns on its head the Marxist conception of state and revolu-
tion. The anarchist conception of the state and its relation to class will
be expanded upon later. However it is necessary at this point to show
that while Marx was no doubt opposed to the state, it is precisely the
question of how he was opposed to it — as an autonomous Bonapartist
institution, or as an institution of bourgeois domination — and the con-
sequences of this for revolutionary strategy, that is crucial to this debate.
Nicos Poulantzas, who wanted to emphasise the relative autonomy of the
capitalist state, argues that for Marx and Engels bonapartism is not merely
a concrete form of the capitalist state in exceptional circumstances, but ac-
tually a constitutive theoretical feature of it (258). This would apparently
question determinist interpretations of the state in Marxist theory. Ralph
Miliband on the other hand, argues that for Marx and Engels, the state
was still very much the instrument of class domination (5).

65
 So what is one to make of this disparity in the interpretations of Marx’s
theory of the state? Marx himself never developed an entirely consistent
theory of the state, pointing perhaps to a theoretical deadlock that he
was unable to overcome. There are times when he appears to have a very
deterministic and instrumentalist reading of the state, when he says, for
instance: “…the State is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class
assert their common interests…” (‘The German Ideology’ in Marx and En-
gels, 1976 vol.5: 90). Nevertheless, the theory of Bonapartism opened the
way for a more heterogeneous approach to the question of the state and
its relative autonomy.

3. Autonomous or determined state?

So how should we approach this central ambiguity in Marxism? There
is no clear answer to this. But at the risk of sounding like trying to en-
force some cohesion onto Marx’s thoughts on this subject that he himself
maybe never intended, perhaps one can say the following: while one can
clearly reject the crude functionalist reading of the state, and while al-
lowing the state a considerable degree of political autonomy in certain
instances, one could still say that, for Marx, the state is in essence class
domination. By this I mean that while the state is by no means the sim-
ple political instrument of the bourgeoisie and, indeed, as Marx himself
shows, often acts against it, the state is still, for Marx, an institution which
allows the most economically powerful class — the class which owns the
means of production — to exploit other classes. In other words, it is still
the state that facilitates the bourgeoisie’s domination and exploitation of
the proletariat. This interpretation would allow the state a significant de-
gree of political autonomy: it could work against the political will of the
bourgeoisie, but it still would have to protect the long-term structural
position and interests of the bourgeoisie. So rather than saying that, for
Marx, the state is the instrument of bourgeoisie, it may be more accurate
to say that the state is a reflection of bourgeois class domination, an insti-
tution whose structure is determined by capitalist relations. Its function
is to maintain an economic and social order that allows the bourgeoisie to
continue to exploit the proletariat. By maintaining the conditions of the

66
capitalist economy in the name of the ‘common good’, the state serves the
interests of the bourgeoisie.
One can see in Marx’s account of the state — if there can be said to be
an ‘account’ as such — a continuation of the Hegelian critique of the par-
tial state, the state that serves the interests of part, rather than the whole,
of society. For Marx, as we have seen, the state has an illusory, ideologi-
cal character: it parades itself as a universal political community open to
general participation, whereas in fact it acts on behalf of certain sectional
interests. It is an ideological veil behind which the real struggles of eco-
nomic classes are waged, behind which the real misery and alienation of
people’s lives is concealed. Like Hegel, Marx was concerned with finding
an ethical agency, a form of communal control, a legitimate form of power
which would transcend the partial state and embody the interests of the
whole of society — something which would, in other words, overcome
the contradiction between public and private life. For Marx, the capital-
ist state was an expression of the alienation in civil society, and the only
way this alienation could be overcome was through an agency that did
not reflect existing economic and property relations. Unlike Hegel, Marx
believed that this agent could not be the modern state as it stands, because
it was essentially the state of bourgeois relations. While Hegel saw this
unifying agent in the ethical principle behind the liberal state, Marx found
it in the proletariat.
The proletariat is Marx’s version of the universal agent sought within
the Hegelian tradition — the subject that would overcome the contradic-
tions in society. Because of its unique place in the capitalist system, the
proletariat embodied the universality of this system, and therefore, for
Marx, the emancipation of the proletariat is synonymous with the emanci-
pation of society as a whole: “a class which is the dissolution of all classes,
a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings
are universal…” (‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right: Introduction’ in Tucker: 538, 16–25).
The proletariat represents the possibility of exercising a legitimate and
universal ethical authority over society: a society characterised by a lack
of public — as opposed to private — authority; a society in which people
were alienated from each other and from the public sphere. Marx there-
fore saw this exercise of public authority, of social power, as a necessary

67
stage in the ushering in of communism — a ‘transitional’ stage. This so-
cial power would be organised, moreover, in the apparatus of the state:
“There corresponds to this also a political transition in which the State
can be nothing but the dictatorship of the proletariat” (‘Critique of the
Gotha Program’ in Marx and Engels, 1968: 327, 315–331). Marx called,
furthermore, for the workers to strive for “…the most decisive centralisa-
tion of power in the hands of State authority.” (‘Address of the Central
Council to the Communist League’ in Tucker: 509, 501–511). So the state,
controlled by the proletariat, has become for Marx, albeit temporarily, the
vehicle which would liberate society from bourgeois domination by repre-
senting society as a whole. Thus the aim of the revolution, for Marx, was
not initially to destroy state power, but rather to seize hold of, and in the
transitional period perpetuate, it. Of course, it must be remembered that
Marx sees this proletarian state as a temporary arrangement, and Engels
argued that it would “wither away” when no longer necessary (1969: 333).
However if the state is always a reflection of class domination, how
then can Marx see the transitional state as acting on behalf of the whole
of society? Anarchists saw this as a major flaw in Marx’s thinking. Marx,
on the other hand, believed that because the state in the ‘transitional pe-
riod’ was in the hands of the proletariat — the universal class — it would
act for the benefit of society as a whole. According to Marx, it was no
longer a partial state, as it had been in bourgeois society — it was now
a universal state. In fact, according to Marx, state power will no longer
even be political power, since ‘political power’ is defined by its reflection
of the interests of a particular class. In other words, because there are
no more class distinctions in society, because the bourgeoisie has been
toppled from its position of economic and, therefore, political dominance,
there is no longer any such thing as political power: “When, in the course
of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production
has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole
nation, public power will lose its political character” (‘Communist Man-
ifesto’ in Tucker: 490). Marx also says in response to anarchist Mikhail
Bakunin’s objections to the transitional state: “… when class domination
ends, there will be no State in the present political sense of the word” (‘Af-
ter the Revolution: Marx debates Bakunin’ in Tucker: 545, 542–548). For
Marx, because political domination and conflict are an expression of class

68
domination, once class domination disappears, then so will political dom-
ination — the state will become a neutral administrative apparatus to be
used by the proletariat, until it simply ‘withers away’.
Let us follow Marx’s logic: because political power is the derivative
of class and capitalist relations, once these relations are abolished, then,
strictly speaking, political power no longer exists. However, the anar-
chists saw this claim as dangerously naive. It neglected what they saw
as the fundamental principle of state power (or for that matter, any form
of institutional or centralised power): that it is independent of economic
forces and has its own imperative of self-perpetuation. As I have shown,
Marx does allow the state some autonomy and self-determinacy — partic-
ularly in his theory of Bonapartism. However, my argument is that he did
not develop the implications of this argument to their full extent, falling
back into the position of class and economic reductionism. By contrast, an-
archism sees the state, in its essence, as independent of economic classes,
thus radicalising the Bonapartist argument and taking it to its logical con-
clusion.

4. The anarchist theory of the state

The idea that the state can be utilised for revolutionary ends is the result
of the Marxist analysis which sees the state as derivative of social forces,
namely the economic power of the bourgeois class. Anarchism works the
other way round: it analyses from the state to society. It sees the state and
centralised political power as determining the social and constituting the
fundamental site of oppression. Marxist theory also sees the state as an
evil to be eventually overcome, but it is an evil derived from the primary
evil of bourgeois economic domination and private property.26
The state, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form
it takes. Bakunin argues that Marxism pays too much attention to the
forms of state power while not taking enough account of the way in which
26
This point of difference is summed up by Engels: “While the great mass of the Social Democratic
workers hold our view that the State power is nothing more than the organisation with which the ruling
classes — landlords and capitalists — have provided for themselves in order to protect their social privileges,
Bakunin maintains that it is the State which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only
by the grace of the State. As, therefore, the State is the chief evil, it is above all the State which must be

69
state power operates and its structural predominance in society: “They
(Marxists) do not know that despotism resides not so much in the form
of the State but in the very principle of the State and political power”
(1984: 221). Peter Kropotkin too, argues that one must look beyond the
present form of the state: “And there are those who, like us, see in the
State, not only its actual form and in all forms of domination that it might
assume, but in its very essence, an obstacle to the social revolution…” (9).
Oppression and despotism exist, then, in the very structure and symbolic
location of the state — in the principle of sovereignty that lies at its heart.
The state, in other words, constitutes its own locus of power — it is not
merely a derivative of class power. The state has its own specific logic,
its own momentum, its own priorities: these are often beyond the control
of the ruling class and do not necessarily reflect economic relations. For
anarchists, then, political power refers to something other than class and
economic relations.
The modern state has its own origins too, independent of the rise of
the bourgeoisie. Unlike Marx, who saw the modern state as a creation of
the French Revolution and the political ascendancy of the bourgeoisie,
Bakunin saw the state as the child of the Reformation. According to
Bakunin, the crowned sovereigns of Europe usurped the power of the
Church, creating a secular authority based on the notion of divine right —
hence the birth of the modern state: “The State is the younger brother of
the Church.” (1985: 20) Kropotkin also attributes the state’s emergence to
non-economic factors such as the historical dominance of Roman law, the
rise of feudal law, the growing authoritarianism of the Church, as well as
the endemic desire for authority (1943: 28).
Furthermore, it could be argued that the political forces of the state ac-
tually determine and select specific relations of production, rather than
done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with
capital…and the State will fall away of itself” (see ‘Versus the Anarchists’ in Tucker: 728, 728–729).
27
Alan Carter argues that because many Marxists have neglected the possibility of political forces
determining economic forces, they have fallen into the trap of the state: “Marxists, therefore, have failed
to realise that the State always acts to protect its own interests. This is why they have failed to see that
a vanguard which seized control of the State could not be trusted to ensure that the State would ‘wither
away’. What the State might do, instead, is back different relations of production to those which might
serve the present dominant economic class if it believed that such new economic relations could be used
to extract from the workers an even greater surplus — a surplus which would then be available to the
State” (see ‘Outline of an Anarchist Theory of History’ in Goodway: 184, 176–197).

70
the other way round. This is because they encourage particular forces
of production which are functional for the state, allowing the develop-
ment of the means of coercion required by the state. This turns the base-
superstructure model of the state on its head, seeing the determining
forces going from top to bottom rather than from the bottom to the top.27
According to this argument, to see the state as derivative of class power
is to fall victim to the state’s deception. The state apparatus in itself ap-
pears to be faceless — it appears to lack any inherent values or direction.
Marx sees it as an illusory reflection of the alienation created by private
property, or as an institution of the bourgeois class. In reality, however,
the state has its own origins and mechanisms, and operates according to
its own agenda, which is to perpetuate itself in different guises — even in
the guise of the worker’s state.
For anarchists, state power perpetuates itself through the corrupting
influence it has on those in power. This is where the real domination lies,
according to Bakunin: “We of course are all sincere socialists and revo-
lutionists and still, were we to be endowed with power…we would not
be where we are now.” (1984: 249) Therefore, the fact that the proletariat
is at the helm of the state does not mean, as Marx claimed, an end to
political power. The state would simply re-instantiate itself at this new
political juncture. The Marxist program would only mean a massive in-
crease in political power and domination. Moreover, Bakunin believed
that Marx’s revolutionary strategy would lead to a new stage of capitalist
development. The Marxist workers’ state would only perpetuate, rather
than resolve, the contradictions in capitalist society: it will leave intact
the division of labour, it will re-instate industrial hierarchies, and further-
more it will generate a new set of class divisions between workers and
peasants, and the new governing class (Bakunin 1980: 336–337).
Bakunin perhaps represents the most radical elements of Marxist the-
ory. He takes Marx seriously when he says that the state is always con-
comitant with class divisions and domination. However there is an impor-
tant difference. To put it crudely, for Marx, the dominant class generally
rules through the state, whereas for Bakunin, the state generally rules
through the dominant class. In other words, bourgeois relations are ac-
tually a reflection of the state, rather than the state being a reflection of
bourgeois relations. Unlike Marxism, the emphasis in anarchist theory is

71
on the state itself — a term which includes economic exploitation — rather
than on economic relations specifically. Anarchism would seem to have a
much broader concept of the state than Marxism. The ruling class, argues
Bakunin, is the state’s real material representative. In this sense, ruling
classes are essential to the state, rather than the state being essential to
ruling classes. The bourgeoisie is only one of the state’s specific forms of
articulation (Bakunin 1984: 208). When the bourgeoisie is destroyed the
state will create another class in its place, through which it can perpetuate
its power — even in an allegedly classless society. In the wake of a Marxist
revolution, a new bureaucratic class will come to dominate and exploit the
workers in much the same way as the bourgeoisie did. Behind every rul-
ing class of every epoch there looms the state — an abstract machine with
its own logic of domination. As Bakunin shows, the state fully realises
itself as a machine when the Marxist revolution installs the bureaucratic
class at its helm: “when all other classes have exhausted themselves, the
class of bureaucracy enters upon the stage and then the State fall, or rises,
if you please, to the position of a machine.” (1984: 208) It is precisely this
machine-like character of the state — this structural imperative of self-
perpetuation — that is dangerous, and which Marxist theory, because of
its economic and class reductionism, could not account for. It is for this
reason, anarchists argued, that revolution must be aimed not at seizing
control of state power, even if only temporarily, but at destroying it and
replacing it with de-centralised, non-hierarchical forms of social organi-
sation. It is also for the reasons mentioned before that anarchists argue
that state cannot be trusted to simply ‘wither away’. For anarchists it is ex-
tremely naive, even utopian, to believe that entrenched political power —
and Bakunin’s analysis has shown the workers state to be precisely this —
will simply self-destruct just because old class divisions have disappeared
and relations of production have been transformed.

5. The problem of economic reductionism

For anarchists, Marxism has great value as an analysis of capitalism
and the relations private authority which it is tied to. However, in focus-
ing on this, Marxism neglected other forms of authority and domination —

72
primarily that of the state, but also technology, religious institutions and
party hierarchy (see Bookchin: 188). This was because it had a tendency to
reduce them to the conceptual categories of class and economics, and to
regard them as secondary to, and derivative of, these. Marxism is caught,
one could argue, in a reductionist logic that cannot adequately account
for the specificity of political domination. According to Elizabeth Rappa-
port, “His (Marx’s) tendency to regard all political conflict as grounded in
class antagonism led him to underestimate the importance of the political
dimension of socialist development.” (343)
This reductionist logic extends to more contemporary forms of Marx-
ism. For instance, while Louis Althusser proposed a concept of society
radically different from the classical Marxian notion of the social super-
structure strictly determined by the economic essence or structure, he
nevertheless saw social relations as being determined, in the last instance,
by the economy. Althusser’s intervention did, however, extend the logic
of Bonapartism, once again engaging with the possibility — within Marx-
ist discourse — of theorising the autonomy of the political. He proposed
that the economy acts on the social only indirectly — economic forces
were part of the social whole, and did they do not constitute a privileged
core outside the social superstructure. In other words, political formations
can act on the economy, just as they can be acted on by the economy.
He calls this symbiotic relationship overdetermination (1977: 101). More-
over, Althusser explored more complex and decentralised constellations
of power — ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses) that included not only the
state bureaucracy, but also institutions such as the Church and schools,
as well as other forms of social and political domination — which largely
functioned autonomously from the workings of the capitalist economy.
This rejection of the base-superstructure thesis has much in common with
classical anarchism. Althusser would seem, then, to be approaching the
anarchist position because he allows for a greater emphasis to be placed
on the autonomy of the state apparatus, and other non-economic forms
of power. However despite this, Althusser structured his conception of
the social around the economy: the economy for Althusser, is the “struc-
ture in dominance”, the organising principle in society (see ‘The Object of
Capital’ in Althusser and Balibar: 188, 71–182). While political and social
formations were not directly, in every instance, determined by the econ-

73
omy, they were still dominated by it. The prerogatives of the economy still
took precedence, in the last instance — in a time of revolution, for example
— over other social formations.
Alex Callinicos, on the other hand, has sought to defend classical Marx-
ism against the potential challenge it faced from Althusser, and from struc-
turalism generally. For Callinicos, Althusser’s rejection of the Hegelian
social whole culminates in an affirmation of difference — a multiplicity
of social practises that cannot be dialecticised back into an original unity
(62). It is this potential openness to the notion of difference and plurality,
according to Callinicos, which has caused the ‘crisis of Marxism’. Instead,
what must be reaffirmed is the classical Marxist notion of the social total-
ity, centrally determined by the economy. It is only this perspective, Call-
inicos argues, that allows for the possibility of the Class Struggle. How-
ever it is precisely this perspective, that negates the possibility of other
sources of power in society, which has been challenged by anarchism.
Bob Jessop tries to develop, within the Marxist framework, a contingent
theory of political power and the state. He argues that in Marxist theory
there are three main ways of approaching this question. The first sees the
relationship between economic interests and institutional systems purely
in terms of function. The second approach stresses the way in which the
institutional form of different systems reflects or corresponds to the struc-
tural needs of economic systems. The third approach rejects the economic
determinism of the last two, and sees the relationship between institutions
and economic systems to be based on “contingent articulatory practices”
(80). The second, and possibly even the first, approach is represented by
Callinicos who sees the social and political as centrally determined by
economic relations. The third strand of Marxist thought is perhaps best
reflected by Althusser who, on one level at least, seems to put forward
a contingent approach to the relationship between the political and the
economic, allowing the political considerable degree of autonomy. How-
ever, as I have shown, even in this sort of analysis, the political is still
ultimately determined by the economy. Therefore, it could be argued that
for a genuinely contingent and autonomous theory of political and non-
economic power to emerge, it means going beyond the conceptual limits
of Marxism. As Rappaport says: “It does…require going beyond Marx in

74
developing a theory capable of explaining political relationships which
do not have their foundations in material scarcity.” (343)

6. Sovereignty and bio-politics

The classical anarchist critique therefore showed that Marxism was in-
capable of grasping centralised political power in its truly autonomous di-
mension. The major theoretical achievement of anarchism was precisely
to unmask this autonomous dimension of power and authority, as well as
highlight the dangers of their reaffirmation in a revolution if neglected. In
other words, political power was now seen as phenomena that could no
longer be reduced to its different class articulations. Rather, it was to be
seen in terms of an abstract position or place in the social, and as having
its own structural logic which articulated itself in different ways. Anar-
chism therefore exposed the limitations of Marxist theory in dealing with
the problem of power. Blinded as it was by its economic determinism, it
failed to see power as an autonomous phenomenon that was irreducible
to economic factors and that required its own specific forms of analysis.
It is precisely this need to examine power as a separate and autonomous
phenomenon that is reflected in contemporary poststructuralist theory, in
particular that of Michel Foucault. Foucault also criticised the economic
and class reductionism of Marxism, precisely because it prevented one
from examining power relations on their own terms: “So long as the pos-
ing of the question of power was kept subordinate to the economic in-
stance and the system of interests which this served, there was a tendency
to regard these problems as of small importance.” (‘Truth and Power’ in
1980: 109–133). For Foucault, power cannot be reduced simply to the in-
terests of the bourgeoisie or capitalist economics: power does not flow
from the bourgeoisie, but from institutions, practices, and discourses that
operate independently of it — such as the prison, the family, psychiatric
discourse — which have their own specific logic.
Foucault would agree, then, with the anarchist position that the Marxist
revolution is only a changing of the guard: it only changes the form and
distribution of power in society, rather than subverting it. For Foucault, a

75
Marxist revolutionary politics that neglects the autonomy of state power
by reducing it to an economic analysis is bound to perpetuate this power:

One can say to many socialisms, real or dreamt: Between the

analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its fu-
ture withering away, there is a missing term: the analysis, crit-
icism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism
itself. (1976: 453–466)

Like the anarchists, then, Foucault believes that power must be studied
in its own right, not reduced to a mere function of the capitalist economy
or class interest. If it is continually subordinated to an economic analysis,
then the problem of power will never be addressed and will continue to
perpetuate itself.
However, Foucault’s reconfiguration of power went not only beyond
Marxism, but also beyond anarchism itself, undermining the paradigm of
sovereignty that not only inscribed anarchist theories of power, but those
of classical political philosophy generally. That is to say, that, according to
Foucault, not only was power irreducible to the class position of the bour-
geoisie, but it was also irreducible to the central apparatus of the state it-
self. Indeed, Foucault argues that the state is a kind of discursive illusion
that masks the radically dispersed nature of power and the way it has
pervaded social relations at every level. In other words, power relations
can no longer be seen as emanating from a centralised institution like the
state, or indeed from any institution. Rather, power is a force relationship
that is exercised at the level of everyday interactions, and permeates a
multiplicity of infinitesimal discourses, practices and strategies. Indeed,
government itself not an institution but a series of practices and rationali-
ties which Foucault calls governmentality or the “art of government.” The
state, “no more probably today that at any other time in its history, does
not have this unity, this individuality, this rigorous functionality, nor, to
speak frankly, this importance;” (‘Governmentality’ in Gordon 1991: 103,
87–104).
Indeed, according to Foucault, political philosophies — including an-
archism — that enshrine power in the state, are part of an outmoded
‘juridico-discursive’ framework of sovereignty which is no longer valid

76
today: “what we need … is a political philosophy that isn’t erected around
the problem of sovereignty… We need to cut off the King’s head: in politi-
cal theory that has still to be done.” (1978: 93) This is because the sovereign
mode of power — symbolised by the right to take like or let live — has been
superseded by the modern mode of biopower — symbolised by the right
to sustain life or to let die. In other words, in contrast to sovereign power,
biopower has extended its reach over biological life itself. It is a form of
power that takes life as its object and sustains it, regulating its flows and
movements, and intensifying its capacities and powers, thus more effec-
tively controlling and dominating it. It is a much more subtle and perva-
sive form of power than that previously exercised by the sovereign over
his subjects.
Now it is precisely this notion of biopower that contemporary conti-
nental philosopher Giorgio Agamben takes up and develops into a coher-
ent theory of biopolitics. However, where he differs from Foucault is that,
rather than seeing the principle of sovereignty and state power as hav-
ing been superseded by biopower, he sees the two modes as coinciding to
form the political nexus of the modern age. As Agamben argues, there is a
hidden point of intersection or indistinction between juridico-institutional
and biopolitical models of power, and that therefore the investigation of
sovereignty and state power, rather than being obsolete, is never more
relevant than today: “It can even be said that the production of a biopo-
litical body is the original condition of sovereign power.” (1998: 6) Indeed,
as Agamben shows, there is a blindspot in Foucault’s work surrounding
the point at which techniques of individualisation and totalising strate-
gies actually converge. In other words, what is missing from Foucault’s
account of power is the question of how the individualising power of
biopolitics is exercised, which institutions exercise it and by what prin-
ciples is it legitimated? What this refers to is the precisely the principle of
state power or sovereignty — and without this Foucault’s theory is incom-
plete. Moreover, as Agamben comments, Foucault’s theory has neglected
any analysis of the exemplary instances of biopower — twentieth-century
totalitarian states (1998: 119).
So it would seem that political theory, if it is to fully grasp the new ways
in which powers is exercised today, needs a theory of state sovereignty.
Indeed, rather than dismiss the notion of state sovereignty, or see it as a

77
discursive illusion, Agamben sees it as the central problem for contempo-
rary politics. He shows the way in which sovereignty, in its biopolitical
articulation, is the hidden matrix of the politics of modernity, underlying
different political ideologies and the transformations from totalitarianism
to liberal-democracy . There is a certain resonance here with the anarchist
argument about state sovereignty — that it is the secret logic that under-
lies its different articulations, from monarchy, to parliamentary democ-
racy, to the Marxist workers’ state.28
At the heart of sovereignty, according to Agamben, is the state of excep-
tion — that is, the principle by which the state can stand both inside and
outside the juridical order simultaneously (1998: 15). This is the paradox
of state authority — that the sovereign provides the foundations of the
legal order and, precisely because of this, is also beyond its limits and has
the power to suspend it at certain moments. Therefore the principle of
sovereignty consists in the power of the state to suspend the normal legal
system and declare a state of emergency. The state of emergency is the ex-
ception that proves the rule: rather than being an aberration of the normal
functions of state power, it is where it shows its true face, where it can
operate with impunity and in a zone of indistinction in which the normal
legal limitations and protections no longer apply. If this state of exception
is the fundamental principle of state power, then the law no longer offers
us any protection from it. The law has, in other words, abandoned us to
sovereignty. This space of exception is also marked by a certain violence:
“the sovereign is the point of indistinction between violence and law, the
threshold in which violence passes over into law, and law passes over into
violence.” (1998: 32)
This hidden intersection of violence, law and sovereignty was also un-
masked in the classical anarchist critique of the state, in which the theory
of the social contract — which serves as the standard liberal justification
of the state — is shown to be false. Bakunin thus dismissed the notion
of the social contract as an “unworthy hoax” because it masks a logical
contradiction: if, as social contract theorists claim, people live a savage
existence in the state of nature, without rationality or morality, then how

28
Indeed, Bakunin argues that a democratic republican state can be more despotic than a monarchic
state, because it can oppress people in the name of the popular will (1984: 209).

78
can they have the foresight to come together for their common ends (1984:
136)? Political authority cannot, therefore, be based on a rational and free
agreement between individuals; rather it is based on a founding gesture of
violence that arbitrarily brings into being the symbolic institution of the
law, and which is concealed by the ideological fiction of the contract. In
other words, the social contract serves only to mask the true nature and
function of the state — self-perpetuation and the violence with which this
in ensured: “And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the
earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle — a struggle against
their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin…” (Bakunin 1984:
139).
This violence directed by the state against its own population, is em-
bodied in Agamben’s figure of homo sacer. Homo sacer means literally
‘sacred man’, and is defined by the act of legal homicide. According to an
ancient principle of Roman law, one who is declared homo sacer is ex-
cluded from normal legal protections and can therefore be murdered by
any one with impunity (see Agamben 1998: 71–74). This figure is charac-
terised by an ambiguity surrounding the word ‘sacred’ — implying not
only what is holy and consecrated, but also what is untouchable. That is
to say, if one is declared homo sacer, according to this law, it means that
he cannot be formally sacrificed or executed, because this would confer
upon him a symbolic status — rather, he is flung into a state of exclusion
and abandonment, and left to the mercy of others. In Agamben’s analy-
sis, homo sacer is the ultimate subject upon whom the violence of the
state is exercised with impunity. For instance, modern examples of homo
sacer may be refugees, who are denied any sort of formal legal protection
and who are at the mercy of governments all around the world. The Jews
in Nazi Germany were perhaps the ultimate homo sacer — before they
could be deported to the murder and concentration camps, they had first
to be stripped of their German citizenship and the legal rights and pro-
tections guaranteed by it. Moreover, because homo sacer is denied any
symbolic and political significance, his status is reduced to that of naked
29
According to Agamben, zoe was for the ancient Greeks biological life itself — the mere fact of
existence — as opposed to bios, which was a form of life proper to the individual within the polis. In
other words, at the heart of the very concept of life itself is the division between symbolic and politically
significant life, and naked life stripped of this significance (see 1998: 1–2).

79
or ‘bare’ life itself — zoé 29 — providing the perfect subject of biopolitics,
upon whom the power over life itself can be exercised without limit. In-
deed, as Agamben shows, the camp is the exemplary biopolitical space
of modernity precisely because it provides a certain extra-judicial zone in
which sovereign power can be exercised without restriction over the body
and biological life of the detainee: “this is the principle according to which
‘everything is possible’.” (1998: 170) Homo sacer can be seen, then, as the
dimension of subjectivity that emerges when sovereign power coincides
with biopolitics, as it has done in an unprecedented way in the modern
age. More alarmingly, according to Agamben, it is this subjectivity that
we are all becoming increasingly reduced to.
One of the more recent articulations of the biopolitical state has been
the new security paradigm that has emerged in the wake of September
11. Indeed, it could be argued that the ongoing ‘war on terror’ and the
obsession with security that is part of this, provides the new ideological
justification for the aggressive reassertion of the sovereign power beyond
the formal limits normally imposed by law and liberal-democratic frame-
works. In other words, the modern state is showing its true face by moving
closer and closer to a state of emergency or exception. Already we have
seen, in the name of combating terrorism, unprecedented infringements
on civil liberties and undreamt of powers of surveillance being accrued by
governments and security apparatuses. This is combined, of course, with
an increasing militarisation of the state, and the preemptive use of force
against external enemies, real or imagined. We have also seen the emer-
gence of contemporary forms of the biopolitical space, in the detention
camps such as Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram Air
Base in Afghanistan. These camps are strictly speaking outside normal le-
gal jurisdiction, thus allowing the government almost complete impunity
in the power they exercise over the detainees. Moreover, the designation
‘illegal combatant’ highlights the ambiguous status of the detainees, the
fact they are beyond normal legal protections — their subjectivity being
that of homo sacer. According to Agamben, “The camp is the space that is
opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.” (1998: 168–
169) We can see this clearly in the informal, extra-legal structures and
practices that are emerging as a result of the ‘war on terror’ becoming a
permanent feature of political life. Agamben suggests that security, which

80
was one amongst several functions of sovereign state — has now become
its single, overriding function, the “basic principle of state activity.” (2002:
1) Central to this security paradigm, however, is not the prevention of
emergencies, but their production — the state has a vested interest in sus-
taining a certain level of disorder, violence and catastrophe, precisely in
order to legitimize its increased incursions into social life. The problem
with this new security paradigm of the state is that, as Agamben argues,
“it can always be provoked by terrorism to turn itself terroristic.” (2002: 1)
Agamben’s analysis has therefore unmasked the hidden matrix of
biopolitics, sovereign power and subjectivity that underlies contemporary
politics. In many ways he goes beyond the classical political paradigm
of anarchism, pointing to new modalities of biopower which anarchism
would simply not have the conceptual language to grasp. However, Agam-
ben’s emphasis on the sovereign power of the state and the way that it
increasingly dominates life today, directly reflects the anarchist argument
that insisted on seeing sovereignty as an irreducible principle of power
and domination that transcended its various concrete articulations. More-
over, the anarchists argued that the central division in politics was not
between the proletarian and bourgeois, as Marx claimed, but rather be-
tween humanity and the state, which for Bakunin is “the most cynical and
complete negation of humanity.” (1984: 138) This looming conflict is also
echoed by Agamben, who, perhaps pointing to the increasingly anarchist
nature of radical politics, contends that “the novelty of coming politics is
that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the State,
but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity)…” (1993:
84).

7. Anarchism and post-Marxism

Anarchist theory, in its emphasis on the sovereign state as an au-
tonomous and specific dimension of power, has uncovered new arenas
of radical political antagonism that are no longer overdetermined by eco-
nomic or class. To further explore these new fields of struggle and the way
that political identities that arise from them, I shall turn to the interven-
tions of key post-Marxist thinkers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.

81
I shall suggest that not only does the post-Marxist project have impor-
tant links with classical anarchism, but that anarchist theory can itself be
extended through an analysis of the relations of hegemony and political
identification central to the post-Marxist argument.
In their work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe at-
tempt to address the theoretical and political crisis of Marxism — evident
not only in the abject failure of Marxist-Leninist projects, but also in con-
crete social conditions of the shrinking working class in post-industrial
societies, the fragmentation of the political domain and the rise of the
‘new social movements’. Added to these factors is the cultural and episte-
mological conditions of ‘postmodernity’, which entails a scepticism about
the universal essentialist identities and positivistic categories that Marx-
ism based itself on. The theoretical premise for the post-Marxism problem-
atic is the contention that the failure of Marxism as a political project was
due to its general neglect of politics — to its insistence that the political is
subordinated to the economy. Laclau and Mouffe argue that the potential
political radicalism contained in Marxism was vitiated by its class essen-
tialism, economic reductionism and blind faith in rational science and the
dialectic. Therefore, using and developing insights from poststructural-
ism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis, Laclau and Mouffe have sought
to radically rethink Marxism in ways that are non-essentialist, pluralistic
and avoid the deterministic logic of the dialectic.
For Laclau and Mouffe, economic and class determinism constitute the
central problem in Marxist theory, preventing it from being able to fully
grasp the political — field of political identities, power relations and antag-
onisms — in its specificity, autonomy and contingency. They argue that
the contemporary political field is no longer held together by the strug-
gles of the proletariat, and that for some time it has been fragmented by a
whole series of different and competing identities and struggles — those
of blacks, feminists, gays, ethnic minorities, students, environmentalists,
consumers, and so on. Class is no longer the dominant category through
which radical political subjectivity is defined. As Laclau and Mouffe argue,
“The common denominator of all of them would be their differentiation
from workers’ struggles, considered as ‘class’ struggles.” (159) Moreover,
these identities are no longer overdetermined by the struggle against capi-
talism, but they are rather struggles over a number of different issues that

82
can no longer be explained in economic or class terms — for instance, envi-
ronmental degradation, differential cultural identity, institutional surveil-
lance, and welfare rights.
It could be suggested, moreover, that these new struggles and antag-
onisms point to the anarchist moment in contemporary politics. As La-
clau and Mouffe argue, these ‘new social movements’ have been primar-
ily struggles against domination rather than economic exploitation, as the
Marxist paradigm would contend: “As for their novelty, that is conferred
upon them by the fact that they call into question new forms of subor-
dination” (160). That is not to say that they do not contest capitalist ex-
ploitation, but rather that economic exploitation would be seen here as
an aspect of broader relations of domination. In particular, the permuta-
tions of the state over the past fifty or so years — from the welfare state
and its increasing bureaucratisation, to neo-liberal state privatisation, to
more contemporary forms of security-driven biopolitical sovereignty as
discussed above — have generated new relations of subordination, dom-
ination and surveillance, as well as concomitant forms of resistance: “In
all the domains in which the state has intervened, a politicisation of so-
cial relations is at the base of numerous new antagonisms” (Laclau and
Mouffe: 162). In other words, they are struggles against specific forms of
state power and relations of domination instigated by it. In this sense, they
are anti-authoritarian, anti-state — that is ‘anarchist’ — struggles.
Laclau and Mouffe also show the way in which the struggles of work-
ers and artisans in the nineteenth century tended to be struggles against
relations of subordination generally, and against the destruction of their
organic, communal way of life through the introduction of the factory sys-
tem and new forms of industrial technology such as Taylorism. They did
not conform to Marx’s notion of the proletarians embracing the forces
of capitalism in order to radicalise it (Laclau and Mouffe: 156). This re-
fusal to reduce the struggles of workers to the specific Marxist vision of
the proletarian struggle against capitalism, would also be characteristic
of the classical anarchist position, which emphasised the heterogeneity of
subaltern subjectivities and antagonisms (the crucial role of the lumpen-
proletariat, for instance, which had been dismissed by Marx) and their
primarily anti-authoritarian character. There is an important theoretical
link here between anarchism and ‘post-Marxism’ — both positions reject

83
the economic and class reductionism of Marxist thought, insisting that it
cannot account for the specificity, complexity and heterogeneity of polit-
ical struggles.

8. The politics of contingency

Given the theoretical proximity between anarchism and post-Marxism,
it is perhaps surprising that this connection is not explored by Laclau
and Mouffe — particularly since, as I have suggested above, classical an-
archism was able to offer, as a radical alternative to Marxism, a wholly
autonomous theory of the state and political power. Moreover, while anar-
chism could be used to inform post-Marxism, perhaps post-Marxism can
also be used here to inform anarchism. In particular, Laclau and Mouffe’s
theory of hegemony could be developed here as a way of understand-
ing the processes of political identification characteristic of contemporary
anti-authoritarian struggles.
Hegemony is a concept used by Laclau and Mouffe to describe a radi-
cally synthetic political relationship that goes beyond the confines of the
Marxist understanding of class struggle. It refers to a political and theo-
retical problematic that emerged from the central crisis of Marxism — the
widening gap, already apparent in the nineteenth century, between, on
the one hand, the empirical reality of the shrinking of the working class
and the transformations in capitalism, and, on the other, Marx’s predic-
tions about the polarisation of society into two opposed classes and the
inevitable collapse of capitalism. There were various attempts to patch up
this gap through synthetic political articulations — interventions which
seemed momentarily to invoke the autonomy of the political and the con-
tingency of the social, only re-inscribe these once again within the param-
eters of economic determinism and class reductionism, thus foreclosing
their radical potential. Indeed, it was only with the introduction of the
concept of ‘hegemony’ that the political domain started to be considered
in its own right. The solution proposed by the Russian Social Democrats
to the specific problems in Russia of during the nineteenth century was
a hegemonic one — because of the situation of ‘combined and uneven
development’ the proletariat would have to take upon itself the politi-

84
cal tasks of the bourgeoisie. This was extended to Lenin’s notion of the
class alliance, in which the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would unite to
achieve common democratic political ends. In both these positions, there
is a conscious construction of a political unity, which involves one class
‘standing in’ synthetically for the demands of other classes. Gramsci took
this synthetic political construction the furthest with his notion of ‘col-
lective will’, in which radical alliances or ‘ historic blocs’ could be formed
from different sectors and classes in society through ideology, intellectual
leadership and shared ‘values’ and ‘ideas’ (Laclau and Mouffe: 66–67).
What is crucial about this concept of hegemony is that designates a dis-
tinctly political relationship. That is to say, radical political identities are
seen here as being constructed contingently and strategically to suit the
specific situation, rather than being the inevitable outcome of historical
or economic forces. In other words, it is assumed here that there is no nec-
essary or essential relationship between the proletariat and other social
identities — there is only a synthetic relationship between them that devel-
ops out of political expediency and is entirely contingent. It also suggests
that radical political struggles can no longer be limited to the proletariat
alone, and must be seen as being open to other classes and social identi-
ties. This is similar to the anarchist position, which sought to include other
classes and social strata in the revolutionary struggle alongside the indus-
trial proletariat — peasants, intellectuals déclassé and the lumpenprole-
tariat. Indeed, Bakunin preferred the word ‘mass’ to ‘class’ to characterise
this heterogeneous revolutionary identity, ‘class’ implying hierarchy and
exclusiveness (1950: 47).
This notion of hegemony, if it is taken to its logical conclusion, breaks
the link that had always been assumed in Marxism between class position
and political outlook, showing that identities, alliances and radical posi-
tions are constituted contingently through engagement in political strug-
gles themselves, rather than being predetermined. Laclau and Mouffe ar-
gue that when a number of different identities are engaged in different
political struggles, ‘chains of equivalence’ can be formed between them
as they become united around a common struggle or in opposition to a
common enemy. For instance, we can imagine a situation in which there
is an authoritarian government that antagonises different groups in soci-
ety — a government that denies worker’s their rights also denies students

85
their rights, and so on. Despite their different specific aims and identities,
a certain relation of equivalence would be formed between workers and
students as they become united against a common foe. In this situation,
a certain identity will ‘stand in’ for or embody the universality of this
political struggle, thus ‘suturing’30 or temporarily holding together the
political field.
To understand this hegemonic relationship more formally, we can think
of it in structural terms. For Laclau, the political field is constituted by two
irreducible poles or principles — the universal and the particular — and
the dynamic that operates between them. Because there is no longer any
universal subject — the position which was once held by the proletariat
— this dimension of the universal is ‘empty’; that is, it can no longer be
embodied in an objective content. The universal remains as the empty
horizon of politics — the ‘empty signifier’ — that cannot be filled and yet,
precisely because of this, generates the desire or structural imperative in
political identities (the particular) to fill or embody it. It is this political op-
eration of attempting to fill the ‘unfillable’ place of politics that is precisely
the logic of ‘hegemony’ (Laclau in Butler, et al: 58). In other words, there
is a political dimension that is symbolically empty and which can only
be articulated through a contingent relation of representation, in which
a particular political identity comes to partially embody it, thus gener-
ating the very contingency in the social and political identities that are
constitutive of it.
Laclau shows that the political field can be reduced neither to essential-
ist determinacy nor to a complete ‘postmodern’ dispersal of identities —
neither, in other words, to absolute universality nor absolute particular-
ity. Both are reductionist paradigms that deny a properly political domain.
Rather, politics must be seen as involving a contamination of the universal
and the particular. Political identities are split between their own partic-
ularity, and the dimension of the universal that constitutes them in their
particularity. Political identities, no matter how particular, cannot exist
without a dimension of universality that contaminates them. It is impos-
sible for a group to assert a purely separate and differential identity, be-
30
This concept ‘suture’ is taken from Lacanian psychoanalysis to describe a process by which the
subject is joined into the signifying chain, allowing the signifier to stand-in for the subject’s absence in
discourse (see Miller 26–28).

86
cause part of the definition of this particular identity is constituted in the
context of relations with other groups (Laclau, 1996: 48). For instance, the
demand of a particular minority for cultural autonomy always bears refer-
ence to a universal dimension — the demand for the right to be different is
also a demand for equal rights with other groups. It is also the case, how-
ever, that the universal is contaminated by the particular. The universal
is formally empty, so that it can only articulate itself if it is represented
by a particular political identity. However, it is also the case that because
the universal is formally empty, no identity can completely represent or
embody it. In other words, the universal, for Laclau, is an ‘impossible ob-
ject’ in that its representation is, at the same time, impossible and neces-
sary. While no particularity can fully symbolise this universal, its partial
symbolisation is crucial if we are to have any notion of politics at all.
So in this hegemonic relationship of mutual contamination, the univer-
sal is split between its universality and its need to be represented through
a concrete particularity; while the particular is split between its particu-
larity, and its reference to a universality which constitutes its horizon (see
Laclau in Butler et al: 56). As I have shown, even the most particular of
identities, if it is to engage in any form of political activism or to articulate
a series of political demand, has to refer to some universal dimension and
form “chains of equivalence” with other identities and groups. In this way,
the groups in this chain are increasingly unable to maintain their own
particularity, as they become united in opposition to a common enemy.
It is important to note here that this hegemonic political relationship
is not determined in an essentialist way. There is no a priori link — as
there was in Marxism with the proletariat — between the universal posi-
tion and the particular identity that comes to incarnate it. According to
Laclau, the relation of incarnation is entirely contingent and indetermi-
nate. The ‘stand in’ is decided in an open field of discursive articulation
and political contestation. Theoretically, any identity, if it manages to ar-
ticulate adequate chains of equivalence, can come to represent a common
political struggle. Furthermore, the particularity that ‘stands in’ for the
universal does so only temporarily, and its identity is destabilised by the
universality it ‘represents’ (Laclau, 1996: 53). Because this link is indeter-
minate and contingent, this opens the political field to other identities to
attempt to fulfil this incarnating function

87
 Let us apply this logic of hegemony to contemporary radical political
struggles. One of the most important developments in radical politics in
recent years has been the emergence of what is broadly termed the ‘anti-
globalisation’ movement, a protest movement against the capitalist and
neo-liberal vision of globalisation that so dominates us today. What is rad-
ical about this movement is not only the breadth of its political agenda,
but the new forms of political action it entails. It is fundamentally differ-
ent from both the identity politics that has recently prevailed in West-
ern liberal societies, as well as from the Marxist politics of class struggle.
It may be seen as a hegemonic political movement because, on the one
hand, it unites different identities around a common struggle; and yet
this common ground is not determined in advance, or based on the pri-
ority of particular class interests, but rather is articulated in a contingent
way during the struggle itself. Chains of equivalence and unexpected al-
liances are formed between different groups and identities who would
otherwise have little in common. In other words, the anti-globalisation
struggle involves a contamination of the universal and the particular. It
is a form of politics that is no longer confined to the particular, separatist
demands of excluded minorities, but rather puts into question the global
capitalist state order itself. At the same time, though, it problematises cap-
italism precisely from the perspective of the identities and minorities that
are excluded and dominated by it, targeting specific sites of oppression
— corporate power and greed, G-M products, workplace surveillance, dis-
placement of indigenous peoples, labour and human rights abuses, and so
on. In other words, it doesn’t transcend these identities and demands from
the perspective of a universal epistemological position — such as that of
the proletariat, for instance; rather it is a universal politics that emerges in
a contingent way precisely through these particular identities themselves.
Moreover, it transcends the particularity of these identities only from a
position that is formally empty. The different identities that come to repre-
sent the struggle at different times — students, trade unionists, indigenous
groups, environmentalists — do so only temporarily, thus leaving the po-
litical field constitutively open to a plurality of identities, positions and
perspectives. So while this movement is universal, in the sense that it in-
vokes a common emancipative horizon that interpellates the identities of
participants, it also rejects the false universality of Marxist politics, which

88
denies difference and heterogeneity, and subordinates other struggles to
the central role of the proletariat — or, to be more precise, to the vanguard
role of the Party.
In many ways, then, the anti-globalisation movement may be seen as
an anarchistic form of politics — it is not confined to a single class iden-
tity, having the character more of a ‘mass’ than a ‘class’ struggle; and
it highlights different relations of political, social and cultural subordina-
tion, rather than just economic exploitation alone. It is perhaps not sur-
prising, then, that anarchist groups feature prominently in these protests.
Moreover, it is a movement that rejects centralism and hierarchy, prefer-
ring structures that are more democratic and pluralistic.31 All of these
strategies and forms of activism suggest a contingent hegemonic style of
politics, in which political identities and positions, rather than being de-
termined at the outset, are constituted and reconstituted through their
engagement in the struggle itself.

Conclusion
The anti-globalisation movement might be seen, then, as not only a
form of hegemonic politics in action, but also as a contemporary expres-
sion of an anarchistic politics. In this sense, post-Marxism, poststructural-
ism and anarchism share a similar politico-theoretical terrain — one that
is characterised by contingency, heterogeneity and the specificity of the
political itself. I have tried to explore the emergence of this terrain, sug-
gesting that it may be seen as arising from the crucial innovation of clas-
sical anarchist theory itself — the theorisation of an autonomous and spe-
cific political sphere that was irreducible to a Marxist class and economic
analysis. As I have shown, the anarchism took Marx’s notion of the Bona-
partist State to its logical conclusion, thus developing a theory of state
power and sovereignty as an entirely autonomous and specific domain,
around which different political struggles could be constellated.
31
Here David Graeber has explored not only the different and increasingly imaginative forms of
activism that characterise the movement, but also the different strategies employed by protest groups to
build consensus amongst participants and to implement forms of direct democracy in decision making
(see 2002).

89
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Retrieved on June 22, 2011 from www.connexions.org and from personal

communication with the author
This article was originally published in Anarchist Studies, [Volume 12,
#1, 2004]

91
Postanarchism from a Marxist
Perspective

Simon Choat

2010
Abstract
Postanarchists have tended to portray Marxism as an anachronism, tak-
ing the alleged redundancy of Marxism as a starting point for their revital-
ization of classical anarchism via post-structuralism. Critical assessments
of postanarchism have so far failed to interrogate this portrayal of Marx-
ism. This is unfortunate, I argue, because Marxism plays an important
function within the postanarchist project, and because it allows postan-
archist characterizations of Marxism and post-structuralism to go unchal-
lenged. The first part of this paper delineates the role of Marxism in posta-
narchism, before examining connections between post-structuralism and
Marxism: I argue that Marx’s work anticipates post-structuralist concepts
of power and subjectivity. The aim of the paper is not to offer a Marxist
critique of postanarchism but to establish equal relevance for both anar-
chism and Marxism to contemporary political thought and practice.

Introduction
The postanarchist attempt to revitalize classical anarchism by reread-
ing it through the lens of post-structuralism has not gone unchallenged.
Critics have raised questions concerning both the relevance of post-
structuralism to anarchist thought and the accuracy of postanarchist read-
ings of classical anarchism — questions which in turn bring up broader is-
sues about the impact of post-structuralism, the direction and significance
of contemporary anarchism, and the relations between theory and prac-
tice. One element that has remained largely unquestioned, however, is the
place of Marxism within postanarchism. This is perhaps understandable:
it is to be expected that not everyone will welcome a Marxist perspective
on postanarchism; in fact, it is possibly the last thing that some anarchists
want. When Marxists have intervened in debates around anarchism, they
have often adopted the condescending and hectoring tone that Marx him-
self used when dealing with Bakunin, Proudhon, et al: anarchism has been
derided by Marxists as a naive or utopian creed that fails to understand
present conditions and is forced to resort to a crude voluntarism as its
basis for political action. It is not my desire, however, to extend this pa-

95
tronizing dismissal of anarchism to cover postanarchism: to the contrary,
it is my contention that postanarchists have been too quick to dismiss
Marxism.

The lack of attention that has been given to Marxism’s role within posta-
narchism is troubling for at least two reasons. First, it effaces the extent to
which — as I shall argue below — opposition to Marxism is a key compo-
nent of the postanarchist project. Thus Marxism is not being introduced
here as an alien perspective from which postanarchism can be measured,
but elicited as a significant but under-discussed element of postanarchism
itself. Second, uncritical acceptance of postanarchist assessments of Marx-
ism obscures the fact that Marxism still has much to offer: Marxism, I ar-
gue, has been unfairly represented by postanarchism. This challenge to
postanarchism’s understanding of Marxism should not be confused with
a Marxist critique of postanarchism. There is much to respect in postanar-
chism, and its attempt to link contemporary post-structuralist theory with
radical nineteenth-century currents of thought is admirable: the problem
is that postanarchism’s reevaluation of classical anarchism comes at the
expense of Marxism. My aim is not to prolong or revive the dispute be-
tween anarchists and Marxists that now stretches across three centuries,
but rather to stake a claim for the importance of both anarchism and
Marxism to contemporary political thought and practice. This is there-
fore a Marxist engagement with a current of anarchism that is offered
in the spirit of reconciliation rather than denunciation. What follows is
not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the relations between posta-
narchism and Marxism: it is intended to open up an area of study that
hitherto seems to have been closed, and is thus offered as a preliminary in-
vestigation rather than the final word. Drawing on postanarchism’s own
characterization of post-structuralism as a theory that reconceptualizes
power and subjectivity, I shall re-examine these concepts as they appear
in the work of Marx, challenging postanarchism’s dismissal of Marxism
and its reading of post-structuralism. I begin, however, by examining the
place of Marxism within postanarchism, delineating three key functions
that the critique of Marxism performs for postanarchism.

96
The Place of Marxism within Postanarchism
Although the number of writers and activists who identify themselves
as postanarchists is relatively small, it is a surprisingly varied current of
thought. The basic coordinates are clear enough: ‘the central contention
of postanarchism is that classical anarchist philosophy must take ac-
count of new theoretical directions and cultural phenomena, in particular,
postmodernity and poststructuralism.’ (Newman, 2008: 101) According to
postanarchists, post-structuralism can be understood as a radicalization
of classical anarchism — meaning both that post-structuralism is in the
tradition of classical anarchism and that post-structuralism can act as a
remedy to the faults and flaws of classical anarchism without betraying
its spirit and aims. But this begs two obvious questions: what is meant
by ‘post-structuralism’ and what is meant by ‘classical anarchism’? It is
not insignificant that the leading representatives of this project have all
given it a different name: Saul Newman refers to postanarchism, Todd
May to post-structuralist anarchism, and Lewis Call to postmodern anar-
chism. These different labels in part reflect disagreement about who can
be termed a ‘post-structuralist’. To take only one example: Jacques Lacan
plays an important part in Newman’s postanarchism, but he is not dis-
cussed by May or Call. Similar problems greet attempts to define ‘classical
anarchism’, itself a notoriously elusive category. Who were the classical
anarchists, and what did they believe? For Newman (2005: 3), Max Stirner
is a ‘sort of “proto-poststructuralist”’, whereas Call and May barely men-
tion Stirner.
These disagreements over definitions and personnel are of course not
specific to postanarchism: it is difficult to draw the boundaries of any intel-
lectual movement, but particularly ones as fluid as post-structuralism and
classical anarchism — difficulties that anyone will face, whether they are
a postanarchist or not.32 In turn, this fluidity is not a flaw of either post-
structuralism or classical anarchism: one of the great strengths of both
currents of thought is their variety and depth. Nor do I mean to suggest
that the postanarchist project is incoherent from the start, or that posta-
narchists fail to define their terms adequately: on the whole they are all
32
Notwithstanding these difficulties, for the purposes of consistency and clarity I shall refer through-
out this essay to ‘post-structuralism’ and ‘postanarchism’.

97
careful to explain what they mean by post-structuralism and classical an-
archism, and themselves draw attention to the difficulties I have outlined.
All I wish to argue here is that it is hard to define a movement in reference
to intellectual currents as nebulous as post-structuralism and classical an-
archism — or, at least, hard to define it only in reference to these. To say
that postanarchism is (for instance) classical anarchism filtered through
post-structuralism does not actually tell us much about what it is to be a
postanarchist. Of course, this missing content is fleshed out in the detailed
studies undertaken by the postanarchists — but these detailed studies dif-
fer from one postanarchist to the next. If we are to attribute any kind
of unity to postanarchism, then we must look to other factors — one of
which, I contend, is a common opposition to Marxism.
This, then, is the first function of Marxism within postanarchism, of
three roles that I shall identify: it helps provide coherence to the postan-
archist project. Though they may draw upon different thinkers and seek to
combine anarchism and post-structuralism in varying fashions, the posta-
narchists are united in their rejection of Marxism. It might even be said
that it is the (alleged) failure of Marxism that is the main motivation be-
hind the entire postanarchist project. Marxism, it is claimed, is in terminal
decline: the problems of exploitation and oppression that Marxism sought
to address, however, have not gone away (and have if anything intensi-
fied). Hence there is a need, according to postanarchism, to rediscover and
develop alternative avenues for radical thought and practice. The problem
with Marxism, according to postanarchism, is not so much that it is no
longer able to provide the appropriate critical resources, but that it was
never able to do so: it is not that Marxism is outdated or took a wrong turn
somewhere, but that from the start Marxism was on the wrong path. In
May’s terms, Marxism is a ‘strategic’ rather than a ‘tactical’ philosophy:
its analysis focuses on a central problematic and it aims at a single goal.
For Marxism, ‘there is a single enemy: capitalism.’ (May, 1994: 26). Like
all strategic philosophies, Marxism is reductive: there is one source of op-
pression (capitalism), only one theory that can accurately understand this
oppression (Marxism), and only one possible agent of struggle (the pro-
letariat, guided by a vanguard party). Tactical philosophies, in contrast,
recognize that there is no single site of oppression, and that resistance
must take the form of specific, local analyses and interventions. Marxism

98
is thus reductive in two senses, postanarchists argue: it reduces the scope
of political analysis by focusing only on capitalist economic relations, and
it reduces politics to economics, effectively effacing politics altogether.
In terms that May borrows from Jacques Rancière, Marxism is a form of
‘metapolitics’: the real truth of politics lies in economic relations, and po-
litical institutions and ideologies merely conceal that truth (May, 2008:
44–5).
Postanarchists claim that to an extent classical anarchism shares these
problems with Marxism, though in a different way: whereas the reduc-
tionism of Marxism manifests itself as an urge to interpret everything in
terms of economic relations, anarchism performs a statist rather than an
economic reduction, tending to lapse into an analysis that focuses on the
state as the primary locus of power. But in anarchism this tendency is
in tension with another trend: anarchism wavers between strategic and
tactical thought. Although it focuses on the state, classical anarchism rec-
ognizes that there are many other sites of power, and advocates diverse
and specific small-scale struggles of resistance against power wherever it
manifests itself. This ambivalence marks the advantage of classical anar-
chism over Marxism: despite its flaws, classical anarchism has advanced
the analysis of power, making it a more suitable avenue for contemporary
politics than Marxism. This leads us to the second role of Marxism within
postanarchism that we can identify: the rejection of Marxism offers a link
to classical anarchism.
As we have seen, classical anarchism is itself a diverse and fluid current
of thought: in many ways it is easier to define it by reference to what it
opposes rather than what it advocates. Newman (2005: 33), for example,
suggests that anarchists are united ‘by a fundamental critique and rejec-
tion of political authority in all its forms.’ It is the rejection of political
authority and representation (especially but not exclusively in the form
of the state), rather than any positive political programme outlining an
alternative vision of society, that is perhaps the key characteristic of clas-
sical anarchist thought. This is not to say that anarchists have failed to
think about how a stateless society should be organized: to the contrary,
they have offered an incredibly diverse range of visions for how stateless
societies might be organized. But it is the very diversity of these visions
that makes them poor candidates if we are looking for what unites classi-

99
cal anarchists. The thread that binds anarchists is not a uniform political
programme but a common opposition to political authority.33 Classical
anarchism can be defined not only in terms of an opposition to author-
ity, but also in opposition to other political ideologies, in particular Marx-
ism. Anarchists are anarchists, we might even say, because they are not
Marxists. This is not to denigrate the originality of anarchist thought —
to suggest that it can only ever be a pale shadow of Marxism and defined
in terms of the latter — but only to highlight the fact that one way to iso-
late the identity of anarchist thought is to distinguish it from Marxism.
There is much common ground between Marxists and anarchists in the
fight for a stateless society free from economic exploitation and political
oppression, and historically most anarchists have been communists (with
obvious and important exceptions such as Stirner). But anarchists have
distanced themselves from Marxism’s organizational and revolutionary
strategies: for classical anarchism, Marx is one those ‘doctrinaire revolu-
tionaries’ identified by Bakunin (1990: 137), ‘whose objective is to over-
throw existing governments and regimes so as to create their own dicta-
torships on their ruins’. Classical anarchists have argued that Marxism’s
economic reductionism is dangerous in at least two ways. First, because
it posits the state as a mere reflection of economic relations, it does not
recognize that the state is a source of power in its own right, and so even
a so-called ‘workers’ state’ will be oppressive. Second, the identification
of the economic realm as the key site of oppression facilitates the emer-
gence of a vanguard party distant from the oppressed masses — a point
well made by May in some critical comments on Marxism: ‘If the funda-
mental site of oppression lies in the economy, it perhaps falls to those
who are adept at economic analysis to take up the task of directing the
revolution’ (May, 2008: 80).
These classical anarchist objections to Marxism anticipate those for-
mulated by the postanarchists, who in turn have identified the strengths
of classical anarchism in explicit contrast to Marxism. Whereas Marxism
is supposedly economically reductionist, viewing all power as merely an
expression of class domination, postanarchists argue that classical anar-

33
Many anarchists have defined themselves in these terms. Think of Proudhon’s response to the
question ‘What will you put in place of the state?’: ‘Nothing’ (Proudhon cited in Rocker, 1937).

100
chism correctly saw that power must be analysed in its own right: irre-
ducible to the workings of the economy, power relations exist through-
out society and need to be analysed in their specificity, without reference
to a uniform model of domination. While Marxism (it is claimed) priv-
ileges certain political actors — identifying the industrial working class
as the sole possible instrument of political transformation, because of its
unique place within the only kind of power relations that really matter for
Marxism, namely the relation of exploitation between labour and capital
— classical anarchism, in contrast, does not limit revolutionary potential
to a single class, instead supporting agents dismissed by Marx, such as the
peasantry and lumpenproletariat. If Marxism privileges not only a partic-
ular revolutionary actor, but also a particular path to revolution, support-
ing an authoritarian party and proposing a dictatorship of the proletariat,
classical anarchism on the other hand consistently opposes all state forms
and all hierarchies, including those of the party. To a great extent, there-
fore, the postanarchist attitude towards Marxism replicates the standard
anarchist criticisms of Marxism, centred on its supposedly reductive anal-
ysis of the political situation and its authoritarian organizational struc-
tures. Rejection of Marxism places postanarchism firmly in the anarchist
tradition.
Where postanarchism goes beyond these standard criticisms, it draws
its weapons from post-structuralism, which brings us to the third role
that Marxism plays within postanarchism: it provides one point of
engagement with post-structuralism. The postanarchists see in post-
structuralism a model for their own anti-Marxism. Post-anarchism identi-
fies two key characteristics of post-structuralism. First, is anti-humanist:
rather than taking the human subject as something that is given, it re-
veals the textual and material practices that constitute the subject. As May
(1994: 75) puts it: ‘If poststructuralist political thought could be summed
up in a single prescription, it would be that radical political theory, if
it is to achieve anything, must abandon humanism in all its forms.’ Sec-
ondly, it is argued that post-structuralism rethinks the concept and analy-
sis of power: the aim is no longer to establish the legitimate boundaries of
power, placing limits between the individual and the state, but to demon-
strate that power is coextensive with social relations, acting not merely
to suppress a pre-existing subject but also and more fundamentally to

101
constitute subjects in the first place. Power and subjectivity are thus in-
timately linked within post-structuralist thought. This is contrasted by
postanarchists with Marxist thought, where power and subjectivity are
also linked, but in a very different way: instead of a productive power that
is constitutive of subjectivity, Marxism conceives of a repressive power
that constrains our essential nature as human subjects.
This view of power and subjectivity, argue postanarchists, is not unique
to Marxism: it is shared by many of the philosophies that developed out
of the Enlightenment, including classical anarchism. ‘Like Marxism and
most other forms of nineteenth-century radical thinking, classical anar-
chism purports to liberate some kind of authentic human essence which
has supposedly been repressed by capitalism and/or the state’ (Call, 2002:
14–15). Although it may broaden the scope of power, classical anarchists
still see subjectivity as given and power as oppressive: like Marxism,
postanarchists argue, classical anarchism posits a notion of human nature
that both acts as a standard by which forms of power can be criticized and
explains the existence of resistance to power. In classical anarchism (it is
argued), the relation between subject and power is formulated as an oppo-
sition between two poles, with the naturality of the human subject within
an organic community on one side and the artificial power of the state on
the other. According to postanarchists, then, post-structuralism moves
beyond both Marxism and classical anarchism. But classical anarchism,
because it at least begins to rethink power — broadening the scope of anal-
ysis beyond both the state and the economy — retains its contemporary
relevance where Marxism does not. A shared ‘anti-authoritarian ethos’
(Newman, 2007: 194) makes classical anarchism and post-structuralism ap-
propriate partners, while Marxism is dismissed as incompatible with post-
structuralism. Indeed, it is argued that to a great extent post-structuralism
developed against Marxism: ‘thinkers in this tradition — including Fou-
cault, Lyotard and Deleuze — were all deeply influenced by the political
experience of May ’68, and they became critical of what they saw as the
totalizing and universalizing logic of Marxist theory’ (Newman, 2007: 3).
Whereas anarchism still has something to teach us, Marxism ‘is not nearly
radical enough to confront adequately the exigencies of the postmodern
condition’ (Call, 2002: 6). An opposition to Marxism therefore provides
postanarchism with a point of contact with post-structuralism. It is true

102
that this portrayal of post-structuralism as an anti-Marxist theory is of-
ten an implicit or undeveloped assumption within postanarchist writings
— but this is perhaps because there is little textual support for the claim:
as we shall see next, if one actually looks at what the post-structuralists
say about Marx then one can see that they are very far from being anti-
Marxist.

Post-Structuralism and Marxism

The critique of Marxism thus plays a key function in postanarchism:
it lends the whole project coherence, it provides continuity with classi-
cal anarchism, and it helps connect postanarchism to post-structuralism.
Given this, it is noticeable how little attention has been paid to the posta-
narchist critique of Marxism. The reason for this lack of attention, I think,
is because although post-anarchist thought has generated some lively dis-
cussion, this discussion has so far largely been confined to the anarchist
community. An anarchist is unlikely to question postanarchism’s critique
of Marxism because — as we have seen — that critique largely echoes stan-
dard anarchist charges against Marxism. The accusations of reductionism
and authoritarianism that postanarchism levels at Marxism are effectively
the same as those directed at Marxism by nineteenth-century anarchists:
they have long been received as self-evident truths within the anarchist
community, and thus in need of no further discussion. But what of the ad-
ditional accusations that postanarchism brings against Marxism? These
supplement the standard anarchist critique of Marxism with a critique
of Marxism’s Enlightenment essentialism. It cannot be claimed that anar-
chists have remained silent on these because they merely reproduce classi-
cal anarchist criticisms of Marxism. Why then has so little comment been
passed? The answer is clear: it is because when these charges of essential-
ism are introduced, the terms of the debate shift entirely, for they apply
equally to classical anarchism. More than this, it can be said that they are
directed primarily by postanarchists at classical anarchism, and in a sense
apply only secondarily to Marxism (which has already been condemned
for separate reasons). Anarchist commentators have therefore been far
more interested in the application and relevance of this critique of essen-

103
tialism to anarchism — partly because they have no interest in defending
Marxism against charges of essentialism and every interest in defending
anarchism, and partly because these charges are directed by the postan-
archists themselves principally at anarchism.
The outcome is that critical discussion of postanarchism has so far
focused on its understanding and interpretation of classical anarchism.
A number of commentators have argued that the anarchist tradition
has been unfairly and misleadingly represented: anarchism, it is ar-
gued, is a far more varied tradition than post-anarchism claims, and
far less beholden to essentialist and humanist philosophies. This has led
some to conclude that anarchism already has more in common with
post-structuralism than has been acknowledged, and even that post-
structuralism might have something to learn from anarchism.34 With very
few exceptions, however, there is silence on postanarchism’s represen-
tation of Marxism.35 Yet if this neglect is understandable, it is also un-
fortunate. In light of the analysis offered above, it can be said that the
effect is threefold: it effaces what is a key element of postanarchism; it
allows its criticisms of Marxism to go unchallenged; and it mischaracter-
izes post-structuralism. I have already tried to counter the first of these, by
demonstrating the place of Marxism within postanarchism. It remains to
challenge the remaining two effects. I shall begin this task by briefly con-
sidering the place of Marxism within post-structuralism, before looking
in more detail at the work of Marx himself.
One reason why we might be suspicious of the alignment of anarchism
and post-structuralism at the expense of Marxism is that even the most
cursory glance at the work of the major thinkers of post-structuralism
suggests that they were far more involved with the Marxist tradition than
with the anarchist tradition. It is a struggle to find any references to clas-
sical anarchist thinkers anywhere in the writings of post-structuralist au-
thors. Where classical anarchists are mentioned, the references are not
usually favourable. In his book Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example,
34
For arguments of this type, see Cohn (2002), Cohn and Wilbur (n.d.), and Antliff (2007). For critical
assessments of post-anarchism from a position much more sympathetic to post-structuralism, see Jun
(2007) and Glavin (2004).
35
One such exception is Benjamin Franks (2007), who while reviewing some of the common anarchist
critiques of post-anarchism also offers a short defence of Marx and class politics.

104
Deleuze offers modest praise for Max Stirner. But ultimately Deleuze con-
cludes that Stirner is the thinker who reveals the nihilism at the heart of
dialectical thinking. Given that dialectics is the central target of Nietzsche
and Philosophy, this hardly amounts to an endorsement of Stirner’s po-
sition: ‘precisely because Stirner still thinks like a dialectician, because
he does not extricate himself from the categories of property, alienation
and its suppression, he throws himself into the nothingness which he hol-
lows out beneath the steps of the dialectic’ (Deleuze, 1983: 163).36 Stirner
also makes an appearance in Derrida’s Specters of Marx. In a subtle and
intriguing analysis, Derrida argues that Stirner and Marx are united in a
common polemic against ‘the spectre’ (a figure used by Derrida to indicate
that which cannot be accounted for in classical ontology). Derrida decon-
structs both Stirner and Marx, trying to show that both remain wedded
to a metaphysical ontology. But the focus of this analysis — which, after
all, is found in a book on Marx — is the critique of Stirner found in The
German Ideology: Stirner is only discussed to the extent that he can throw
light on Marx. We would find much the same if we looked at the writings
of other post-structuralists: where classical anarchist thinkers appear, it
is only in passing; certainly there is no sustained engagement with the
anarchist tradition.
There are two potential objections here that can be anticipated. First,
it might be argued that the absence of references to classical anarchist
thinkers in post-structuralist thought does not invalidate the postanar-
chist attempt to link classical anarchism and post-structuralism: the posta-
narchists do not need to claim that post-structuralism has been directly
influenced by classical anarchism — only that a potential alliance might
be formed between the two, on the basis of theoretical affinities rather
than explicit citation. I accept this argument, but in a sense it is not rel-
evant to my own thesis: I am not claiming that the attempt to link post-
structuralism with classical anarchism is misguided — rather that it is
misguided to attempt to pursue this link at the expense of Marxism. If it
is worth investigating connections between classical anarchism and post-
36
Deleuze’s conclusions are in stark contrast to postanarchist attempts to reclaim Stirner as a fore-
runner of post-structuralism: see Koch (1997) and Newman (2001, chapter 3; 2005, chapter 4). It is true
that in Nietzsche and Philosophy Deleuze is somewhat ambiguous about Marx’s relation to the dialectic —
but his use of Marx elsewhere surely demonstrates that he finds something beyond dialectics in Marx.

105
structuralism even though no explicit connections already exist — because
the post-structuralists have little to say about classical anarchism — then
it seems to me that it is certainly worth investigating potential connec-
tions between Marxism and post-structuralism — precisely because the
post-structuralists have quite a lot to say about Marx. This brings us to
a second potential response, however. It might be argued that the pres-
ence of Marx in post-structuralist writings, far from indicating a fidelity
to Marx amongst post-structuralist thinkers, is testament only to a criti-
cal attitude: Marx is cited only in order to reject him. This argument has
some validity. It is clear that post-structuralism in many ways developed
in opposition to Marxism. In part this was a response to the concrete po-
litical situation. The French Communist Party had at best a mixed polit-
ical record: rigidly pro-Moscow, it provided qualified support for French
imperialism in Asia and Africa and failed to support the worker-student
uprisings of May 1968. In attempting to formulate new modes of theory
and practice, post-structuralist thinkers therefore tended consciously to
distance themselves from the institutional forms of Marxism that existed
in France in the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, this distancing was a
result not only of pragmatic political exigencies: it is clear that there were
substantial theoretical reasons for moving away from Marxism. The post-
structuralist subversion of reductionist, teleological, and dialectical forms
of thought necessarily involved subverting certain versions of Marxism,
not least the version propounded by the PCF.
But although post-structuralism developed in opposition to certain
forms of Marxism, this opposition should not be confused with an out-
right rejection of all Marxisms, still less of Marx himself. Again, even a
cursory glance at the works of the major thinkers of post-structuralism
would indicate how far they were from rejecting Marx. It is well known
that Deleuze’s final (unfinished) book was to have been on the Grandeur
de Marx (Deleuze, 1995: 51), and the two volumes of Capitalism and
Schizophrenia that he co-authored with Félix Guattari are saturated with
Marxian concepts. In Specters of Marx, Derrida does not stop affirming
Marx’s contemporary relevance; more than simple recognition of Marx’s
37
Whether Derrida is successful in his aim, or whether he himself only reproduces a ‘philosophico-
philological’ Marx, is a separate issue: the point is that far from rejecting Marx, Derrida explicitly affirms
his contemporary political and philosophical relevance.

106
profound influence upon the present, Derrida’s call is for a political Marx,
‘to prevent a philosophico-philological return to Marx from prevailing’
(Derrida, 1994: 32).37 Even Foucault, who often seems to go out of his
way to disparage Marxism, is careful to emphasize that while much of his
work subverts traditional Marxist concepts, he nonetheless continues to
draw upon Marx himself: ‘I quote Marx without saying so, without quota-
tion marks, and because people are incapable of recognizing Marx’s texts
I am thought to be someone who doesn’t quote Marx’ (Foucault, 1980:
52). These brief excerpts are of course no substitute for a detailed analy-
sis of the place of Marxism within post-structuralism, which is beyond
the scope of the present work. But they do begin to complicate the posta-
narchist narrative. Rather than trying to establish beyond doubt that all
post-structuralists are indebted to Marx, however, I want instead to think
about what it is that post-structuralism might have seen in Marx. To do
this, we shall draw upon postanarchism’s own characterization of post-
structuralism, and interrogate Marx’s views on power and subjectivity.
We shall focus on Marx not because he is the touchstone of ‘true’ Marx-
ist theory, but because his is the most innovative and important thinker
within Marxism.

Power and Subjectivity in Marxism

As postanarchists have correctly claimed, post-structuralism offers a
radically new way of understanding power. There are perhaps two key ele-
ments to the post-structuralist reconceptualization of power. First, rather
than emanating from a single central source (like the state or the bour-
geoisie), power is everywhere, because we are all involved in relations of
power. This means that power relations must be analysed in their speci-
ficity, at a local level, and without reference to a homogeneous model.
Second, rather than repressing a given essence, power constitutes the
very subject to which it is applied. In their search for forerunners of post-
structuralism within the classical anarchist tradition, postanarchists have
tended to focus on the first of these elements: although classical anar-
chists viewed power as repressive rather than constitutive, they nonethe-
less made great advances in undermining the idea that power springs from

107
a single source. Postanarchists acknowledge that there is a tendency in
classical anarchist thought to focus on the state as the centre of power.
But in the first place this is seen as an advance on Marxism, for it unmasks
political power in its own right rather than subordinating it to the econ-
omy. In addition, this tendency is in tension with a recognition amongst
classical anarchists that there are numerous sites of power (clerical, edu-
cational, familial, etc.) that need to be criticized on their own terms. It is
in this light that Marxism’s own theory of power is viewed by postanar-
chism: Marxism is judged according to the extent to which it can follow
classical anarchism’s recognition of the decentred and autonomous na-
ture of political power. For May, the story of Marxism in the twentieth
century is the story of a current of thought that offered ever more refined
accounts of power, but could ultimately never escape its own reductionist
premises. In this way, ‘Marxism, in dealing with successive disappoint-
ments, kept reformulating itself in ways that edged ever closer to — but
never entirely coincided with — the perspective embraced by anarchism’
(May, 1994: 18). Newman, on the other hand, sees in Marx’s own work
the potential for a non-reductionist account of power: in The Eighteenth
Brumaire we can find the beginnings of a theory of the specificity of polit-
ical power, irreducible to economic factors. Like May, however, Newman
suggests that Marxism remained tied to its own limits: ‘within [Marx’s]
theory of Bonapartism lay the theoretical foundations for an “epistemo-
logical break” with Marxism itself’. In other words, Marxism itself could
never fully realize its own conceptual potential: it was classical anarchism
that ‘took the theory of Bonapartism to its logical conclusion, and was able
to develop a concept of the sovereign state as a specific and autonomous
site of power that was irreducible to capitalist economic relations’ (New-
man, 2004: 37). Thus according to postanarchism, classical anarchism is,
so to speak, halfway between Marxism and post-structuralism: it broad-
ens and deepens the analysis of power beyond that which Marxism is
capable of, but it does not yet achieve the insights into power developed
by post-structuralism.
This analysis by postanarchism is not wholly incorrect: from a post-
structuralist perspective, there are clearly a number of flaws with the
Marxist concept of power. In Marxist theory ‘power’ tends to refer to a
property that is used by one class to oppress another class: under capital-

108
ism power belongs to the bourgeoisie and is exercised repressively via the
state. It is no wonder that Foucault, for example, decries the ‘economism’
of Marxism’s view of power: it appears that in Marxism power is never
analysed in its own right but only to the extent to which it maintains
economic relations of domination (Foucault, 1980: 88). But the picture is
more complicated than this, for we can find in Marx’s work an analytics
of power much closer to post-structuralism. Like the postanarchists, Marx
thinks that the classical anarchists focus too much on the state. Whereas
for postanarchism this focus on the state is to the neglect of other forms
of power in society, for Marx it is to the neglect of economic conditions
(he berates Bakunin for this fault, for example [Marx, 1989: 506]). But
by emphasizing economic conditions over the state, Marx is not reducing
political power to the economy, in a move equivalent to classical anar-
chism’s tendency to reduce political power to the state. Marx’s move is
quite different: he is broadening the scope of political power, politicizing
areas of life that had previously been characterized as apolitical. Classical
political economists saw the market as an apolitical realm of natural har-
mony opposed to the artificialities of the state — a stance not dissimilar
to the distinction made by classical anarchism between the natural order
of society and the artificial order of the state. Marx, in contrast, demon-
strates that the supposedly neutral fields of production, distribution and
exchange are permeated by relations of domination, thereby at once ex-
panding the analysis of power into realms hitherto thought to be outside
politics, and undermining the naive distinction between naturality and
artificiality. In this way it could be said that it is Marx rather than classi-
cal anarchism who appears a forerunner of post-structuralism. There is a
further way in which Marx seems to anticipate the post-structuralist view
of power, however. In arguing that classical anarchism comes closer than
Marxism to the post-structuralist view of power, postanarchists focus on
one element of that view of power: the idea that power is everywhere
rather than restricted to a single site. But the most novel aspect of the
post-structuralist view of power is the second element identified above,
namely the idea that power is constitutive — and it is here in particular
that Marxism anticipates post-structuralism. For Marx does not merely
broaden the scope of power, he initiates a reconceptualization of ‘power’
itself. To appreciate this conceptual revolution properly, we need now to

109
turn to the other feature of post-structuralism highlighted by postanar-
chism: its decentring of subjectivity.
Just as Marx in many ways remains tied to a conventional concept of
power, so in many ways he remains tied to a conventional view of sub-
jectivity. This is nowhere more evident than in Marx’s early writings, in
which there is an alienated human nature that requires liberation: there
is no doubt that works like the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts op-
erate within a humanist problematic. Whether or not we agree with Al-
thusser’s postulation of an ‘epistemological break’ in Marx’s work, how-
ever, it is clear that from about 1845 there is a shift in Marx’s work: at
the very least, after 1845 we can find in Marx’s work the resources for
an alternative reading — the possibility of a Marx who is not tied to hu-
manism. As early as the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, ‘the essence of man’ is
displaced into ‘the ensemble of the social relations’ (Marx, 1976b: 4): in
effect, there is no human essence, because what was taken as essential
is shown by Marx to be mutable and historically contingent. Marx goes
further than this, however. Newman (2001: 14) correctly argues that one
way to distinguish post-structuralism from structuralism is that whereas
the latter dissolved the subject into a determining structure, for the for-
mer the subject is constituted rather than merely dissolved or determined.
This is precisely what Marx also demonstrates: the subject for Marx is not
the empty, shifting centre of a network of social relations; the subject for
Marx is produced. In order to appreciate this aspect of Marx’s work, we
should turn not to The Eighteenth Brumaire, or other works usually desig-
nated as ‘political writings’, but to the very book that is so often dismissed
as ‘economistic’, namely volume one of Capital.
The vast bulk of this book is dedicated to a concrete analysis of the op-
eration of capitalism within manufacture and large-scale industry — to
what actually goes on in workshops and factories. A central focus of this
analysis is the manner in which capitalism creates the very subjects that it
needs in order to operate: capitalism as it is portrayed in Capital does not
repress a given essence (such as the human capacity for creative labour),
but must constitute the subjects over whom its power is exercised. One of
the essential preconditions of capitalism is a propertyless mass that has
nothing to sell but its labour-power. The final part of Capital, on primitive
accumulation, details the various ways in which such a mass of potential

110
workers was produced: the enclosure of land, the seizure of Church es-
tates, the clearing of the Highlands, and so on. But this expropriation in
itself was not enough, for at first it merely created masses of ‘beggars,
robbers and vagabonds’ (Marx, 1976a: 896). These masses then needed
to be disciplined in order to be utilized as wage-labourers. Marx’s sec-
tion on primitive accumulation outlines the ‘grotesquely terroristic laws’
(Marx, 1976a: 899) that were necessary initially to force the expropriated
into wage-labour, by preventing them from making a living from begging
or petty theft and thereby leaving them with no choice but to sell their
labour-power. But once the capitalist mode of production is established
a different kind of discipline — the ‘barrack-like discipline’ (Marx, 1976a:
549) of the factory — is needed. It is not enough that the proletariat is
forced by economic circumstances to sell its labour-power to the capital-
ist: the worker needs to be shaped and moulded in certain ways, so that
there develops ‘a working class which by education, tradition and habit
looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident
natural laws’ (Marx, 1976a: 899). Moreover, as capitalism advances, the
type of subject that is required continues to change. In capitalism’s early
stages, there exists only what Marx calls ‘formal subsumption’, in which
the capitalist production process ‘takes over an existing labour process, de-
veloped by different and more archaic modes of production’ (Marx, 1976a:
1021). Only later do we arrive at what Marx calls ‘real subsumption’: ‘there
now arises a technologically and otherwise specific mode of production —
capitalist production — which transforms the nature of the labour process
and its actual conditions’ (Marx, 1976a: 1034–5). Real subsumption refers
not only to an increased use of an ever-growing range and number of ma-
chines, but to the development of a different kind of worker. The aim for
the capitalist cannot be to repress a natural essence, nor even simply to
accommodate the worker to the requirements and rhythms dictated by
the machine — but rather in a sense to create a new subject out of both
worker and machine, augmenting the power and capacities of the worker
rather than repressing them.
The use of disciplinary power to create a subject with augmented ca-
pacities: a description that could of course apply just as much to Fou-
cault as to Marx. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Foucault explic-
itly and repeatedly cites Capital Volume One in Discipline and Punish,

111
and that certain passages in both books are practically interchangeable.38
Contrary to postanarchist claims, we find in Marx something much like
what we find in post-structuralism: not a repressive power that denies
an essential human nature — as we find in classical anarchism — but a
power that operates by generating different subject positions. This does
not mean that Marx is some kind of proto-post-structuralist, or that the
post-structuralists were really Marxists in disguise: key differences re-
main. Newman (2001: 14) suggests that post-structuralism can be distin-
guished from structuralism not only by the fact that the former views
the subject as constituted and not determined, but also because ‘for the
post-structuralists, the forces which constitute the subject do not form a
central structure — like capitalism, for instance — but remain decentral-
ized and diffused’. This claim cannot so readily be accommodated to Marx,
who analyses the constitution of subjectivity not only just within capital-
ism but, even more narrowly, primarily within the factory. Indeed, the
decentralized and diffused nature of power is better captured by classical
anarchism. But this only serves to reinforce my central point: a contem-
porary politics informed by post-structuralism will be at its strongest if it
draws upon both Marxism and anarchism.

Conclusions
I have argued that the neglect of postanarchism’s attitude towards
Marxism is damaging, because it overlooks the key role that Marxism
plays within postanarchism and because it perpetuates misunderstand-
ings of both post-structuralism (characterized as anti-Marxist) and Marx-
ism (characterized as a dangerous anachronism). To counter this damage,
I have sought to elucidate the place of Marxism within postanarchism,
and to show that if we are looking for forerunners of or partners for post-
structuralism then Marxism is just as viable a candidate as classical anar-
chism. This should not be taken as a Marxist attempt to colonize other
fields of thought — a possibility that some postanarchists clearly fear:
‘Just as it thoroughly eclipsed anarchism during the struggle for control
over the First International during the nineteenth century, Marxism now
38
For Foucault’s references to Marx in Discipline and Punish, see Foucault (1977: 163–4, 175, 221).

112
attempts to eclipse postmodernism as well’ (Call, 2002: 7). My purpose
has not been simply to reverse the postanarchist position, demonstrating
that it is Marxism that has contemporary relevance and anarchism that
should be condemned as an anachronism. Instead I have tried to show that
Marxism deserves an equal hearing alongside anarchism. This is not an
uncritical endorsement of Marxism in which we take it as it is and incor-
porate its insights as they stand. On the contrary, just as postanarchists
argue that post-structuralism can offer a rereading of anarchism, so it is
to be hoped that Marxism can be transformed by an encounter with post-
structuralism. This will necessarily mean that many elements of Marx-
ism are discarded, as we pick and choose from the Marxist tradition. But
this should not be a problem; after all, this selective approach is exactly
the approach that postanarchists themselves take to classical anarchism:
rejecting the residual essentialism in classical anarchism, postanarchism
nonetheless finds much else that is valuable in this tradition. Moreover,
it is an approach that fits well with post-structuralism. When the post-
structuralists read Marx — or any other thinker, for that matter — they do
not treat him as a homogeneous whole to be accepted or rejected en bloc,
but as a heterogeneous resource that can be used in many ways: as Derrida
(1994: 91–2) says, any reading of Marx must be an ‘active interpretation’,
‘a critical, selective, and filtering reaffirmation’. In its straightforwardly
dismissive attitude towards Marxism, postanarchism risks contravening
the spirit of post-structuralism. Moreover, it risks placing itself in a rather
strange position whereby it values classical anarchism in spite of classi-
cal anarchism’s failure to recognize the productivity of power and the
decentring of subjectivity, while simultaneously rejecting Marxism even
though Marxism does recognize these things. The very reasons that posta-
narchists give for needing to supplement classical anarchism are in fact
good reasons for turning to Marxism.

In the end, I do not think that my defence of Marxism is incompati-

ble with postanarchism. At the end of his critical review of the history
of Marxism, May (1994: 44) states: ‘It is […] possible that there are as
yet untraveled paths within Marxism that might yield more benefit than
those which have been taken.’ Despite its own intentions, it may be that
postanarchism can help us find those paths.

113
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structuralist?,’ Anarchist Studies 5: 95–107
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Works Volume 5. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
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June 17th , 2010 from flag.blackened.net
 

From Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Volume 2010.1

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 What’s Wrong With
Postanarchism?

Jesse Cohn and Shawn Wilbur

What is now being called “postanarchism” by some thinkers, including

Saul Newman, can take on many forms, but the term generally refers to
an attempt to marry the best aspects of poststructuralist philosophy and
the anarchist tradition. One way to read the word, thus, is as a composite:
poststructuralism and anarchism. However, the term also suggests that
the post- prefix applies to its new object as well — implying that anar-
chism, at least as heretofore thought and practiced, is somehow obsolete.
Together, these two senses of the word form a narrative: an aging, spent
force (anarchism) is to be saved from obsolescence and irrelevance by
being fused with a fresh, vital force (poststructuralism). We would like
to question this narrative’s assumptions and teleology, but not without
some appreciation of what it has to offer.
Anarchists can indeed usefully take several things from poststructural-
ism:

1. Howard Richards has said that “what is sometimes called ‘post-

modern consciousness’… could more modestly be called an im-
proved understanding of symbolic processes” (Letters From Quebec
2.38.8). Rather than seeing human beings as autonomous individu-
als who perceive the world objectively — a naïve realist position
which would imply that the choices we make to participate in hier-

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 archical and exploitative systems are made with open eyes — post-
structuralists point to the many ways in which our consciousness
of the world is filtered through social “texts” which script our lives.

2. In so doing, poststructuralism opens up a new terrain of struggle for

political analysis: the struggle over signs, symbols, representations,
and meaning in the media environment and everyday life. This has
been particularly important for feminist theory over the last forty
years, and it ought to be so for anarchism as well.

3. As long as we think of language as a tool distinct from its users, we

can’t adequately criticize the notion of “the individual” as an iso-
latable, self-contained unit, and that means we will still have trou-
ble thinking beyond (or convincing others to try to think beyond)
the sacred categories of capitalism. By undermining naïvely indi-
vidualistic conceptions of subjectivity, poststructuralism furnishes
a powerful confirmation of the importance anarchists have always
accorded to community and sociality.

4. All of this provides us with some splendid tools for ideological cri-
tique. Poststructuralism trains us to think critically in ways that
allow us to see through the seeming political/ethical “neutrality”
of certain discourses. We can use poststructuralist analytical ap-
proaches to read texts for the way they use language to construct
identities and divisions, to frame issues and distort them, to lie by
omission, to center certain perspectives while marginalizing others,
and so on.

5. To understand that some things which seem “natural” are culturally

constructed is to be aware that they might have been constructed
otherwise. Poststructuralists challenge the notion that people have
“natures” or “essences” that limit and determine what they can be
— a point that should remind us of Kropotkin’s riposte to the Social
Darwinism of scientists like Huxley, who proposed that capitalism
and war are merely social expressions of the natural struggle for
“survival of the fittest.”

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 6. Anarchists should also take to heart some of the ethical implica-
tions of poststructuralism. A poststructuralist emphasis on “other-
ness,” on historical and cultural locatedness, on the multiplicity of
perspectives and “subject positions,” on the inescapable plurality
of representations — all should confirm and deepen our awareness
of our own limitations, our sense of respect for others. When Der-
rida’s mentor, Emmanuel Levinas, says that ethics is the true “first
philosophy,” he delivers the best possible rebuke to Marx and other
critics of anarchism, with their contempt for a theory which was
too “simple” to be adequate (based as it was on an ethical position
— the rejection of domination and hierarchy, the embrace of social
freedom — rather than on some speculation about the laws of eco-
nomics or the ultimate goal of history).
7. Poststructuralism can strengthen anarchist commitments to a so-
cial conception of freedom, as opposed to a simpleminded “libera-
tionism” for which every social relationship is merely a constraint
to be rejected. Despite the tendency of some to read poststructural-
ist accounts of the constructedness of things as an endorsement
of a “deconstructive” liberationism, it does offer at least some re-
sources for thinking about the necessity and possibility of social
reconstruction. Foucault, for instance, ridicules liberationism in its
left-Freudian forms (centered on the concepts of a naturally good
desire which must be “expressed” rather than “repressed” by a bad
society), and ultimately proposes a kind of “ethics” premised on our
ability to construct ourselves. It’s not an entirely successful effort
(Foucault is still somewhat captive to a liberationist discourse in
much of his writing), but it’s suggestive. Derrida appears to be de-
veloping gradually a politics of “friendship,” “memory,” “responsibil-
ity,” “hospitality,” etc. Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben and others
have given us a wealth of engagements with “community.”
At the same time, we see a number of serious problems with postanar-
chism’s manner of wedding poststructuralism to anarchism:
1. Postanarchism has, as one of its core narratives, a drastically re-
duced notion of what “anarchism” is and has been. The “classical

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 anarchist” tradition treated by Andrew M. Koch, Todd May, Saul
Newman, and Lewis Call, usually restricted to a limited number
of “great thinkers” (Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin),
is reductive at best. As the late John Moore noted in his review
of The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism, postanar-
chists omit any mention of “second wave” or “contemporary” anar-
chism, reducing a living tradition to a dead “historical phenomenon”
called “classical anarchism.” Reiner Schürmann is content to dismiss
“Proudhon, Bakunin, and their disciples,” in a single paragraph, as
“rationalist” thinkers, plain and simple. There is almost complete
inattention to the margins of the “classical” texts, not to mention
the margins of the tradition. Such “minor” theorists as Gustav Lan-
dauer, Voltairine de Cleyre, Josiah Warren, Emma Goldman, and
Paul Goodman, to name just a few of those excluded, would seem to
merit some consideration, particularly if the project is a rethinking
of “normal anarchism.”

2. Conflict, as well as diversity, is smoothed over in the historical ac-

counts of anarchism given by postanarchists. Anarchist history is a
terrain occupied by materialists and mystics, communists and mu-
tualists, nihilists and scientists, progressivists and primitivists alike.
Terms taken for granted in much postanarchist critique — “science,”
for example — were the explicit subject of complex struggles within
anarchism and socialism broadly. To fail to look at this history of
internal difference can also blind us to the related history of or-
ganizational conflict and strife — the other set of forces at work
in shaping anarchism and socialism as we have had them passed
down to us. Marc Angenot notes that “the point of departure for
Proudhon” is not “an axiom,” but a sense of “scandal” — a provo-
cation into thought by “something unthinkable.” Just as we have
to read Kropotkin’s theory of “mutual aid” as a response (or, as
Kingsley Widmer calls it, a “countering”) to Huxley, we ought to
analyze other key developments in anarchist theory in the context
of an anarchist milieu traversed by a continuing series of disputes,
controversies, and epistemological “scandals.”

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3. Where Koch, May, Newman, and Call examine specific “classical
anarchist” texts, the passages they cite often seem far from repre-
sentative of the actual arguments made by those writers. Particu-
larly when using texts like G. P. Maximoff’s Political Philosophy of
Mikhail Bakunin — a patchwork of translated quotations from some
twenty-nine source texts in three languages — close attention to the
overall use of concepts is necessary to compensate for the unsys-
tematic nature of the original sources. Lack of such attention, to-
gether with preconceptions about anarchist “rationalism,” can lead
to curious misreadings. In Newman’s “Anarchism and the Politics
of Ressentiment,” for example, the argument proceeds by reading
“classical anarchism,” represented by Bakunin and Kropotkin, as fol-
lows: at certain points, these anarchists depict the human subject
as naturally opposed to power, while at other points they seem to
say that power naturally emanates from human subjects. From this
premise, Newman goes on to conclude that classical anarchism is
riven by a fundamental inconsistency, a damaging “contradiction.”
The unstated assumption which warrants this move from premise
to conclusion is that these two characterizations of the human sub-
ject are mutually exclusive — that Bakunin and Kropotkin cannot
intend both. This assumption begs the question: why not? In fact,
a close reading of texts by these theorists would support a differ-
ent conclusion — that for both of them, it is the human subject it-
self which is the site, as Kropotkin writes in his Ethics, of a “funda-
mental contradiction.” What Newman misses is the possibility that,
in Dave Morland’s words, “anarchists are proprietors of a double-
barrelled conception of human nature” as composed of “both so-
ciability and egoism.” Of course, for Anglophone writers and read-
ers, the difficulties of understanding are compounded by a linguis-
tic barrier: for instance, of the thirty-nine texts collected in fifteen
volumes of Proudhon’s complete works, only four have ever been
translated into English, so the only glimpses of his more ambitious
“theoretical” work available to us — including his paradoxically “ab-
solute” refusal of “the Absolute” — are in Selected Writings of Pierre-
Joseph Proudhon, a collection of scattered quotations.

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 4. Poststructuralist critiques of “classical anarchism” tend to place it in
intellectual contexts — “humanism,” “rationalism,” “Enlightenment”
— which are likewise treated in the most reductive terms. For in-
stance, Cartesian rationalism is conflated with movements directly
opposed to it — and is applied to texts from the late 19th century, as if
there was no significant developments in ideas about subjectivity,
truth, or rationality after the 17th century. Rather than artificially
tying the ideas of anarchist theorists to those of philosophers they
directly oppose (such as Rousseau), we might be better off looking
at Kropotkin’s use of Wundt’s psychology and Guyau’s ethics, Gold-
man’s reading of Nietzsche, Godwin’s engagement with the episte-
mology of Hume and Hartley, Malatesta’s flirtation with pragma-
tism, or what Bakunin might have learned from Schelling’s call for
a “philosophy of existence” in opposition to Hegel’s “philosophy of
essence.” Contemporary French sociologist Daniel Colson’s recent
essay on “Anarchist Readings of Spinoza” in the journal Réfractions
is suggestive of what can be done along these lines.

5. Having constructed, on such an impoverished basis, an ideological

ghost called “classical anarchism,” postanarchists then subject this
phantom entity to a critique based on some drastically undertheo-
rized concepts, tending to proceed as if the meaning of key terms
like “nature,” “power,” and even “poststructuralism” were both self-
evident and unchanging. They act, as Foucault hears Nietzsche com-
plain of Paul Rée, as if “words had kept their meaning… ignor[ing]
the fact that the world of speech… has known invasions, struggles,
plundering, disguises, ploys.” Moore, again, fingered this difficulty:
“’One would not call all exercises of power oppressive,’ May states.
But surely that depends upon who one is.” Why assume that what
Bakunin meant by the word “power,” in one particular essay, is the
same concept designated by Foucault’s use of the word, or Moore’s,
or May’s — or even that named by the same word in a different
Bakunin essay? Indeed, even Newman seems to allow the meaning
of the term to slide in a strategically convenient manner: on the
first page of From Bakunin to Lacan, he uses “power” as synony-
mous with “domination,” “hierarchies,” and “repression,” but soon

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 shifts over to a Foucauldian usage which defines “power” as “some-
thing to be accepted as unavoidable,” while defining “domination”
and “authority” as things which are “to be resisted.” The problem
is that, depending on which definition is in play, Newman could be
contradicting Bakunin or simply reiterating him. In his “Reflections
on Anarchism,” Brian Morris makes a distinction (similar to the
Spinozan opposition between “potestas” and “potentia” to which
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt apeal) between “power over” and
“the power to do something.” It is only “power” in the first sense
that anarchists categorically oppose, while “power” in the second
sense, as what Hannah Arendt calls “the human ability not just to
act but to act in concert,” is central to anarchist theorizations of the
social. Bakunin considers what he and Proudhon call “social power,”
conceived as the non-coercive influence of individuals and groups
on one another, to be absolutely real and ineradicable, condemning
as “idealist” the “wish to escape” the play of “physical, intellectual,
and moral influences” which is continuous with society itself: “To
do away with this reciprocal influence is death.”

6. The intended sense of the prefix “post-” in “postanarchism” often

seems to be uncritically progressive, as if “anarchism” per se is
something that belongs to the past; this is reinforced by the frequent
suggestions that anarchism is merely a continuation of a clapped-
out “Enlightenment” thought. This is far too simplistic. First of all,
you don’t have to be Noam Chomsky to think that the Enlighten-
ment produced some ideas of lasting value: as Donna Haraway sug-
gests, “Enlightenment modes of knowledge have been radically lib-
erating” because “they give accounts of the world that can check ar-
bitrary power.” Secondly, it is by no means clear that poststructural-
ism places itself categorically outside, after, or beyond the thought
of “Enlightenment,” nor that it can or ought to. Lyotard defines the
“postmodern” as that within the “modern” which keeps it lively and
resists reification, and these days, even Newman acknowledges that
for Foucault there are not one but two “Enlightenments” — “the
Enlightenment of continual questioning and uncertainty” as well
as that of “rational certainty, absolute identity, and destiny.” We

123
 can also recall here Derrida’s guarded defense of “the projects of
the Enlightenment” and Haraway’s “insider strategy” where sci-
ence and development are concerned, characteristically preferring
“blasphemy” to “apostacy,” emphasizing choice within a conflicted,
dangerous field instead of simple opposition to what is ultimately a
“naturalized” structure rather than a natural one. “Non-innocent” re-
sistance and the business of dealing with complicity seem to be com-
mon to many poststructuralist positions. Having shifted away from
simple opposition, poststructuralism has to abandon some simple
forms of moralizing as well. This is why, finally, Haraway rejects the
“postmodern” label, preferring Latour’s formulation that “we have
never been modern.” And it’s why folks from Baudrillard to Derrida
have such a dismissive attitude toward “good souls” who think they
can attack something like “the Enlightenment” from the outside,
without complicity. In any case, poststructuralists have provided
us with many, many reasons to be “incredulous” towards “grand
narratives” of linear historical progress and to remain open to what
is open, living, and potentially radical in tradition.

7. The way in various critical missteps can compound one another is

perhaps clearest in the discussions of “essentialism.” Much posta-
narchist critique echoes Nietzsche’s charge that anarchism is “poi-
soned at the root” (a rather essentialist claim); for postanarchists,
ironically the “poison” is “essentialism.” This notion however, is
compromised to begin with: for some time now, theorists from Di-
ana Fuss to Hubert Dreyfus have been complaining that the term
“essentialism” has become a mere pejorative epithet, so flexible in
its usages (Nick Haslam counts no less than six distinct concepts
lumped together under the one word) that it can be applied to al-
most any statement qua statement, and feminists like Gayatri Spi-
vak have argued that some uses of “strategic essentialism” are en-
demic to any politics whatsoever. Nonetheless, for Koch, May, and
Newman alike, Godwin, Proudhon, and Kropotkin are representa-
tive of a hopelessly “essentialist” or “ontological” anarchism: as
Koch writes, “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century anarchists’ at-
tacks on the state were based on a ‘rational’ representation of hu-

124
man nature” in which a basically static human subject is innately
possessed of “reason, compassion, and gregariousness”; on this
view, “corruption takes place within social institutions and is not
an essential part of human nature,” since “the human being is seen
as a rational, cognitive, and compassionate creature.” Certainly, if
these theorists believed in this sort of innate goodness, they would
have a hard time explaining the prevalence of violence, inequality,
and domination; however, they affirm no such thing. For instance,
in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, far from assuming a spon-
taneously good, rational, or gregarious human subject, Godwin de-
picts the subject as the result of social construction: “the actions
and dispositions of men are not the off-spring of any original bias
that they bring into the world in favour of one sentiment or char-
acter rather than another, but flow entirely from the operation of
circumstances and events acting upon a faculty of receiving sensi-
ble impressions.” Thus, he ridicules the idea that complex behavioral
patterns such as a favorable disposition towards “virtue” are “some-
thing that we bring into the world with us, a mystical magazine,
shut up in the human embryo, whose treasures are to be gradually
unfolded as circumstances shall require,” and denies equally that
“self-love” (egoism) or “pity” (compassion) are “instincts”; both, to
him, are learned behaviors. The “representation” of the human sub-
ject that emerges from Political Justice is far from “fixed” or “closed”
— it is dynamic, endlessly mutable: “Ideas are to the mind nearly
what atoms are to the body. The whole mass is in a perpetual flux;
nothing is stable and permanent; after the lapse of a given period
not a single particle probably remains the same.” This, in fact, is
why Godwin thinks we are capable of doing better, and it is why
he wrote so extensively on questions of pedagogy and culture: just
as government is ultimately founded not on physical coercion but
on popular obedience springing from culturally learned “opinions”
and “prejudices,” a non-authoritarian society would have to be the
product of cultural change — not “human nature.” His real argument
against “the state, as a coercive institution” (and against every other
coercive institution) is simply that it is coercive, when cooperation
is possible. Human beings — whatever else we are — are capable of

125
 negotiating conflicts and coordinating efforts without resorting to
force or manipulation. In Godwin’s words: “The evils existing in po-
litical society… are not the inseparable condition of our existence,
but admit of removal and remedy.” This is all that ever need be ar-
gued ontologically, and all that Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin
really require: the possibility of free cooperation, which is the pos-
sibility of a life in which no one is treated merely as an instrument.

8. The “epistemologically based” or “poststructuralist” anarchism that

Koch traces back through Nietzsche to Stirner, on the other hand, is
precisely the conception of the world in which all relations are held
to be instrumental — and here is another major problem with posta-
narchist projects. In criticizing the supposed “essentialism” of “clas-
sical anarchism,” rather too many postanarchists throw the baby out
with the bathwater, rejecting the broadly communitarian, populist,
and working-class character of that tradition, and preserving only
Stirner’s radical individualism. Indeed, for Newman, Stirner’s value
is precisely that he “perpetuates” Hobbes’s “war model” of society,
while Koch finds in his thoroughgoing nominalism a weapon to use
against “the tyranny of globalizing discourse,” ultimately against all
“universals.” The problem is that Stirner’s notion of “uniqueness” de-
nies legitimacy to any universal and every collectivity: if, as Koch
says, any “concepts under which action is coordinated” can be dis-
missed as mere “fictions,” while only the “individual” is “real,” then
it must follow that any coordinated action or “consensual politics”
is simply a form of domination, the “impos[ition]” of “one set of
metaphors” on the infinite plurality of society. Newman insists that
“Stirner is not opposed to all forms of mutuality,” citing his concept
of a “Union of Egoists,” but this, too, is an inadequate and implausi-
ble conception — a kind of laissez-faire utopia in which the social is
replaced by the utilitarian, equality produced by the equal exertion
of force, and the common good is reducible to an infinity of private
whims. Ultimately, for Stirner, “community… is impossible.” Nor is
it clear that Stirner manages to avoid his own form of essential-
ism in positing a “fixed” concept of the subject as an self-identical
“nothingness.” Where anarchists have articulated sharp critiques of

126
 Stirner — Landauer’s objection was precisely that Stirner’s “ego” is
something that never develops or grows, since anything it takes in,
it has to spit out, lest it become a “fixed idea” — some poststructural-
ists have been prone to overlook problems: thus, Koch uncritically
endorses Stirner’s claim that “socal liberalism robs people of their
property in the name of community,” as if this did not appeal to
a rather flagrantly essentialist notion of the “person” and what is
“proper” to it. While Stirner’s attack on the bloodless abstractions
of liberal political philosophy is still relevant, they can be and have
been articulated by others (such as Bakunin) without the accom-
panying endorsement of an all-too-ideologically-suspect individu-
alism.

9. Seeing how postanarchism constitutes itself via a rhetoric which

dismisses the categories of the natural and the universal tout court,
we should not be surprised to find that it takes on board a substan-
tial quantity of subjectivism and relativism. It is instructive to trace
Mike Michael’s arguments demonstrating what he takes to be the
relevance for anarchism of Bruno Latour’s sociological critique of
science, for which agreements are only ever a matter of “power,”
produced through a process of “interessement” or “recruitment” in
which “one aims to convince actors that, rather than maintain a
particular set of self-understandings… they should really be con-
ceptualizing themselves through the categories that you provide.”
From this kind of poststructuralist perspective, there is no way to
distinguish between free agreements and instrumentalist manipula-
tion: cooperation is always a con game. As May has noted recently,
in a review of Newman’s From Bakunin to Lacan, these varieties of
poststructuralism take such a “deconstructive approach to language
and politics” that they seem to preclude “the kind of collective ac-
tion that seems necessary for political success”: “Indeterminacy is,
to my mind, a weak basis for political thought and organizing. It
tends to drive people apart rather than bringing them together.”
Koch likewise declares that “the relativity of both ontology and epis-
temology, the plurality of language systems, and the impossibility
of communicating intended meaning” imply that “the potential to

127
 reach consensus without deception or force becomes impossible.” It
is not to his credit that Koch terms this miserable result “anarchy.”
The anarchist tradition is not a complete, perfect whole which is beyond
question or criticism; it stands in need of rigorous and permanent critique,
and certain elements of poststructuralist theory might be valuable in this
reconstructive work. In this respect, Colson’s recently published Petit lex-
ique philosophique de l’anarchisme de Proudhon à Deleuze, while it has re-
course to some dubious poststructuralist rhetoric (in phrases such as “re-
jecting all mediation”), seems to illustrate some of the more interesting in-
tersections between 19th -century anarchist ideas and practices, on the one
hand, and Deleuze’s “strange unity… which never speaks but of the mul-
tiple” on the other. Here, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Stirner are
revisited, but so are Makhno, Bookchin, Grave, Michel, Pelloutier, Reclus,
and Landauer, as well as Agamben, Serres, Latour, de Certeau, Balibar,
and Negri. Rather than unidirectionally projecting poststructuralism back
onto anarchism (“correcting” its supposed humanist, foundationalist, ra-
tionalist, and essentialist “errors”), Colson places the two discourses in
dialogue, allowing each to illuminate the other in its turn.
We are excited to find social philosophers attempting to rethink anar-
chism in connection with poststructuralism — and impatient with what
we see as the shortcomings of these attempts. We value the poststructural-
ist work in large part because it strikes us as concerned with going to the
limits, finding its own breaking points. Poststructuralism acknowledges
the dual responsibilities of radicals to engage in potentially “interminable”
analyses while not letting us forget how immediately urgent the problems
that face us are. But it has very little specific analysis of its own, and is
hesitant in its engagements with the traditional forms of the struggle for
freedom. It is our hope that by putting its insights into play with the older
insights of the libertarian socialist tradition, we can overcome some po-
tential misconceptions about the road towards a free society and put back
into play some otherwise “lost” strategies and insights.
***
Jesse Cohn lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is a Green activist and
an Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University North Central. Re-

128
cent publications include “What is Postanarchism ‘Post’?” in Postmodern
Culture (September 2002) and “Anarchism, Representation, and Culture”
(in proceedings of the Culture and the Modern State conference, forth-
coming). He is currently completing a book on anarchist literary theory,
focusing on the question of “representation” as it affects the three realms
of interpretation, aesthetics, and politics, with the working title of Anar-
chism and the Crisis of Representation.
Shawn P. Wilbur is a bookseller, electronic musician, live sound engi-
neer and independent scholar. He holds an MA in American Culture Stud-
ies from Bowling Green State University. He is a member of the Spoon Col-
lective, which provides online forums for the discussion of various polit-
ical and philosophical subjects, including postanarchism. He is currently
working on a history of anarchism in the United States, with an empha-
sis on the individualist and mutualist currents within the movement. His
work in various areas can be found at www.libertarian-labyrinth.org

Retrieved on 29 April 2010 from libertarian-library.blogspot.com

129
Spectres of Freedom in Stirner
and Foucault: A Response to
”Solitude and Freedom”

Saul Newman

2004
 I am grateful to Caleb Smith for his response to my essay ”Stirner and
Foucault: Towards a Post-Kantian Freedom,” and I particularly like the
way he links my discussion of a post-Kantian freedom to strategies of re-
sistance against contemporary forms of incarceration. Already, back in
the early 1970s, in response to a series of prison revolts in France, Michel
Foucault was talking about the emergence of a ”carceral archipelago”–a
network of punitive institutions, discourses, and practices that had been
progressively spreading throughout the social fabric since the late eigh-
teenth century (297). It was as if the prison had become a metaphor for
society as a whole–with the same techniques of surveillance and coercion
appearing in schools, hospitals, factories, and psychiatric institutions. To-
day, unprecedented technological developments have made possible an
intensification of social control to levels beyond what even Foucault could
have imagined–the proliferation, for instance, of surveillance cameras in
public spaces indicates a blurring of the distinction between the institu-
tion and life outside. Indeed, in light of the new forms of incarceration that
are appearing today–the extra-legal detention facilities in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, for example–perhaps we should take note of Giorgio Agam-
ben’s disturbing insight that what is paradigmatic of modern life is not
the prison, as Foucault believed, but rather the /camp/ (20). The slogan
posted above the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay–”Honor Bound to
Defend Freedom”–is chillingly and ironically reminiscent of another infa-
mous slogan, the one posted above Auschwitz: ”Arbeit Macht Frei” (”Work
Makes One Free”).
Given this proliferation today of spaces of incarceration and detention–
which are, at the same time, becoming virtually indistinguishable from ev-
eryday life–questions of freedom and emancipation, always central to po-
litical discourse, are perhaps more crucial now than ever before. It is here
that Smith raises some very interesting questions about how Stirner’s
and Foucault’s emancipatory strategies might be useful today in challeng-
ing contemporary institutions, and practices of incarceration, particularly
solitary confinement. As Smith shows, solitary confinement has been em-
ployed as a punitive tool since the inception of the modern prison in the
early nineteenth century, and is now undergoing a massive resurgence
in prisons in the U.S. It was originally believed that if prisoners were iso-
lated within their own individual cells, not only could they be more eas-

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ily controlled and supervised, but their very ”souls” could be redeemed
through a process of self-reflection. Solitary confinement thus served as a
sort of moral experiment upon the subjectivity of the individual inmate–
an experiment in which the criminal’s soul was constructed as a discur-
sive object to be corrected and reformed. A similar approach can be seen
in contemporary practices of solitary confinement in detention camps,
where the psyches of inmates are carefully monitored in an effort to un-
lock their ”secrets.” Smith is right in suggesting, moreover, that this has
become a ”postmodern” form of punishment–one that relies on sophisti-
cated and subtle techniques of psychological manipulation, rather than
clumsy physical coercion (though of course, as we have been amply re-
minded by events in Iraq, the latter has by no means been expunged from
contemporary carceral practice).
However, the question remains as to what sort of strategies of free-
dom are effective in resisting these new postmodern regimes of punish-
ment? Smith suggests that the post-Kantian or ”postmodern” notion of
freedom that I have theorized in my paper–one that is derived from the
interventions of Foucault and Stirner–is not only somewhat limited in
resisting ”concrete” practices of incarceration, but, because it is based
largely on a notion of individual autonomy that may be achieved even
within oppressive conditions, may actually sustain these very practices.
There are three separate, yet related, points that Smith is making here:
/firstly/, that, despite my emphasis on concreteness and particularity as
opposed to abstract universals, I have to some extent ignored concrete
practices or institutions–like the prison–and have thus remained within
the very abstract world I am attacking; /secondly/, that my attempt to the-
orize a notion of freedom and individual autonomy–”ownness”–that can
be realized even in conditions of oppression is of limited use against the
practice of solitary confinement, and may even sustain it; and /thirdly/,
that this notion of individual autonomy, developed from Stirner and Fou-
cault, has ignored a very important dimension of their thinking that sup-
ports the idea of collective insurgency–one that would be more relevant
to the question of prison revolt. I think Smith raises some very interest-
ing points here, and in answering his criticisms my aim is not simply to
defend my own argument but rather to expand the terms of the discus-
sion so that it may develop in new theoretical directions. In this sense, I

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shall approach Smith’s intervention in the spirit of /agonism/, rather than
antagonism–that is, as a theoretical challenge that opens up new ways of
thinking, new ”lines of flight.”
”Lines of flight” are exactly what we want here, after all. How to con-
struct new lines of flight, new strategies that will liberate people from
institutions like the prison, and, more broadly, from the carceral/bio-
political society we are living in today? Concrete practices and institu-
tions of coercion and surveillance are all around us–not just in the prison,
but, as I have suggested, at all levels of the social network. Why, then, res-
urrect Max Stirner, the thinker who was obsessed with ghosts, ”spooks,”
and ideological apparitions, and who claimed that we can be dominated
and oppressed as much by an abstract idea as we can by a ”real” institution
or social relation? How useful is Stirner’s critique of the abstract world
of universal ideals–the spectres of humanity, rationality, and morality–
in combating very real practices and institutions of domination? How is
Stirner’s diagnosis of a spectral world relevant to a world that seems ever
more frighteningly /real/?
Many people, including, most famously, Marx, have suggested that be-
cause the target of Stirner’s critique is the abstract world of idealism, he
neglects the ”real” material world of concrete relations and institutions. In-
deed, Marx and Engels devoted the largest part of The German Ideology
to attacking Stirner, accusing him of the worst kind of naïvety and ideal-
ism. They repeatedly parody Stirner as ”Saint Max” or ”Saint Sancho”–as
one who mistakes illusions for reality. Stirner, Marx and Engels argue, at-
tempts to overcome religious alienation by condemning the dominance
of abstract ”fixed ideas” but, in doing so, overestimates the importance of
these ideas in the real world, thus falling into the idealist trap himself. In
other words, Stirner, in focusing on the way that abstract ideas dominate
our lives, sees these ideas as all-determining, thus neglecting their basis
in real material and social conditions. Stirner is therefore characterized
as an ideologist /par excellence/–one who ignores the concrete material
world and conjures up instead a word of illusions and apparitions.
This idealist illusion is most apparent, Marx and Engels argue, in
Stirner’s understanding of the State. Stirner sees the State as itself an ide-
ological abstraction, much like God–it only exists because we allow it to
exist, because we abdicate to it our own authority, in the same way that we

135
create God by abdicating our authority and placing it outside ourselves.
What is more important than the institution of the State is the ”ruling
principle”–it is the /idea/ of the State, in other words, that dominates us
(Stirner 200). The State’s unity and dominance exist mostly in the minds
of its subjects. The State’s power is really based on /our/ power, accord-
ing to Stirner. It is only because the individual has not recognized this
power, because he humbles himself before authority, that the State con-
tinues to exist. As Stirner correctly surmised, the State cannot function
only through top-down repression and coercion, as this would expose its
power in all its nakedness, brutality, and illegitimacy. Rather, the State
relies on our /allowing/ it to dominate us. Stirner wants to show that ide-
ological apparatuses are not only concerned with economic or political
questions–they are also rooted in psychological needs. The dominance of
the State, Stirner suggests, depends on our willingness to let it dominate
us, on our complicit desire for our own subordination. Therefore, the State
must first be overcome as an idea before it can be overcome in reality–or
more precisely, they are two sides of the same coin. According to Marx
and Engels, however, this ignores the economic and class relations that
form the material basis of the state: Stirner’s ”idealism” would absurdly
allow the state to be dismissed by an act of ”wishful thinking” (374).
Now this critique of Stirner’s ”idealist” approach to the State goes to
the heart of the debate between me and Smith. Indeed, Smith’s sugges-
tion that I, in my critique (via Stirner) of abstract universal ideals, fail
fully to acknowledge or account for the concreteness of institutions like
the prison, uncannily resembles Marx and Engels’s attack on Stirner for
not recognizing the concreteness of institutions like the State. As with the
critique of Stirner, it is objected that my thinking in effect proposes the
existence of ”abstract” prisons from which there can only be ”abstract”
forms of escape. Like the unfortunate Saint Max, who stumbles foggily
through the world of illusions, I am said to be gesturing toward the con-
crete world ”as if toward something half-real.” Now my response to this
is as follows: Smith’s objection, which so closely parallels Marx and En-
gels’s materialist critique of Stirner, is itself based on a sort of illusory
separation between discourse and reality, in which ”reality” is privileged
as ”concrete” and as having an immediacy that ideas and theoretical con-
cepts do not. However, I would suggest here not only that ”concrete” ob-

136
jects and practices are meaningless outside discourse (that is, the linguis-
tic, symbolic, and ideological networks within which they are constituted)
but, more precisely, that these institutions and practices themselves have
a sort of spectral ideological dimension that gives them consistency. In
the same way, for instance, that Stirner argues that the State cannot be
understood, let alone resisted, without an understanding of the abstract
ideological systems that legitimize it, I am suggesting that ”concrete” in-
stitutions and practices cannot be separated from the spectral ideological
and symbolic systems that give them meaning–and that, in order to re-
sist these institutions and practices, we have first to attack their spectral
underside. For instance, Foucault shows that the ”abstract” concept of the
soul–which Smith himself has drawn upon–has very real material effects,
allowing a sort of discursive cage to be constructed for the prisoner: as he
expresses it in his famous inversion of the traditional formula, ”the soul
is the prison of the body” (30).
What I am suggesting here is that, paradoxically, in order for us to per-
ceive what is concrete we must go through the abstract, or at least the
symbolic. That is to say, we can only grasp institutions and practices in
their concrete materiality through an ”abstract” symbolic and ideologi-
cal framework which constitutes their meaning. They cannot be seen as
somehow outside or separate from this. As Slavoj Zizek argues, there is
nothing more /ideological/ than the belief that we can somehow step out-
side ideological systems and see things for the ”way they really are” (60).
The world of abstract ideas and ideological systems does not somehow
stand apart from and opposed to the world of concrete, material practices
and institutions, as Smith seems to suggest; but rather, each can only be
articulated through the other. While it is true that I have not referred in
my paper directly to ”concrete” institutions and practices, my contention
is that they can only be grasped through their spectral, abstract, ”half-real”
dimension–and it is this dimension that I have focused on in discussing
Stirner’s critique. It is a mistake to believe that Stirner’s critique of ab-
stract universals implies that they can be simply dismissed, and that a new
world of reality and concreteness will be revealed to us–it is more sophisti-
cated than this. Just because this world is spectral and ideological does not
mean that it is not, at the same time, very /real/–on the contrary, ideology
is all around us, materially present and deeply entrenched in our psyches.

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And what Stirner is interested in unmasking is the way that these abstract
ideals, such as morality, rationality, and human essence, find their logical
expression in concrete practices of domination–for instance, in punish-
ment, which Stirner sees as a form of moral hygiene (213). It is precisely
the abstract notions of morality and humanity that make this new sys-
tem of punishment intelligible–that form the ideological and discursive
apparatus that gives it meaning. That is why the State, for Stirner, is as
much ideological and spectral as it is ”real.” Indeed, it is constituted in its
materiality precisely through this abstract, ideological dimension. This is
what Marx and Engels did not understand–and it could be argued here
that in neglecting the State’s ideological dimension, and by reducing it
to the ”materiality” of economic relations, they have themselves failed to
grasp its reality–that is, its political specificity and autonomy. To suggest,
as Smith seems to, that my focus on abstract structures of idealism has
obscured or neglected the real, material world, is simply to repeat Marx’s
and Engel’s error.
The second point that Smith makes is that Stirner’s idea of ”ownness”
as a form of radical freedom that is possible even in oppressive conditions
may actually contribute to the practice of solitary confinement. This is be-
cause solitary confinement is based on the notion of a ”cellular soul” that
can be self-correcting, and Stirner’s notion of ownness, though it seeks
to throw off repressive moral constraints, nevertheless sustains the idea
of a soul that can be redeemed–this time in egoism rather than moral-
ity. Smith raises an interesting point–that because the egoist, for Stirner,
creates his own forms of freedom, he can maintain a Buddhist-like spir-
itual detachment from the real conditions of restraint and coercion that
he is subjected to, and that this may actually sustain, or at any rate allow
to be sustained, the practice of incarceration in solitary confinement. In
other words, the implications of Stirner’s theory of ownness would seem
to be that the egoist can be free even in a prison cell. It is certainly the
case that ownness is largely based on the individual seizing for himself
a radical autonomy through the rejection of universal essences and fixed
ideas. Moreover, Stirner does indeed say that this form of autonomy can
be experienced even in the most oppressive conditions: ”under the do-
minion of a cruel master my body is not ’free’ from torments and lashes;
but it is /my/ bones that moan under the torture, /my/ fibres that quiver

138
under the blows […]” (143). What Stirner is suggesting here is that even
in conditions of abject slavery, in which the concept of freedom as an
ideal becomes meaningless, there is nevertheless a more immediate form
of autonomy or ”self-ownership” available to the subject. Moreover, this
internal autonomy is something upon which the concrete act of resistance
and liberation can be based: the egoist, Stirner says, bides his time while
submitting to punishment, and ”as I keep my eye on myself and my self-
ishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the
slaveholder into the dust” (143). So what Stirner is trying to develop here
is similar to the notion of positive freedom–a form of /internal/ freedom
or autonomy that goes beyond simple freedom from external constraint.
While it is usually the case that positive freedom presupposes a basic neg-
ative freedom, in the case of incarceration or slavery, there is no possibil-
ity of this prior condition of negative freedom. Positive internal freedom
must therefore form the a priori condition for any act of resistance. An
example of this strategy of ownness in action might be found in the film
Cool Hand Luke. ”Cool Hand” Luke, played by Paul Newman, is a convict
on a chain gang. In one scene the prisoners are building a road with picks
and shovels, and they are working at a slow, monotonous pace that is reg-
ulated, not only by the enforced generalized boredom of the task, but also
by the watchful gaze of the guards. The prisoners are languidly dreaming
of their freedom, of life on the ”outside.” Luke suddenly urges his fellow
prisoners to intensify the pace of the digging, saying all time ”Go hard!
Beat the Man!” The building of the road becomes a frenetic collective activ-
ity that causes profound consternation amongst the prison guards. Here
we see the convicts taking a kind of self-ownership over their activity, an
activity from which they were hitherto alienated because it was seen as
something that had to be done for the authorities, for ”the Man.” By the
convicts owning their own labor, by making it /theirs/, it becomes an act
of resistance.
Stirner is also making another, more subtle point here: as well as the
act of resistance being based on a radical internal freedom, the reverse
of this is that practices and institutions of domination actually rely on
an internalized oppression, whereby the subject is not only externally co-
erced and incarcerated but is also tied, in more profound ways, to this very
identity of oppression. That is, institutions do not only oppress and coerce

139
the subject from the outside–they also dominate the subject /inwardly./
In other words, they rely on an active self-domination–the subject is tied
psychologically to the very institution that dominates him, and this might
continue even after the institution itself has disappeared. The subject is
tied to a kind of spectral shadow of the institution, precisely through an
internalization of the moral and rational norms upon which the institu-
tion is based. This spectral shadow is precisely the hidden ”authoritarian
obverse” that I have referred to. The State, for instance, relies on certain
forms of subjectification, so that the individual comes to willingly submit
himself to its authority–so that, in the words of Stirner, ”/its permanence/
is to be sacred to me” (161). So, for Stirner, any concrete liberation from
the institution must begin with a sort of self-liberation–a liberation of the
self from the forms of subjectivity that are tied to the institution. This is
what Stirner means by ”ownness.” My point is, therefore, that Stirner’s
theory of ownness–although it would seem to mirror, as Smith suggests,
a fantasy of ”corrective solitude”–can actually be interpreted in another,
much more radical way. It can be seen as a way of overcoming the forms
of self-domination and servitude upon which practices of incarceration
are ultimately based.
Although any act of liberation must begin with a personal individual
liberation, it will ultimately be ineffective unless it incorporates a collec-
tive dimension–and it is here that I am inclined to agree with Smith in his
emphasis on collective insurgency. I believe that notions of collective ac-
tion and identity are very much implicit in both Stirner’s and Foucault’s
politics, despite the way that they are usually perceived as valorizing only
individual acts of resistance. Elsewhere I have insisted on a collective di-
mension in their thought, drawing on Stirner’s important notion of the
”union of egoists,” as well as Foucault’s writings on the Iranian Revolution
(Newman). As Smith points out, Stirner himself talks about the way that
the prison system, although designed to isolate individuals, actually cre-
ates the conditions for a new kind of collective intercourse and identity–
one that constitutes a significant threat to the prison system. So while in
my article I have focused on the individual–both in terms of the effect
of abstract ideals and ideological systems on the individual, as well as on
different forms of individual autonomy and resistance–there is no doubt
that, for Stirner at least, this can form the basis for a collective insurgency.

140
There is certainly nothing in either what I have said, or what Stirner and
Foucault have said, that rules this out. How else can we hope to challenge
the systems of power, surveillance, and domination in which we are all
increasingly being inscribed?

Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans.
Daniel Heller-Roazen. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 1998.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans.
Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1991.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. Collected
Works Vol. 5. New York: International; London: Lawrence & Wishart;
Moscow: Progress, 1976.
Newman, Saul. ”For Collective Social Action: Towards a Postmodern
Theory of Collective Identity.” Philosophy and Social Action 27.1 (2001):
37-47.
Stirner, Max. The Ego and Its Own. Ed. David Leopold. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP: 1995.
Zizek, Slavoj. ”The Spectre of Ideology.” The Zizek Reader. Ed. Elizabeth
Wright and Edmond Wright. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. 55-86.

http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.504/14.3newman.txt

141
Solitude and Freedom A Response
to Saul Newman on Stirner and
Foucault

Caleb Smith

2004
 In a recent essay on ”Stirner and Foucault,” Saul Newman brings these
”two thinkers not often examined together” into a conversation about free-
dom, coercion, and individual subjectivity. Newman uses Stirner and Fou-
cault to explore a discourse of freedom formulated by Kant and dominant
since the Enlightenment, a discourse based on universal moral abstrac-
tions that subtly coerce the mind even as they promise to liberate it. The
aim of Newman’s interrogation, as I understand it, is finally to disman-
tle these abstractions, and to imagine an individual freedom that would
not have an ”authoritarian obverse,” an oppressive shadow–a new free-
dom not chained to universal norms, but grounded in the world of power
and practice, in ”concrete and contingent strategies of the self.” My own
research into the modern prison and its cultural consequences has also ap-
proached Stirner and Foucault, also on the themes of freedom, coercion,
and the shape of the mind, and I’m glad to discover Newman’s work. This
essay is my effort to answer its provocations.
Max Stirner’s major text, The Ego and His Own, is long, strange, and
fitful–and the same can be said of its afterlife.39 Why revive Stirner now?
The answer must be, at least partly, strategic. The ”egoist,” Stirner writes,
”never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake:
the thing must serve him” (221). Similarly, The Ego and His Own is awak-
ened when it becomes useful, when it helps critics to oppose some oppres-
sive structure in their own time. Newman writes with this urgency; Kant
is a bogey-man in his critique because Kant’s theory of freedom seems to
Newman to be shaping contemporary discourse, dispensing an ”illusory”

39
Conceived in a revolutionary moment, in the European 1840s, the book attacks, by turns sneering
and raging, the authorities of religion and government and, as Newman shows, a version of Enlighten-
ment humanism. A few years later, Stirner himself becomes an authority under attack in Marx’s The Ger-
man Ideology, where Marx’s emergent materialism in philosophy and revolutionary politics defines itself
against the idealism of ”Saint Max” and his generation. In the late nineteenth century, Stirner enters and
helps to form Nietzsche’s writing, but he remains fairly obscure outside Germany until about 1907. In the
decade just before the Great War, a group of Anglo-American anarchists takes a new interest in Stirner as
a source of insight and energy. The American radicals Steven Byington and Benjamin Tucker produce a
translation, and Stirner’s work moves to the center of the early modernism developing in Dora Marsden’s
London journal, The Egoist. A Stirnerite anarcho-individualist cultural politics has been traced through
Marsden’s journal to the works of its contributors, among them Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Re-
becca West, Richard Aldington, H.D., Ford Madox Ford, Marianne Moore, D.H. Lawrence, and other exper-
imental writers. With the genesis of English modernism, Stirner is invoked as the spokesman of a radical
politics against the liberal state and against socialism, whose forms seemed, to Marsden, sentimental and
ineffectual. See Levenson and Clarke.

145
freedom, a disguised oppression, in our own present tense. But where
Newman wishes to reveal the hidden constraints in a theory of freedom–
a theory that, he intimates, has endured the modernist and postmodernist
ruptures and affects the present–I would measure Stirner’s worth against
a form of coercion that is partly hidden but not simply theoretical: the
modern prison built for solitary confinement. The Stirner-Foucault con-
nection becomes strongest and most material here, in relation to an op-
pressive form developed in Stirner’s time and given its definitive theoreti-
cal treatment by Foucault, a form that is being reborn and expanded right
now in the United States, in ”super-max” prisons and in the cells for sus-
pected ”enemy combatants” on Guantanamo Bay. If Stirner is going to be
roused and put to use again, it might be against these very ”concrete and
contingent” institutions of solitude and unfreedom.

Concreteness, contingency, ”this world”–material institutions and prac-

tices suggest themselves everywhere in Newman’s essay, but he gestures
toward them as if toward something half-real. The opposite of abstract
universals never quite takes a shape of its own. How might a contingent
liberation be achieved by real people? How might concrete freedom feel?
The trouble may be that escape from an abstract prison can only be, itself,
abstract. A metaphoric jailbreak–where can we hide from such guards,
except in another metaphor? But the prison is not only an idea. It is first
of all a concrete coercive institution. It is an architecture, a practice and a
policy with a specific history, and its history is not over. Today the United
States is involved in the reconstruction of solitary confinement on a mas-
sive scale, the largest experiment in coercive isolation since the middle
nineteenth century. The modern institution whose genesis was witnessed
by Stirner and carefully traced by Foucault is coming back in a postmod-
ern form. It is this return that gives the Stirner-Foucault connection its
urgency now.

I don’t wish to quarrel with Saul Newman. I’ll grasp and develop some
of his ideas and depart from others, but this is a correspondence, not an
attempt at correction. My thoughts are offered in a spirit of collaboration.

146
I
The modern prison takes shape in the American northeast between
1815 and 1840. Two rival ”systems,” ”Auburn” and ”Philadelphia,” emerge,
but their competition masks an underlying unity: both accept the crucial
idea of solitary confinement (Beaumont and Tocqueville 54-55; Foucault
237-39). The main line of cultural criticism since Foucault has developed
his formulations around the processes of surveillance and social control,
but just as important to the modern prison and to the Stirner-Foucault
connection is the architecture of solitude and, with it, the architectural
figure of the criminal soul conceived by reformers.
Prison reform, the discursive and political movement that transforms
institutions, is itself transformed by them. To break up conspiracies and
riots, to quarantine disease and contain sex, the architecture of solitude
is designed. Once established, the new architecture, in turn, changes the
meaning of solitude.40 From the engagement of reform discourse and cel-
lular architecture a new image of the criminal is conceived–a cellular soul.
This soul has its own internal architecture; it is divided and binds itself,
struggling to correct itself through ”reflection” into a redeemed and reuni-
fied entity. The spiritual ”cell” is the convict’s guilt, the flaw that corrupts
him; working to repair this flaw is his repentance, a corrective agency
within that masters guilt and reshapes the soul.
A crucial fiction of reform in the golden age of solitude is that the pris-
oner’s suffering is mainly spiritual. The real struggle of inmates against
the forces that hold them is sublimated, obscured, into the image of a di-
vided and self-binding soul struggling toward redemption. According to
reformers, it is not the granite walls, the guards and wardens, but the
convict’s private guilt that, in solitude, ”will come to assail him.” Self-
correction, in the discourse of reform, happens through a process of ”re-
flection”: ”thrown into solitude [the convict] reflects. Placed alone, in view
of his crime, he learns to hate it” (Beaumont and Tocqueville 55). Again,
a tactical reform is ennobled with spiritual imagery. Prisoners prove re-
sourceful and inventive in the use of objects as weapons, so any potential
weapon is removed from their reach. Cells are stripped of furniture, ac-
40
On the architecture of solitary confinement in modern prisons, see Evans and Johnston.

147
cessories, any adornment not biologically necessary and that cannot be
bolted to the floor. In the imagination of prison reform, this necessary re-
design becomes an aid to redemption: the bare walls become a ”reflective”
surface where the convict sees not a wall but the image of his guilt–what
the English reformer Jonas Hanway calls ”the true resemblance of [the
prisoner’s] mind” (65). The convict burns to repair this reflection, as if his
spiritual correction would liberate him from the torments of confinement.
Foucault traces the subtle consequences of reform’s alchemy:

solitude assures a sort of self-regulation of the penalty and

makes possible a spontaneous individualization of the pun-
ishment: the more a convict is capable of reflecting, the more
capable he was of committing his crime; but, also, the more
lively his remorse, the more painful his solitude; on the other
hand, when he has profoundly repented and made amends
without the least dissimulation, solitude will no longer weigh
upon him. (237)

The startling last turn is central to the mythology of reform. The cor-
rected criminal, though still confined to his cell and awaiting the end of
his sentence like any other, waits without suffering, without experiencing
his confinement as a punishment. He sits in the tranquility of his redemp-
tion, liberated from guilt. His soul is of a piece, no longer its own cell.
Despite his shackles, his forced labor, his bodily exposure to the various
tortures wielded by guards, the prisoner is already ”free.”
The modern prison, then, depends upon a cellular figure of the soul.
Stirner’s The Ego and His Own grasps precisely this figure, and subverts it.
Stirner’s contention is that the deviant, criminalized dimension of the soul
is really its better half, its true calling, while the spirit of ”repentance” is
an oppressive social force, conformity and obedience internalized. Stirner
protests solitary confinement, in other words, by a reversal, by turning
its figure of the cellular soul inside-out: ”turn to yourselves,” he preaches,
”rather than to your gods or idols. Bring out from yourselves what is in
you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to revelation” (211).
But Stirner’s protest, because it accepts a cellular architecture of the
soul, remains deeply bound to the fantasy of corrective solitude. Despite

148
a certain structural rearrangement, an inversion of values like a switching
of magnetic poles, the soul stays cellular, provoked to correct itself by an
authority (Stirner) promising a new redemption (”ownness”). Freedom is
a spiritual matter; as a consequence, the institutions that coerce people in
the material world disappear. Like the jailers he attacks, Stirner obscures
the violent struggle between inmates and their keepers.
Stirner’s critique of modern confinement would appear, in this light,
locked in an irresolvable conflict with the prison’s cellular figure of the
soul. The terms of redemption are reversed, but the soul remains its own
cell, still isolated and charged with the task of correcting itself: imprison-
ment remains an individual matter, and freedom a state of mind. What
saves The Ego and His Own from this stalemate is nothing but the work’s
fitfulness, the shifty self-disruption of Stirner’s prose and of his line of
thought. Just as the circle seems ready to close, as the prison is about
to complete its horizon around Stirner’s protest, there is an interruption,
a heave, and another possibility breaks open. Explicitly considering the
modern prison and the ”saintly” reformers who wish to introduce soli-
tary confinement, Stirner perceives an insurgent collectivity, a collabora-
tive uprising by inmates as the menace that these architects are trying to
exterminate. With this insight into origins, Stirner intimates that the same
possibility continues to hold a liberating promise. Not individual redemp-
tion but riotous, collective ”intercourse” now appears as the opposite of
solitary confinement:

That we jointly execute a job, run a machine, effectuate any-

thing in general,–for this a prison will indeed provide; but
that I forget that I am a prisoner, and engage in intercourse
with you who likewise disregard it, brings danger to the
prison, and not only cannot be caused by it, but must not even
be permitted. For this reason the saintly and moral-minded
French chamber decides to introduce solitary confinement,
and other saints will do the like in order to cut off ”demoraliz-
ing intercourse.” Imprisonment is the established and–sacred
condition, to injure which no attempt must be made. The
slightest push of that kind is punishable, as is every uprising

149
 against a sacred thing by which man is to be charmed and
chained. (287)

Stirner’s brief but important treatment of insurgent collectivity sug-

gests an absence in his own design, and in Newman’s. Between the iso-
lated, oppressed individual and the oppressive ”society” or ”authority” lies
a contested middle ground, where individuals might commune and move
together toward resistance: ”every union in the prison bears within it the
dangerous seed of a ’plot,’ which under favorable circumstances might
spring up and bear fruit” (287). I would develop Newman’s account by
restoring not just the material institutions of oppression, but also the pos-
sibility of collective uprising. Toward the material world, toward insur-
gent collectivity–critics of Stirner and Foucault have not generally seen
these two movements in their work41 ; Newman tries to make do with-
out them, but his undertaking will be incomplete, I believe, until they are
restored.
Stirner, when he considers the prison explicitly, becomes unusually
conscious of the material processes of coercion. The material ”space,” the
concrete ”building” of the prison, he writes, is what ”gives a common
stamp to those who are gathered in it” and ”determines the manner of life
of the prison society” (286). Similarly, Stirner and Foucault, faced with the
material prison, suggest that liberation might be achieved not by a solitary
turn inward, which the prison is built to enforce, but by communion and
riot. Edward Said, interrogating Foucault’s theory of power, insists that
”in human history there is always something beyond the reach of domi-
nating systems, no matter how deeply they saturate society, and this is
obviously what makes change possible, limits power in Foucault’s sense,
and hobbles the theory of that power” (216). Apparently against Foucault,
Said holds to ”some modest […] belief in noncoercive human community”
41
I refer specifically to Marx’s treatment of Stirner as a deluded idealist in The German Ideology and
to a series of responses to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish that includes Frederic Jameson and Edward
Said. Jameson, introducing his own periodizing thesis in Postmodernism, describes a ”winner loses” para-
dox in Foucault: <quote>the more powerful the vision of some increasingly total system or logic–the Fou-
cault of the prisons book is the obvious example–the more powerless the reader comes to feel. Insofar as
the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very
degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralyzed, and the impulses of negation
and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in
the face of the model itself. (5-6)</quote>

150
(217). But what Said misses is that the idea of insurgent collectivity, prison-
ers and the dominated communing and moving against their confinement,
is in Foucault’s own vision of the prison, just as it is in Stirner’s. ”In this
central and centralized humanity,” Foucault writes, ”the effect and instru-
ment of complex power relations, bodies and forces subjected by multiple
mechanisms of ’incarceration,’ […] we must hear the distant roar of battle”
(308).

II
Newman’s essay announces itself as more than an exercise in intellec-
tual history or a theoretical comparison; its Stirner-Foucault connections
work against oppressive, illusory models of freedom that ”continue to
dominate” in the present. Stirner and Foucault matter because they are
useful to us now in our efforts to imagine and realize freedom. I would fol-
low Newman here, and submit that the history of solitary confinement has
a new urgency in this postmodern moment. ”While society in the United
States gives the example of the most extended liberty,” wrote Beaumont
and Tocqueville in 1833, ”the prisons of the same country offer the spec-
tacle of the most complete despotism” (79). Today, as the United States
declares itself the worldwide defender of freedom, it incarcerates a higher
percentage of its own subjects than any other country, over two million
42
On these themes in general, and on the particular relation between Tocqueville’s study of the
American penitentiary and his study of Democracy in America, see Dumm.
43
The modern solitary prison had its golden age in the U.S. between 1820 and the Civil War. Even
during these years, solitude was never an established fact of life for most American prisoners; rather, 1820-
1860 marks the period when a faith in the corrective function of solitude and reflection dominated the
discourse of prison reform. This is the golden age of an institutional fantasy, the desire to rebuild American
discipline around solitude, the expressed belief that such a rebuilding was socially practical and that it
would, if achieved, produce a better society. With the Civil War, the dream of a solitary confinement regime
encountered vast new problems–in particular, vast new populations to incarnate. Captives taken in battle,
emancipated slaves, new waves of immigrants: these criminalized populations were far too large for the
existing reformed prisons, and authorities could not afford to build enough cells for them all. See Rotman,
especially pages 169-176. Still, isolation persisted in prisons, no longer as the standard confinement for
all convicts but as a special punishment for the unruly–or, more recently, as a technique of ”segregation”
to protect vulnerable inmates from the general population, or the vulnerable general population from the
”worst of the worst.” In the last quarter century, the days of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror,
American prison populations have doubled and then doubled again, yet solitary confinement has made a
surprising return.

151
in all (Shane).42 I make these connections not for the satisfaction of ”ex-
posing” some hypocrisy, but as a point of departure, a way of establishing
what is at stake in the relation between freedom and incarceration today.
At the entrance to the prison camp on Guantanamo Bay is a posted slogan:
”Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” (Conover 42).
We have in the United States a whole new generation of prisons built
for solitary confinement. The line connecting them to the penitentiaries
of the early-middle nineteenth century is not at all continuous–the last
thirty years have seen not so much an evolution as a rebirth and redef-
inition of the modern prison.43 The super-max prisons and the isolation
facility at Guantanamo represent the largest experiment in solitude since
the nineteenth century. Long discredited as a form of torture that actu-
ally ravages the minds it pretends to correct, displaced for a century and
a half by less expensive practices, solitude is suddenly a major part of cor-
rections again. And the criminal soul that lay dormant for so long is reap-
pearing with the cell, though both have been transformed by technology
and new power structures.
Built by Halliburton and operated by the U.S. military, the Guantanamo
Bay prison takes an acute interest in the psychic lives of its inmates. The
prisoner’s mind is to be carefully managed in an effort to extract its se-
crets. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson describes the balance: ”This is not a coercive
effort,” he says, ”because as you coerce people, they will tell you exactly
what they want you to hear–and that does us no good. We have to have
accuracy and facts, and people need to be willing to give you that. It takes
motivation, not coercion.” On the difference between motivation and co-
ercion, Johnson is evasive, except to offer the cryptic remark that ”fear is
very different than pain” (Conover 45). The high-tech solitary chambers in
super-max prisons also hold inmates for a complicated range of reasons,
some of them clearly political–Ray Luc Levasseur, convicted of bombing
a Union Carbide facility, was transferred to a solitary cell in Colorado’s
ADX super-max when he refused to work in a prison factory because the
coaxial cable produced there was for U.S. military use. According to offi-
cial policy, Levasseur had refused to perform labor necessary to his ”reha-
bilitation” (Franzen 219-20). The old criminal soul may not have expired
as a disciplinary tactic, after all.

152
 The sophisticated architecture and functioning of the new solitary pris-
ons raises more questions than I can hope to answer here, but these seem
to me the crucial questions for the contemporary value of Stirner and Fou-
cault, writers who engage and resist the solitary cell at its modern genesis.
The point is not to reveal some supposedly hidden mechanism, or to speak
with pious outrage, the usual tone of prison reform itself, which produced
the cell in the first place. But neither will these troubling questions be
quieted by Newman’s ”affirmation of the possibilities of individual auton-
omy within power” (my emphasis). What kind of insurgent collectivity
might develop inside a super-max unit? How do its technologies of depri-
vation and computerized video-surveillance connect to the old barren re-
flective surfaces and panoptic supervision? Finally, can theory shift from
the bound figure of the cellular soul, as Stirner and Foucault do, to a vision
of practical communion and collaborative resistance? My sense, only half-
formed, is that we might move toward a collective critical practice whose
proper adversary is not so much Immanuel Kant as the modern prison
and its postmodern reincarnations.
A curious reversal: solitary confinement falls from dominance during
a period of exploding convict populations; now, in another period of ex-
ploding numbers, it comes back. The trick, the difference, may lie in the
new economic structure of postmodern discipline. Many of the new soli-
tary prisons are built and operated by private contractors, paid by states
and by the federal government but working for profit. These businesses–
the two largest are the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and
Wackenhut–in turn, contribute to the campaigns of ”tough on crime” can-
didates, fund research into their own effectiveness, and lobby for longer,
more standardized sentencing rules like California’s ”three strikes” law.
Solitary confinement may be coming under private contracting for the
same reason it faded from its golden age: because it is expensive. (A note
to my Australian correspondent: Wackenhut runs prisons there, too.)
If the aim of privately contracted discipline is to increase construction
of new prisons, to incarcerate more people for longer periods of time be-
cause more prisoners now mean more business, more profits, higher stock
prices, then the postmodern turn would seem to be away from the inte-
rior life of the convict. Containment, an industry in itself, has less and less
interest in producing repentant souls, and mandatory sentencing rules ap-

153
pear to signal a shift away from ”individualized and individuating” correc-
tions. This characterization may well fit the majority of our prisons–but
the solitary lockdowns, I submit, are an exception, a special circumstance.
On the continuities and mutations in the history of American solitary
confinement, see Dayan’s compelling and haunting essay, ”Held in the
Body of the State.” On contemporary prison trends and the new solitary
facilities, see Parenti’s major study, Lockdown America, and Herivel and
Wright’s new edited collection, Prison Nation. Franzen’s essay, ”Control
Units” in How to Be Alone, is an elegant introduction. Studies of the new
Guantanamo Bay prison are harder to find, the circulation around it mon-
itored and controlled, but its mechanics and economics are interrogated
in Ted Conover’s ”In the Land of Guantanamo.”

Works Cited
de Beaumont, Gustave, and Alexis de Tocqueville. On the Penitentiary
System in the United States and Its Application in France. (1833). Trans.
Francis Lieber. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1964.
Clarke, Bruce. Dora Marsden and Early Modernism: Gender, Individu-
alism, Science. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1996.
Conover, Ted. ”In the Land of Guantanamo.” New York Times Sunday
Magazine 29 Jun. 2003: 40-45.
Dayan, Joan. ”Held in the Body of the State: Prisons and the Law.” His-
tory, Memory, and the Law. Eds. Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns. Ann
Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1999. 183-247.
Dumm, Thomas L. Democracy and Punishment: Disciplinary Origins
of the United States. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1987.
Evans, Robin. The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture,
1750-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans.
Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1977.
Franzen, Jonathan. ”Control Units.” How to Be Alone. New York: Farrar,
2002. 211-41.

154
 Hanway, Jonas. ”Distributive Justice and Mercy.” London: J. Dod-
sey, 1781. Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature 12217. New
Haven, CT.: Research Publications, 1976.
Herivel, Tara, and Paul Wright. Prison Nation: The Warehousing of
America’s Poor. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capi-
talism. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991.
Johnston, Norman. Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architec-
ture. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 2000.
Levenson, Michael. A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English
Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922. New York: Cambridge UP, 1984.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. The German Ideology. Collected
Works. Vol. 5. New York: International, 1975.
Newman, Saul. ”Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom.”
Postmodern Culture 13:2 (Jan. 2003). <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/post-
modern_culture/v013/13.2newman.html>
Parenti, Christian. Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age
of Crisis. London: Verso, 1999.
Rotman, Edgardo. ”The Failure of Reform: United States, 1865-1965.”
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in West-
ern Society. Eds. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman. New York: Oxford
UP, 1995.
Said, Edward. ”Traveling Theory.” The Edward Said Reader. Eds.
Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin. New York: Vintage, 2000.
Shane, Scott. ”Locked Up in the Land of the Free.” Baltimore Sun 1 June
2003 final ed.: 2A.
Stirner, Max. The Ego and His Own. Trans. Steven Byington. New York:
Tucker, 1907.

http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.504/14.3smith.html

155
Derrida’s Deconstruction Of
Authority

Saul Newman

2001
 Abstract: This article explores the political aspect of Derrida’s work, in
particular his critique of authority. Derrida employs a series of strategies to
expose the antagonisms within Western philosophy, whose structures of pres-
ence provide a rational and essentialist foundation for political institutions.
Therefore, Derrida’s interrogation of the universalist claims of philosophy
may be applied to the pretensions of political authority. Moreover, I argue
that Derrida’s deconstruction of the two paths of ‘reading’ — inversion and
subversion — may be applied to the question of revolutionary politics, to
show that revolution often culminates in the reaffirmation of authority. Der-
rida navigates a path between these two strategies, allowing one to formu-
late philosophical and political strategies that work at the limits of discourse,
thereby pointing to an outside. This outside, I argue, is crucial to radical pol-
itics because it unmasks the violence and illegitimacy of institutions and
laws.

159
 The political aspect of Jacques Derrida’s thinking, in particular his cri-
tique of authority, has been somewhat neglected. However his interro-
gation of rational and essentialist structures in philosophy makes his
work crucial to any contemporary critique of political institutions and
discourses, and indeed any understanding of radical politics. Derrida in-
stigates a series of strategies or ‘moves’ to unmask the suppressed an-
tagonisms and differences within the Western philosophical discourse
whose claims to universality, wholeness and lucid self-reflection have
been sounded since the time of Plato. His critique has important impli-
cations for political theory: his questioning of the claims of philosophy
may be applied to the claims of political institutions founded upon them.
Derrida’s discussion of the relation between metaphysical structures of
essence and presence and the hierarchies and dominations they make pos-
sible, as well as his critique of oppositional and binary thinking, allows his
work to be read as an assault on the place of power. The place of power
refers here to the tendency of radical political philosophies and move-
ments to reaffirm the very structures of authority they seek to overthrow.
However, the logic of deconstruction operates in a way that is somewhat
different from the poststructuralist logic of dispersal that characterizes
the work of such thinkers as Foucault and Deleuze. Derrida allows us to
explore the possibility of strategies of politics that refer to a radical ex-
teriority — an outside to power and authority. Through this outside one
can interrogate and resist authority without invoking another form of
authority in its place.

Deconstruction
‘Deconstruction’ is the term most commonly associated with Derrida
and, while it is a widely misunderstood and misused term, it will never-
theless be used here to describe the general direction of Derrida’s work.
Christopher Norris defines deconstruction as a series of moves, which in-
clude the dismantling of conceptual oppositions and hierarchical systems
of thought, and an unmasking of ‘aporias’ and moments of selfcontra-
diction in philosophy.44 It might be said that deconstruction is a way of
44
Christopher Norris, Derrida (London: Fontana Press, 1987), p. 19.

160
reading texts — philosophical texts — with the intention of making these
texts question themselves, forcing them to take account of their own con-
tradictions, and exposing the antagonisms they have ignored or repressed.
What deconstruction is not, however, is a philosophical system. Derrida
does not question one kind of philosophy from the standpoint of another,
more complete, less contradictory system. This would be, as I shall argue,
merely to substitute one kind of authority for another. This is a trap Der-
rida assiduously tries to avoid. He therefore does not come from a point
of departure outside philosophy. There is no essential place of outside
the system. Rather Derrida works within the discourse of Western phi-
losophy itself, looking for hidden antagonisms that jeopardize it. More-
over, his aim is not to undermine philosophy, as has often been claimed.
On the contrary, Derrida’s critique of philosophy is itself fundamentally
philosophical. By opening philosophy to this questioning, Derrida is being
faithful to the spirit of philosophy: unquestioning and slavish adulation
ultimately makes a mockery of philosophy. Deconstruction is, therefore,
a strategy of questioning philosophy’s claims to reflexive self-identity.
Deconstruction may be seen as a critique of the authoritarian struc-
tures in philosophy, in particular ‘logocentrism’ — that is, philosophy’s
subordination, throughout its history, of writing to speech. The privileg-
ing of speech over writing in philosophical texts is an example of what
Derrida calls the ‘metaphysics of presence’ in Western philosophy. It is an
indication of how far philosophy is still grounded in the metaphysical con-
cepts it claims to have transcended. Derrida points to Plato’s Phaedrus in
which writing is rejected as a medium for conveying and recording truth:
it is seen as an artifice, an invention which cannot be a substitute for the
authenticity and immediate presence of meaning associated with speech.
Where speech is seen as a means of approaching the truth because of its
immediacy, writing is seen as a dangerous corruption of speech — a lesser
form of speech, which is destructive of memory and susceptible to deceit.
Moreover, speech is associated with the authority of the teacher, while
writing is seen by Plato as a threat to this authority because it allows the
pupil to learn without the teacher’s guidance.45

45
ibid., p. 31.

161
 Derrida attacks this logocentric thinking by pointing out certain con-
tradictions within it. He shows that Plato cannot represent speech except
through the metaphor of writing, while at the same time denying that
writing has any real efficacy as a medium at all. As Derrida says: ‘it is not
any less remarkable here that the so-called living discourse should sud-
denly be described by a metaphor borrowed from the order of the very
thing one is trying to exclude from it.’46 Speech is, therefore, dependent
on the writing that it excludes. Writing is an example of the ‘logic of sup-
plementarity’: a supplement is excluded by presence, but is, at the same
time, necessary for the formation of its identity. Writing is thus a supple-
ment to speech: it is excluded by speech, but is nevertheless necessary
for the presence of speech. The unmasking of this logic of supplementar-
ity is one of the deconstructive moves employed by Derrida to resist the
logocentrism in philosophy. Speech claims to be a self-presence that is
immediate and authentic to itself, whereas writing is seen as diminishing
this presence. However, Derrida shows that this authenticity, this purity
of self-identity is always questionable: it is always contaminated by what
it tries to exclude. According to this logic no identity is ever complete or
pure: it is constituted by that which threatens it. Derrida does not want
to deny self-identity or presence: he merely wants to show that this pres-
ence is never as pure as it claims to be. It is always open to the other, and
contaminated by it.
This logic of supplementarity may be applied to the question of classical
revolutionary politics, which centres around an essential identity. Thus,
in Marxist discourse the proletariat is a revolutionary class whose identity
is essentially opposed to the political and social structures of capitalism.
Might it be argued, then, that these structures are actually a supplement
to proletarian identity itself, in the same way that writing is the supple-
ment to speech? Any identity of resistance would be highly problematic
if it was, in part, constituted by the very forces it professed to oppose.
Derrida’s critique throws into doubt the question of essential identity and
whether it can continue to be foundation for political action against power
and authority. Moreover his critique of self-identity forces us to confront

46
Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1981), p. 148.

162
the fact that power itself cannot be contained in stable identities — such as
the state, for instance. Rather power is an identity that is always unstable,
contingent and diffuse.
Derrida continues this critique of essential identity by showing not only
that its unity and purity are questionable, but also that it constitutes an
authoritarian identity. It establishes a series of hierarchical binary rela-
tionships in philosophy, in which one term is subordinated to another.
Derrida sees these as ‘violent hierarchies’. Logocentrism establishes the
binary hierarchy of speech/writing, in which writing is subordinated to
speech, representation to presence. Presence constitutes a form of textual
authority that attempts to dominate and exclude its supplement. However,
this authority is continually jeopardized by the excluded supplement be-
cause it is essential to the formation of the identity of the dominant term.
These binary structures nevertheless form a place of power in philosophi-
cal discourse. They provide the foundations for political domination. For
instance, Foucault argues that philosophy’s binary separation of reason/
unreason is the basis for the domination and incarceration of the mad.
Binary structures in philosophy perpetuate practices and discourses of
domination.

Inversion/subversion
It must be made clear, however, that Derrida does not simply want to
invert the terms of these binaries so that the subordinated term becomes
the privileged term. He does not want to put writing in the place of speech,
for instance. Inversion in this way leaves intact the hierarchical, authori-
tarian structure of the binary division. Such a strategy only reaffirms the
place of power in the very attempt to overthrow it. One could argue that
Marxism fell victim to this logic by replacing the bourgeois state with the
equally authoritarian workers’ state. This is a logic that haunts our radical
political imaginary. Revolutionary political theories have often succeeded
only in reinventing power and authority in their own image. However,
Derrida also recognizes the dangers of subversion — that is, the radical
strategy of overthrowing the hierarchy altogether, rather than inverting
its terms. For instance, the classical anarchist’s critique of Marxism went

163
along the lines that Marxism neglected political power — in particular the
power of the state — for economic power, and this would mean a restora-
tion of political power in a Marxist revolution. Rather, for anarchists, the
state and all forms of political power must be abolished as the first revolu-
tionary act. However, Derrida believes that subversion and inversion both
culminate in the same thing — the reinvention of authority, in different
guises. Thus, the anarchist critique is based on the Enlightenment idea of
a rational and moral human essence that power denies, and yet we know
from Derrida that any essential identity involves a radical exclusion or
suppression of other identities. Thus, anarchism substituted political and
economic authority for a rational authority founded on an Enlightenment-
humanist subjectivity. Both radical politico-theoretical strategies then —
the strategy of inversion, as exemplified by Marxism, and the strategy of
subversion, as exemplified by anarchism — are two sides of the same logic
of logic of ‘place’. So for Derrida:

What must occur then is not merely a suppression of all hi-

erarchy, for anarchy only consolidates just as surely the es-
tablished order of a metaphysical hierarchy; nor is it a simple
change or reversal in the terms of any given hierarchy. Rather
the Umdrehung must be a transformation of the hierarchical
structure itself.47

In other words, to avoid the lure of authority one must go beyond both
the anarchic desire to destroy hierarchy, and the mere reversal of terms.
Rather, as Derrida suggests, if one wants to avoid this trap the hierar-
chical structure itself must be transformed. Political action must invoke
a rethinking of revolution and authority in a way that traces a path be-
tween these two terms, so that it does not merely reinvent the place of
power. It could be argued that Derrida propounds an anarchism of his
own, if by anarchism one means a questioning of all authority, including
textual and philosophical authority, as well as a desire to avoid the trap
of reproducing authority and hierarchy in one’s attempt to destroy it.
This deconstructive attempt to transform the very structure of hierar-
chy and authority, to go beyond the binary opposition, is also found in
47
Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 81.

164
Nietzsche. Nietzsche believes that one cannot merely oppose authority
by affirming its opposite: this is only to react to and, thus, affirm the dom-
ination one is supposedly resisting. One must, he argues, transcend op-
positional thinking altogether — go beyond truth and error, beyond be-
ing and becoming, beyond good and evil.48 For Nietzsche it is simply a
moral prejudice to privilege truth over error. However, he does not try to
counter this by privileging error over truth, because this leaves the oppo-
sition intact. Rather, he refuses to confine his view of the world to this
opposition: ‘Indeed what compels us to assume that there exists any es-
sential antithesis between “true” and “false”? Is it not enough to suppose
grades of apparentness and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones
of appearance?’49 Nietzsche displaces, rather than replaces, these opposi-
tional and authoritarian structures of thought — he displaces place. This
strategy of displacement, similarly adopted by Derrida, provides certain
clues to developing a non-essentialist theory of resistance to power and
authority. Rather than reversing the terms of the binary opposition, one
should perhaps question, and try to make problematic, its very structure.

The end(s) of man

The prevalence of these binary structures indicates, according to Der-
rida, how much philosophy is still tied to metaphysics: it is still dominated,
in other words, by the place of metaphysics. In the same way, one might
argue that political theory is still dominated by the need for a place, for
some sort of essence that it has never had, and yet continually tries to
reinvent. The demand for a self-identical essence in politics and philos-
ophy would be, according to Derrida, the residue of the category of the
divine. God has not been completely usurped from philosophy, as has al-
ways been claimed. God has only been reinvented in the form of essence.
Derrida is influenced here by Nietzsche, who argues that as long as we
continue to believe absolutely in grammar, in essence, in the metaphysi-
48
See Alan D. Schrift, ‘Nietzsche and the Critique of Oppositional Thinking’, History of European
Ideas 11 (1989): 783–90.
49
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, Mx: Penguin,
1990), p. 65.

165
cal presuppositions of language, we continue to believe in God. As much
as we may claim the contrary, we have not ousted God from philosophy.
The place, the authority of the category of the divine remains intact, only
reinscribed in the demand for presence. For Derrida the Man of humanist
discourse has been reinscribed in the place of God:

What was named in this way was nothing other than the
metaphysical unity of Man and God, the relation of man to
God, the project of becoming God as the project of constitut-
ing human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this funda-
mental structure.50

This spectre of God-Man has yet to be exorcized from our midst. For
instance, Derrida shows that Heidegger’s notion of Being does not dis-
place the category of God-Man-Essence as it claims to have done: on the
contrary, Being merely reaffirms this place. The notion of Being is only a
reinscription of humanist Essence, just as Man was only a reinscription
of God. The authority, the place, of religion and metaphysics, remains in-
tact.51 Derrida’s analysis is important because it exposes the authoritari-
anism that still inhabits certain structures of thought. Moreover, it shows
that any kind of radical political theory must first be aware of its own
latent metaphysical structures, and therefore its own potential for domi-
nation.
Derrida argues that it is necessary to think the end of Man, without
thinking essence. In other words, one must try to approach the problem
of the end of Man in a way that avoids the perilous trap of place. Philos-
ophy’s proclamation of the death of Man does not entirely convince Der-
rida. So perhaps Foucault’s sounding of the death-knell of Man — when he
predicted that the figure of Man would disappear like a face drawn in the
sand at the edge of the sea — should be taken with a grain of salt.52 There
is still, at least for Derrida, the intransigent spectre of God-Man-Essence
that refuses to be exorcized: it remains as firmly entrenched in philosophy,
50
Jacques Derrida, ‘The Ends of Man’, in The Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Brighton, UK:
Harvester, 1982), p. 116.
51
ibid., p. 128.
52
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage,

166
and indeed in politics, as ever.53 Moreover, as Derrida has argued, it is not
possible to destroy this place. Heidegger, by positing a pre-ontological
Being to overcome metaphysics, has remained only more faithful to the
metaphysical tradition.54 This strategy of absolute rejection, as we have
seen already, never works: it merely reinvents authority in another form.
It constructs the dubious binary of authority-power/revolution, in which
revolution becomes potentially the new form of power.
However, have poststructuralists like Foucault and Deleuze fallen into
the same trap? It could be argued that Foucault’s dispersal of the subject
into sites of power and discourse, and Deleuze and Guattari’s fragmenta-
tion of the subject into an anarchic and haphazard language of machines,
parts and flows, are operations that deny radical politics a necessary point
of departure. So in their rejection of humanism, perhaps Foucault, and
Deleuze and Guattari, have paradoxically denied themselves the possibil-
ity of resistance against the domination they see as inextricably involved
in humanist discourse. Poststructuralism, in this sense, has left a theoret-
ical void in radical politics. Derrida points here to the limits of the post-
structuralist argument.

Beyond poststructuralism
Derrida allows us to re-evaluate the problem of humanism. He de-
scribes two possible ways of dealing with the problem of place in phi-
losophy — the two temptations of deconstruction. The first strategy is:

To attempt an exit and a deconstruction without changing

terrain, by repeating what is implicit in the founding con-
cepts and the original problematic, by using against the ed-
ifice the instruments or stones available in the house, that is,
equally, in language. Here, one risks ceaselessly confirming,
1973), p. 386.
53
Derrida plays upon this idea of spectre or ‘spirit’. See Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: the State
of Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994),
pp. 120–1.
54
Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida & the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 119.

167
 consolidating, relifting (relever), at an always more certain
depth, that which one allegedly deconstructs. The continuous
process of making explicit, moving toward an opening, risks
sinking into the autism of the closure.55

So this strategy of working within the discourse of Enlightenment hu-

manist metaphysics, using its terms and language, risks reaffirming and
consolidating the structure, the place of power, that one is trying to op-
pose. Derrida is talking here about Heidegger’s critique of humanism,
which, he argues, involved a replacement of Man with the equally essen-
tialist and metaphysical Being.
The second strategy, according to Derrida, is:

To decide to change terrain, in a discontinuous and irruptive

fashion, by brutally placing oneself outside, and by affirm-
ing an absolute break or difference. Without mentioning all
the other forms of trompe-l’oeil perspective in which such a
displacement can be caught, thereby inhabiting more naively
and strictly than ever the inside one declares one has deserted,
the simple practice of language ceaselessly reinstates the new
terrain on the oldest ground.56

This alternative move of making an absolute break with the discourse

of humanist metaphysics, of seeking an outside to which one can escape,
and from which one can resist authority, would represent the logic of
poststructuralism.57 Alan Schrift, for instance, sees this strategy in Fou-
cault’s The Order of Things.58 As I suggested before, Foucault and Deleuze
may be seen to be making an absolute break with humanism — dispers-
ing the subject into fragments and effects of discourses, machines, desires
and practices, etc. According to Derrida, this would have the same ef-
fect as the first strategy: by attempting a complete change of terrain one
55
Derrida, ‘The Ends of Man’, p. 135.
56
ibid.
57
Derrida says that this style of deconstruction is the one that ‘dominates France today’. See ibid.
58
Alan D. Schrift, ‘Foucault and Derrida on Nietzsche and the End(s) of “Man”’, in Exceedingly Niet-
zsche: Aspects of Contemporary Nietzsche-Interpretation, ed. David Farrell Krell and David Wood (London:
Routledge, 1988), p. 137.

168
only reaffirms one’s place within the old terrain. The more one tries to
escape the dominant paradigm, the more one finds oneself frustratingly
within it. This is because, in its over-hasty rejection of humanism and the
subject, poststructuralism has denied itself a point of departure for the-
orizing resistance to essentialist humanist discourses such as rationality.
Derrida argues that deconstruction — and for that matter, any form of
resistance against authority — is always caught between the Scylla and
Charybdis of these two possible strategies, and must therefore navigate a
course between them. These two strategies of deconstruction skewer polit-
ical theory: they are the two possible paths confronting anti-authoritarian
thought and action. They are both dominated by the threat of place.
Derrida can perhaps show us a way out of this theoretical abyss. There
may be a means of combining these two seemingly irreconcilable paths
in a way that allows radical politics to advance beyond the problematic of
metaphysics and humanism, without reaffirming these structures. Rather
than choosing one strategy over another, Derrida believes that we must
follow the two paths simultaneously.59 We must find a way of combining
or weaving these two possible moves, thereby transcending them. For in-
stance, as Alan Schrift argues, Derrida does not dispense with the category
of the subject — rather he seeks to displace, and re-evaluate, it.60 Rather
than think in terms of the end of Man, as Foucault does, Derrida refers to
the ‘closure’ of Man in metaphysics.61 The difference is that, for Derrida,
Man will not be completely transcended, but rather re-evaluated, perhaps
in terms of Nietzsche’s Higher Man.62 For Derrida, the authority of Man
will be decentred within language, but the subject will not be discarded
altogether. Derrida’s refusal to dispense with the subject points to a num-
ber of interesting possibilities for political thought: perhaps the category
of the subject can be retained as a de-centred, non-essentialist category,
existing as its own limit, thus providing a point of departure for politics.
By discarding Man so hastily, thinkers like Foucault and Deleuze have
perhaps neglected the possibility of his re-emergence in another form. So
Derrida’s critique works at the limits of this problematic, thereby pointing
59
ibid., p. 138.
60
ibid.
61
ibid., p. 145.
62
ibid.

169
beyond the possibilities of the poststructuralist argument. He suggests, for
instance, that the motif of difference is inadequate — while it claims to es-
chew essence, perhaps it only allows another essence to be formed in its
place.

Differance
Deconstruction tries to account for the suppressed, hidden differences
and heterogeneities in philosophical discourse: the muffled, half-stifled
murmurs of disunity and antagonism. Derrida calls this strategy ‘differ-
ance’ — difference spelt with an a, in order to signify that it is not an
absolute, essential difference. It is rather a difference or movement of dif-
ferences, whose identity as difference is always unstable, never absolute.
As Derrida says: ‘differance is the name we might give to the “active”,
moving discord of different forces, and of differences of forces … against
the entire system of metaphysical grammar.’63 Because differance does
not constitute itself as an essential identity of difference, because it re-
mains open to contingency, thereby undermining fixed identities, it may
be seen as a tool of anti-authoritarian politics: ‘It governs nothing, reigns
over nothing, and nowhere exercises any authority… Not only is there no
kingdom of differance, but differance instigates the subversion of every
kingdom.’64
This series of differences has a structure or, as Rodolphe Gasché argues,
an ‘infrastructure’.65 The infrastructure is a weave, an unordered combi-
nation of differences and antagonisms. It is a system, moreover, whose
very nature is that of a non-system: the differences that constitute it are
not dissolved by the infrastructure, nor are they ordered into a dialectical
framework in which their differences become only a binary relation of op-
posites.66 This is a ‘system’ of non-dialectical, non-binary differences: it
threads together differences and antagonisms in a way that neither orders
nor effaces them. Infrastructures are not essentialist: their very essence is
63
Derrida, The Margins of Philosophy, p. 18.
64
ibid., p. 22.
65
See Gasché, Tain of the Mirror, pp. 147–54.
66
ibid., p. 152.

170
that of a non-essence.67 It does not have a stable or autonomous identity,
nor is it governed by an ordering principle or authority. It is a ‘place’ that
eschews essence, authority and centrality: it is characterized by its very
inability to constitute an identity, to form a place. Moreover, its structural
inability to establish a stable identity is a threat to the authority of identity.
As Derrida says then:

There is no essence of the differance; not only can it not allow

itself to be taken up into the as such of its name or its appear-
ing, but it threatens the authority of the as such in general,
the thing’s presence in its essence.68

It is here also that Derrida goes beyond the poststructuralist argument.

While he employs a model of difference, as do Foucault and Deleuze, he
uses it in a slightly different way: differance refers back to some sort of
structure or infrastructure, some sort of unity constructed on the basis of
its own disunity, and constituted through its own limits. Because post-
structuralism lacks this idea of an infrastructure that remains structurally
open — even to the possibilities of the Same — it could be seen as essential-
izing difference. So paradoxically, maybe it is precisely because poststruc-
turalism lacks a structure or place, in the way that Derrida provides, that it
falls back into a place — a place constituted by essentialist ideas. Derrida’s
argument is pointing to the need for some kind of point of departure — not
one based on an essential identity — but rather one constructed through
the logic of supplementarity, and based on its own contaminatedness.
The infrastructure may be seen as a tool of anti-authoritarian thought: it
is a model which, by its own structural absence of place, by its own lack of
essence, undermines from within various structures of textual authority.
At its centre is an absence. It is ‘governed’ by a principle of undecidabil-
ity: it affirms neither identity nor non-identity, but remains in a state of
undecidability between the two. The infrastructure is a way of theorizing
difference that makes the formation of stable, unified identities in philos-
ophy impossible. It is also a model that allows thinking to transcend the
67
ibid., p. 150.
68
Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David
Allison (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 158.

171
binary structures that have limited it. So the aim of this strategy is not
to destroy identity or presence. It is not to affirm difference over iden-
tity, absence over presence. This would be, as I have suggested, to reverse
the established order, only to establish a new order. Difference would be-
come a new identity, and absence a new presence. The point of Derrida’s
thinking is not to seek the founding of a new order, but rather to seek the
displacement of all orders — including his own.
Derrida argues that the strategy of deconstruction cannot work entirely
within the structures of logocentric philosophy; nor can it work com-
pletely outside it. Rather, it traces a path of undecidability between the
two positions. In this way deconstruction avoids the trap of place. It es-
tablishes neither a place of power, nor a place of revolution — which, as I
have suggested, are two sides of the same logic of domination — but rather,
constructs a path between them, disrupting the identity of both terms. It
works from within the discourse and metaphysical structures of philoso-
phy, operating at its limits in order to find an outside.69 Deconstruction
cannot attempt an immediate neutralization of philosophy’s authoritarian
structures. Rather, it must proceed through a strategy of displacement —
what Derrida calls a ‘double writing’, which is a form of critique neither
strictly inside, nor strictly outside philosophy. It is a strategy of contin-
ually interrogating the self-proclaimed closure of this discourse. It does
this by forcing it to account for the excess which always escapes, and thus
jeopardizes this closure. For Derrida, this excess has nowhere to escape
to: it does not constitute a place of resistance and, once it escapes, it disin-
tegrates. This excess is produced by the very structures it threatens: it is a
supplement, a necessary, but at the same time, dangerous and wayward,
part of the dominant structure. This excess which deconstruction tries to
identify confronts philosophy with a limit to its limitlessness, a limit to its
closure. The proclaimed totality and limitlessness of philosophy is itself a
limit. However, its complete closure to what threatens it is impossible be-
cause, as deconstruction has shown, the thing that it attempts to exclude
is essential to its identity. There is a strange logic at work here, a logic
that continually impedes philosophy’s aspiration to be a closed, complete
system. Deconstruction unmasks this logic, this limit of the limit.
69
Rodolphe Gasché, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

172
 The limits that Derrida identifies are produced within the tradition of
philosophy — they are not imposed from a nihilistic, irrational outside.
As Derrida says: ‘The movements of deconstruction do not destroy struc-
tures from outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take
accurate aim, except by inhabiting those structures.’70 This positioning of
limits is important here because it points to the possibility of an outside
— an outside, paradoxically, on the inside. To position oneself entirely on
the outside of any structure as a form of resistance is only to reaffirm, in
a reversed way, what one resists. This idea, however, of an outside cre-
ated by the limits of the inside may allow us to conceive of a politics of
resistance which does not restore the place of power. So not only does
Derrida suggest a way of theorizing difference without falling back into
essentialism, he also point to the possibility of an outside.

The ‘outside’ of ethical responsibility

So this limit, this impossibility of closure, is perhaps, at the same time,
the constitution of a possible outside — an outside constructed from the
limitations and contradictions of the inside. These contradictions make
closure impossible; they open philosophical discourse to an Other. This is
a radical outside. It is not part of the binary structure of inside/outside and
it does not have a stable identity. It is not clearly divided from the Inside by
an inexorable line: its ‘line’ is continually reinterpreted, jeopardized, and
constructed by relations of antagonism. It is an outside that is finite and
temporary. Moreover, it is an outside that obeys a strange logic: it exists
only in relation to the inside that it threatens, while the inside exists only
in relation to it. Each is necessary for the constitution of the identity of
the other, while at the same time threatening the identity of the other. It
is therefore an outside that avoids the two temptations of deconstruction:
on the one hand, it is an outside that threatens the inside; on the other
hand, it is an outside that is formulated from the inside. Derrida makes
it clear that it cannot be seen as an absolute outside, as this would only
Press, 1994), p. * 28.
70
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1976), p. 24.

173
reconsolidate the inside that it opposes. The more one tries to escape to an
absolute outside, the more one finds oneself obstinately on the ‘inside’. As
Derrida says: ‘the “logic” of every relation to the outside is very complex
and surprising. It is precisely the force and the efficiency of the system
that regularly changes transgressions into “false exits”.’71
For Derrida, as we have seen, the notion of an absolute break, an abso-
lute transgression, which is central to classical revolutionary politics, is
only a reaffirmation of the ‘system’ one wishes to escape. Transgression,
as Derrida argues, can only be finite, and it cannot establish a permanent
outside:

… by means of the work done on one side and the other of

the limit the field inside is modified, and a transgression is
produced that consequently is nowhere present as a fait ac-
compli. One is never installed within transgression, one never
lives elsewhere.72

So deconstruction may be seen as a form of transgression, which, in

transgressing the limits of metaphysics, also transgresses itself.73 It af-
firms nothing, does not come from an oppositional outside, and dissipates
upon crossing this limit. It exposes the limits of a text by tracing the re-
pressed absences and discontinuities within the text — the excess that
the text fails to contain.74 In this sense, it is transgressive. However, it
is also a self-effacing movement — a transgression that cancels itself out.
Deconstruction neither affirms nor destroys the limit it ‘crosses’: rather it
re-evaluates it, reinscribing it as a problem, a question. This uncertainty as
to the limits of transgression — this undecidability, is the closest Derrida
comes to an outside.
This radical outside is, for Derrida, ethical. Philosophy has been opened
to what it excludes, to its other. The act of forcing philosophy to confront
its own structures of exclusion and repression, is a thoroughly ethical
gesture. Derrida is influenced here by Emmanuel Levinas, who tries to
71
ibid., p. 135.
72
Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (London: Athlone Press, 1981), p. 12.
73
See Michael R. Clifford, ‘Crossing (out) the Boundary: Foucault and Derrida on transgressing Trans-
gression’, Philosophy Today 31 (1987): 223–33.
74
ibid., p. 230.

174
think the limits of the Hegelian tradition by showing the point at which
it encounters the violence of an ethical outside, of an alterity that is eth-
ical in its exclusion and singularity. Levinas tries to transcend Western
philosophy, to rupture it by confronting it with the Other, the point of
irreducibility which will not fit into its structures.75 Deconstruction may
be seen, therefore, as an ethical strategy which opens philosophy to the
other. It tries to step, if only for an instant, beyond the confines of reason
and historical necessity, and this ‘stepping beyond’, this momentary trans-
gression, constitutes an ethical dimension — an ethics of alterity. Derrida
writes:

To ‘deconstruct’ philosophy, thus, would be to think — in a

most faithful, interior way — the structured genealogy of phi-
losophy’s concepts, but at the same time to determine — from
a certain exterior that is unqualifiable or unnameable by phi-
losophy — what this history has been able to dissimulate or
forbid, making itself into a history by means of this some-
where motivated repression.76

This questioning of philosophy does not lead to the moral nihilism that
deconstruction has often been accused of promoting. As John Caputo ar-
gues, deconstruction is a strategy of responsibility to the excluded other.
Unlike hermeneutics, which tries to assimilate difference into the order
of the same, of Being, deconstruction tries to open a space for difference.
Derrida’s thinking is, therefore, a responsible anarchy, not an irresponsi-
ble anarchy as some have claimed.77 Deconstruction, then, is by no means
a rejection of ethics, even when it questions moral philosophy: rather, it is
a re-evaluation of ethics.78 It shows us that moral principles cannot be ab-
solute or pure: they are always contaminated by what they try to exclude.
Good is always contaminated by evil, reason by unreason. What Derrida
75
See John Lechte, Fifty Contemporary Thinkers: from Structuralism to Postmodernity (London: Rout-
ledge, 1994), p. 117.
76
Derrida, Positions, p. 6.
77
See John Caputo’s ‘Beyond Aestheticism: Derrida’s Responsible Anarchy’, Research in Phenomenol-
ogy 18 (1988): 59–73.
78
Richard Kearney, ‘Derrida’s Ethical Re-Turn’, in Working Through Derrida, ed. Gary B. Madison
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993, p. 30).

175
questions is the ethics of morality: if morality becomes an absolute dis-
course, then can it still be considered moral or ethical? Deconstruction
allows us to open the realm of ethics to reinterpretation and difference,
and this opening is itself ethical. It is an ethics of impurity. If morality is
always contaminated by its other — if it is never pure — then every moral
judgement or decision is necessarily undecidable. Moral judgement must
always be selfquestioning and cautious because its foundations are not ab-
solute. Unlike much moral philosophy grounded on the firm foundations
of human essence, deconstructive ethics has no such privileged place and,
therefore, enjoys no such self-assurance.

Law, justice and authority

The undecidability of judgement, which is the necessary outcome of a
deconstructive critique, has implications for political discourses and insti-
tutions, particularly the institution of law. Derrida argues that the author-
ity of law is questionable and, to a certain extent, illegitimate. This is be-
cause the authority that supposedly grounds law is legitimized only when
law is instituted. That means that the authority upon which law is estab-
lished is, strictly speaking, non-legal, because it had to exist prior to law.
Therefore, the original act of instituting law is an illegitimacy, a violence:
‘Since the origin of authority, the foundation or ground, the position of
the law can’t by definition rest on anything but themselves, they are them-
selves a violence without ground.’79 Like Foucault, Derrida shows that the
origins of laws and institutions are violent — they are antagonistic and
without essential ground. This does not mean that the origins of law are
illegal: because they are prior to law, they are neither legal nor illegal.80
Rather, the legitimacy of law is undecidable. A deconstructive interroga-
tion of law reveals the absence, the empty place at the base of the edifice
of law, the violence at the root of institutional authority. The authority of
law can, therefore, be questioned: it can never reign absolute because it is
contaminated by its own foundational violence. This critique allows one
79
Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority’, Deconstruction & the Possi-
bility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 3–66 (p. 14).
80
ibid.

176
to interrogate any institutional and political discourse that claims to rest
on the authority of the law, and this makes it an invaluable tool of radical
anti-authoritarian politics.
However, as Derrida argues, deconstruction cannot have as its aim the
complete destruction of all authority: this only succumbs, as we have seen,
to the logic of place. As Derrida says, the two temptations of deconstruc-
tion can be likened to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the alternate paths of
the general strike — to replace the state or to abolish it:

For there is something of the general strike, and thus of the

revolutionary situation in every reading that founds some-
thing new and that remains unreadable in regard to estab-
lished canons and norms of reading, that is to say the present
state of reading or what figures the State, with a capital S, in
the state of possible reading.81

In this sense, then, deconstruction may be seen as a strategy of resis-

tance against the authority of meaning — the state — in the text of philos-
ophy, just as other struggles might resist the state in the ‘text’ of politics.
Indeed, there is no point separating the deconstruction of philosophical
texts from the deconstruction of power: the two realms of struggle are in-
extricable because political authority is dependent upon its sanctioning by
various texts, such as those by Hobbes, and by the logocentric discourse
of reason. The deconstructive moment is a ‘revolutionary’ moment in this
sense.
However, if one is to avoid re-establishing the authority of law in one’s
struggle against it, then law must be distinguished from justice. Law, for
Derrida, is merely the general application of a rule, while justice is an
opening of law to the other, to the singularity which law cannot account
for. Justice exists in a relation of alterity to law: it opens the discourse of
law to an outside. It performs a deconstructive displacing of law. For a
decision to be just, for it to account for the singularity denied by law, it
must be different each time. It cannot be the mere application of the rule
— it must continually reinvent the rule. Therefore, justice conserves the
law because it operates in the name of the law; but at the same time, it
81
ibid., p. 37.

177
suspends the law because it is being continually reinterpreted. As Derrida
says: ‘for a decision to be just and responsible, it must … be both regulated
and without regulation: it must conserve the law and also destroy it or
suspend it enough to have to reinvent it in each case, re-justify it.’82
Justice, moreover, exists in an ethical realm because it implies freedom
and responsibility of actions.83 Justice is the experience of the impossible
because it always exists in a state of suspension and undecidability. It is
always incalculable: the promise of something yet to come, which must
never be completely grasped or understood, because if it is it would cease
to be justice and become law. As Derrida says: ‘There is an avenir for jus-
tice and there is no justice except to the degree that some event is possible
which, as an event, exceeds calculation, rules, programs, anticipations.’84
Justice is an event that opens itself to the other, to the impossible. Its ef-
fects are always unpredictable because it cannot be determined, as law
can, by an a priori discourse. It is an excess which overflows from law
and cannot be grasped by it. Justice functions as an open, empty signifier:
its meaning or content is not predetermined. Derrida’s notion of justice
is without a pre-determining logic, a justice whose very structure is gov-
erned by a lack, an emptiness which leaves it open to reinterpretation and
contestation.

The politics of emancipation

Justice occupies a politico-ethical dimension that cannot be reduced
to law or institutions, and it is for this reason that justice opens up the
possibility for a transformation of law and politics.85 This transformation
though is not an absolute rejection of the existing order, because this leads
only to the founding of a new order. It is much more radical than that: it
is a refounding of political and legal discourse in a way that unmasks the
violence and lawlessness of its origins, and lack of legitimate ground, thus
leaving it open to continual and unpredictable reinterpretation. This logic
82
ibid., p. 23.
83
ibid., pp. 22–3.
84
ibid., p. 27.
85
ibid.

178
of unmasking — which is a political logic par excellence — may be applied
to our political reality to expose its limits. This is not to reject our contem-
porary political discourses but, rather, to reinterpret and re-evaluate them.
For instance, the discourse of emancipation, which has been with us since
the French Revolution, should not be rejected but, rather, reformulated.
While the Enlightenment-humanist ideal of emancipation has the poten-
tial for becoming a discourse of domination — through its essentialization
of rational and moral categories — it can also become a discourse of liber-
ation if it can be unmoored from its essentialist foundations and radically
refounded as a non-essentialist, constitutively open political signifier. As
Derrida says:

Nothing seems to me less outdated than the classical eman-

cipatory ideal. We cannot attempt to disqualify it today,
whether crudely or with sophistication, at least not without
treating it too lightly and forming the worst complicities. But
beyond these identified territories of juridico-politicisation
on the grand political scale, beyond all self-serving interpre-
tations … other areas must constantly open up that at first
seem like secondary or marginal areas.86

One could argue that because poststructuralism abandons the human-

ist project, it robs itself of the possibility of utilizing the politico-ethical
content of this discourse for theorizing resistance against domination. In
other words, it has thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
Because Derrida, on the other hand, does not rule out the Enlightenment-
humanist project, he does not deny himself the emancipative possibilities
contained in its discourses. Nor should radical politics deny itself these
possibilities. Derrida suggests that we can free the discourse of emanci-
pation from its essentialist foundations, thereby expanding it to include
other political struggles hitherto regarded as of little importance. In other
words, the discourse of emancipation can be left structurally open, so that
its content would no longer be limited or determined by its foundations.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man, for instance, may be expanded to
encompass the rights of women, sexual and ethnic minorities, and even
86
ibid., p. 28.

179
animals.87 The logic of emancipation is still at work today, although in
different forms and represented by different struggles.
The question of rights reflects upon the differences between deconstruc-
tive politics and classical revolutionary politics. Both strategies have a no-
tion of political rights and a form of emancipative struggle on the basis
of these rights. The difference is, though, that classical revolutionary pol-
itics sees these rights as essential and founded in natural law, while the
politics of deconstruction would see these rights as radically founded: in
other words, these rights are without stable foundations and, therefore,
their content is not prefixed. This leaves them open to a plurality of dif-
ferent political articulations. A deconstructive analysis questions the idea
of natural, inalienable rights. Derrida, for instance, in his critique of lib-
eral social contract theory, argues that these ‘natural’ rights are actually
constituted discursively through the social contract and that, therefore,
they cannot claim to be natural.88 These rights, then, are displaced from
the social to the natural realm, and the social is subordinated to the nat-
ural, just as writing is subordinated to speech. As Derrida argues in his
critique of Rousseau, the social is the supplement that threatens, and at
the same time is necessary for, the identity of the natural: the idea of natu-
ral rights can be formulated only discursively through the contract. There
is no pure natural foundation for rights, and this leaves them open to
change and reinterpretation. They can no longer remain inscribed within
human essence and, therefore, can no longer be taken for granted. If they
are without firm foundations, one cannot always assume that they will
continue to exist. They must be fought for and, in the process, will be
reformulated by these struggles.

Derrida’s an-archy
It is through this form of deconstructive logic that political action be-
comes an-archic. An-archic action is distinguished here from classical an-
archist politics — the anarchism of Kropotkin and Bakunin — which is gov-
87
ibid.
88
Michael Ryan, ‘Deconstruction and Social Theory: the Case of Liberalism’, in Working Through
Derrida, ed. Madison, p. 160.

180
erned by an original principle such as human essence or rationality. While
it is conditioned by certain principles, an-anarchic action is not necessar-
ily determined or limited by them. An-archic action is the possible out-
come of a deconstructive strategy aimed at undermining the metaphysical
authority of various political and philosophical discourses. Reiner Schur-
mann defines an-archic action as action without a ‘why?’.89 However, a
deconstructive notion of an-archy might be somewhat different: it might
be seen as action with a ‘why?’ — that is, action forced to account for
itself and question itself, not in the name of a founding principle, but in
the name of the deconstructive enterprise which it has embarked upon. In
other words, an-archic action is forced to account for itself, just as it forces
authority to account for itself. It is this selfquestioning that allows politi-
cal action to resist authority, to avoid becoming what it opposes. So this
notion of an-archism may be seen as making radical politics account for
itself, making it aware of the essentialist and potentially dominating pos-
sibilities within its own discourse. Moreover, through some of the decon-
structive moves and strategies outlined above, an-anarchism seeks to free
radical politics from essentialist categories that inevitably limit it. Der-
rida’s unmasking of the authority and hierarchy that continue to inhabit
Western thought, as well as his outlining of various strategies to counter
them, have made this an-archist intervention possible.
Derrida occupies a number of crucial terrains in the radical imaginary,
and has capital consequences for anti-authoritarian politics. Through the
unmasking and deconstruction of the textual authority of logocentrism,
Derrida allows us to develop a critique, using the same logic, of the con-
temporary political institutions and discourses based on this authority.
He also shows us that no identity is pure and closed — it is always con-
taminated by what it excludes. This undermines oppositional politics, be-
cause identity is in part constituted by what it opposes. More importantly,
through the various deconstructive strategies and moves that Derrida em-
ploys, he allows us to examine the subtle and pernicious logic of the place
of power — the propensity for radical politics to reaffirm the authority
it seeks to overthrow. He points to the limits of the two possible strate-

89
Reiner Schurmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, trans. Christine-
Marie Gros (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 10.

181
gies of radical politics — inversion and subversion — showing that they
both culminate in the reaffirmation of authoritarian structures and hierar-
chies. That is to say, they both fall victim to the logic of the place of power.
These strategies are the two poles that skewer radical political theory. Der-
rida, however, shows a means of transcending this impasse by weaving
together subversion and inversion, affirmation and absolute rejection, in
a way that re-evaluates these terms, and thus displaces place. In doing so,
he goes beyond the problematic of poststructuralism by retaining Man as
his own limit — leaving him constitutively open to a radical outside. This
notion of an outside constructed through the limits of the inside — the
limits of philosophy and politics — is central to any understanding of the
political. It constitutes a politico-ethical dimension of justice and eman-
cipation, which works at the limits of the law and authority, unmasking
its hidden violence, and destabilizing institutions that are based on it. Der-
rida’s political thinking may be seen, then, as an an-archism, an interroga-
tion of authority, a politico-ethical strategy which questions even its own
foundations, and forces us to re-evaluate the limits of our contemporary
political reality.
Macquarie University, Department of Sociology, Sydney, Australia
 

Retrieved on September 14, 2009 from www.infoshop.org

Originally appeared in Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol 27, no 3.

182
Anarchist Meditations, or: Three
Wild Interstices of Anarchism
and Philosophy

Alejandro de Acosta

2010
Abstract
Philosophers allude to anarchist practices; philosophers allude to an-
archist theorists; anarchists allude to philosophers (usually in search of
theory to add to the canon). What is missing in this schema, I note with
interest, is anarchists alluding to philosophical practices. These are the
wild interstices: zones of outlandish contact for all concerned.

Todo está ya en su punto, y el ser persona en el mayor.

Conocer las cosas en su punto, en su sazón, y saberlas lograr.
— Baltasar Gracián

Failure and the Third

I dare to call certain turbulent interstices of anarchy and philosophy
wild. I feel that there is a lot of activity there, but not (yet) along pre-
dictable lines. For some time now, those interested have been hearing
about several other such interstices: tamer ones, from my point of view.
Or at least more recognizable. So let us play the familiar game of theory
and practice, that game in which we presuppose them as separate and
seek to claim them reunited. From within the play of this game, the tame
interstices are variations on the following moves: philosophers allude to
anarchist practices; philosophers allude to anarchist theorists; anarchists
allude to philosophers (usually in search of theory to add to the canon).
What is missing in this schema, I note with interest, is anarchists alluding
to philosophical practices. These are the wild interstices: zones of out-
landish contact for all concerned, I think.
But there are other games to play, even if they are only innocent games
of exposition. I think it is important and interesting to stop presuppos-
ing separation, to dissolve its painful distribution of thinking and action.
That is, we might hazard the risky game (which is also an experience, an
exercise) in which there are no theories, no practices; just more or less re-
90
I feel strongly about those last two phrases. But I would add that such experiments should interest
us in philosophy outside of universities and anarchism — better, anarchy — beyond activist groups.

185
markable enactments of ways of life, available in principle to absolutely
anyone, absolutely anywhere.90
Anecdotally, these reflections have a double genesis. The first occurred
some years ago, when I was asked at an anarchist gathering to partic-
ipate in a panel on “anarchism and post-structuralism.” It was around
the time some began speaking of and writing about post-anarchism. The
conversation failed, I think, in that no one learned anything. Of the four
speakers, two were roughly in favour of engaging with post-structuralism
and two against. I write roughly because we seemed to agree that “post-
structuralism” is at best an umbrella term, at worst a garbage term, not
acknowledged by most of the authors classed within it, and not partic-
ularly helpful in conversations such as that one. As if there really were
two massive aggregates on either side of the “and” we were being asked
to discuss! Indeed, the worst possible sense that something called post-
anarchism could have would be the imaginary collusion of two crudely
conceived imaginary aggregates. During the discussion, a participant
asked the panel a question: “how do post-structuralist anarchists orga-
nize?” Of course the question went unanswered, though some of us tried
to point out that there just aren’t, and cannot be, post-structuralist anar-
chists in the same sense that there are or may be anarcho-communists or
anarcha-feminists or primitivists, etc. The operative reason was that our
interlocutor seemed to be (involuntarily?) imagining post-structuralism
as a form of theory, and anarchism primarily as a form of practice with
no spontaneous or considered theory of its own. This is a variant of the
familiar schema of separation, in which theory offers the analysis that
informs practices, a.k.a. “organizing.” No go.
That night, I also posed a question, one that went unanswered: “is there
a third?” I meant to ask both about the status of anarchism and post-
structuralism as massive, clumsy imaginary aggregates, and also about
the presupposed separation in their implicit status as forms of practice
and theory. Or perhaps merely to hint at the unacknowledged efficacity
of the and, its silent labour, its gesture towards possible experiences. What
I have to say here is my own attempt to answer that question as provoca-
tively as possible. I will begin with this claim (which I think does not pre-
suppose separation): it is precisely the apparent political failures of what
I am now glad to have done with referring to as post-structuralism that

186
could make certain texts and authors interesting. And it is precisely the
supposed theoretical failures of what it is still a little silly to call anarchism
that could make its peculiar sensibilities attractive.
Indeed, the great and continuing interest of anarchism for philosophers
(and for anarchists, if they are willing to learn this lesson) could be that it
has never successfully manifested itself as a theoretical system. Every at-
tempt at an anarchist system is happily incomplete. That is what I suppose
concerned our interlocutor that night: he was worried, perhaps, about the
theoretical insufficiency of anarchism compared with what appeared to
be an overwhelming array of theories and concepts on the other side. In
this anxious picture, the array seeks to vampirically attach itself to what-
ever practice, interpreting, applying itself to, dominating, ultimately, its
motions. ‘Theories without movements: run!’ I would prefer to invert the
terms and claim the apparent theoretical weakness of anarchism as one of
its greatest virtues. For its commonplaces (direct action, mutual aid, soli-
darity, affinity groups, etc.) are not concepts but forms of social practice.
As such, they continually, virally, infect every even remotely extraparlia-
mentary or grassroots form of political action. And, beyond politics, they
compose a kind of interminable reserve of social intelligence. In all this
they neither require a movement to become manifest nor compose one
by default of tendentially existing. In this sense, what anarchism offers
to philosophers (to the philosophers any of us are or might be) is that it
has been and remains primarily a way of life. Its asystematicity and its
persistent recreation as a way of life probably account for the fact that
anarchism, as theory, has never been incorporated into or as an academic
discipline.91
Anarchism acts as an untimely echo of how philosophy was once lived,
and how, indirectly and in a subterranean fashion, it continues to be lived.

91
Cf., David Graeber’s remarks in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004: 2–7). One might also
consider here Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, proposed, among other places, in The Other Side of Psy-
choanalysis: first, in his problematization of the status of psychoanalysis in its relation to the university dis-
course (there are interesting parallels with what I have written about anarchist theory); secondly, in light
of the connections he implies between the hysterical discourse, the master’s discourse, and revolutionary
movements. To show the singular status of the analyst’s discourse, Lacan often provoked his audience by
wondering aloud if there were any analysts. My way of adopting this humorous provocation would be to
ask if there are any anarchists. Finally, I recall here Monsieur Dupont’s text on experience: “Nobody can
be an anarchist in the sense that the ideology of anarchism proposes” (Nihilist Communism, 2009: 202).

187
And, paradoxically, we might learn something about how it is lived by
reference to philosophical practices.

Dramatization: Wild Styles

Practices, or simply philosophy as a way of life: that is the second gen-
esis of what I have to say here. This idea crystallized in studying, of all
things, the ancient Stoics. Seeking to give a (pedagogical) sense to Stoic
logic, physics, and ethics as a lived unity and not as components of what
they already called a “theoretical discourse,”92 I had recourse to the elabo-
ration of the practice of spiritual exercises by Pierre Hadot. He describes
them as follows: “practices which could be physical, as in dietary regimes,
or discursive, as in dialogue and meditation, or intuitive, as in contempla-
tion, but were all intended to effect a modification and a transformation in
the subject who practised them” (Hadot, 2005: 6).93 Or, again: “The philo-
sophical act is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of
the self and of being. It is a progress which causes us to be more fully,
and makes us better. It is a conversion which turns our entire life up-
side down, changing the life of the person who goes through it” (Hadot,
1995: 83). Briefly, it’s that every statement that is still remarkable in the
fragments and doxographical reports is so in light of its staging (dramati-
zation, theatricalization) as part of a meditative practice that might have
been that of a Stoic.
Hadot offers several examples from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
demonstrating that logic and physics, the purportedly theoretical compo-
nents of Stoicism, were already and immediately part of ethical practice.
Logic as a “mastery of inner discourse” (Hadot, 2005: 135): “always to de-
fine or describe to oneself the object of our perception so that we can grasp
its essential nature unadorned, a separate and distinct whole, to tell one-
self its particular name as well as the names of the elements from which
it was made and into which it will be dissolved” (Aurelius, 1983: III, 11).
Physics as “recognizing oneself as part of the Whole” (Hadot, 2005: 137),
92
That is, philosophical logos. See Diogenes Laërtius, in The Stoics Reader, 8. I was trying to teach that
these spiritual exercises cannot be taught, only modelled and perhaps imitated.
93
The discursive and intuitive senses indicated in the definition are the most relevant here.

188
but also the practice of seeing things in constant transformation: “Acquire
a systematic view of how all things change into one another; consistently
apply your mind to, and train yourself in, this aspect of the universe” (Au-
relius, 1983: X, 11).
I contend that such spiritual exercises are theories dramatized as sub-
jective attitudes. As the pivot of the whole system or at least of its com-
prehensibility as such, the role of logic and physics for the Stoics must
have been precisely that of a training for ethical thought and action. But
in some sense the converse is even more compelling: subjective attitudes,
their theatre, seem to secrete theory as a detritus in need of being taken
up again — precisely in the form of a new or repeated exercise, a renewed
dramatization. Setting aside the labyrinthine complications of the entan-
glement with what is still badly understood as Fate, I would like to retain
this much of Stoic ethics in my anarchist meditations: to find if there is
anything to affirm in what confronts us, what we encounter. Conclud-
ing a recent essay, I shared a desire “to affirm something, perhaps all, of
our present conditions, without recourse to stupid optimism, or faith” (de
Acosta, 2009: 34). I would like to speculatively expand on the practice of
such affirmations. As Gilles Deleuze once put it: “either ethics makes no
sense at all, or this is what it means and has nothing else to say: not to
be unworthy of what happens to us”94 (Deleuze, 1990: 49). What we en-
counter cannot but provoke thought; if it can, meaning, if we allow it to,
there is something to affirm, and this affirmation is immediately joyful.
How we might thoughtfully allow events, places, actions, scenes, phrases
— “what happen to us,” in short — to unfold in the direction of joy is the
explicit or implicit question of every spiritual exercise.
 
I propose, then, an interlinked series of fantastic spiritual exercises:
meditations for anarchists — or on anarchy. They have, I suppose, been im-
plicit in every significant anarchist discourse so far (including, of course,
the many that have not called themselves anarchist) (cf., de Acosta, 2009).
They have been buried, indirect, assumed but unstated, in these discourses.
Or at least in much of their reception. In each of these three forms (or

94
Or, more obscurely: “not being inferior to the event, becoming the child of one’s own events”
(Deleuze, 1987: 65).

189
styles) of exercise what is pivotal is some use of the imagination — at least
the imaginative-ideational uptake, Stoic phantasia or phantasma, of writ-
ten or spoken discourse, and of what is given to thought in experience.95
So, we are concerned here with experiential dispositions, attitudes that at
first seem subjective but are ultimately prior to the separation of subject
and object, and perhaps even of possible and real.
Whatever happens, these exercises are available. I will not opine on
their ultimate importance, especially not on their relevance to existing
movements, groups, strategies, or tactics. In what fashion and to what
degree any of these exercises can be applied to another activity — if that
is even possible — is ultimately up to any of us to decide upon in the
circumstances that we find ourselves in, or through situations that we
create. The status of these meditations is that of a series of experiments,
or experiences, whose outcome and importance is unknown at the outset
and perhaps even at the conclusion.
I will have recourse in what follows to texts and authors that preceded
what is now called anarchism, or were, or are, its difficult contemporaries,
so as to underline that what matters in anarchist meditations are the atti-
tudes that they make available, not any actual or possible theory or group
that they may eventually secrete. The secret importance of anarchy is
the short-circuit it interminably introduces between such attitudes and
action, and back — what is badly conceived as spontaneity. (Or worse,
“voluntarism,” in the words of our enemies…)
Perhaps, then, the truly compelling reason to call the three forms of
meditation wild styles is that anarchists have no archon, no school, no
real training in or modelling of these activities outside of scattered and
temporary communities and the lives of unusual individuals. But they
can and do happen: interminably, yes, and also informally, irregularly, and
unpredictably. That is their interest and their attraction.

First Wild Style: Daydream

A Daydream may take the form of a meditative affirmation that informs
how we might read so-called utopian writers. Of these I will discuss the ab-
95
On phantasia and phantasma, see Inwood & Gerson (2008: 12). As will become evident further on,

190
solutely most fascinating. It is Fourier, with his taxonomy of the passions;
with his communal phalansteries; with his tropical new earth, aigresel
oceans, and kaleidoscopic solar system; ultimately, with his Harmonian
future. What are we to do today with such a discourse? A version of this
first wild style is beautifully laid out in the following remarks by Peter
Lamborn Wilson:

Fourier’s future would impose an injustice on our present,

since we Civilizees cannot hope to witness more than a fore-
taste of Harmony, if it were not for his highly original and
somewhat mad eschatology. […] One of the things we can
do with Fourier’s system is to hold it within our conscious-
ness and attention in the form of a mandala, not question-
ing whether it be literally factually true, but whether we can
achieve some sort of “liberation” through this strange medi-
tation. The future becoming of the solar system, with its re-
arrangement of planets to form dances of colored lights, can
be visualized as a tantric adept uses a yantra of cosmogenic
significance, like a Sufi meditation on “photisms” or series
of visionary lights, to focus and integralize our own individ-
ual realization of the potential of harmony within us, to over-
come our “prejudices against matter, which is represented to
us as a vile principle” by philosophers and priests (Lamborn,
1998: 17–17).

From which I would like to retain at least the following: first, we can
affirm nothing in the present unless we acknowledge that the future is
unthinkable, unimaginable. Fourier did write, after all, that if we sorry
Civilizees could grasp the ramifications of the entire Combined Order, we
would be immediately struck dead (Fourier, 1996: 67). (This, by the way,
seems to be why he was more given to examples about Harmonian ban-
quets than ones about Harmonian orgies.) So, with respect to direct action,
his intention is clear enough: one does not build Harmony as such, be-
cause it is unimaginable; one builds the commune, the phalanstery. (That
there is also some question here of the madness/ordinariness of speaking to oneself, silently or aloud, and

191
is why so much of The Theory of the Four Movements, for example, is ded-
icated to a discussion of transitional phases, e.g. “Guaranteeism”).96 This
practice is focused, however, through a contemplation in which we are
not planning for a future that is, after all, unforeseeable; we are dreaming,
fantasizing, but in a peculiarly concentrated way, acting on ourselves in
the present.
Secondly, setting aside the future, one can somehow meditate on
Fourier’s system. And not just the system as totality; perhaps the most
effective form of this meditative affirmation that I can report on is that
which focuses on one single and exceptionally absurd element of Fourier’s
speculations: for example, the archibras, a prehensile tail he claims hu-
mans will develop, good, as Lamborn Wilson notes, for fruit-picking as
well as orgies. Or the sixteen kinds of strawberries, or the lemonade ocean,
or the anti-giraffe.97 Fourier is as dumbfounding when he describes the in-
dustrial armies of Harmony as he is when he suddenly reveals one of these
strange Harmonian monads to his audience.
It seems to me that Lamborn Wilson suggests an entirely different mode
of reading and experiencing Fourier’s writings than either the impatient
critique of so-called scientific socialism or the predictably tolerant pick-
and-choose of the other socialists and anarchists. To focus on what is sys-
tematic, or appears to be so, in Fourier, is to try to recreate for ourselves
his precise derangement, to train our thinking in the paths of his mad
logic, the voice of his desires, without for all that believing in anything.
Especially Harmony. As he wrote: “passionate attraction is the interpreter
of nature” (Fourier, 1996: 189). I will accept this only if it can be agreed
that interpretation is already an action, on ourselves first of all. (For exam-
ple, it might be a healthy use of the same imaginative faculties that many
of us squander on video feeds of one sort or another.)
 

of a concomitant recognition of familiar and unfamiliar phrases, with their differends. I will take this up
in a future essay.
96
Compare, in this light, the delirious foldout “Table of the Progress of Social Movement” spanning
80,000 years with the utterly practical propositions of the “Note to the Civilized Concerning the Coming
Social Metamorphosis.”
97
See (Fourier, 1996: 50n, 284). The anti-giraffe is one of the new animals of Harmony, “a great and
magnificent servant whose qualities will far surpass the good qualities of the reindeer.”

192
 A similar meditative affirmation could allow one to make good use of
“P.M.’s” infamous zerowork tract bolo’bolo. The text opens with a short pre-
dictive narrative about the “substruction of the planetary work machine”
by the construction of small autonomous communes or bolos networked
together into the global bolo’bolo. We are, by the way, twenty-two years
too late; bolo’bolo should have emerged in 1988. The bulk of this tract,
however, is taken up by a series of systematic elements that may become
themes for Daydreams. It is the ideographic sign language of bolo’bolo,
asa’pili, the series IBU, BOLO, SILA, TAKU … each coupled with an in-
vented ideograph. As with the hexagrams of the Classic of Changes, each
heading encapsulates and illustrates a concept with a simple sign. Imag-
ine the use of this artificial lingua franca: the ideographs and odd bisyl-
labic words could aid a certain meditative translation. IBU is and is not
an ego; NIMA is and is not beliefs; TAKU is and is not private property;
YAKA is and is not a duel. And so on. Confronted, then, with egos, beliefs,
private property, or duels, I may always perform an exercise that trans-
lates them to asa’pili. This means asking, speculating on, the question: and
what would do we do with all this in bolo’bolo? This language is said to
be of a future and yet we are already using it, making new sense or even
new worlds of sense with it.
The second systematic series occurs only once: it is an incredible list
of sample bolos. “In a larger city, we could find the following bolos: Alco-
bolo, Sym-bolo, Sado-bolo, Maso-bolo, Vegi-bolo, Les-bolo, Franko-bolo,
Italo-bolo, Play-bolo, No-bolo, Retro-bolo, Thai-bolo, Sun-bolo […]”98 It
is again a linguistic operation at first, which is obvious since so many
of these are puns. Once we are amused, the imagination begins its play-
ful reverie. Once the suffix takes on consistency, we are dreaming other
dreams. Imagine, not just Sado-bolo and Maso-bolo, but the relations be-
tween them. What are the parties in Dada-bolo like? The art of Tao-bolo?
The dialect of Freak-bolo? As with the punctual things, events, or practices
98
“[…] Blue-bolo, Paleo-bolo, Dia-bolo, Punk-bolo, Krishna-bolo, Taro-bolo, Jesu-bolo, Tao-bolo,
Marl-bolo, Necro-bolo, Pussy-bolo, Para-bolo, Basket-bolo, Coca-bolo, Incapa-bolo, HighTech-bolo, Indio-
bolo, Alp-bolo, Mono-bolo, Metro-bolo, Acro-bolo, Soho-bolo, Proto-bolo, Herb-bolo, Macho-bolo, Hebro-
bolo, Ara-bolo, Freak-bolo, Straight-bolo, Pyramido-bolo, Marx-bolo, Sol-bolo, Tara-bolo, Uto-bolo, Sparta-
bolo, Bala-bolo, Gam-bolo, Tri-bolo, Logo-bolo, Mago-bolo, Anarcho-bolo, Eco-bolo, Dada-bolo, Digito-
bolo, Subur-bolo, Bom-bolo, Hyper-bolo, Rock n’-bolo, etc. Moreover, there are also just good old regular
bolos, where people live normal, reasonable and healthy lives (whatever those are)” (P.M., 1985: 80–1).

193
denoted by the terms of asa’pili, we have some initial sense, but our imag-
ination is pushed to a new and more voluptuous level of complication and
creation in conceiving each bolo, its inner workings, and the interrelations,
or lack thereof, among bolos.
In neither case is there anything to believe in. Certainly not bolo’bolo!
I maintain rather that to gather and concentrate one’s thought process
using these signs or examples is to accept their provocation, to under-
take a deviation, détournement, of the imaginative flux. In so doing we
find, paradoxically, that we have names for otherwise unimaginable re-
lations. We are in an even better position to do so than when the book
first appeared since, according its chronology, bolo’bolo should have al-
ready come about. So the more credulous among us, those unhappy souls
awaiting some anarchist version of 2012 or the Apocalypse of John, will
be stumped and disappointed. It can no longer be read as a book concern-
ing (do please laugh here) ‘the current conjuncture.’ Two mostly unhappy
decades have returned it to its fetal form: a wish, a mad dream, that mod-
els its madness in an exemplary fashion, precisely by drawing us into its
codes. Each ideogram, each bolo’s name, is a monad. To meditatively grasp
it is to attain a perspective on the otherwise impossible: to be a witness to
bolo’bolo. It is only when we hopelessly use these monads that they can
have an effect on our thinking-in-the-event: a healthy use of what Berg-
son called la fonction fabulatrice, perhaps even what Freud conceived as
the wish-fulfillment involved in dreams.
 
Another sort of Daydream, the meditative negation, manifests in a sim-
ilar way, as a summoning up of powerful, almost unthinkable images of
destruction, specifically of consumption. I consider this strange passage
by Max Stirner to be paradigmatic:

Around the altar rise the arches of the church and its walls
keep moving further and further out. What they enclose is sa-
cred. You can no longer get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking
with the hunger that devours you, you wander around about
these walls and search for the little that is profane. And the
circles of your course keep getting more and more extended.
Soon that church will embrace the whole world, and you will

194
 be driven out to the extreme edge. Another step and the world
of the sacred has conquered: you sink into the abyss. There-
fore take courage while there it is yet time, wander about no
longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the
leap and rush the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you devour
the sacred you have made it your own. Digest the sacramental
wafer and you are rid of it (Stirner, 1995: 88–9).99

This is perhaps the most excessive of many such passages in The Ego
and its Own. What is the status of this discourse? Just who is speaking
here? What I is addressing me, presenting its ideas as my own? What is the
altar, the church, its walls? What is the sacred exactly? What is the hunger
referred to here? The courage? What does this apparently metaphorical
act of eating entail in practice? As I have posed them, abstractly, these
questions are unanswerable. I propose rather that the interest of passages
such as these, their significance in Stirner’s text, is that, functioning as a
model, they allow one to project a parallel thought pattern onto one or
more given sets of circumstances. This meditation could help me to divest
myself of my allegiance to a stupid political group that I have made the
mistake of joining; or it could save me from a noxious commonplace of
sexual morality. In each case I would find the sacred element, identify its
will to power, feel my impotence for a moment (“hunger”) and then strike
with courage, undoing the sacrificial logic that has possessed me.
The difference between meditative affirmation and negation is that in
affirming I actively imagine a future that I do not take to be real; I explore
its details to act on my own imagination, on my thought process, to con-
tract other habits. In negation, as in affirmation, there is no future, just
this present I must evacuate of its meaning. This meditation is a voiding
process, a clearing of stupidities. It is what I do when I can find nothing
to affirm in the present.
That is not the only form a meditative negation can take. Throughout
The Ego and its Own, Stirner also deploys countless brief, pithy phrases
that are not imagistic, but rather almost speech acts, cases of a kind of
disruptive direct action in discourse: “I do not step shyly back from your
99
I have already commented on this passage, with reference to related alimentary imagery in Niet-

195
property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I need to ‘re-
spect’ nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!” (Stirner,
1995: 220). “I do not love [the world], I annihilate it as I annihilate my-
self; I dissolve it” (ibid., 262). I do not know what could possibly follow
such statements, though something must. These phrases could be ironi-
cally spoken aloud to a coarse interlocutor as the mark of a necessary
distance; they could also be thought silently to oneself, as so many avail-
able elements of an egoist tetrapharmakon that could recall us to ourselves
in even the most alienating moments.100 The I that speaks in Stirner’s text
is more often than not offered as a common property, that is to say, not a
property at all. It is a model, a case. It is there to be taken up, imitated, if
we have the courage to be the confessed egoists we could be. Stirner was
not describing the world, he was acting on it; so we too might act if we
study and train ourselves in such imaginary and discursive exercises. Like
anarchism, egoism cannot be taught, only modelled and perhaps imitated.

Second Wild Style: Field Trip

Although careful and generous acts of reading are vital to anarchist
meditations, the exercises I am describing could also take the form of con-
centrations of thought developed not through engagement with written
or spoken discourse but with the materiality of places. In affirmative or
negative meditations, the question is that of another attitude, another tone
of thought, another voice. And reading bizarre books is only one way to
achieve it. A second form of exercise, the Field Trip, is a kind of speculative
anthropology of geographical spaces. I will elaborate it through a detailed
examination of one example, both for its richness and because I suppose
many of my readers are unfamiliar with its source, a recent text from
the sometime proponent of a “nihilist communism.” In a tone sometimes
echoing Bakunin, sometimes Bataille, “Frere Dupont,” the pseudonymous
author of species being, proposes that revolt is a sort of anthropological
constant. It corresponds not so much to the organizations that seek to
zsche, in my “How the Stirner Eats Gods” (de Acosta, 2009).
100
I am referring, of course, to the Epicurean tetrapharmakon or “four-part cure,” the briefest epitome
of their philosophy.

196
bring it about, or at least stimulate and channel it, but rather to an exis-
tential dimension of the human. Borrowing from another lexicon, I would
say that for Dupont revolt is anthropogenetic. “The untheorized and non-
included aspects of human existence is [sic] our platform” (Dupont, 2007:
47). I suppose the term “platform” is used here with tongue fully in cheek.
What is this ironic project, then? “Our purpose is to develop a feral subject
[…]” (ibid.). Very well: how is this subject developed?
Setting aside, perhaps even ignorant of, the procedures of scientific an-
thropology or archeology, Frere Dupont enters an archeological site in
the East of England and reports:

It is noon on the Tenth of May. The year is Two Thousand

and Six. I am crouching, my hands on the floorstone, in Pit
One of Grime’s Graves, a retrieved neolithic flint mining com-
plex in Norfolk’s Breckland. I have chosen this place to begin
my investigation into the tendency within society to modify
itself through the chosen activities that it undertakes in re-
sponse to the perceived limits of itself. I have asked myself
whether this tendency of transformation out of stability is
explicable in terms of a motivational sense of lack and/or a
sense of abundance (ibid., 48).

The question Dupont is asking could be understood to belong to politi-

cal philosophy, ethics, anthropology, or any number of other disciplines.
It is also, of course, a variant of the old anarchist question about the in-
ception of the State-form and authoritarian politics: the institutionalized
concentration of power.101 This text bears with it the rare sense of a situ-
ated thought (“I have chosen this place”), the unusual idea that it matters
where one is when one thinks; or, again, the fantastic intuition that one
can conceive of the activities that have unfolded in a place, even thousands
of years later:

I am crouching in Pit One of the complex. It is dark because

the custodians of the site have put a roof over the site, but
101
The “centripetal” social organization, that is, whose emergence Pierre Clastres tried to understand
in the essays collected in Society Against the State (1989).

197
 four thousand years ago, at midday, on a day like today in
bright summer light, the chalk walls would be dazzlingly in-
tense. To increase this effect the miners built angled walls
from the chalk spoil at the surface of the shaft to further re-
flect light down into the galleries. My first impressions are
of the miners’ appreciation for the actual process of mining
as an activity in itself, which they must have valued in their
society above the flint that was mined. Also, I felt an aware-
ness of their creation of an architecture, their carving out of
underground spaces, and the separations and connections be-
tween these and the world above. Somewhat self-consciously,
I crouch at the centre of the shaft and announce my short,
prepared thesis, “organization appears only where existence
is thwarted” (Dupont, 2007: 51).

The three key components of this exercise seem to be location in an

unfamiliar and significant place (“I am crouching”), affective engagement
with the history and arrangement of the space (“My first impressions […]
I felt an awareness …”), and the conscious, explicit introduction of what
would otherwise be an abstract “thesis” into that experience (“I […] an-
nounce”). I suggest that in so doing an aleatory element is introduced
into thought, a tendency that unfolds, at least in this case, in solitude. Per-
haps the place and its intuitive reconstruction act as a sort of externalized
primary process on speculation, inflecting or declining it. It is an analytic
moment. Not: what does this thesis mean? But: what does it mean that I
said it here? Dupont offers up the thesis to the mute walls of the pit. And
then something happens: new thought. The “thesis” thickens, taking on a
new consistency.

Organization appears only where existence is thwarted […]

And existence appears only where organization is thwarted.
But is this because the appearance of existence-in-revolt is a
negatively constituted movement (a mere inversion of what
is, a substantiation of the possibilities of the form), or is
it an indication of a crisis within organization, the break-
down of the holding/defining of the scene — or rather, is the

198
 recurrence of existence-counter-to-present-structure an inti-
mation of organization yet to come? The question here con-
cerns capture, and return — the possibility of getting back to
a previous stage where the problems of any given structure,
or structure itself, have yet to appear (ibid., 56).

What Dupont discovered, perhaps, is some way to imaginatively recre-

ate precisely what is lost of prehistoric peoples — their anarchy: a kind
of vanished attitude modelled anew. Dupont does not claim to speak the
truth of those peoples. Who could ever claim to know what they thought?
Or even if they experienced thought as a relatively autonomous faculty,
the presupposition, by the way, of all our amusing contentions about “the-
ory”? Rather, speculating in a place that is still somehow theirs, and letting
the speculation remain what it is — a hallucination, ultimately — she or he
moves to a speculative or archeological reconstruction of our own prob-
lems. Dupont is able to speculate on some Neolithic transformation from
existence to organization (whatever else this means, I suppose it has to do
with the stabilization of proto-states, ritual structures, divisions of labour,
etc.) insofar as she or he locates, imaginatively, analogous or even ge-
nealogically related elements in our present. Namely, the vast, unthought
but available, background of the thesis! I might encapsulate that back-
ground by reference to a feeling: the terrible sense that the group one is
in is becoming rigid, static, that a hierarchy, hierogamy, or hierophany is
developing where initially only some sort of kinship or friendship existed.
The place (here, the pit) concretizes, materializes, or grounds thought in
a provisional, momentary, but remarkable way. Could this be the birth of
the feral subject?
Elsewhere in the book Dupont quotes Krishnamurti: “Meditation is to
find out if there is a field which is not already contaminated by the known”
(ibid., 114). Whatever this statement could have meant in its original con-
text, I understand Dupont to be suggesting that we always need new prac-
tices of thought, new contemplations, that habituate us to overcoming our
profoundly limited common sense about what is human, what the human
102
That someone can speak to a wall is already a marvelous and irreducible fact of a future anarchist
anthropology! This magical speech, the natural converse of speaking to oneself, also belongs to a future
essay.

199
or its societies can do and be. The field, then, in this example is both the
pit and the attitude or wishes one brings there — though the latter may
only become evident in the pit.
There is, in short, a tentative anthropology here102 , and it is overtly spec-
ulative and intuitive. The interest of its statements lies not in their truth-
value but in their importance, their success — their felicity, as one says
of a performative utterance. They are felicitous if they can meditatively
restage some or all of a fantastic anthropogenetic moment in a present
itself rendered fantastic.

Third Wild Style: Psychogeography

A third wild style bears as its name a Situationist term, which they
defined as follows:

Psychogeography: the study of the specific effects of the ge-

ographical environment (whether consciously organized or
not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals (Knabb,
2006: 52).

I mean it somewhat differently, however, since the question is not

merely to understand effects, but to act on them, to generate other ef-
fects inasmuch as one becomes capable of experiencing places and spaces
differently.103 One could view this style as a complex combination of the
first (affirmation especially) and the second (though the speculative an-
thropology here refers not to the past but to a perspective on our world).
A first simple form of Psychogeography could take up, for example, the
long lists Kropotkin made of what in his present already manifested mu-
tual aid: public libraries, the international postal system, cooperatives of
every sort (Kropotkin, 1955: Chapters 7 & 8, et passim). Kropotkin argued
that mutual aid is an evolutionary constant, as generic and vital as com-
petition, or what was called the struggle for existence. But we would be
103
I might note here that the definition, in French, seems to be ambiguous as to whether it is the ef-
fects or the study of the effects that acts on our affective life. But the conjoined definition of “psychogeo-
graphical” makes clear that it is a question of the “direct action” of the milieu on affectivity. Compare In-
ternationale Situationniste (1997: 13).

200
mistaken if we thought his books, essays, speeches, etc. had as their only
rhetorical mode the one perhaps most evident on a first reading, that of
scientific proof. His examples, his repeated and lengthy enumerations of
actual cases of mutual aid, offer up an entirely new world, an uncanny
symptomatology of a familiar world. It is our world, seen through a new
and clear lens.104 One could then travel to the places revealed in this new
world, buildings or events, and meditate on the activity there so as to
eventually grasp what is anarchist about them immediately and not po-
tentially. I am referring to what is colloquially called “hanging out.” Going
to the public library, for example, for no other reason than to witness what
in it is anarchic — or, again, to a potluck. This practice involves another
way of inhabiting familiar spaces. It brings out what in them is uncan-
nily, because tendentially, anarchic. It multiplies our sites of action and
engagement and could shape our interventions there.
Those interested could expand the range of this exercise, making the
goal not only arrival at the sites of mutual aid (or other anarchic activities),
but also the journey. Here again a Situationist term is relevant: the dérive,
that “experimental behaviour” (Knabb, 2006: 52) of wandering across an
urban space with no determinate destination. I suppose that if one has
begun to master the affirmation of certain places as anarchic, one could
begin expanding the range of the exercise, meditating as one walks or
rides a bicycle or bus, affirming now forms of movement, escape, or eva-
sion, as well as creative flights of fancy. Soon many places in urban space
will emerge, detached from their everydayness, as remarkable: places of
intensity, or of virtual anarchy. (I think here, for example, of the great
significance some friends put on visiting certain garbage dumpsters.)
Indeed, it is likely that Fourier’s preferred examples may have emerged
in just this way. Reading his finest descriptions of Harmony, we find in-
numerable parades. He plans Harmonian processions: “Parade Series: In a
societary canton all the members of the industrial phalanx […] are divided
into 16 choirs of different ages; each choir is composed of 2 quadrilles,
one of men and one of women, making a total of 32 quadrilles, 16 male
104
Perhaps then a more relevant reference is not science but science fiction. As Deleuze wrote of
Hume’s empiricism: “As in science fiction, one has the impression of a fictive, foreign world, seen by
other creatures, but also the presentiment that this world is already ours, and these creatures, ourselves”
(Deleuze, 2001: 35).

201
and 16 female, each with its distinctive banners, decorations, officers and
costumes, both for winter and summer” (Fourier, 1996: 293). It is strange
and lovely to suppose that all of this began with the solitary tradesman
Charles Fourier looking on as a military parade passed by, spontaneously
inventing his version of this exercise by asking himself: what can we do
with the passions set to work in this array? It seems these people like
costumes, display, fanfare, and ordered group movements. How do these
passions fit in Harmony, given that the constraint in thinking harmon-
ically is to affirm every passion? Once the question is asked, our expe-
rience reveals the details to be meditatively rearranged. For Fourier, pa-
rades are not only great fun; they also presage the serial organization of
the Combined Order. “All this pomp may be thought unnecessary to the
cultivation of flowers and fruits, wheat and wine, etc., but baubles and
honorific titles do not cost anything, and they are incitements to greater
enthusiasm in the work of the Series” (ibid., 299). “You will come in the
end to recognize that there are no bad or useless passions, and that all
characteristics are good in themselves, that all passions must be intensi-
fied, not moderated” (ibid., 303). Psychogeography could show us where
each passion, intensified, may bloom.
 
One night in the mid-nineties I had dinner with Peter Lamborn Wilson.
We spoke about Fourier and he told me of a group of friends who had
set off from New York into Canada in an expedition that had as its goal to
trigger the birth of the Northern Crown, that “shining ring of light,” which,
in Fourier’s system, “will appear after two centuries of combined order”
(ibid., 33–4). I do not remember all the details, but, since it has been fifteen
years, and the Northern Crown has yet to emerge, I am led to wonder
what this journey could have meant for its participants. I am reminded
here of the great and catastrophic Tupi migrations of the sixteenth century
documented by Hélène Clastres: ambiguous wanderings of whole peoples
who abandoned a sad and sedentary way of life and danced off (literally!)
in search of a land of immortality that they expected to find in the Andes
or across the Atlantic (Clastres, 1995: 49–57). Or so it is said. We read of
such journeys and perhaps conceive of them as pointless — fanatical, even.
We suppose, perhaps, that they were primarily religious, missing what is
remarkable about the absolute desertion of agricultural labour, marriage

202
customs, etc. Religion might be the operative discourse, and prophetism
the power mechanism, but the lived practice seems like something else
entirely: “The quest for the Land-Without-Evil is […] the active denial of
society. It is a genuinely collective asceticism” (ibid., 56). Should we say
the poor Tupi were duped by their own prophets? What if the journey
were its own reason? How did the Tupi experience what Clastres calls
the “auto-destruction” of their own societies? What could the wanderers
Lamborn Wilson told me of have felt and thought as they made their way
north?105

Interstices
Let me return to the question, “how do post-structuralist anarchists
organize?” I have suggested that what perhaps went unthought in it was
the presupposition of separation. In this case that meant that the prized
goal of the game, the theory-practice intersection, ought to be (to embody
or resemble) organizing or an organization. Here I recall Dupont’s thesis:
organization appears where existence is thwarted. Could we rewrite that
last word with the phrase separated from itself ?
Indeed, my three wild styles concern forms of existence that are more
and less than organizations, or, to be direct, organisms, since in the uncon-
scious hylomorphic background of the schema, theory is the soul, practice
is the body, and progress is the organism’s health. To maintain that anar-
chist meditations are interstitial is to propose that something or someone
thrives and swarms ahead of, behind, among, inside of, and between the
slow-moving theory-practice compounds that we call organizations. The
vital question is: do organizations ever do anything at all? Or are they
something like remnants, the clumsy carapaces of what has been and is
already being done? David Hume wrote: “The chief benefit which results
from philosophy arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its
secret insensible influence, than from its immediate application” (Hume,
2008: 104). A secret insensible influence: that is all I would claim for my
wild styles. They are good practices, and good practice. They do not dic-
tate action; action is its own reason and its own model. But they have had
105
Would it be going too far to write that they perhaps felt the Earth anew?

203
a long-standing, indirect, and insensible influence on what anarchists and
many others in fact do.
Unlike a theory that purposely or accidentally posits an ideal state or
a goal, they have no implicit or explicit teleology. I have long felt, and re-
main convinced, that there is nothing to be gained by positing a goal for
action other than in the most irreducibly local sense (and even then!). Al-
though I have my reasons for maintaining this near-metaphysical propo-
sition, I will restrict myself here to underlining the contemporary phe-
nomenon of non-ideological political actions, which could nearly all be
called tactics without strategies. Or even: punctual acts in the course of
detaching themselves from the tactical realm of militant and militarized
politics. I prefer not to think such actions as practices in need of theoret-
ical interpretation. If there is anything to praise in them, it is that these
actions are wild experiments: ‘what happens when we do this?’ They in-
stall themselves, impossibly, I admit, on the side of existence, and attempt
to remain there.
These wild styles ought, eventually, to put into question every political
project — first, as project, and, again, as political.106 That is their virtue,
or at least their contribution to virtue. Whatever effects they may or may
not have, they exemplify in thought that aspect of anarchist practice called
direct action. The famous and pathetic theses of the innate goodness of hu-
mans or of a future utopia have perhaps no value other than their role as
themes for meditation and affirmation in the present. Hume, again: “The
chief triumph of art and philosophy: it insensibly refines the temper, and
it points out to us those dispositions which we should endeavour to attain,
by a constant bent of mind, and by repeated habit” (ibid., 105). This sort
of direct action, as it infuses our lives, may succeed or fail. To the extent
that it succeeds, we are on the way to anarchy. To the extent that it fails,
it succeeds as well, though in a more local way. We have bent our mind,
as Hume wrote, and made life “amusing” (ibid., 113).107

106
It is no coincidence that some anarchists and communists have recently posed the problem of what
they provocatively call “anti-politics.”
107
Perhaps amusement is the only thing worth hoping for.

204
References
de Acosta, Alejandro. (2009) “Two Undecidable Questions for Thinking
in Which Anything Goes.” Contemporary Anarchist Studies (Amster et al.,
Eds.) New York: Routledge.
— . (2009) “How the Stirner Eats Gods,” Anarchy: A Journal of Desire
Armed, 67 (Spring).
Aurelius, Marcus. (1983) Meditations. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Clastres, Hélène. (1995) The Land-Without-Evil. Chicago: University of
Illinois Press.
Clastres, Pierre. (1989) Society Against the State. New York: Zone Books.
Dupont, Frère. (2007) species being and other stories. Ardent Press.
Dupont, Monsieur. (2009) Nihilist Communism. Ardent Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. (1990) Logic of Sense. New York: Columbia.
— . Dialogues. (1987) New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
— . (2001) “Hume.” In Pure Immanence. New York: Zone Books.
Fourier, Charles. (1996) The Theory of the Four Movements. New York:
Cambridge.
Graeber, David. (2004) Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.
Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Hadot, Pierre. (2004) What is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
— . (1995) “Spiritual Exercises.” Philosophy as a Way of Life. Blackwell.
Hume, David. (2008) “The Sceptic.” Selected Essays. New York: Oxford.
Internationale Situationniste. (1997) Édition augmentée. Librairie
Arthème Fayard.
Inwood, Brad., & Lloyd P. Gerson., Eds. (2008) The Stoics Reader. Indi-
anapolis: Hackett.
Knabb, Ken., Ed. (2006) Situationist International Anthology. (Revised
and expanded edition) Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets.
Kropotkin, Petr. (1955) Mutual Aid. Boston: Extending Horizons.
Lacan, Jacques. (2007) The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. New York: Nor-
ton.
Lamborn Wilson, Peter. (1998) Escape from the Nineteenth Century. New
York: Autonomedia.
P.M. (1985) bolo’bolo. New York: Semiotext(e).

205
 Stirner, Max. (1995) The Ego and Its Own. New York: Cambridge.
 

From Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Volume 2010.1

206
Buffy the Post-Anarchist Vampire
Slayer

Lewis Call

2011
 The publication of Post-Anarchism: A Reader confirms what many of us
have suspected (and cautiously hoped for) these past few years: a kind
of post-anarchist moment has arrived. Benjamin Franks has argued that
this moment has already enabled a small but identifiable post-anarchist
movement to emerge; he quite sensibly names Todd May, Saul Newman,
Bob Black, Hakim Bey and me as members of this movement (2007: 127).
Legend has it that Bey got the whole thing started back in the 1980s, when
he called for a ‘post-anarchism anarchy’ which would build on the legacy
of Situationism in order to reinvigorate anarchism from within (1985: 62).
Interestingly, Bey identified popular entertainment as a vehicle for ‘rad-
ical re-education’ (ibid.). It is in this spirit that I offer my post-anarchist
reading of Joss Whedon’s popular fantasy programme Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. My text will be Buffy’s fourth season. This season undeniably rep-
resents Buffy’s anarchist moment; I will argue that season four also offers
its audience an accessible yet sophisticated post-anarchist politics.
But what does a post-anarchist politics look like? Newman has pointed
out that post-anarchism is not ‘after’ anarchism and does not seek to dis-
miss the classical anarchist tradition; rather, post-anarchism attempts to
radicalize the possibilities of that tradition (2008: 101). Broadly speaking,
post-anarchists believe that an effective anarchist politics must address
not only the modern forms of economic and state power, but also the
more pervasive and insidious forms of power which haunt our postmod-
ern world. These include what Foucault called bio-power (1978: 140ff.),
and what Deleuze and Guattari called overcoding or the imperialism of
the sign (1983: 199ff.). The kinds of power which structuralists and post-
structuralists have located in the realm of language are of particular im-
portance to post-anarchism. For example, Newman (2001) has shown that
Lacan’s concept of the Symbolic order is crucial to the post-anarchist
project. For Lacan, the Symbolic is the place of language and thus of Law;
the Symbolic order creates us as individuals, structures our desires and de-
termines the limits within which resistance can happen. This has serious
implications for radical thought: if Lacan’s model is correct, then anar-
chist theory must offer an account of the Symbolic. Furthermore, if the
Symbolic is the place where Law happens, and if Law is the speech of the
state, then anarchists should seek to subvert the Symbolic order. In other
words, if we really want to do something about the Law, we must find

209
a way out of the Symbolic. Otherwise, we’re just fighting laws, a losing
proposition.
What I’m really saying is that we just want to let anarchism take its
structuralist turn, because we think that will lead us to a place that’s fas-
cinating and possibly liberatory. This desire is motivated by what Franks
has called one of the ‘great strengths’ of post-anarchism: its ability to
spot the ‘essentialisms and dogmatisms’ of classical anarchisms, and its
capacity to open up original areas for critical scrutiny (2007: 140). Yet
Franks and others have also noted a serious potential problem with post-
anarchism: it often rejects or ignores the concept of class, and thus disre-
gards important forms of oppression (ibid.: 137). It seems that a dangerous
elitism lurks within post-anarchism. My turn to popular culture was mo-
tivated, in part, by my desire to purge the project of this elitism. After
all, it’s true that the workers don’t read much Lacan. They have better
things to do. But in our postmodern world, everybody watches television.
As post-anarchist ideas are represented on TV, they become accessible to
a broad audience, which includes many working-class viewers. Pop cul-
ture in general, and television in particular, can take post-anarchism out
of its bourgeois ivory tower and broadcast it into living rooms around the
world.
This is where Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes in. Buffy is a pop-culture
phenomenon. The show ran for seven seasons. Its spinoff, Angel, ran for
five. Both narratives have continued in comic book form. Buffy has a large,
loyal, dedicated audience. That audience does include many bourgeois aca-
demics: David Lavery (2004) has described Buffy Studies as an academic
cult, and I am a card-carrying member of that cult. But Buffy is not just
for scholar-fans; it is for everybody. Buffy’s most working-class charac-
ter, Xander Harris, starts season four by stating his ethical imperative.
He solves his moral dilemmas by asking himself, ‘What would Buffy do?’
(4.1).108 The answer, I will argue, is that Buffy would launch a classical an-
archist assault on the military–scientific complex, followed by an all-out
post-anarchist attack on the Symbolic. And then have hot chocolate.
108
Dialogue quotations are taken from the excellent Buffyverse Dialogue Database at
http://vrya.net/bdb/. I have made minor corrections to some dialogue. Episodes are cited by sea-
son number and episode number, e.g. (4.1) for season four, episode one. For a complete episode list, see
http://vrya.net/bdb/ep.php. Thanks to Peggy Q for loaning me season four DVDs.

210
 Not everyone agrees; Buffy criticism, especially in its early years, has
often denied the show’s revolutionary potential. Jeffrey Pasley equated
Buffy and her demon-hunting friends with the ‘primitive rebels’ and ‘so-
cial bandits’ of leftist lore, but concluded that they ended up offering
only ‘piecemeal’ resistance, not revolution (2003: 262–3). Reading the pro-
gramme through the lens of Marxist historiography, Pasley failed to see
the more radical elements of anarchist resistance in Buffy. Even less plau-
sibly, Neal King (2003) denied that there was anything anti-authoritarian
about Buffy’s ‘Scooby gang’; for him, Buffy and her (mainly female)
friends were nothing more than fascist ‘brownskirts’. This position was
based largely on a tortured interpretation of Buffy’s first three seasons;
by the fourth season, it had become quite impossible to identify Buffy
with any kind of fascist politics.
Season four shows us Buffy’s freshman year at the University of Cali-
fornia, Sunnydale. As Bussolini has pointed out, this is the same U.C. that
brought us the American nuclear arsenal (2005; paragraph 16). Buffy be-
gins dating Riley Finn, her handsome young teaching assistant. (Whoops!)
Buffy soon discovers that Riley is actually a special forces soldier work-
ing for the U.S. government’s secret demon-hunting project, the Initiative.
Buffy tries to work with the Initiative, but soon finds that she can’t handle
its military hierarchies and authoritarian power structures. So season four
actually establishes Buffy’s politics as anti-fascist. Wall and Zryd have ar-
gued compellingly that Buffy’s ‘critical way of thinking about the fascistic
and military-structured Initiative’ facilitate Riley’s transformation from
loyal soldier to self-proclaimed anarchist by the end of the season (2001:
61). Riley’s ‘anarchism’, they claim, is not rigorous, but rather represents
a ‘shorthand alternative to institutional logic’ similar to that used by op-
ponents of globalization (ibid.). The fact that it is non-rigorous or post-
rational may be to its advantage, however. Bussolini makes the important
point that the famous mass protests against the World Trade Organiza-
tion, later known as the ‘Battle of Seattle’, took place while season four
was originally being broadcast in November 1999 (2005; paragraph 29).
Bussolini emphasizes, correctly, that the anti-globalization politics which
were contemporary with season four criticize the kind of state-based, hi-
erarchical politics which motivate the Initiative (ibid.). The show presents
Seattle-style anarchism as a real and legitimate option for an Iowa farm

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boy like Riley Finn, or for a working-class carpenter like Xander Harris.
The show thus makes anarchism an option for various non-bourgeois au-
diences. As the streets of Seattle filled with those who believed another
world was possible, Buffy was broadcasting a radical endorsement of this
belief – on network television!
If Buffy’s fourth season had ‘only’ portrayed a relevant form of con-
temporary anarchist politics in a highly positive light, that alone would
secure the show a place in the history of popular culture. But this season
did much more than that. In addition to its compelling narrative about
the emergence of a classical anarchist consciousness, season four offered
a bold post-anarchist vision. Kenneth Hicks has recently accused season
four of assuming that ‘government is incompetent because it’s incompe-
tent’; Hicks finds this assumption ‘inconclusive and unsatisfying’ (2008:
69). But there is, in fact, a perfectly convincing reason for the Initiative’s
failures. Richardson and Rabb have quite rightly interpreted Riley’s rejec-
tion of the Initiative as a rejection of ‘humanity’s militarization of reason
and scientific knowledge’ (2007: 70). Riley’s ‘anarchism’, then, is in part an
anarchist critique of what Habermas and others have called instrumental
rationality.
This is Buffy’s entry point into post-anarchism. A Habermasian critique
of instrumental rationality, while certainly radical by the standards of net-
work television, would nonetheless have remained wedded to the mod-
ernist position of the Frankfurt School. To avoid this, the show must take
a post-structuralist turn. Amazingly, this is precisely what it does. The
second half of season four takes as its central concern the operations of
power within the realm of language and Law. Buffy has always shown a
strong fascination with language (see M. Adams, 2003), but here that fas-
cination takes on a specifically political form. The show enacts an escape
from what Fredric Jameson called the ‘prison-house of language’ (1972).
This escape begins with the silent episode, ‘Hush’ (4.10), which performs
the elimination of the Symbolic in order to stage a very post-anarchist re-
turn to the Lacanian Real. The alternate reality episode ‘Superstar’ (4.17)
rewrites the Symbolic order, to make a minor character into the star of
the show. Buffy’s post-anarchist project culminates in the season four fi-
nale, ‘Restless’ (4.22). This episode is a tour of the dreamworld, the world

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beneath the rational. As much as any symbolic artefact could, ‘Restless’
approaches the unrepresentable world Lacan called the Real.
So Buffy’s fourth season does not only provide a savvy, vibrant repre-
sentation of an anarchist praxis which was real and relevant when the pro-
gramme aired in 1999. The show also models a very viable post-anarchist
politics, one which is based on a radical subversion of the dominant Sym-
bolic regime. This politics is the heir of 60s Situationism and the ‘ontolog-
ical anarchy’ of the 80s. It builds on radical street theatre and the sym-
bolic interventions associated with Carnival against Capitalism and other
contemporary anarchist movements. Most crucially, this post-anarchism
challenges the hegemony of language. It locates the places where effec-
tive revolutionary action is still possible: in the space where there is no
speech, and in the mystical space of the unconscious. Lacan named this
last space the Real. We can never represent it, but if we approach it even
obliquely, we contribute to our liberation from the tyranny of language.
This is what Buffy would do. She would be an anarchist, certainly: after
all, Riley and all the other kids are doing it. But being an anarchist means
something specific in Buffy’s millennial moment. It means that she will
be Buffy, the post-anarchist vampire slayer.

‘WE’VE GOT IMPORTANT WORK HERE. A

LOT OF FILING, GIVING THINGS NAMES.’
Post-Anarchist Themes in Late Season Four of Buffy
Jacques Lacan is justly infamous for his incomprehensible prose, but
his structuralist version of psychoanalysis is nonetheless crucial to many
contemporary intellectual projects, including post-anarchism. Thankfully,
there is a rich secondary literature on Lacan. Marini (1992) provides a use-
ful summary of Lacan’s conceptual revolution. In 1953, Lacan replaced
the traditional Freudian system with a structural system which divided
human reality into a Symbolic realm of language and culture, an unrep-
resentable and unknowable Real, and an Imaginary composed of our fan-
tasies of reality (ibid.: 43). Lacan reformulated the Oedipus complex; he
made it our entrance into the Symbolic, which was the ‘universe of the

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law’ (ibid.). The Lacanian model should be of tremendous interest to con-
temporary anarchists, for it’s just possible that Lacan located the place
where Law happens. That place is the Symbolic, which we first enter
via the name of the Father. As Elizabeth Grosz has pointed out, the La-
canian model implies that ‘language alone is capable of positioning the
subject as a social being’ (1990: 99). Language does this by deploying the
rules, structures and hierarchies of the social. Since these are also the con-
duits through which political power flows, language advances the statist
agenda. That makes the Symbolic a legitimate target for post-anarchism.
If the Symbolic is post-anarchism’s natural enemy, the Real is its nat-
ural ally. It was Saul Newman who first recognized this important point:
‘this gap, this surplus of meaning that cannot be signified, is a void in
the symbolic structure – the “Real”’ (2001: 139). The Real ensures that the
hegemony of the Symbolic is never complete. Thinking about the Real
helps us to find fissure points in the structures of postmodern power. The
Real is a jackpot for post-anarchists, suggesting as it does that ‘there is al-
ways something missing from the social totality, something that escapes
social signification – a gap upon which society is radically founded’ (ibid.:
147). It’s certainly a relief to realize that society and its myriad power
structures must always remain incomplete. Society might appear to be
monolithic and omnipotent, as might the state which claims to represent
society. But both were built upon this gap in the system of signification:
their foundations are hollow.
Newman uses this Lacanian notion of the gap ‘to theorize a non-
essentialist outside to power’ (2001: 160). This is post-anarchism in a nut-
shell – or in a bombshell, as Jason Adams (2003) would have it. Post-
anarchism seeks a space outside power, and endeavours to use that space
as the staging area for a project of radical liberation. Like Newman, I be-
lieve that this space is to be found in the Lacanian Real. Of course, the
Real is not a destination we can reach; it will always elude us. But we can
think about the Real. We can develop an awareness of its effects. We can
feel its presence in our lives. When we do these things, we challenge the
authority of the Symbolic. We question its jurisdiction, in the most literal
sense: we dispute its right and its ability to speak the Law. What could be
more anarchist than that?

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 Buffy makes its post-anarchist move about halfway through season
four, in Joss Whedon’s celebrated silent episode ‘Hush’ (4.10). In this
Emmy-nominated episode, an especially terrifying band of monsters de-
scends on Sunnydale. The Gentlemen are neat, tidy and Victorian in their
appearance. They are also completely silent. And the moment they arrive
in Sunnydale, they steal everyone’s voices. In Lacanian terms, the Gen-
tlemen rip the Symbolic order away and lock it in a box. In an excellent
Lacanian reading of ‘Hush’, Kelly Kromer notes that Buffy normally acts
as the Law in Sunnydale: she creates the world by classifying creatures as
wicked or good (2006: 1). Buffy wields the power of the Name, a weapon
just as potent as her trusty stake, Mr. Pointy. From a post-anarchist per-
spective, of course, this power is problematic, since it is precisely the kind
of power that underwrites the postmodern state. But Buffy, like all slay-
ers, is a woman. And as Luce Irigaray (1985) has pointed out, women are
connected to the Symbolic in a way which is tenuous at best. As Irigaray
argues, women assure the possibility of the Symbolic without being re-
cipients of it: ‘their nonaccess to the symbolic is what has established the
social order’ (ibid.: 189). Buffy’s gender is important here. As a woman,
she’s used to being denied access to the Symbolic. This denial of access
is literalized in ‘Beer Bad’, (4.5) when magic beer causes Buffy to devolve
into a cavewoman.109 By the end of the episode, she is incapable of form-
ing multi-word sentences. Xander asks her what lesson she has learned
about beer; she replies, ‘foamy’. When the womanizing Parker asks for-
giveness for his use and abuse of Buffy, she is beyond language, and can
only bonk him on the head with a club. At this point we realize that ac-
tually, Buffy is often outside the Symbolic. So when the Symbolic sud-
denly vanishes from Sunnydale in ‘Hush’, she can cope better than an
old patriarch like Giles or a young one like Riley. In silent Sunnydale, the
Real reigns supreme, and consequently social Law begins to disintegrate
(Kromer, paragraph 8). This is bad news for Buffy, but good news for post-
anarchists. Life would indeed be really good, if only the Real could be

109
It turns out that the working-class tavern owner spiked the beer in order to get back at the snotty,
elitist upper-class students who frequent his pub. ‘Beer Bad’ thus enacts a bar-room class struggle between
bourgeois students and working-class ‘townies’. Mainstream films like Good Will Hunting have tried this
before, but Buffy is able to take it much further by stripping the arrogant intellectual elite of its weapons
of rationalism.

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domesticated (Marini,1992: page 43). At least, that’s how the state sees
things. But ‘Hush’ argues powerfully that this domestication can never
be achieved. Indeed, ‘Hush’ performs the polar opposite of this domesti-
cation: a radical release of the Real.
In ‘Hush’, the Real is dramatically erotic. That’s understandable, since
Eros always contains the excess of meaning which characterizes the Real.
Erotic gestures thus approach the Real in a way that language never can.
‘Hush’ begins with a daydream. Buffy is in her psych class. Professor
Walsh (the mad scientist who runs the Initiative) is lecturing about com-
munication, language and the difference between the two. As part of a
demonstration, Walsh asks Riley to kiss Buffy. ‘If I kiss you, it’ll make
the sun go down’, warns Riley. He does, and it does. Clearly this kiss has
performative powers which language can’t match. Of course, the Sym-
bolic immediately tries to reassert itself. ‘Fortune favours the brave’, ob-
serves Buffy. She doesn’t usually quote Virgil, so this looks like the voice
of the Empire speaking through Buffy – in this case an Empire of Signs, as
Barthes might say. ‘Hush’ is all about the kiss. Riley complains to Forrest
that he has trouble talking to Buffy. ‘Then get with the kissing’, Forrest
quite sensibly replies. But the really interesting thing about Buffy and
Riley is that they actually can’t kiss anywhere near the Symbolic. Their
first kiss happened in the Imaginary, in Buffy’s daydream. Their second
kiss happens in the Real. Stripped of speech, the two mute heroes meet in
downtown Sunnydale, which has become a chaotic no-man’s-land. They
hug. Each checks, silently, to see that the other is OK. They hear the
sounds of nearby violence. Preparing to do their duty, they start to turn
away from one another. They think better of this, turn back, and kiss. The
entire kiss is negotiated and consummated without speech, which gives
it a great deal of power. This kiss becomes the foundation of their rela-
tionship. Buffy and Riley never do get the hang of the talking. But when
they are fighting demons together – and afterwards, when they are mak-
ing love – they move with effortless grace. Buffy and Riley don’t need
speech; indeed, they are visibly better off without it. They show us that
we can actually operate much closer to the Real than we typically believe.
The other major erotic event in ‘Hush’ is an incident of same-sex hand-
holding, which represents the beginning of Willow’s first lesbian rela-
tionship. In ‘Hush’ we meet a young witch named Tara. When Sunny-

216
dale goes silent, Tara seeks out Willow, the one person who might under-
stand what’s happening. Tara and Willow are attacked by the Gentlemen.
They’re forced to barricade themselves in the dorm laundry room. With
the Gentlemen banging on the door, Willow tries to use her magic to
move a soda machine up against the door. It’s too heavy, and she fails.
Then Tara takes Willow’s hand. Their fingers intertwine. They look at
each other. In a very well choreographed move, they turn simultaneously
towards the soda machine, which flies across the room and blocks the
door. (This shot would later reappear in the show’s opening credits.) Wil-
low and Tara don’t stop holding hands after their spell is done, and they
are basically inseparable from this moment. Their shared magical power
illustrates the nature of their relationship: vital, energetic, and very much
greater than the sum of its parts. All of this is accomplished without lan-
guage. Indeed, ‘Hush’ makes us realize that if the Gentlemen hadn’t come
to Sunnydale, Willow and Tara might never have got together. Willow
is a hyper-articulate nerdy type, and Tara has a stutter which gets worse
when she’s nervous. In normal times, the two of them live on two very dif-
ferent margins of the Symbolic. None of that matters in the laundry room.
Here there is no language, only a Real composed of power and love.
‘Hush’ argues consistently that love happens where there is no lan-
guage. Naturally, Buffy finds her voice at last, and her scream destroys the
Gentlemen. The Law returns to Sunnydale. But no one is actually happy
about that. ‘Hush’ concludes with a brilliant meditation on the misery of
the Symbolic. During the reign of silence, Buffy and Riley have discovered
each other’s secret identities. At the end of the episode, Riley visits Buffy
in her dorm room. He sits down awkwardly on Willow’s bed. ‘I guess we
have to talk’, he begins. ‘I guess we do’, Buffy agrees. The two of them then
sit in complete silence, staring at one another across the gulf between the
two beds. Their longing is palpable, and it is a longing for the Real. Their
plight suggests that we should resist the Symbolic not only because it’s
the right thing to do, but also because it might be the only way that we
can find happiness.
Jane Espenson’s ‘Superstar’ (4.17) explores the fascist tendencies of the
Symbolic. The teaser shows us a typical monster hunt, with one bizarre
twist: Buffy can’t handle things, so she has to get help from … Jonathan
Levinson? This geeky, alienated graduate of Sunnydale High has some-

217
how been transformed into a super-suave James Bond type. Things get
worse fast: Jonathan has even colonized the opening credit sequence, in
which he gets as much screen time as any Scooby. This is big trouble, be-
cause it means that Jonathan has broken out of the Buffyverse’s narrative
space. The credits are the part of the programme which knows itself to be
a television show. In the credits, Jonathan is not just part of the story; he
is part of the real-world cultural artefact we call Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Ten minutes into this astonishing ‘Espensode’, Jonathan has taken control
of the Symbolic in the Buffyverse and in our world, too.
Throughout ‘Superstar’, the image of Jonathan continues to proliferate
across every available surface. We see rows and rows of identical Jonathan
posters lining the walls of Sunnydale. The aesthetic is unmistakably fas-
cist: infinite copies of Jonathan’s sad, shy face gaze down on the popula-
tion. Jonathan has become all things to all people: brilliant musician, vam-
pire slayer, author, basketball player. He is the subject of comic books and
trading cards. Jonathan advertises sporting goods on billboards. A poster
on the back of Riley’s dorm room door shows Jonathan as a basketball
superstar – like Michael Jordan, only short and Jewish. This infinite prop-
agation of Jonathans slides smoothly into a very smart critique of con-
sumer culture. Here is a radical assault on the corporate logo, for those
who may never get around to reading Naomi Klein. In this strange and
disturbing world, there is only one logo, and it is Jonathan. His image has
monopolized the Symbolic system more effectively than Nike’s swoosh
ever did. And now we see where consumer capitalism is headed: towards
a barren, totalitarian Symbolic, a world with only one sign. Here the Name
has been distilled down to its most basic, oppressive essence. That essence
is Jonathan.
Naturally, the magic which Jonathan used to rewrite the Symbolic or-
der proves to be ‘unstable’. It’s one thing to disrupt the narrative of the
show, but Jonathan’s magic is threatening to spill over into our Symbolic,
and that won’t do. This is television, after all, and the name of the show
must be identical with the name of its protagonist. So the spell is bro-
ken. Jonathan goes back to being a nobody, and Buffy’s on top of the
world once again. But the damage has been done. Buffy’s viewers can no
longer take the Symbolic for granted. ‘Hush’ has already taught us that

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the Symbolic comes and goes in the Buffyverse. Now we know that our
own Symbolic is no safer than Buffy’s.
The stage is set for season four’s climactic post-anarchist battle. To de-
feat Adam, the Scoobies must use a spell which combines the strengths
of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles. It’s a moment of radical mysticism.
‘We are forever’, declares Combo Buffy. Here we see a powerful expres-
sion of Buffy’s typical argument: Buffy needs her friends, and is always
better off when she has their help. She may be a kick-ass Stirnerean su-
perhero, but she can’t do it alone. A strong collectivist spirit lies deep at
the heart of Buffy. Maybe this is what Fredric Jameson was talking about
when he described the attempt to dissolve the subject into the Symbolic as
an awareness of the ‘dawning collective character of life’ (1972: 196). By
the end of season four, Buffy was post-Seattle and post-structuralist. The
show increasingly pointed towards a radically collectivist politics, and it
increasingly found space for such a politics in the place beyond the Sym-
bolic.
This trend culminates in Joss Whedon’s ‘Restless’ (4.22), the denoue-
ment of season four.110 It turns out that the joining spell which created
Combo Buffy has a price, as such spells often do. The Scoobies try to
sleep off the spell’s after-effects, but they are plagued by troubling dreams.
These dreams reveal a persistent need to overcome language and embrace
the Real. Willow dreams of ‘homework’ which requires her to cover ev-
ery inch of Tara’s skin with mysterious calligraphy. In this dream, Tara
is over-inscribed. She is completely contained and constrained within the
Symbolic. This reiterates the argument of ‘Hush’: Tara is always better
off without language. Indeed, all the Scoobies are. Dream-Giles directs a
play. He gives an inspirational speech just before the curtain goes up, and
cheerfully instructs his troupe to ‘lie like dogs’. Public speech is ridiculed
here, dismissed as a pack of lies. Gradually the Scoobies start to realize the
nature of their dilemma. ‘There’s a great deal going on, and all at once!’
observes Giles. He’s right: as the Symbolic erodes, everything becomes
simultaneous. The Scoobies are entering the eternal Now of the Real. This
world is seductive; it’s hard to leave. Willow and Giles start to work out
110
The narrative structure of season four is unique, for this is the only season of Buffy which features
a denouement. Every other season concludes with a climactic battle between Buffy and the current ‘Big
Bad’. But in season four, this battle occurs in the season’s penultimate episode, ‘Primeval’.

219
the fact that they are being pursued by some kind of primal force. Xander
resists: ‘Don’t get linear on me now, man!’ He doesn’t want to re-enter
the Symbolic – who would? That would mean going through the whole
Oedipal thing again. ‘Restless’ literalizes Oedipal fear through Xander’s
pseudo-incestuous desire for Buffy’s mom, and through his aggression to-
wards his drunken father, who makes a rare and violent appearance in
Xander’s dream.
Buffy’s dream provides the strongest challenge to the Symbolic. Buffy
meets Riley in an Initiative conference room. He’s dressed in coat and tie,
as befits his new rank: ‘They made me Surgeon General.’ In the dream-
world, Buffy’s critique of instrumental rationality can reach new heights
of beautiful absurdity. It transpires that Riley is drawing up a plan for
world domination with Adam (the season four ‘Big Bad’, now in human
form). ‘The key element?’ Riley reveals: ‘Coffee-makers that think’. It’s a
wonderful absurdist send-up, in the tradition of Situationism, Dadaism or
Surrealism. When Buffy questions this plan to achieve the apotheosis of
state power, Riley replies, ‘Baby, we’re the government. It’s what we do.’
It’s important to note that Riley did not participate in the joining spell,
and is not part of this dream voyage. What we are seeing here is Buffy’s
unconscious perception of Riley. This is the show’s way of explaining how
Riley could call himself an anarchist without actually understanding what
that meant. Although Riley has rejected the external power structures
which once ruled him, he has not yet killed his inner fascist. Riley re-
mains a statist, and an especially nasty sort of statist at that. He dismisses
his girlfriend: ‘Buffy, we’ve got important work here. A lot of filing, giv-
ing things names.’ The work he mentions, the filing and naming, are the
distilled essence of bureaucracy. Buffy’s dream becomes a nightmare as
Riley embraces Symbolic power. The dream reveals to us that Riley’s po-
litical education is not over. He may call himself an anarchist, but now he
needs to learn how to be a post-anarchist.
Finally, Buffy meets the mysterious primal force which has been pur-
suing her and her friends through the dreamworld. This force turns out
to be the spirit of the original Slayer, the woman who first took on the
burden of slayerhood in the ancient world. Tara shows up to mediate be-
tween Buffy and the speechless Primal Slayer. As Tara says, ‘Someone has
to speak for her.’ This ancient tribal woman confirms Irigaray’s interpreta-

220
tion, for she is definitely outside the Symbolic. ‘Let her speak for herself’,
Buffy demands. Buffy is still the voice of the Law here, constantly trying
to reassert the Symbolic order. ‘Make her speak’, Buffy insists. Speech is
an imperative here, for the Symbolic order is in a state of crisis. The Pri-
mal Slayer is a creature of the radical Real. If she cannot be made to speak,
she threatens to undermine the entire Symbolic regime. Speaking through
Tara, the first Slayer insists upon her position outside language: ‘I have no
speech. No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrat-
ing wound. I am destruction. Absolute … alone.’ She is pure action, and
she has nothing to do with language. Buffy reasserts the Symbolic one
more time, with a twinkling speech that rolls off Sarah Michelle Gellar’s
tongue like a waterfall in springtime: ‘I walk. I talk. I shop. I sneeze. I’m
gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There’s trees in the desert
since you moved out. And I don’t sleep on a bed of bones. Now give me
back my friends.’ This is finally enough to force the first Slayer to speak.
‘No … friends! Just the kill. We … are … alone!’ But it’s Buffy’s position
that prevails. She defeats her ancient ancestor, everybody wakes up, and
things get back to normal.

Wait a minute. Doesn’t that just mean that the Symbolic always wins
in the end? What’s revolutionary about that? Buffy’s still the voice of the
Law, and the space outside language has vanished once again. But here we
have to look at the big picture. Baudrillard once observed that the events
of May 1968 created a rift in the Symbolic order which remained open
for years (1976: 34). The events of ‘Restless’ have a similar effect on the
Buffyverse. ‘Restless’ appeared almost exactly halfway through Buffy’s
seven-season narrative. Seasons five, six and seven are largely concerned
with Buffy’s quest to understand the primal nature of her power. In a way,
Buffy never wakes up from her dream. She now knows that the Real is out
there. She continues to live in the Symbolic as she must, as we all must.
But she has learned that her power comes from a place outside language.
‘I need to know more. About where I come from, about the other slayers’,
she tells Giles at the beginning of season five (5.1). In a most unlikely
move, Buffy becomes a student of history. She studies the ancient stories
of the slayer line, seeking the place where it all began, in the time before
the Symbolic.

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 Buffy finally finds what she’s looking for towards the end of the show’s
seventh and final season. In ‘Get it Done’ (7.15), Buffy visits the dreamtime
once again. This time she goes all the way back to the beginning, to re-
enact the event which created the first Slayer. Here Buffy examines its
own creation myth. Since the slayers seem to represent the Symbolic or-
der, this also lets the show examine the foundational myth of our culture.
Buffy meets the Shadow Men, the ancient patriarchs who made the Primal
Slayer. They chain Buffy, promising to show her the source of her power.
Buffy protests. ‘The First Slayer did not talk so much’, remarks a Shadow
Man. Nor could she, for she had not yet created the Symbolic order. The
patriarchs show Buffy the demon energy which gives the slayers their
power. She refuses it, but they won’t listen. Suddenly she realizes that
she is experiencing a rape, a violation. These men forced this demonic
essence into a young woman against her will. These ancient fathers raped
their daughter; from this violation the Symbolic was born. As Lacan sur-
mised, the Law originates in the crucible of Oedipal desire.
But Buffy’s been flirting with the Real for a while now, and she’s ready
to take back this ancient night. She defeats the Shadow Men, and breaks
their staff. ‘It’s always the staff’: Buffy knows a Lacanian phallus when she
sees one. For the remainder of the series, Buffy pursues the destruction
of this primal, patriarchal Symbolic. And at last she succeeds. At the end
of the show, Buffy and her friends change the world. Buffy rallies her
army of potential slayers, and makes her ‘Crispin’s Day’ speech before
the big battle: ‘In every generation one slayer is born because a bunch
of men who died thousands of years ago made up that rule’ (7.22). Buffy
rejects her own foundational myth. She rejects the Oedipal logic which
established the Symbolic. She acknowledges that the ancient patriarchs
‘were powerful men’. But she insists that her best friend Willow is ‘more
powerful than all of them combined’. And indeed, Willow lives up to her
press. The young witch works a spell which makes every ‘potential’ into a
full-fledged slayer. In this way Buffy’s power is diffused through an entire
community. It’s a radically democratic move. Buffy is no longer ‘Slayer,
comma, The’. The Law has been thoroughly fragmented. Indeed, following
this rupture in the Symbolic, there is no longer a monolithic Law at all.
There is instead a play of forces and flows, a give and take. Buffy has
created a community of post-anarchist vampire slayers.

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 The show’s conclusion demonstrates that Buffy is anything but a fas-
cist brownskirt. At the end of season seven, Buffy holds nominal com-
mand over an army of slayers. But Buffy season eight comic books reveal
that this ‘army’ is really a diverse collection of free-thinking riot grrrls,
third-wave feminists and lesbian separatists. They’re all ‘hot chicks with
superpowers’ (7.21) now, and they’re anarchists to boot. They would just
as soon kick Buffy’s ass as salute her. The slayers are an anarchist army,
not unlike those that fought against Franco’s fascists during the Spanish
civil war. As for Buffy herself, she’s a reluctant revolutionary. For most of
her career she has been the sheriff of the Symbolic, wielder of the Name,
bearer of the Law. But to her credit, when the Real came calling, she an-
swered. By returning to the very moment of the Symbolic’s creation, she
found a space before language, a space of resistance. She made that space
into a weapon and used it to fragment the Symbolic order which had im-
prisoned the slayers for so long. In this way Buffy modeled an effective,
engaged post-anarchist politics. Buffy made that politics available to au-
diences of various ethnicities, genders, sexualities and social classes. Let
the Buffy Studies and post-anarchist communities rejoice together at the
arrival of Buffy, the post-anarchist vampire slayer.

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