Episodes
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In this essay, Jon Burke describes Qalang Smangus, an aboriginal village in Taiwan which has been collectively organized. Jon makes a case for identifying it as an intentional Christian anarcho-collectivist community, assesses its success, and identifies its internal and exernal challenges.
Jon is a former lecturer in photography and media studies at Ming Chuan University in Taiwan, and is currently a technical writer in Melbourne, Australia. His most recent publications are ‘Learning to love fakes: how to overcome the inauthenticity of digital artifacts’, for the 2023 conference Medievalisms on the Screen III: Digital Medievalisms and the Teaching of History, hosted by Central European University, and ‘Anarchitecture: Anarchist Principles Made Concrete for the Anarchist Studies Network 7th International Conference, 2022.’
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Jess Dillard-Wright and Danisha Jenkins make the case for an anarchist approach to nursing. Part love note to a problematic profession we love and hate, part fever dream of what could be, we set out to think about what nursing and care might look like after it all falls down, because it is all falling down.
Jess Dillard-Wright is an associate professor of nursing at Elaine Marieb College of Nursing at University of Massachusetts Amherst. You can learn more and find Jess’s contact information here.
Danisha Jenkins is an assistant professor of nursing at San Diego State University.
Jess and Danisha’s most recent publications are:
Jenkins, D., Cohen, J., Walker, R., McMurray, P., & Dillard Wright, J. (2024). Getting Ours? “Girlbossing” and the Ethics of Nurse Reimbursement Models. Health Equity, 8(1), 480-492. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/heq.2024.0059
Dillard-Wright, J., & Jenkins, D. (2024). Dangerous and Unprofessional Content: Anarchist Dreams for Alternate Nursing Futures. Philosophies, 9(1), 25. https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/9/1/25
Dillard‐Wright, J., & Jenkins, D. (2024). Nursing as total institution. Nursing Philosophy, 25(1), e12460. https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12460
Out of the hospitals. Into the streets.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Cahal McLaughlin reflects on the influence of anarchist principles on his documentary filmmaking practices in societies affected by state violence, using case studies from South Africa, Haiti, Brazil and Ireland.
Cahal McLaughlin is Professor of Film Studies, Queen's University Belfast. His recent publications include Challenging the Narrative: Documentary Film as Participatory Practice in Conflict Situations (Anthem Press, 2023) and We Fight For This Land: Quilombola and Ka'apor Communities in Brazil (2024, 62 mins). See more at www.itstayswithyou.com and www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Henry Brown examines the controversial participation of anarchists in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War (1936-9). Despite the universal association of anarchism with antimilitarism, the Spanish anarchists responded to the demands of antifascist war in a nuanced fashion, creating a distinctive military subculture based on solidarity, comradeship, and clandestine political agitation.
Henry Brown is a PhD candidate at the University of Kent, examining military culture and identity in the Popular Army of the Spanish Republic (1936-9). His most recent publications include ‘The Anarchist in Uniform: The Militarisation of Anarchist Culture during the Spanish Civil War’ and his contribution to the Special Issue ‘Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth-Century History’: ‘“¡Vivan las tribus!”: persecution, resistance and anarchist agency in the Popular Army.’
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Alex Doyle examines how anarchists in late 19th and early 20th century Cuba grappled with thorny issues of the nation and nationalism in their pursuit of social revolution. Contrary to common assumptions about anarchism which posit that the movement wholly rejects and ignores the nation, the anarchists in Cuba, through their discourse and praxis, cultivated a critical engagement with the nation characterised by a fascinating mixture of compromise, support and rejection.
Alex Doyle is an independent researcher. He recently completed a Master's of Research at the University of Leeds with a focus on class, transnationalism and national identity within Cuban anarchism. His most recent publication is ‘Transnationalism, class and national identity in the Cuban labour movement (1898-1902)’.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
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In this essay, Diogo Duarte proposes a different look at the history of the State, urban planning and social housing in Portugal, by bringing into the picture the often forgotten presence of a significant anarchist movement in the country. As he suggests, to fully understand some of the social and political processes that were underway in Portugal during the first decades of the 20th century, it is essential to consider the threat that anarchism posed to the economic and political elites.
Diogo Duarte is a researcher at the Instituto de História Contemporânea (Institute of Contemporary History) in NOVA University Lisbon. He has a PhD in contemporary history with a thesis about the history of anarchism in Portugal and in 2024 he published the book "O Anarquismo e a Arte de Governar, Portugal (1890-1930)" (Edições Fora de Jogo). Recently he has also published the articles "Anarchism, colonialism and the question of "race" in Portugal (c.1890-1930)", in the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, and "'Um grito de alarme contra a degenerescência da espécie': Homosexuality and Decadence in the Anarchosyndicalist A Batalha in the Early 1920s", in Portuguese Studies, both co-written with Richard Cleminson.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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This essay introduces a short series of podcasts emanating from last year's 'Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth Century History' special issue. Joshua Newmark highlights some of the parallels and linkages between the Spanish and Portuguese anarchist movements, while Sophie Turbutt explores the key themes emerging from the special issue and what they contribute to research on anarchist history.
Joshua Newmark is a fourth year PhD student in the School of History, University of Leeds, researching internationalism in the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement, 1910-1939. In 2023 he published an edited collection on British and Irish solidarity with the Spanish anti-fascist struggle.
Sophie Turbutt is a third year PhD student in the School of History, University of Leeds, researching gender and comradeship in the Spanish anarchist movement, 1923-1939. In 2022 she published a journal article on sexual revolution and the Spanish anarchist press.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, David Christopher explores and unpacks the mutually anarchistic and apocalyptic propensities in the early films of David Cronenberg. Christopher positions Cronenberg's films as exemplary of an innovative new methodology of cinema analysis for films following Cronenberg's influence. For more on these topics, see Anarchist Studies 32.1.
Dr Christopher is a Lecturer in Popular Screen Cultures at the University of Leicester for the School of Arts, Media, and Communication.
David's most recent publications are:
Flexing Armageddon: Displacing Climate Change Anxiety through Soft Power Nationalist Interests in GuoFan’s The Wandering Earth, Brill - Youth and Globalization Journal: Cultural Production in Asia, Spring 2024. DOI - tba.
Horror and the Cube Films: An Unlikely Vehicle for the Negotiation of Nationalist-Cultural Ideologies, Mutual Images – On Politics of Visual Media, Issue 11 (2023-24): pp. 139-170. (Co-edited and with and Introduction by Dr. David Christopher and Dr. Marco Pellitteri, pp. 53- 59). https://www.mutualimages-journal.org/index.php/mi/issue/view/11/14.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Andrew Whitehead examines the two most lethal incidents linked to anarchism in London's history: the murder of three police officers during an attempted armed robbery at Houndsditch in December 1910 and the ensuing siege of Sidney Street in Stepney. He looks particularly at the links between the mainly Latvian perpetrators and three anarchist luminaries then living in exile in London, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta and Rudolf Rocker.
Andrew Whitehead is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham and an associate editor of History Workshop Journal. His latest book A Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney Street, was published by Reaktion Books in March 2024.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Jayne Malenfant and Hannah Brais unpack an anarchist approach to confronting housing precarity by bringing together existing anarchist scholarship while proposing housing interventions that support agency, anti-colonial work, and justice. They confront the inadequacy of existing housing interventions and propose an alternative vision that aligns with anarchist values of solidarity, agency, prefigurative politics, and harm reduction.
Jayne Malenfant is an Assistant Professor at McGill University in Tio'tia:ke/Montreal. Their work focuses on housing, homelessness, community-led research and anarchist education.
Hannah Brais is a doctoral candidate at McGill University in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Her work focuses on improving practices and policies for people experiencing homelessness.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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This essay examines the rise of 'direct action' as a key concept in anarchist and radical politics over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces the transnational arguments, texts and networks that made this possible.
Sean Scalmer is a Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. This essay is a greatly edited version of a recent article: 'Direct Action: Invention of a Transnational Concept', International Review of Social History, vol. 68, no. 3, December 2023, pp.357-87. (An open access version is here).The research and the essay forms part of a research project on 'Direct Action and Democracy: Utopia, Experience, Threat', funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, adapted from his recently published book, Sam C. Tenorio (he/they) reconsiders the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and its ruinous disruptions, like arson, theft, and vandalism, as a cataclysm that clears material and discursive ground and proffers its own questions of property. It argues that the cataclysmic vantage of the Watts rebellion overflows on a state narrative meant to misapprehend both the political subjectivity of Black people and their conditions of possibility.
Sam C. Tenorio is Assistant Professor in African American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. He writes about carcerality and black radical practice as well as black trans and trans of color critique. His most recent publications are Jump: Black Anarchism and Antiblack Carcerality (NYU Press) and “White Carceral Geographies” (South Atlantic Quarterly).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Nolan Bennett traces through Alexander Berkman's 1912 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist an unresolved tension between two approaches to the prison: advocacy for political prisoners and advocacy against the politics of prisons. Berkman's ambivalence between these approaches amid his memoirs and later activism signify the book's importance and point toward enduring tensions in contemporary prison politics.
Nolan Bennett is a political theorist and assistant professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Nolan's most recent publications are "The Ambivalence of Alexander Berkman's Anti-Prison Anarchism" and "George Jackson's Perfect Disorder."
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Peterson Silva talks about metaphors for freedom among anarchists. He particularly discusses a metaphor concerning failure in complex systems, pointing out that anarchists relate freedom to the deep transformation of social patterns. A list of the references he cites in this episode is available here.Peterson Silva is a writer, translator, and PhD student of Sociology and Political Science in Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. Peterson Silva's most recent publications are Modelos anarquistas de legitimidade [Anarchist models of legitimacy] and A posição anarquista nos debates sobre privatização, burocracia e meritocracia [Anarchists on privatisation, bureaucracy, and meritocracy].
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Chris Robé explores the origins of video activism from the ecology, women’s liberation, and anarchist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He then traces the state’s increasing surveillance of video activism and recent debates regarding the value of such activism among participants of the Stop Cop City movement.
Chris Robé is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies. He writes about media activism of all varieties and has recently published Abolishing Surveillance: Digital Media Activism and State Repression with PM Press. He occasionally writes film reviews for PopMatters. He is also vice-president for his faculty union, pushing back against the attacks against academic freedom while pursuing creating a quality and free public higher education for all.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Pranay Somayajula critically examines the anarchist movement’s relationship to anticolonial politics. Drawing on a rich history of anticolonial movements, from the Kurds in Rojava to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who have sought national liberation and self-determination without being confined by the nation-state, he argues for an anarchist politics of anticolonial solidarity rooted in a radical conception of nationhood without nationalism.
Pranay Somayajula is an Indian-American writer, researcher, and cultural critic currently based in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in outlets including Jacobin, The Nation, and The Drift, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock. He can be found on Twitter at @p_somayajula.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Christopher Powell examines how sovereign statehood generates an economy of shame that fosters identification with the imagined sovereign. Achieving anarchy requires a shift in who is shamed and for what, shifting self-worth from ‘higher' ideals to horizontal solidarity.
Christopher Powell is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. His most recent publication is “Radical Complexity: Using Complex Systems Theory to Think About Social Transformation” in New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Elena Pagani presents theorising and practices of freedom as interpersonal and intersubjective. She does this through the conceptions of agonistic self-creation and agonistic empathy in conversation with empirical findings from a militant research of radical worker co-operatives in Greece. Her presentation invites us to imagine and prefigure an anarchist utopia where the notion of power would be redundant (without 'archy') in the now, or otherwise, how we could potentially get rid of informal hierarchies.
Elena Pagani is an activist and currently a Lecturer in Organisation Behaviour at the University for the Creative Arts. Her doctoral thesis was Organising Equal Freedom: from antagonism to agonism.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Deric Shannon outlines the anarchist analysis and critique of capitalism. He also gives some potential explanations for capitalism's resilience.
Deric Shannon is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University's Oxford College. His most recent books are The State of State Theory: State Projects, Repression, and Multi-sites of Power and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education: From the Abstract to the Quotidian.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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In this essay, Sonia Hernández describes the central role Mexican women played in the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist organizing during the early 20th century. She examines the emergence of transnational feminism influenced by anarchist ideas in the Gulf of Mexico region - such women's labor activism left an indelible mark on the greater history of the US-Mexican borderlands.
Sonia Hernández is a Professor of History at Texas A&M University. Her most recent publications are For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938 (University of Illinois Press, 2021) and "Gendering Transnational State Violence: Intertwined Histories of Intrigue and Injustice along the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1913," Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 2, September 2023: 258-281.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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