NCOR RADICAL THEORY TRACK
March 10-11, 2007
co-curated by the Institute for Anarchist Studies
and the Free Society Collective
For the first time, the National Conference on
Organized Resistance (NCOR,
http://www.organizedresistance.org) held in
Washington, DC, is offering a Radical Theory Track--a
selection of ten talks and presentations explicitly
aimed at activists who wish to explore how social
theory both informs and is born out of our political
work. Radicals have long acknowledged the importance
of guiding thoughts in our work to transform the
world. We also understand the need to develop and
critically evaluate our own theories in a world rife
with exploitation, oppression, and hegemonic thinking.
Thus, the Radical Theory Track aims to provide a space
at NCOR in which to engage in theoretical discussion
and debate as political practice--a forum in which
theoretical discussion is not divorced from movement
concerns and experience, or bound up in abstraction,
but in which careful and original analysis of dynamic
concepts that are key to radical Left theory and
strategy can be articulated, shared, critiqued,
extended, and proliferated.
The Radical Theory Track is co-curated by an
organizing collective of the Institute for Anarchist
Studies (IAS, http://www.anarchiststudies.org) and the
Free Society Collective
(http://www.freesocietycollective.org), with much
support from the NCOR collective. The idea for the
track emerged out of the annual Renewing the Anarchist
Tradition conference, a project of the IAS, as a way
to create more spaces for anti-authoritarian Left
scholarship-as-praxis. We hope you will join us,
whether for one, some, or all of the sessions.
The ten sessions are:
OPPRESSION, FREEDOM, AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Mark Lance
For anarchists and other leftists, various forms of
social organization--be they governmental, economic,
cultural, or sexual--can be oppressive. Indeed,
oppression of the sort we meet in the modern world is
not just caused or facilitated by social organization
but is largely constituted by complex structures of
social organization. For example, a society can be
systemically racist, as a result of the broad function
of its institutions, without any individual having
racist attitudes or setting out to achieve racist
ends. Some react to this connection by advocating some
form of primitivism, a rejection of social
organization beyond the most rudimentary. There is a
philosophical tradition--found in Aristotle, and
developed classically by Kant, Hegel, and Marx, but
showing up in a wide range of thinkers--that argues
that freedom is also constituted by social
organization. Human autonomy, that is, is something
quite different from the freedom of solitary animals
and is inconceivable without social practices. Mark
will explain and argue that both are true. But if
social organization is both necessary for freedom and
constitutes oppression, what is a poor radical to do?
The devil is in the details; we’ll try to sort some of
them out.
Mark is a professor of philosophy and professor of
justice and peace at Georgetown University. In his day
job, he works on and teaches about philosophy of
language, logic, epistemology, moral philosophy, and
political philosophy. He has been an activist for over
twenty years, working on a wide range of peace and
social justice issues both local and global. Mark is
currently on the board of the Institute for Anarchist
Studies, the editorial collective of "Perspectives on
Anarchist Theory," and is national co-chair of the US
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. He is also at
work on a book defending an idiosyncratic version of
anarchism.
THE LEGACY OF FREEDOM IN MURRAY BOOKCHIN'S WORK
Cindy Milstein
Born in 1921, the same year that Peter Kropotkin died,
Murray Bookchin’s own death this past July signals the
end of another era in anarcho-communist theorizing.
Bridging the Old and the New Left, his
interdisciplinary body of work (over a dozen books,
and countless articles and public talks) moved
anarchism into the twentieth century, transforming it
into a more rigorous political philosophy and a more
directly democratic praxis. His exploration of the
emergence of hierarchy in "The Ecology of Freedom" and
his utopian stress on forms of freedom in
"Post-Scarcity Anarchism" stand out in this regard.
Yet he was often a controversial figure, displeasing
Marxists and anarchists alike. This talk aims to take
a critical look this self-educated, lifelong radical’s
contributions to a revolutionary and libertarian Left.
It will briefly introduce some of his key notions, and
then delve into his work through three lens: the way
he lived his life; the way he thought about society;
and the way he thought about politics.
Cindy is co-organizer of the annual Renewing the
Anarchist Tradition conference, a board member of the
Institute for Anarchist Studies, and a collective
member of both the Free Society Collective and
all-volunteer Black Sheep Books in Montpelier. She
does grassroots political work in central Vermont and
public speaking anywhere else. Her essays appear in
several books, including "Realizing the Impossible:
Art against Authority" (AK Press, 2007), "Globalize
Liberation" (City Lights, 2004), and "Confronting
Capitalism" (Soft Skull, 2004).
CREATIVE DISRUPTIONS OF SPACE, MEMORY, AND POWER
Bettina Escauriza and Dara Greenwald
Public space is highly scripted. As users of space, we
are constantly receiving cues on how to behave and
make use of space. This scripting occurs due to
pressures from agents of repression (capitalism, the
state, sexism, and so on), which in turn aid in the
construction of identities. We are interested in
raising questions around how we comply and sometimes
reinforce the different ways that power emerges in
public space, asking what public space is anyway, and
discussing strategies of how we might resist these
dominant and pervasive scripts on our behavior. In
this talk, we will present several creative projects
that have attempted to challenge the scripting of
public place and public memory through autonomous
interventions, including performance, landmarking,
modification of structures, media, and messages. We
will do a multimedia presentation that will include
video and images.
Bettina was born in Paraguay and immigrated with her
family in the late 1980s to Miami. She is interested
in making art and public interventions that contest
the coercive power of the built environment.
Dara is a media artist living in Troy, New York. She
has been committed to participating in collaborative
and political cultural work for many years.
CHALLENGES TO CAPITALISM, CHALLENGES TO THE LEFT:
ANTI-SEMITISM, ISLAMOPHOBIA, AND THE THREE-WAY FIGHT
Michael Staudenmaier
The "three-way fight" analysis proposes that we
reconfigure our understanding of global politics away
from a binary opposition between "us" (good, radical,
freedom-loving) and "them" (bad, capitalists,
oppressive), and toward a multipolar assessment in
which capitalism attempts to maintain its hegemony by
fending off insurgent movements both Left (anarchists,
Zapatistas, etc.) and Right (fascists, al-Qaeda,
etc.). Michael will explore the implications of this
analysis, taking as his starting point the perceived
tension between those on the Left who prioritize the
struggle against anti-Semitism and those who emphasize
the fight against Islamophobia. His talk will address
problems within the North American radical Left in
order to examine the broad prospects for an insurgent
anti-capitalist movement that can challenge capitalism
from the Left.
Michael is a longtime anarchist writer and activist
from Chicago. He is currently working on a book-length
history of the Sojourner Truth Organization, a
revolutionary group largely based in the Midwest
during the 1970s and 1980s. He spends much of his time
trying to be a good dad.
YOU STOLE MY TACTICS!
CRITICALLY EXPLORING THE CAPITALIST CO-OPTATION
OF DECENTRALIZED CULTURAL PRODUCTION
Andréa Maria and Arthur Foelsche
Radicals are often on the cutting edge of cultural
production; many innovations in media, art, and
organizational forms have their roots in social
movements. This influence shouldn’t be
underestimated--from the rise of "citizen journalism"
to cooperative forms of production, tools and ideas
that anti-authoritarian radicals have created and
developed in struggles for autonomy and against
capitalism abound. Yet neoliberal capitalism has done
a remarkable job of co-opting and commodifying these
tactics and tools for its own ends; in the process,
the content of these forms has been vitiated of
politically subversive or revolutionary meaning and
effect. How has this happened? Why do radicals have so
little success utilizing forms, tools, and tactics
that they helped architect? What can we do to reclaim
those tactics, and use them to their fullest potential
for subversive and revolutionary ends? From another
perspective, attempts by radicals as well as some
liberals and progressives to criticize mainstream
culture, shifts the focus toward a critique of
cultural forms rather than the conditions that produce
them. How can radicals maintain a perspective that
both demands critical content in media, art, and
organizational forms while maintaining a criticism of
the broader social structures in which they occur?
Andréa has reported on occupation and conflict from
Iraq and Haiti, organized for migration justice and
the right to housing, and written dispatches on
international solidarity and anti-imperialism. Her
articles have appeared in a range of online and print
publications, from the "Guardian Weekend Magazine" to
"Counterpunch," and an anthology, "Autonomous Media:
Activating Resistance and Dissent" (2005). Andréa sits
on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies.
Her research interests include new media and digital
resistance, and the commodification of political
practices. She is currently working on a book of
interviews with international solidarity organizers.
Arthur is a member of the Free Society Collective and
Black Sheep Books collective, and has been involved in
a variety of media projects. He worked as an organizer
for several Indymedia projects, produced two
documentaries on the anti-globalization movement, has
been involved in community radio news programming, and
worked with a variety of nonprofit and progressive
organizations to develop strategy and technological
solutions for their needs. Arthur has taught at the
Institute for Social Ecology, and currently programs
for a living.
WOMEN, THE BODY, AND CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION
Silvia Federici
This talk will discuss the function of female labor
and the female body in the process of capitalist
accumulation, and the reproduction of the working
class. In addition, it will look at the struggle women
have made on the terrain of reproduction, and the
importance of a feminist viewpoint for both
anti-capitalist movements and the construction of a
nonexploitative society.
Silvia is a longtime feminist activist and teacher.
She has taught at the University of Port harcourt
(Nigeria) and Hofstra University. Silvia is the author
of many essays on culture, education, and women’s
struggles. Her books include: "Caliban and the Witch:
Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation,"
"Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of
Western Civilization and Its 'Others'" (editor); "A
Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles against Structural
Adjustment in African Universities" (co-editor); and
"African Visions: Literary Images, Political Change,
and Social Struggles in Contemporary Africa"
(co-editor).
THE ENCLOSURE OF THE COMMONS--AND STEALING IT BACK
Shiri Pasternak and George Caffentzis
The commons and common property have revived in
antagonism with the rise of neoliberalism, and provide
an important political lingua franca for anarchists,
ecologists, and Marxists. This co-presentation will
look at property rights and privatization while
surveying examples of the criminalization of
collectivity; it will also examine how the robbery of
the commons concept is taking place. Property rights
regimes expose the inequalities of society;
intellectual property rights regimes especially
denaturalize the way things are owned and distributed.
By comparing property rights systems around the world,
we can see how property is not a "thing" but a social
relationship, and a way of being in and knowing the
world. Underpinning global privatization processes and
colonization, the expansion of private property rights
around the world threatens to destroy knowledge forms
and community economy. But like material commons,
these powerful common concepts can be enclosed too,
and their "natural heirs" can be dispersed with
nothing in their heads and hands! This is happening to
the concept of commons and common property. This talk
will also suggest some steps to stop the robbery of
the commons and put forward a proposal for moving away
from the public/private binary toward a radical
commons.
Shiri is a freelance writer and researcher based in
Toronto, and the founder of the Property Taskforce
think tank (www.propertytaskforce.org). She is a
research associate at the Polis Project on Ecological
Governance, and the former associate director of the
Forum on Privatization and the Public Domain. Shiri is
currently working on a direct democracy project with a
small collective in Toronto, and researching
co-optations of commons and common property movements.
George is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective
and a professor of philosophy at the University of
Southern Maine. An e-book of his recent political
essays can be downloaded from www.radicalpolytics.org.
STREET ART AND COUNTER POWER
Josh MacPhee
This workshop is an in-depth and serious discussion
about the efficacy of street art and graffiti, and its
role in social movements. Through an assessment of the
role street art has played in four historical examples
(Paris, France in 1968; Nicaragua in the 1970s; South
Africa in the 1980s; and Buenos Aires, Argentina, in
2001-2003), Josh will lay the groundwork for the idea
that street-level artistic acts have the potential to
become a democratic and grassroots counterinstitution
to dominant mainstream media. When done in isolation,
acts of street expression often primarily play the
role of social release, allowing an individual to vent
frustration against an unjust system or act, but when
done en masse, collectively, street art can take on a
powerful role that is essential to insurrections and
radical social movements. The first half of the
workshop will consist of a multimedia presentation of
the material, containing nearly a hundred images of
political street art and graffiti from the last forty
years. The second half will be a group discussion
about how to improve the role(s) street art plays in
our contemporary social movements.
Josh is an artist and activist who co-edited the just
released "Realizing the Impossible: Art against
Authority," a collection of writings on art and
anarchism for AK Press. He also is working with a
group of artists to collectivize the radical art
distribution system at justseeds.org.
WHAT A CONCEPT CAN DO: PUTTING THEORY TO WORK
Stephen Turpin
When we struggle against oppressive structures and
authoritarian regimes, one of the decisive factors in
mobilizing resistance is our dissatisfaction with the
conditions of the present. As obvious at this
incipient dissatisfaction may be for many activists,
the question of how to create a broader understanding
of contemporary conditions remains a serious challenge
for radical political movements. In order to
articulate these conditions in an accessible,
meaningful, and compelling analysis, radical political
organizations must continually work to develop
concepts that can connect structures of domination,
modes of oppression, and various other forms of
authority with our lived experiences. In this
discussion, Stephen takes up the question of how
concepts are created and what they can do in order to
demonstrate how concepts can be used as weapons in
anti-authoritarian struggles. Drawing from
contemporary and historical examples, as well as from
the theoretical work of Michel Foucault, Gilles
Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, we will explore the
politics of concept production, and see how
theoretical constructions can embolden our political
imaginary while undermining forms of oppression and
domination.
Stephen is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto,
where he is researching the spatial pedagogies and
attendant politics of contemporary installation art
and architecture. His other research interests include
the history of aesthetics, organizational science and
complexity theory, anarchist theory, digital activist
practices, and contemporary French philosophy.
Stephen’s political work is focused on issues of
resource recuperation and mutation through
organizations like Books to Prisoners and the
production of "waste-based" art, architecture, and
design.
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE LOSS OF THE POLITICAL
Walter Hergt
The neoliberal ethos suggests that social freedom and
human well-being are best realized within the
capitalist market--the deeper the reach of market
transactions and imperatives that regulate our social,
spiritual, and political lives, the better.
Neoliberalism thus eviscerates the public sphere in
two ways: through the privatization of its spaces, and
by recrafting citizenship as the action fulfilled by
the private, consuming, or entrepreneurial individual.
What then remains of politics, and specifically what
are the opportunities for radicals to advance politics
in a depoliticized world? This talk will look at the
origins and character of neoliberalism, how
neoliberalism recasts historically political
questions, such as the attainment of social goods, and
particularly how the consumption of entertainment
masks increasingly reactionary and repressive social
conditions. We must acknowledge that neoliberalism is
not simply a concern for society at large but that it
also shapes and constrains the political responses of
radicals. Together, we will explore the pitfalls of
potentially apolitical Left responses, and how our
theory and practice might better reclaim politics and
lead toward meaningful confrontations with capitalism.
Walter is a member of the Free Society Collective, a
collective member of Black Sheep Books, a carpenter,
and a graduate student at City University New York. He
has been involved with numerous organizing,
independent media, and radical educational projects.