Good Politics” Property, Intersectionality, and the Making of the Anarchist Self
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“Good Politics” Property, Intersectionality, and the Making of the Anarchist Self Erica Lagalisse Department of Anthropology McGill University, Montreal December 2016 A Thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of the PhD. ©Erica Lagalisse 2016 Abstract Contemporary anarchist activists aim to manifest non-hierarchical social relations within their own social milieu, as well as topple the social hierarchies that characterize the dominant society, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism: Anarchists observe the importance of “means” matching “ends” and work to bring about “a new world in the shell of the old”. I argue however that anarchist activism in North America does not entirely subvert the logic of neoliberalism. Colonial property relations, bureaucratic legalism, and statistical fantasies of the sovereign state (among other linear equations) continue to inflect anarchist politics and self-making projects: the rhizome is re-territorialized. This multi-sited ethnography explores anarchist networks that cross Québec, the United States and Mexico to demonstrate how anarchist practice is mired in contradiction, especially to the extent that this practice is shaped by notions of self and property (propriety) dominant in English-speaking North America. My comparative study illustrates similarities and differences among diverse anarchist scenes, throwing into relief the particular practices of university-educated Anglo American leftists, and draws on anthropological, feminist and critical race theory to show how they have preempted the black feminist challenge of “intersectionality” by recuperating its praxis within the logic of neoliberal self-making projects and property relations, a particular economy of value in which certain identities are foregrounded and others—especially that of class— are effectively concealed. Ultimately the anarchists are presented as a limit case: even within their “autonomous” everyday practices, the propertizing self prevails in what I call the game of “good politics” - the Bridge of all prestige games, and one which structures much contemporary critical academic scholarship as well. Résumé Les militants anarchistes contemporains cherchent à manifester des relations sociales non hiérarchiques au sein de leur propre milieu social et à renverser les hiérarchies sociales qui caractérisent la société dominante, comme le suprémacisme blanc, le patriarcat et le capitalisme: les anarchistes observent l'importance d’une congruence entre fins et moyens et travaillent à créer «un nouveau monde dans la coquille de l'ancien». Je soutiens cependant que l'activisme anarchiste en Amérique du Nord ne subvertit pas entièrement la logique du néolibéralisme. Les relations de propriétés coloniales, le légalisme bureaucratique et les fantasmes statistiques de l'État souverain (entre autres équations linéaires) continuent à infléchir les pratiques politiques des anarchistes et leurs projets de construction de soi: le rhizome est ainsi reterritorialisé. Cette ethnographie multi-située explore les réseaux anarchistes qui traversent le Québec, les États-Unis et le Mexique pour démontrer comment la pratique anarchiste est embourbée en contradiction, surtout dans la mesure où cette pratique est influencée par des notions de soi et de propriété dominantes chez les anglophones en Amérique du Nord. Mon étude comparative illustre les similitudes et les différences entre divers milieux anarchistes, mettant en relief les pratiques particulières des gauchistes anglo- américains formés à l'université, et s'inspire de la critical race theory, la théorie anthropologique, et la théorie féministe pour montrer comment ils ont préempté le défi du féminisme noir de l' «intersectionnalité», en récupérant sa praxis dans la logique des projets de construction de soi et relations de propriétés néolibéraux, une économie de valeur particulière dans laquelle certaines identités sont mises en avant et d'autres - en particulier celles de classe - sont effectivement masquées. Enfin, les anarchistes sont ici présentés comme un cas limite: même dans leurs pratiques quotidiennes «autonomes», le propriétaire de soi-même prévaut dans ce que j'appelle le jeu de la «good politics» - un jeu de prestige qui influence les activités des théoriciens académiques autant que celles des activistes anarchistes. Acknowledgements I should first like to honour all the activists with “good politics” and “bad” who participated in this project, those who shared their stories, those who helped me work through the complex political and theoretical questions of my research, those who supported me at key moments. If I begin to list names of those found within the pages of this work I risk betraying the identity of participants beyond as well. You know who you are – thank you. Thanks then go to Dr. Kristin Norget, my PhD supervisor, for her support and guidance. It was Kristin who helped me understand that my dissertation was in fact an ethnographic study of “intersectionality” as much as one of the anarchist scene, and for her scholarly and theoretical guidance in this direction I am very grateful. As my primary reviewer and critical interlocutor, she pushed me to craft this thesis into a work greater in scope and import than I had ever imagined (and I imagined quite a bit). For her generous help during the “early years” as I prepared my first publications, I learned to write and find my voices. I would also like to thank Dr. Catherine LeGrand, Dr. Jérôme Rousseau, and Dr. Setrag Manoukian at McGill University for their support during the PhD program. Dr. LeGrand pushed me to expand my study of 19th century anarchism to include Freemasonry and Theosophists, which was daunting, but exciting, and ultimately influenced my dissertation and ongoing research in a profound way. Catherine also consoled me many afternoons when I felt the need to vent about less-exciting aspects of Higher Learning. Visiting Jérôme on Fridays to pick his brain about anthropological theory and mathematics was one of the most pleasant aspects of the PhD early years; his study of complexity theory was influential to my work and I hope he feels I have done our conversations justice in the end. During the latter years Setrag helped me through many institutional frustrations, read draft segments, and generously took over as my new talking partner as I proceeded to study “the self”. Completing the PhD program would have been significantly more difficult without the generous patience, technical- bureaucratic prowess, and moral support of Olga Harmazy and Connie di Giuseppe, Administrators of the McGill Anthropology Department. Clara-Swan Kennedy, Crystal Leger, Nathalie Tran, Isabel Tames and Amber Lee Silva made me laugh, kept me company, took care of my cat, and brought me snacks when it mattered most. Whenever there was only one set of Footprints In The Sand, it’s because one of these girlz was carrying me or running to the dépanneur. Clara-Swan Kennedy also deserves an extra special mention for sending me loads of Internet links to juicy articles, blog posts, comment threads and Youtube videos that illustrated my points and made for fantastic footnotes. Great friends also include guys such as Chuk Plante and David Graeber. Chuk was a rare and appreciated confidante during the early years in Peterson Hall, when we still automatically sat down on the steps to chat instead of using the armchairs provided. Dr. David Graeber encouraged me to write this dissertation throughout the entire ten years of its gestation. His initial confidence in my work helped me develop my own. Later on David also financially supported me with a custom-crafted “Debt: Zero- Fucking-Years” ethnographic writing fellowship. David was flush but deserves real cred for this, because my ethnography of direct action is, in some ways, an anti-thesis to his own (long live the dialectix). In terms of funding, I also thank the Fulbright U.S-Canada Program for the Visiting Student Researcher Fellowship (2011-2012), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for a Doctoral Fellowship (2010-2012) and Canada Graduate Scholarship (2005-2007), and the Fonds de Recherche Québecois de la Société et Culture (FRQSC) for the Bourse de doctorat en recherche that allowed me to begin pursuing my doctoral studies (2008-2009). I also thank McGill University for the Arts Insight Award and Research Fellowship (2008-2009). I would also like to thank Concordia University, whose Caroline and Richard Renaud Full Tuition Entrance Scholarship for undergraduate studies (2000-2003) made it possible for me to pursue a university education in the first place, and for Dr. Lillian Robinson, who signed off on my first (piddly but encouraging) undergraduate Research Grant from the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. I wish I had read her chapter in Working Class Women in the Academy (1993) while she was still alive. I am someone who would never have acquired a BA, much less a PhD, in absence of the above scholarship schemes, and although I have strong negative feelings regarding the design of their web applications, I am ever grateful for their money. I want to pay specific gratitude to Dr. João Costa Vargas, whose Critical Race Theory seminar I audited while I was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011-12. Dr. Costa Vargas’ anthropological study of “intersectionality” as conveyed in his seminar greatly influenced my research; it was he who first articulated the insight developed in Chapter 9 of this work that “intersectionality” is brought to articulate with the logic of the state when it is “made amenable to the predictability that legal thinking requires”. João also introduced me to the work of Frank Wilderson, which ultimately provided the perfect punchline to my ethnographic study of settler “anarchoindigenism”. I suppose I will never have my Wilderson without some Marx, yet as I ventured through my class critique of everyday “intersectionality” I imagined Dr. Costa Vargas as my reader to keep me thinking as cleverly as possible. I very much hope both João Costa Vargas and Frank Wilderson appreciate where I have carried their work.