Anarchist Imaginaries

Allan Antliffi

Abstract

In this brief statement, I suggest generates the preconditions for a host of radical imaginaries.

Pondering the concept of “imagination” as it relates to “radicalism”, I am reminded that over the course of the last century the ability to experiment with and develop social ideals has been repeatedly shut down in the name of radicalism as adjudicated by authoritarian movements (predominantly Marxist or Fascist) that have an instrumentalist notion of what radicalism entails. If we consider the etymology of the word radical—“going to the root”—then I would suggest we are speaking about a range of subjectivities and the freedom to forge affinities across differences, to develop a politics of empathy that might sustain unity in diversity. Therefore I am drawn, in the first instance, to the anarchist model of and political federation as a precondition for the radical imagination in the context of social self-governance. Beyond that, we face the question of what sort of societies we wish to realize. In this regard, anarchic modes of organizing will pre-figure many possibilities for imagining conditions of social freedom, and necessarily so.

Anarchists are not so fixated on doctrinaire divisions and identities co-exist and over-lap constantly. Lived situations defy “theoretical” divisions and people are constantly engaging in critically thinking through theory and practice with the anarchic transformation of society in mind. This demands unity in diversity and most importantly, an openness to change—that is why the current anarchist movement in Canada is diversifying on many different levels, ensuring there are numerous “radical imaginaries”. That said, authoritarianism in all its guises— economic, social, ecological, cultural, and spiritual—are the source of much that is wrong with the world. Imagining alternatives to the current state of affairs, therefore, entails reconfiguring ethics anarchically, bringing the means into relationship with the ends and freeing up social agency from hegemonic „truths‟. Anarchic social potentialities—across a range of affinities and alliances—are of necessity bound up with insurrectionary activism against any social formations that inculcate relations of domination, exploitation and war. Indian anarchist and anti-colonial activist Ananda Coomaraswamy gives us this axiom: “those who would be free should have the will to power without the will to govern.” In this sense, he continues, “everyone who believes in the self-

Alan Antliff, “Anarchist Imaginaries,” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2010, pp. xxx-xxx. 62 determination [of a people] is to that extent an anarchist.” In sum, only the refusal of power over others makes possible the militancy that is integral to radicalism.

Endnotes

i Allan Antliff, Canada Research Chair, University of Victoria, is author of Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde (2001), and Art: From the Paris to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (2007) and editor of Only A Beginning (2004) a documentary anthology of anarchist writings and activism in Canada.

Alan Antliff, “Anarchist Imaginaries,” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2010, pp. 61-62.

Allan Antliff