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Anarchist Heterotopias : Post-1968 Libertarian Com- Munities in Britain and Italy ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Anarchist heterotopias : post-1968 libertarian com- munities in Britain and Italy https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40310/ Version: Full Version Citation: Lapolla, Luca (2018) Anarchist heterotopias : post-1968 liber- tarian communities in Britain and Italy. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email ANARCHIST HETEROTOPIAS: POST-1968 LIBERTARIAN COMMUNITIES IN BRITAIN AND ITALY Luca Lapolla Birkbeck, University of London Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 Statement of originality I, Luca Lapolla, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work. Previously published material is acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original and does not, to the best of my knowledge, break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right. Luca Lapolla 16 October 2017 2 Acknowledgments Doing a PhD can often feel like a solitary voyage through uncharted waters, or through uncharted communities, as in my case. Throughout my journey, though, I have encountered many people who have helped me in lots of different ways. This thesis would simply not exist without their suggestions, words of encouragement, and stimulating discussions. Thanking them all here is the least I could do. Although some of them would probably prefer a pint. I am particularly grateful to my supervisors: Matt Cook and Becky Taylor. They guided me in this exploration with patience and friendliness, and provided me with precious advice and feedback. By sharing their experience and knowledge with me, they gave me the opportunity to enhance my academic skills. And they always did so with an encouraging smile, which helped me overcome those moments of despair that could almost make a PhD student quit everything and join a commune in rural Italy. Almost. My thanks are also due to my interviewees. They decided to believe in my project and to trust me with their life stories and personal views. They welcomed me in their homes, met me in public places, and in occupied spaces. And sometimes they never showed up. When they did, though, they shared their time and private memories with me. Those memories were sometimes happy and others sad, but they were all intimate episodes of somebody else’s unique journey on this planet. Talking about one’s own past is something most people would normally struggle with, so I particularly appreciated the involvement of activists in these times of undercover police and state repression. In fact, I also respect the decision of those who preferred not to take part in this research, and hope that this thesis might persuade them to participate in future projects. Hopefully, some parts of this work will also provide other libertarian communities a starting point to reflect on their own political experience and inform their activism. I want finally to say thank you to my friends and family. They incited me throughout my research journey with their skilful combination of unconditional support and impatient questions like: ‘Have you finished yet?’. But this has been a personal journey as well, and knowing that they were always by my side (whether in Britain or Italy) helped me through some difficult periods. As an anarchist community cannot survive without a radical network of activists and other communities, so would I have not gotten this far without my own transnational network of mates and kin. That and Italian comfort food. 3 Abstract This thesis explores libertarian and anarchist communities – such as social centres, squats, and communes – in the UK and Italy since 1968. It shows how they relate and contribute to wider Left and social movements, despite being often overlooked by historians. Such places functioned as gateways into activism for ‘ordinary people’ and as catalysts to action for existing activists. They have provided a space to experiment and implement radical social alternatives to the status quo. These communities also facilitated the transmission of intergenerational radical memories and traditions. Like Foucauldian heterotopias, such ‘counter-sites’ simultaneously ‘represented, contested, and inverted’ the expressions of the dominant cultures. To explore the effects of this simultaneous replication and inversion of the status quo, this dissertation draws on interviews I have conducted with libertarians involved in these communities. They enable a critical appraisal of the tension between theoretical and actual communities, and of the persistence of mainstream ideas and power relations within these spaces. In particular, this work investigates the variations in the attitude of libertarian activists towards key facets in the life of their communities. I focus especially on the influence space/place and activists have on each other; the perception of time and preservation of collective memory; and the construction of identities and emergence of power relations. The period covered allows for an analysis of experiences of a new type of libertarianism – influenced by (and influencing) countercultures and new social movements. By comparing British and Italian communities within this time and with precedent cases, the dissertation illustrates how different historical and spatial contexts inflect experiences of community living and participation. It thus challenges widespread assumptions inside both the mainstream and the libertarian movement (as well as the cohesiveness of such constructs) and sheds light on the changes and continuities in the life of libertarians within and beyond such communities. 4 Table of contents List of illustrations ___________________________________________________________7 List of acronyms_____________________________________________________________8 Introduction_________________________________________________________________9 Methodology A new perspective on libertarian communities Theorised communities: from ‘paradise lost’ to confederated eco-communities Libertarian communities during ‘classical anarchism’ Chapter One________________________________________________________________32 Post-1968 libertarian communities: Reservoirs for radicals or training centres for anarchists? Countercultures and the Left: Paving the way for the rebirth of libertarian communities Post-1968 urban communities Post-1968 rural communities in Britain and Italy Conclusion Chapter Two________________________________________________________________72 From local to global. The effects of ‘space/place’ on libertarian communities Local space/place and global anarchism Urban communities as places and spaces: Ex-Caserma Liberata Urban communities between places, spaces, and memory: Kebele The libertarian community – place, people, spaces: Urupia Libertarian communities as processes? Conclusion Chapter Three______________________________________________________________99 The time and memory of libertarians A day in the life of libertarians No community for ‘old’ people A ‘libertarian memory’ Conclusion 5 Chapter Four______________________________________________________________126 An ordinary (counter)culture: Everyday negotiations in libertarian communities Old habits die hard: Libertarian communities and gender-based power relations Service providers or white leadership? Libertarian communities and ethnic minorities A class of their own: Libertarian communities and class-related issues Conclusion Chapter Five_______________________________________________________________156 Libertarians (de)constructing their political identity Anarchy in the … terminology: Deconstructing political self-identifications ‘Natural’ and political anarchists in the 1970s ‘Anarchy, but unburdened by politics’: Punks re-semanticise anarchy in the long 1980s Rediscovering and ‘customising’ the anarchist identity in the mid-1990s and early-2000s Multiple identity/ies: Deconstructing and reconstructing anarchism in the present day Conclusion Conclusions_______________________________________________________________183 Bibliography_______________________________________________________________187 Appendices________________________________________________________________202 Appendix 1 – Interview consent form Appendix 2 – Semi-structured interview schedule (first version) Appendix 3 – Semi-structured interview schedule (final version) 6 List of illustrations Photo 1: Outer wall of Ex-Caserma Liberata social centre in Bari……………………………. 76 Photo 2: Outer wall of Ex-Caserma Liberata social centre in Bari……………………………. 76 Photo 3: Pathway inside Ex-Caserma Liberata social centre in Bari...........................................77 Photo 4: Courtyard inside Ex-Caserma Liberata social centre in Bari.........................................77 Map: Map of Bari city centre…………………………………………………………………...80 7 List of acronyms ASS: Advisory Service for Squatters CdQ: Comitato di Quartiere (neighbourhood committee) CND: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CNT: Confederatión Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour) CPGB: Communist Party of Great Britain CSA: Centro Sociale Autogestito (Self-managed Social Centre) CSOA: Centro Sociale Occupato Autogestito (Self-managed Occupied Social Centre) EF!: Earth
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