DOCSLIB.ORG

Journeying Through Utopia: Anarchism, Geographical Imagination and Performative Futures in Marie-Louise Berneri’S Works

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Journeying Through Utopia: Anarchism, Geographical Imagination and Performative Futures in Marie-Louise Berneri’S Works Investigaciones Geográficas • Instituto de Geografía •UNAM eISSN: 2448-7279 • DOI: dx.doi.org/10.14350/rig.60026 • ARTÍCULOS Núm. 100 • Diciembre • 2019 • e60026 www.investigacionesgeograficas.unam.mx Journeying through Utopia: anarchism, geographical imagination and performative futures in Marie-Louise Berneri’s works Un viaje a través de la utopía: anarquismo, imaginación geográfica y futuros performativos en la obra de Marie-Louise Berneri Federico Ferretti* Recibido: 25/07/2019. Aceptado: 12/09/2019. Publicado: 1/12/2019. Abstract. This paper addresses works and archives of Resumen. Este articulo aborda los trabajos y archivos de transnational anarchist intellectual Marie-Louise Berneri la militante anarquista transnacional Maria Luisa Berneri (1918-1949), author of a neglected but very insightful (1918-1949), autora de un estudio poco conocido pero muy history of utopias and of their spaces. Extending current significativo sobre las historias de las utopías y sus espacios. literature on anarchist geographies, utopianism and on the Al ampliar la literatura actual sobre geografías anarquistas, relation between geography and the humanities, I argue utopismo y sobre la relación entre la geografía y las ‘humani- that a distinction between authoritarian and libertarian dades’, defiendo que una distinción entre utopías libertarias utopias is key to understanding the political relevance of y utopías autoritarias es esencial para comprender la impor- the notion of utopia, which is also a matter of space and tancia política del concepto de utopía, que es también un geographical imagination. Berneri’s criticisms to utopia were asunto de espacio y de imaginación geográfica. Las críticas eventually informed by notions of anti-colonialism and anti- de Berneri a la utopía se inspiraron en su anticolonialismo y authoritarianism, especially referred to her original critique su antiautoritarismo, centrado especialmente en su original of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Then, I argue for critica de los totalitarismos del siglo XX. Además, propon- a connection between anarchist, humanistic, cultural and go una conexión entre abordajes anarquistas, humanistas, historical approaches to geography, to extend the empirical culturales e históricos de la geografía para ampliar el campo and theoretical reach of the discipline and its relations empírico y teórico de la disciplina y de sus relaciones con with the ‘humanities’. This paper likewise contributes to las humanidades. Este articulo contribuye también a las in- recent scholarship on transnational anarchism, arguing that vestigaciones recientes sobre el anarquismo transnacional, y the anarchist tradition cannot be understood outside its afirma que la tradición anarquista no puede ser comprendida transnational, cosmopolite and multilingual networks and fuera de sus redes transnacionales, multilingües y cosmo- concrete practices: therefore, only relational, contextual and politas y de sus practicas concretas. Entonces, solo lecturas space-sensitive approaches can make sense of its specificity. contextuales, relacionales y sensibles al espacio pueden dar sentido a esta especificidad anarquista. Keywords: Berneri, geographical imagination, anarchism, utopianism, anti-colonialism Palabras clave: Berneri, imaginación geográfica, anarquis- mo, utopismo, anticolonialismo * Associate Professor, University College Dublin, School of Geography, Belfield, Newman Building, Room H015. Email: [email protected]. https://people.ucd.ie/federico.ferretti. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5446-6522; Scopus Author ID: 55540917000. F. Ferretti Journeying through Utopia: anarchism, geographical imagination and performative futures… ‘The utopian lights stars in the sky of human dig- opening quotation from Camillo Berneri (1897- nity, but he sails in a harbourless sea. His psycho- 1937), important transnational activist of the first logical nature is that of a mystic, his ingenuity is half of the twentieth century and father of Maria that of a true poet; he lives outside his time, turned Luisa, exposing a certain ambivalence of the notion towards the most remote and dead past, or staring of utopia in the anarchist intellectual tradition. at the most unrealistic future. The utopian can fly On the one hand, anarchists have often expressed on the actual town, but he can never conquer it. In appraisals of utopias as positive ‘dreams’ of a new all times, Florence kills Savonarola’. society. On the other, they generally claim not to be utopians but proponents of real alternatives to the Camillo Berneri, 1932: 1. present society, arguing that ‘utopia’ is a generally bourgeois notion: Camillo Berneri’s classification of the ‘utopian’ among the ‘politicians’ is a good INTRODUCTION1 example of this critique. Anarchism is an idea which appears especially relevant for geography, This paper discusses the problem of how to build given the historical links between the construction geographies of Utopia, drawing upon an excep- of an anarchist thinking and a geographical one tional and little-known case, that is the works of embodied by figures such as Elisée Reclus (1830- anarchist transnational intellectual and activist 1905) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) (Ferretti Maria Luisa (or Marie-Louise) Berneri, author of 2014 and 2018; Kinna 2016; Springer 2016), neglected but exceptional works on histories and and the widely acknowledged role of present-day spaces of utopias. While her masterpiece Journey rediscovery of anarchist geographies in fields such Through Utopia (Berneri 1952), written in the as historical geography (Keighren 2018). What 1940s, addressed philosophical matters from the deserves further reflection is that, as anticipated, Antiquity to the beginning of the twentieth cen- most of the anarchist tradition, including Reclus tury, it was inserted in the context of the author’s and Kropotkin, explicitly refused the label of political activities, tackling the challenge of pro- utopianism, considering that anarchist activists viding a suitable alternative to the dominant re- should strive for concrete societal modifications presentations of the opposition between demo- rather than build ‘Icarias’ outside the real world, cracies and totalitarianisms, a very urgent task including utopian communities overseas (Ferretti for the international anarchist movement at that 2013). Nevertheless, according to Ruth Kinna, time. Berneri’s reflections provide useful concep- some tendencies in anarchism, normally conside- tual tools to understand anarchist approaches to red as ‘romantic’ ones, adopted the idea of utopia the notion of utopia, and at the same time it con- as synonymous with the freed society they drea- tributes to current reflections on the relation bet- mt. Kinna’s argument is that, between anarchist ween geography and utopia, extending scholar- utopianism and anti-utopianism, ‘the differences ship on cultural, (neo)humanistic and anarchist have been exaggerated’ (Kinna 2009, 222). This geographies. matches Maria Luisa Berneri’s distinctions bet- One of the political movements which have ween ‘authoritarian’ and ‘libertarian’ utopias as been especially identified with the idea of utopia I explain below. is anarchism. This association is exemplified by the My main argument is twofold. First, as Berneri did, geographies of utopia should distinguish bet- 1 An early version of this paper was presented at the session ween, on the one hand, an imperial model which ‘Where Next? Historical Geographies of the Future’ at the characterised the ultramarine expansion in the early RGS-IBG International Conference in 2016. Thanks to all Modern Epoch, reflected by the first self-declared those who asked questions and gave suggestions, especially Utopia (1516) of this kind by Thomas More the panel’s convenors Mike Heffernan and Jake Hodder. Many thanks also to Carolina Martínez (CONICET) for (Martínez 2017) and, on the other, a pluralist and our conversations on utopia and modernity. complex inspiration for more recent prefigurative 2 • Investigaciones Geográficas • eISSN: 2448-7279 • DOI: 10.14350/rig.60026 • ARTÍCULOS • Núm. 100 • Diciembre • 2019 • e60026 F. Ferretti Journeying through Utopia: anarchism, geographical imagination and performative futures… thinking linked to the idea of social progress. Se- early humanist thinkers like Erasmus, a philoso- cond, utopia is a pertinent object of study at the pher who was likewise evoked by Berneri. Recent same time for anarchist geographies, cultural and scholarship has demonstrated the political, ethical humanistic (or neo-humanistic) approaches as a and scholarly interest of early anarchist geographers literary genre, a conceptual device for investigating for ‘humanism’, ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘humane cultures of empire but also as a potential tool for science’ against the various utilitarian and amoral prefiguration and social action. Considering uto- approaches to the production of knowledge (Fe- pias in their places and in their historical contexts rretti 2018). This parallels the rediscovery of the is essential: as a corollary to my first argument, I connection between ‘humanistic’ approaches to contend that there is generally (but not necessarily) geography fostered by Anne Buttimer (1938-2017) a conceptual difference between utopias located and what was considered as ‘radical geography’ in in imaginary places overseas, linked to imperial the 1970s and 1980s (Ferretti 2019a). This paper imagination, and utopias which try to locate pos- extends this scholarship by
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Tommaso Campanella the Book and the Body of Nature Series: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives Internationales D'histoire Des Idées
    springer.com Germana Ernst Tommaso Campanella The Book and the Body of Nature Series: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées A comprehensive intellectual biography of an important and complex philosopher of the Renaissance A historical reconstruction of social and cultural relationships between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century A volume useful to clarify some philological and interpretative problems concerning modern editions and translations of Campanella’s texts A friend of Galileo and author of the renowned utopia The City of the Sun, Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, Calabria,1568- Paris, 1639) is one of the most significant and original thinkers of the early modern period. His philosophical project centred upon the idea of reconciling Renaissance philosophy with a radical reform of science and society. He produced a complex and articulate synthesis of all fields of knowledge – including magic and astrology. During his early formative years as a Dominican friar, he manifested a restless impatience 2010, XII, 281 p. towards Aristotelian philosophy and its followers. As a reaction, he enthusiastically embraced Bernardino Telesio’s view that knowledge could only be acquired through the observation of Printed book things themselves, investigated through the senses and based on a correct understanding of Hardcover the link between words and objects. Campanella’s new natural philosophy rested on the 139,99 € | £119.99 | $169.99 principle that the books written by men needed to be compared with God’s infinite book of [1]149,79 € (D) | 153,99 € (A) | CHF nature, allowing them to correct the mistakes scattered throughout the human ‘copies’ which 165,50 were always imperfect, partial and liable to revisions.
    [Show full text]
  • Conversations with Stalin on Questions of Political Economy”
    WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS Lee H. Hamilton, Conversations with Stalin on Christian Ostermann, Director Director Questions of Political Economy BOARD OF TRUSTEES: ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Joseph A. Cari, Jr., by Chairman William Taubman Steven Alan Bennett, Ethan Pollock (Amherst College) Vice Chairman Chairman Working Paper No. 33 PUBLIC MEMBERS Michael Beschloss The Secretary of State (Historian, Author) Colin Powell; The Librarian of Congress James H. Billington James H. Billington; (Librarian of Congress) The Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin; Warren I. Cohen The Chairman of the (University of Maryland- National Endowment Baltimore) for the Humanities Bruce Cole; The Secretary of the John Lewis Gaddis Smithsonian Institution (Yale University) Lawrence M. Small; The Secretary of Education James Hershberg Roderick R. Paige; (The George Washington The Secretary of Health University) & Human Services Tommy G. Thompson; Washington, D.C. Samuel F. Wells, Jr. PRIVATE MEMBERS (Woodrow Wilson Center) Carol Cartwright, July 2001 John H. Foster, Jean L. Hennessey, Sharon Wolchik Daniel L. Lamaute, (The George Washington Doris O. Mausui, University) Thomas R. Reedy, Nancy M. Zirkin COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT THE COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT WORKING PAPER SERIES CHRISTIAN F. OSTERMANN, Series Editor This paper is one of a series of Working Papers published by the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Established in 1991 by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) disseminates new information and perspectives on the history of the Cold War as it emerges from previously inaccessible sources on “the other side” of the post-World War II superpower rivalry.
    [Show full text]
  • Boundaries of Utopia – Imagining Communism from Plato to Stalin
    Boundaries of Utopia – Imagining Communism from Plato to Stalin The idea that socialism could be established in a single country was adopted as an official doctrine by the Soviet Union in 1925, Stalin and Bukharin being the main formulators of the policy. Before this there had been much debate as to whether the only way to secure socialism would be as a result of socialist revolution on a much broader scale, across all Europe or wider still. This book traces the development of ideas about communist utopia from Plato onwards, paying particular attention to debates about universalist ideology versus the possibility for ‘socialism in one country’. The book argues that although the prevailing view is that ‘socialism in one country’ was a sharp break from a long tradition that tended to view socialism as only possible if universal, in fact the territorially confined socialist project had long roots, including in the writings of Marx and Engels. Erik van Ree is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series 1 Liberal Nationalism in 7 The Telengits of Central Europe Southern Siberia Stefan Auer Landscape, religion and knowledge in motion 2 Civil-Military Relations in Agnieszka Halemba Russia and Eastern Europe David J. Betz 8 The Development of Capitalism in Russia 3 The Extreme Nationalist Simon Clarke Threat in Russia The growing influence of 9 Russian Television Today Western Rightist ideas Primetime drama and comedy Thomas Parland
    [Show full text]
  • Rancour's Emphasis on the Obviously Dark Corners of Stalin's Mind
    Rancour's emphasis on the obviously dark corners of Stalin's mind pre- cludes introduction of some other points to consider: that the vozlzd' was a skilled negotiator during the war, better informed than the keenly intelli- gent Churchill or Roosevelt; that he did sometimes tolerate contradiction and even direct criticism, as shown by Milovan Djilas and David Joravsky, for instance; and that he frequently took a moderate position in debates about key issues in the thirties. Rancour's account stops, save for a few ref- erences to the doctors' plot of 1953, at the end of the war, so that the enticing explanations offered by William McCagg and Werner Hahn of Stalin's conduct in the years remaining to him are not discussed. A more subtle problem is that the great stress on Stalin's personality adopted by so many authors, and taken so far here, can lead to a treatment of a huge country with a vast population merely as a conglomeration of objects to be acted upon. In reality, the influences and pressures on people were often diverse and contradictory, so that choices had to be made. These were simply not under Stalin's control at all times. One intriguing aspect of the book is the suggestion, never made explicit, that Stalin firmly believed in the existence of enemies around him. This is an essential part of the paranoid diagnosis, repeated and refined by Rancour. If Stalin believed in the guilt, in some sense, of Marshal Tukhachevskii et al. (though sometimes Rancour suggests the opposite), then a picture emerges not of a ruthless dictator coldly plotting the exter- mination of actual and potential opposition, but of a fear-ridden, tormented man lashing out in panic against a threat he believed to real and immediate.
    [Show full text]
  • Sos Political Science & Public Administration M.A.Political Science
    Sos Political science & Public administration M.A.Political Science II Sem Political Philosophy:Mordan Political Thought, Theory & contemporary Ideologies(201) UNIT-IV Topic Name-Utopian Socialism What is utopian society? • A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens.The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. • Utopia focuses on equality in economics, government and justice, though by no means exclusively, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology.According to Lyman Tower SargentSargent argues that utopia's nature is inherently contradictory, because societies are not homogenous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. • The term utopia was created from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America Who started utopian socialism? • Charles Fourier was a French socialist who lived from 1772 until 1837 and is credited with being an early Utopian Socialist similar to Robert Owen. He wrote several works related to his socialist ideas which centered on his main idea for society: small communities based on cooperation Definition of utopian socialism • socialism based on a belief that social ownership of the means of production can be achieved by voluntary and peaceful surrender of their holdings by propertied groups What is the goal of utopian societies? • The aim of a utopian society is to promote the highest quality of living possible. The word 'utopia' was coined by the English philosopher, Sir Thomas More, in his 1516 book, Utopia, which is about a fictional island community.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy of Mind
    Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY OF MIND ERAN ASOULIN, PAUL RICHARD BLUM, TONY CHENG, DANIEL HAAS, JASON NEWMAN, HENRY SHEVLIN, ELLY VINTIADIS, HEATHER SALAZAR (EDITOR), AND CHRISTINA HENDRICKS (SERIES EDITOR) Rebus Community Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind by Eran Asoulin, Paul Richard Blum, Tony Cheng, Daniel Haas, Jason Newman, Henry Shevlin, Elly Vintiadis, Heather Salazar (Editor), and Christina Hendricks (Series Editor) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. CONTENTS What is an open textbook? vii Christina Hendricks How to access and use the books ix Christina Hendricks Introduction to the Series xi Christina Hendricks Praise for the Book xiv Adriano Palma Acknowledgements xv Heather Salazar and Christina Hendricks Introduction to the Book 1 Heather Salazar 1. Substance Dualism in Descartes 3 Paul Richard Blum 2. Materialism and Behaviorism 10 Heather Salazar 3. Functionalism 19 Jason Newman 4. Property Dualism 26 Elly Vintiadis 5. Qualia and Raw Feels 34 Henry Shevlin 6. Consciousness 41 Tony Cheng 7. Concepts and Content 49 Eran Asoulin 8. Freedom of the Will 58 Daniel Haas About the Contributors 69 Feedback and Suggestions 72 Adoption Form 73 Licensing and Attribution Information 74 Review Statement 76 Accessibility Assessment 77 Version History 79 WHAT IS AN OPEN TEXTBOOK? CHRISTINA HENDRICKS An open textbook is like a commercial textbook, except: (1) it is publicly available online free of charge (and at low-cost in print), and (2) it has an open license that allows others to reuse it, download and revise it, and redistribute it.
    [Show full text]
  • Camillo Berneri
    Camillo Berneri Frank Mintz 1978 Born in Lodi on 28th May 1897, he spent his childhood at Reggio Emilia and was active in [a] Socialist youth group. He decided to resign by sending an open letter which caused some disturbance: ”. the Socialist movement has started on a disastrous descent towards the depths of destructive egoism, thus following in the path of the moral strength of Christianity, which grew strong thanks to its martyrs and fell into decay when the sacrifices of its followers ceased.” ”We need a new burst of energy, we must return to a time when to love an idea meant not to fear death and to sacrifice one’s whole life to total submission.” (1915). This deep, militant commitment which one meets again and again right up until his assassination was never, however, a blind faith, as we shall see. In 1917 he was drafted. Did he want to be an objector or desert? ”There are occasions whento get oneself killed is the most logical solution, and to get oneself killed becomes a moral necessity. Cases of conscience are more terrible than Austrian bullets or asphyxiating gases.” ”One fights and one dies. Violets grow on the blood-soaked earth, along the ditches of red water.” After the war he finished his studies while very actively involved in the anarchist press.He became a humanities teacher in a high school.. The coming of the Fascist regime and his refusal to give any loyalty as a civil servant to this regime meant that he had to go into exile.
    [Show full text]
  • Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War.Pdf
    NESTOR MAKHNO IN THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR Michael Malet THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE TeutonicScan €> Michael Malet \982 AU rights reserved. No parI of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, wilhom permission Fim ed/lIOn 1982 Reprinted /985 To my children Published by lain, Saffron, and Jonquil THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London rind BasingSloke Compafl/u rind reprutntatiW!S throughout the warld ISBN 0-333-2S969-6 Pnnted /II Great Bmain Antony Rowe Ltd, Ch/ppenham 5;landort � Signalur RNB 10043 Akz.·N. \d.·N. I, "'i • '. • I I • Contents ... Acknowledgements VIII Preface ox • Chronology XI .. Introduction XVII Glossary xx' PART 1 MILITARY HISTORY 1917-21 1 Relative Peace, 1917-18 3 2 The Rise of the Balko, July 19I5-February 1919 13 3 The Year 1919 29 4 Stalemate, January-October 1920 54 5 The End, October I92O-August 1921 64 PART 2 MAKHNOVSCHYNA-ORGAN1SATION 6 Makhno's Military Organisation and Capabilities 83 7 Civilian Organisation 107 PART 3 IDEOLOGY 8 Peasants and Workers 117 9 Makhno and the Bolsheviks 126 10 Other Enemies and Rivals 138 11 Anarchism and the Anarchists 157 12 Anti-Semitism 168 13 Some Ideological Questions 175 PART 4 EXILE J 4 The Bitter End 183 References 193 Bibliography 198 Index 213 • • '" Acknowledgements Preface My first thanks are due to three university lecturers who have helped Until the appearance of Michael PaJii's book in 1976, the role of and encouraged me over the years: John Erickson and Z. A. B. Nestor Makhno in the events of the Russian civil war was almost Zeman inspired my initial interest in Russian and Soviet history, unknown.
    [Show full text]
  • Rebel Alliances
    Rebel Alliances The means and ends 01 contemporary British anarchisms Benjamin Franks AK Pressand Dark Star 2006 Rebel Alliances The means and ends of contemporary British anarchisms Rebel Alliances ISBN: 1904859402 ISBN13: 9781904859406 The means amiemls 01 contemllOranr British anarchisms First published 2006 by: Benjamin Franks AK Press AK Press PO Box 12766 674-A 23rd Street Edinburgh Oakland Scotland CA 94612-1163 EH8 9YE www.akuk.com www.akpress.org [email protected] [email protected] Catalogue records for this book are available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress Design and layout by Euan Sutherland Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd., Glasgow To my parents, Susan and David Franks, with much love. Contents 2. Lenini8t Model of Class 165 3. Gorz and the Non-Class 172 4. The Processed World 175 Acknowledgements 8 5. Extension of Class: The social factory 177 6. Ethnicity, Gender and.sexuality 182 Introduction 10 7. Antagonisms and Solidarity 192 Chapter One: Histories of British Anarchism Chapter Four: Organisation Foreword 25 Introduction 196 1. Problems in Writing Anarchist Histories 26 1. Anti-Organisation 200 2. Origins 29 2. Formal Structures: Leninist organisation 212 3. The Heroic Period: A history of British anarchism up to 1914 30 3. Contemporary Anarchist Structures 219 4. Anarchism During the First World War, 1914 - 1918 45 4. Workplace Organisation 234 5. The Decline of Anarchism and the Rise of the 5. Community Organisation 247 Leninist Model, 1918 1936 46 6. Summation 258 6. Decay of Working Class Organisations: The Spani8h Civil War to the Hungarian Revolution, 1936 - 1956 49 Chapter Five: Anarchist Tactics Spring and Fall of the New Left, 7.
    [Show full text]
  • Revolution and Counterrevolution in Catalonia – Carlos Semprún Maura
    Revolution and Counterrevolution in Catalonia – Carlos Semprún Maura Introduction to the Spanish Edition I wrote this book between 1969 and 1971, when the tremors of the May-June 1968 outbreak in France had not yet subsided, and when a wide range of topics, new for many people, nourished actions, discussions, projects, journals and books. Among these topics, of course, were the libertarian revolutions and the shopworn theme of self-management. To me it seemed that the logical as well as the obvious thing to do was to participate in my own way in these discussions and in the critique of totalitarianism (“red” fascism as well as the “white” variety), by writing a book about the experiences of “self- management” in Catalonia and Aragon in 1936-1939, concerning which almost no one (if not absolutely no one) knew anything in France at that time. I was myself only then discovering the importance of these phenomena as I engaged in research and gathered documents and data for the book. During those same years, it had become fashionable for Parisian publishers to carry some “leftist” titles in their catalogues, in order to satisfy a new youthful customer base and to thus increase the profits of the various publishing houses. This book, however, was offered to a whole series of publishers without being accepted by any of them, until it was to “miraculously” find a home with a respectable, and originally Catholic, publisher (Mame), that was at the time attempting to change its image to keep pace with the times. My book did not bring it any good luck since its publisher went out of business shortly thereafter, sinking into the most total bankruptcy….
    [Show full text]
  • Anarchist Modernism and Yiddish Literature
    i “Any Minute Now the World’s Overflowing Its Border”: Anarchist Modernism and Yiddish Literature by Anna Elena Torres A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair Professor Naomi Seidman Professor Nathaniel Deutsch Professor Juana María Rodríguez Summer 2016 ii “Any Minute Now the World’s Overflowing Its Border”: Anarchist Modernism and Yiddish Literature Copyright © 2016 by Anna Elena Torres 1 Abstract “Any Minute Now the World’s Overflowing Its Border”: Anarchist Modernism and Yiddish Literature by Anna Elena Torres Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality University of California, Berkeley Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair “Any Minute Now the World’s Overflowing Its Border”: Anarchist Modernism and Yiddish Literature examines the intertwined worlds of Yiddish modernist writing and anarchist politics and culture. Bringing together original historical research on the radical press and close readings of Yiddish avant-garde poetry by Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Peretz Markish, Yankev Glatshteyn, and others, I show that the development of anarchist modernism was both a transnational literary trend and a complex worldview. My research draws from hitherto unread material in international archives to document the world of the Yiddish anarchist press and assess the scope of its literary influence. The dissertation’s theoretical framework is informed by diaspora studies, gender studies, and translation theory, to which I introduce anarchist diasporism as a new term.
    [Show full text]
  • Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21 Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21
    Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21 Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21 Colin Darch First published 2020 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Colin Darch 2020 The right of Colin Darch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3888 0 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3887 3 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7868 0526 3 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0528 7 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0527 0 EPUB eBook Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England For my grandchildren Historia scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum – Quintilian Contents List of Maps viii List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements x 1. The Deep Roots of Rural Discontent: Guliaipole, 1905–17 1 2. The Turning Point: Organising Resistance to the German Invasion, 1918 20 3. Brigade Commander and Partisan: Makhno’s Campaigns against Denikin, January–May 1919 39 4. Betrayal in the Heat of Battle? The Red–Black Alliance Falls Apart, May–September 1919 54 5. The Long March West and the Battle at Peregonovka 73 6. Red versus White, Red versus Green: The Bolsheviks Assert Control 91 7. The Last Act: Alliance at Starobel’sk, Wrangel’s Defeat, and Betrayal at Perekop 108 8. The Bitter Politics of the Long Exile: Romania, Poland, Germany, and France, 1921–34 128 9.
    [Show full text]