"Postanarchism in a Nutshell"

Jason Adams

In the past couple of years there has been a growing
interest in what some have begun calling
"postanarchism" for short; because it is used to
describe a very diverse body of thought and because of
its perhaps unwarranted temporal implications, even
for those within this milieu, it is a term that is
more often than not used with a great deal of
reticence. But as a term, it is also one which refers
to a wave of attempts to try to reinvent anarchism in
light of major developments within contemporary
radical theory and within the world at large, much of
which ultimately began with the Events of May 1968 in
Paris, France and the intellectual milieu out of which
the insurrection emerged.

"What's Wrong With Postanarchism?"

Jesse Cohn and Shawn Wilbur

What is now being called 'postanarchism' by some
thinkers, including Saul Newman, can take on many
forms, but the term generally refers to an attempt to
marry the best aspects of poststructuralist philosophy
and the anarchist tradition. One way to read the word,
thus, is as a composite: poststructuralism and
anarchism. However, the term also suggests that the
post- prefix applies to its new object as
well, implying that anarchism, at least as heretofore
thought and practiced, is somehow obsolete.

Together,
these two senses of the word form a narrative: an
aging, spent force (anarchism) is to be saved from
obsolescence and irrelevance by being fused with a
fresh, vital force (poststructuralism). We would like
to question this narrative's assumptions and
teleology, but not without some appreciation of what
it has to offer.

"Can the Subaltern Speak German?
On Postcolonial Critique"

Hito Steyerl (May, 2002)

The debate on cultural globalization also often involves so-called postcolonial
theory. What does this encompass? According to Ruth Frankenbert and Lata Mani
(1993, 292), postcolonialism refers to a specific "conjuncture" of social force
fields and a type of political positioning in relation to local conditions.
Geopolitical power gradients strongly influence these social relations. They
influence the emergence of certain subjectivities -- and thus also the
production of art and the formation of the aesthetic and cognitive categories
of its perception. Since global power relations structure living conditions all
over the world today, according to Frankenberg and Mani's definition the place
where postcolonial power relations are in effect, is therefore equally
ubiquitous. This place is neither outside social practices nor beyond the
borders of western societies, but is rather reproduced within them as a social
relationship of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion.

"Freezing the Movement:

Posthumous Notes on Nuclear War" (1983)

George Caffentzis

Preface (2003)

I found the following set of “posthumous notes” recently while I was cleaning up a closet. They were written, on the basis of memory and textual evidence, in the spring of 1983, right before I left the US to live and teach in Nigeria. Some of the material in these notes went into a couple of articles that were published then. One was in the "Posthumous Notes" (1983) issue of Midnight Notes and the other was in a piece entitled “The Marxist Theory of War” in the Radical Science Journal issue on the anti-nuclear war movement (1983). But they have since been unread and untroubled. My rediscovery of these notes puts them and me in a tight logical spot. I was supposed to have been dead (and reborn) according to these notes…but I clearly am neither. So their circulation now immediately falsifies them. Self-negating or not, I am hoping that these notes from the dead might be of use to the living at a time when nuclear war is again on the agenda. Anyway, please receive these notes as a gift on the Day of the Dead. -- November 2, 2003

A Lamentation

Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from here! for they be all adulterers, and assembly of treacherous men. -- Jeremiah, Lamentations 9:2

"The existence of the bomb paralyzes us. Our only motion a gigantic leap backward in what we take to be the minimal conditions of our existence whereby all desires, demands, struggles vanish; only our biological existence appears a valid cause. Don't kill us, exterminate us, burn us alive, make us witness the more most horrid spectacle the mind can imagine (?????), lived thousands of times in our fears watching the 7:00 News, reading the "scientific medical reports." Please let us live, that's all we ask, forget what this life will be like, forget about our now seemingly utopian dreams..."

But isn't this declaring we're already dead? Isn't this admitting the explosion has already worked, that we've already been blown to pieces hundreds of times when, of all our needs and struggles, only the will to survive remains? Worse yet. Isn't this declaration a most dangerous path? For when only people on their knees confront the powers that be, these powers feel godlike and justified, not restrained by the fear that should they dare so much, whoever of us will be left will make life impossible for them as well.