Global Anarchisms Conference, Ithaca, NY, Sept. 21-22, 2012

Global Anarchisms:
No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries

2012 Annual Conference,
Institute for Comparative Modernities
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Friday, September 21
Saturday, September 22, 2012

Organized by Barry Maxwell
(Comparative Literature and American Studies, Cornell University) and Raymond Craib (History, Cornell University)
All events will take place at
Africana Studies and Research Center,
310 Triphammer Rd.,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

[Autonomedia will have a book table at this event.]

Anarchism: no gods, no masters. Enough with religion and the state. This workshop makes an additional demand: no peripheries.

The diffusionist line – anarchism was in areas outside of Europe an import and a script to be mimicked – has faced the challenge in recent years of research that reveals anarchism in its plural origins and sheer multiplicity of local variants. In this sense one might go so far as to argue that early twentieth century anarchists were—in their emphasis on the world as their home, in their peripatetic radicalism, in the fact that anarchist perspectives could be born from (rather than prior to) migration, in their critique of the constant efforts to divide and hierarchize people—the first postcolonial theorists. To reflect on the histories and cultures of the anti-statist mutual aid movements of the last century, then, will be one aim of this conference. It has a second aim, that dovetails with the first: the re-examination of the historical relationships between anarchism and communism, without starting from the position of sectarian difference (Marxism versus anarchism). Rather, we will look at how anarchism and communism intersected; how the insurgent Left could appear—and in fact was—much more ecumenical, capacious, and eclectic than frequently portrayed; and that such capaciousness is a hallmark of anarchist practice, which is pre-figurative in its politics and anti-hierarchical and anti-dogmatic in its ethics.

PARTICIPANTS WILL INCLUDE
Gavin Arnall
Mohammed Bamyeh
Banu Bargu
Iain Boal
Bruno Bosteels
Glen Coulthard
Ray Craib
Geoffroy de Laforcade
Silvia Federici
Andrej Grubacic
Steven Hirsch
Adrienne Hurley
Hilary Klein
Peter Linebaugh
David Porter
Maia Ramnath
Penelope Rosemont
Jolene Rickard
Bahia Shehab
Eddie Yuen

CO-SPONSORED BY

Africana Studies and Research Center
American Indian Program
American Studies
Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future
Comparative Literature
Development Sociology
English
Government
History
History of Art
Institute for German Cultural Studies
Latin American Studies Program
Latino Studies Program
Near Eastern Studies
Romance Studies
Rose Goldsen Lecture Series
Society for the Humanities