Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism: Solidarity, Mimesis and Radical Social Change

Description

The turn of the Millennium demonstrated a fully-fledged revival and fusion of various left-wing social movements with differing agendas. Movements for women’s, black, indigenous, LGTB and animal liberation as well as ecological, anti-nuclear and anti-war groups unified against the global capital. Considering the diverse emphases of these movements, is there a philosophical framework that could help us understand their nature and their modes of operation in the 21st century? This book provides a set of conceptual tools offering a theoretical model of ‘slow’ social transformation, a modality of social change that explicitly differs from the irruptive model of a revolution or a paradigm-changing event. Instead, it proposes the two concepts of mimetic contagion and solidarity with singularity which allow us to understand what is currently happening in the activist milieu. By bringing together some of today’s most important thinkers, including Butler, Girard, Badiou, and Sloterdijk this book suggests a philosophical lens to look at the alternative living projects that contemporary left-wing activists undertake in practice. At the heart of their projects lie the pressing concerns that these contemporary philosophers currently debate. Breaking from the conceptual apparatus of the Marxian tradition, Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism instead takes Hegelian concepts and feeds them through the thought of contemporary theorists in order to form an original, productive, and inclusive scaffold with which to understand today’s world of social and political movements. FC Half title Also available from Bloomsbury Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1 Universality in Triangulation: Hegel on a Carousel Hegel’s static triad: Universality–particularity–singularity Butler’s dynamic universal: Political performativity Circulating singularity Recognition and the question of asymmetry Where are ‘we’ in Butler: The question of collectivity 2 Universality in Mimesis: Structural Failure and Social Transformation Towards recognition: Performativity as a special case of mimesis How mimesis produces failure Why we repeat: Freud, Foucault, Derrida Does gender always have to be sexual? Butler and the question of the transgender Structural failure and the question of formalism Slow social transformation: How radical is that? Reform, revolution, emancipation, subversion Collectivities of heterogeneity 3 Universality in Space: Collectivities of Heterogeneity meet Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherology Sloterdijk’s theory of bubbles and foams The archaeology of the intimate Republic of spaces: A city of human foams ‘Everything is a society’: Gabriel Tarde and the contamination of anthropocentrism Schaumdeutung versus Traumdeutung: Ego formation through the ears Foam ethics: Immunism of co-fragile heterogeneous systems Affirmation versus critique: Foucault and the planet of the practising 4 Co-Immunism versus Communism: Challenging Alain Badiou’s Model of Revolution Universal doubling: Generic multiplicity and universal singularity Generic multiplicity in ontology The difficult passage: Between being and being-there Universal singularity in the world of appearing The problem with particularity Make it quick: Event and revolution as irruptive transformations Communism à la parisienne 5 Towards Anarchism Away from equality Solidarity with singularity and contemporary anarchism Directed mimesis, contagion and anarchist r/evolution Impure universality and slow social transformation Bibliography Index