File spoon-archives/postanarchism.archive/postanarchism_2004/postanarchism.0404, message 8


Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 19:50:34 -0800 (PST)
From: villon sasha k <il_frenetico-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Glavin: "Power, Subjectivity, Resistance: Three Works on Postmodern Anarchism"


"What a traditional anarchist critique of T.I.A.
misses is that the effect of T.I.A is not so much the
repression of radical groups, but rather, the
construction of self-policing subjects. (The effect of
jailing Sherman Austin, a Black anarchist webmaster,
is that it makes people on the internet think twice
about creating a website espousing their political
beliefs.)"

Really?  Do "traditional anarchists" (ones that
haven't read post-structuralist or post-anarchist
works) really miss this point?  Do they really not see
that such repression makes others not act in the same
way?  This is an example of "postist" absurdism. 
Anarchists have always realized that repression stops
others from acting because they self-police
themselves.  This really shows how silly the critique
can become when it is put into the traditional
anarchism/post-anarchism dichotomy.  Sure, we can
always use more theorization about repression, but it
simply isn't so black and white; and, when it is made
so black and white the critique loses all its value.  
 


"My “buying a book” becomes an act of rebellion. It
isn’t illegal to buy a book, the form of power that is
being exercised is not the power of law or suppression
in a traditional sense, what is being exercised is the
power of the norm. The norm sets both what is to be
internalized—not doing anything that could be
interpreted as “wrong”—and, more importantly,
constitutes what is transgressive: buying a book on
anarchism. "

I think it is exactly here that a little theorization
of capitalism would be useful. Buying a book might be
transgressive to post-anarchists, but it isn't for
capitalism.  Without any theorization of how
capitalism has been able to recuperate revolt, and
even comodify it, all analysis is lost and it becomes
transgressive to buy a book.  Glavin says we need to
be "proactive" instead of transgressive, but isn't it
exactly an understanding of capitalist recuperation,
missing from post-anarchism, that will let us figure
out how to be proactive? 


On newman, I agree with some of Glavin's comments;
particularly with this:"Newman starts off his text by
conflating power and domination. He posits that
anarchists oppose power as such, not state power, the
power of the church, and the economic exploitation of
capitalism, but rather, simply “power.” "  And this is
the point I tried to make and jason disagred with in
my review.  It is actually Newman's critique of power
that is too simplistic; and that is expressed by his
conflation of Foucault's domination and power, or
anarchism critique of what I call alienated power and
anarchists effort to take power over their own lives. 
It is in this effort that anarchists construct an
ethics of power--missed completely by newman.

In the end, Glavin does not question the central and
foundational claim of postanarchism at all: that
"classical anarchism" (which is its own construction)
is as essentialist as is claimed.  The question is,
what do they leave out in order to make such a
construction in the first place????

sasha

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