On Anarchism – Discourse Analysis

Abstract

For a discussion on anarchism, one encounters a branching taxonomy of versions of it, sprouting from the various overlappings and crosscutting intersectionalities with other ideologies. The logical structure of likeness leaves no room for equivocation: to see the like is to see the same in spite of, and through, the different. But the presupposition underlying it is that there is a difference. And this is precisely my goal, namely to show that, in spite of overlappings, anarchism is different from other ideologies and, first and foremost, to justify the unique way in which anarchist discourse surfaces, namely in metaphorical garments. The texts which will be analysed are R. L. Stevenson’s “Britain, a Garden Enclosed” and Hilaire Belloc’s “Love of England”. Detectable isotopies, repetitions of semes belonging to the same semantic field, the anarchist one, are manifest in Stevenson’s “Britain, a Garden Enclosed”, though entangled with radicalist upsurges, smouldering throughout the text and surfacing in a manner which is contrapuntal of anarchist avowals. The expectation to find recurrent elements, of the kind mentioned above is confirmed on perusal of Hilaire Belloc’s text, as well.