{"title":"Occult Features of Anarchism","authors":"Erica Lagalisse","doi":"10.16993/BAS.I","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/BAS.I","url":null,"abstract":"By exploring the hidden correspondences between classical anarchism, Renaissance magic and occult philosophy, this chapter advances the critical study of Left-political attachment to the ‘secular’, wherein Western anarchist and socialist cosmologies have been mystified. By historicizing Western anarchism and ‘the revolution’, it highlights the development of Left theory and praxis within clandestine masculine ‘public’ spheres of the radical Enlightenment, and how this genesis proceeds to inflect anarchist understandings of the ‘political’. Inspired by ethnographic research among contemporary anarchist social movements in the Americas, this essay questions anarchist ‘atheism’ insofar as it has posed practical challenges for current anarchist-indigenous coalition politics. Moreover, in its treatment of ‘secret societies’ this essay has pedagogical utility for today’s political activists as well as scholars of anarchism. Where popular fear of ‘secret societies’ is widespread, charting the construction of the secret society in European history has practical political importance. By attending to this history, we also witness the co-evolution of modern masculinity and secularized social movements as a textured historical process, and observe the privatization of both gender and religion in the praxes of radical counter-culture, which develops in complex dialectic with the “privitization” of gender and religion by the modern nation-state.","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129533690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Restoring Anarcho-Christian Activism: From Nietzsche’s Affirmation to Benjamin’s Violence","authors":"C. Iliopoulos","doi":"10.16993/bas.f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/bas.f","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter approaches the issue of activism through the prism of the pacifism/violence debate within Christian anarchist circles. Based on two philosophical critiques – Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity and Walter Benjamin’s critique of violence – I challenge the main anarcho-Christian theses that favour a pacifist/ passive model of action, providing an alternative context for the interpretation of the relevant biblical passages and, ultimately, offering a restored version of anarcho-Christian activism, beyond dogmatic pacifism and fetishistic violence. The first critique looks at those Christian features that have turned Christianity into self-negation, and promotes an affirmative life stance. The second critique presents a qualitative approach to violence, distinguishing between two types – mythical and divine – out of which the latter revises the role of violence in Christian anarchist practices. Resistance to evil and secular authority can now acquire a new meaning, affirmative and active instead of passive and resentful.","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123293837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prisons of Law and Brothels of Religion: William Blake’s Christian Anarchism","authors":"Duane D. Williams","doi":"10.16993/bas.h","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/bas.h","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay I highlight how Blake can be understood as a Christian anarchist by interpreting the significance of key beliefs and arguments found in his work. I do this by exploring how Blake was opposed to both judicial and moral law thus questioning the authority and rule of king and priest. However, given the theme of this essay I tend to focus more on the moral and priestly angle. To this end my essay consists of two sections. I begin by exploring Blake’s complete mistrust of institutional state religion, along with its establishment of priests who, he maintained, cruelly bound and thus enslaved believers with moral law. And in the next section I examine Blake’s view of Jesus as a transgressor of this law, through the latter’s unique insight concerning the mutual forgiveness of sins that places love and liberty above all else.","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121701982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anarchism and Religion: Exploring Definitions","authors":"Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Matthew S. Adams","doi":"10.16993/BAS.A","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/BAS.A","url":null,"abstract":"This is an open access book chapter. It is published by Stockholm University Press under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114832175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yiddish Radicalism, Jewish Religion: Controversies in the Fraye Arbeter Shtime, 1937–1945","authors":"Lilian Türk, Jesse Cohn","doi":"10.16993/BAS.B","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/BAS.B","url":null,"abstract":"“Anarchism” and “religion” are categories of belonging that serve as tools for identification – both of oneself and of others. Yiddish-speaking anarchism is overwhelmingly remembered as an antireligious movement, a characterization drawn from its early experiences in the immigrant communities of the U.S. (circa 1880–1919). However, this obscures the presence of competing definitions of both religion and anarchism within the Jewish anarchist milieu and fails to take into account the social character of processes of identification unfolding over time. A generation after its circulation peaked, in a context of declining Jewish anarchist “groupness” (1937–1945), the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime hosted debates over religion which reveal a far broader spectrum of interpretations than were apparent in the earlier period. Examining these debates demonstrates the subversive fluidity more than the rigidly bounded character of anarchist and religious identities alike, as an emergent consensus among Jewish anarchists names domination rather than religion per se as the common enemy.","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132251742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Representations of Catholicism in Contemporary Spanish Anarchist-themed Film (1995–2011)","authors":"Pedro García-Guirao","doi":"10.16993/BAS.D","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/BAS.D","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores the portrayal of Catholicism in eight Spanish anarchist-themed films. The first part discusses negative representations of the Catholic religion rehearsed in these films, set as they are mainly in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Among those representations are: the political and economic purpose of the Catholic Church’s control of education in Spain; the breaking of the religious vows of poverty and chastity, and the recourse to praising the vow of obedience when under scrutiny; and the breaking of the seal of the confessional. In the second part, the essay shows that those films also portray a Christianity which can be more solidary, revolutionary and attached to a different idealization of Christ, unlike the Church consisting of high-ranking members of the clergy. This second part also considers the notion of “secularization” and the extent to which anarchism has become an alternative religion in these films. The essay also reflects on the reliability of films as historical sources.","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127337537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blessed Are the Peacemakers: The Contribution of Christian Nonviolence to Anarchism","authors":"Samuel R. R. Underwood","doi":"10.16993/BAS.G","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16993/BAS.G","url":null,"abstract":"Although Christian anarchists are typically committed to pacifism, in the broader anarchist literature pacifism is a decidedly minoritarian position. It may be argued on this basis that Christian anarchists are pacifists on account of their Christianity rather than their anarchism, and that non-Christian anarchists, in not sharing Christians’ commitment to following Jesus, have no similar reason to accept pacifism. However, this paper argues that the radical nonviolence defended by Christian anarchists is as consistently anarchist as it is Christian, for in Christian nonviolence we find anarchistic commitments to mutual aid, prefiguration, and attention to ‘the least of these’. The paper therefore also suggests that the criticisms of violence articulated by Christian anarchists might actually speak to non-Christian anarchists too, and that nonviolence is in fact a central element of anarchist prefiguration.","PeriodicalId":360627,"journal":{"name":"Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume II","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128984216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}