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| Nietzsche, Post-Anarchism and the senses | |||
| * Anarchists do not try to find domination in the throne –they look in their own palms. Politicians will never like anarchists. Anarchists destabilize the field of politics, blur the borders deliberately drawn before and do not give priority or a pioneering status to politics. Anarchism downplays big targets and magnifies small ones. Anarchism pulls politics into life, drags it into the streets, and there, on the streets, under heavy clouds of dust, takes it by the arm. They walk together there, hand in hand, and sit in a park. | |||
| Süreyyya Evren |
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There is a postanarchist reduction of classical anarchism seen in texts of some key writers on post-anarchism (like Todd May, Saul Newman, Lewis Call or more recently Richard Day). Up until now, this feature of the postanarchist tendency has been criticized by various anarchists. But actually, ‘anarchists’ should admit that, ‘post-anarchists’ didn’t invent this! ‘Post-anarchists’ have been using the common anarchist history writing on classical anarchism which can be found anywhere in any reference book. The problem is, because of the reference to poststructuralism, they could be expected not to rely on that canonized history of anarchism without interrogating it, without questioning it at all. When post-anarchists take the findings of a modernist, Eurocentric history writing of anarchism as a given truth and start working on this ground, it is likely to see them (post-anarchists) reproduce many problems already existing in this practice of history writing. (Jason Adams has given a basic critical questioning of this while he was talking on the “constructed history of anarchism”[1].) As someone working on post-anarchism as well, what Adams did in this early article was quite a good start – you have to turn your critical investigation to the given history of anarchism as well. Before comparing classical anarchism with poststructralist philosophy, or before making a genealogy of affinity in the realm of ‘classical anarchism’ (that’s what Day does in “Gramsci is Dead”[2]) one must first endeavor to make a genealogy of the anarchist ‘canon’. These questions should be asked: how did the anarchist history writing developed? When and how were the main anarchist writers selected? Who were the fathers of the ‘fathers of anarchy’? Were there different tendencies in describing the main body of ‘classical anarchism’ and which tendency dominated the resulting history and how? How were the classical anarchists represented? Can we trace any hierarchy in these histories; were they modernist in their approach; can we trace any kind of discrimination? *My first critique to post-anarchist literature [3] so far is that it has not undertaken a new reading of the anarchist canon, that they didn’t investigate the classical anarchism from their poststructralist perspectives, but instead compared poststructuralist theory with what was readily available in a classical anarchism written mostly from a modernist perspective. Many problems are rooted in this choice I believe. As it is with the history of anarchism, what I understand from post-anarchism has many folds, and one crucial fold is about anarchist history writing, a new post-anarchist thinking should bring a new anthology, a new history of anarchism. At least, a new sensibility towards existing anarchist histories… * When politicians see the anarchist embracing everything as political, struggling against every tiny possibility of domination, they regard this as an absence of something. Either a lack of passion for economics or a lack of passion for politics. What they don’t get is that everything is political with the anarchist and deserves the same passion. As the poet Ilhan Berk said in an interview “everything is political, even water flows politically.” Even water flows politically – thus, anarchist politics is a politics of life, of culture, anarchism is a raven knocking on the window to invite you. A libertarian party has begun! Anarchists are de facto pan-anarchists. Anarchist politics lies in the multiplicity of non-politics. The core is not fixed. * Many accuse Newman or Day of ‘abusing’ anarchist tradition, as it is quite easy to recognize that their relation with the anarchist history is not sufficient on many levels – but on the other hand, what they are trying to do, especially Newman, is to bring anarchism into today’s political and theoretical agenda as something more powerful. This shouldn’t be underestimated. And I think they are trying the correct door for this – maybe they haven’t found the correct keys yet (maybe, it is time to make the keys collectively today). *Can it be true that some anarchist principles became generally accepted principles in some Western cultural environments? While discussing the post-Seattle anti-globalization movements, I always tried to ask: where did these protestors who want to organize in an anarchistic way come from? Are they products of anarchistic propaganda? Not likely. My assumption is Western societies (and also many world cities in different parts of the world) are today able to produce ‘anarchistic subjects’, subjects who would only be interested in politics if it is done according to ‘anarchist principles’ or a ‘logic of affinity’. This is because when these people wanted to get politicized there was no other way for them outside the anarchistic way – they wouldn’t accept being part of a Marxist party machine, wouldn’t accept orders, wouldn’t accept being represented by some revolutionary, and yet they still want to engage in something political – what is left for a person like that? Only anarchism or an unlabeled mode of organization which has anarchistic principles and which uses the logic of affinity. Another option is to get in touch with a Marxist faction which has openly declared that they will follow anarchistic principles (Holloway, Negri, etc.) that won’t frustrate ‘anarchistic subjects’ in the West. There may be something very fundamental for post-anarchism here. The question of “how did the postanarchist subjects appear” also goes back to May 68. *Anarchism brings freedom from phallocentrism or exoticism. The left, without anarchism, is all about control. Anarchism immerses the left into internal organs. Anarchism writes in the feminine, and does it in Cixous’ way. Anarchism reflects the memory of the body. * What happened between Los Angeles 1992 and Seattle 1999? Los Angeles 1992, an ‘anarchistic’ uprising including many people of color [4] ends with Seattle 99 where you don’t see many black people. How? Why? Does violence play a role here? The non-violence of anti-globalization movements is not directly connected with Gandhi or Tolstoy. This is something else. Gandhi can be compared with Fanon. Both thought about ways for people who had suffered from violence and who continue to – Fanon suggests an empowering, emancipating, liberating counter-violence, while Gandhi suggests an empowering, emancipating, liberating non-violence. But what about today? What about today’s non-violence doctrine in Western anti-globalization movements? And what about today’s counter-violence doctrine (black-block?) in Western anti-globalization movements? * If we go back to the pre-1994 period of EZLN, we can remember that Marcos didn’t go to Chiapas for a post-revolution, he went there to organize a modernist-type revolution. Before 1994, EZLN happened through a process of mutuality in Chiapas. Not ended with an utopian heaven, but had a heavenly effect for the Left world. If we can lay aside political correctness for a moment, we can dare say that, although the Mexican government also had a paramilitary branch which killed and wounded many, there were very few countries that would let a Marcos be as he liked with his EZLN in 1994 and afterwards. For example it wouldn’t be possible in the USA, Peru, Russia, China, Turkey or UK. It wouldn’t happen in a ‘real democracy’ (which can’t endure strong oppositions as we recently witnessed when Western governments showed their brutal side to anti-globalisation protestors early in the 2000s in Gothenburg and in Italy) or in a ‘totalitarian country.’ Mexico was an exceptional zone. And from the beginning, in order not to let this exceptional state become isolated and eventual fade away, EZLN/Marcos described it not as a form and not as an ideology, but as an understanding, as an approach to politics. Isn’t this the core principle of ‘new anarchism’ today as well? * I was in a European capital city with a group of anarchists when the Madrid bombings occurred. My friends were overtly terrified, taking this as a potential attack on themselves. In Turkey, nobody in the anarchist circles would feel anything similar to that. (And it is not because ordinary people in Turkey were less likely to be a victim of an El Kaide bombing. This was proved soon enough when the El Kaide bombed Istanbul heavily, attacking the British bank HSBC Headquarters and the British embassy, killing many Turkish citizens walking on the road, Never before had something like that happened in that European capital city and will probably never happen again.) And when Zinedine Zidane headbutted Materazzi in the World Cup Final in 2006, why did many anarchists and socialists in Turkey tend to see this act as an ‘anti-colonial art work’, while for many anarchists and socialists in Western Europe it was another expression of ‘Islamic male honour’? What is behind this cultural connectedness that exists even when we are talking about radicals? There are many similar situations I can recall from today’s anarchist circles in different parts of the cultural division – but why wasn’t it like that in the times of Malatesta? *In the arena of politics, anarchism existed by letting the senses speak. Anarchism is, simply, senses speaking. *In “Gramsci is Dead” [5], very interestingly Day says, “At the same time as he reproduced much of what came before him, however, Bakunin made certain advances that are relevant to the emergence of the logic of affinity”. Basically he means that, although Bakunin repeated many hegemonic, non-anarchistic stuff like Proudhon, Godwin and the like, at certain moments he came close to being anarchistic, and some of his steps were relevant for the emergence of anarchistic politics! Prejudice about a modernist anarchism is so strong that when these writers see an anti-modernist aspect of Bakunin for example, they either take it as an exception or something said inadvertently, or worse, as a contradiction! For example for Call, “Bakunin provides us, perhaps quite inadvertently, with a point of departure for postmodern anarchism.” [6] Here, Bakunin says science was marred by a dangerous and disturbing statism. So when Bakunin talks against science, he is talking “inadvertently”, but when he talks for science, that should be what he actually believes wholeheartedly. Why is that? Why then the ‘Bakunin effect’, the ‘Bakunin heritage’ is not the effect of a ‘science admirer’ but a creative man of deed and anarchist theory? How do we know if he said this inadvertently or not? Similarly, when Newman finds out that Kropotkin and Bakunin seemed anti-essentialist in some of their claims, he interprets these as ‘contradictions’! Whereas, the only contradiction is between the modernist image of anarchism and the real ‘anarchist effect’. *Call sees Bakunin’s politics as a Royal science. But when we see ‘new anarchism’, as formulated by David Graeber, as a movement that takes organization principles as its ideology, what kind of a human essence will we find here? Is ‘new anarchism’ a nomad science or a royal science? *Some time ago, we (me and a friend) were invited to Diyarbakir (the ‘unofficial Kurdish capital city in Turkey’) for a talk on literature. It was an event held as a part of the annual Diyarbakir Literature Days. We thought of talking on Minor Literature. One of the metaphors we were planning to use was an old classic: bombing literature! Yes, we were planning to say that “today, we should bomb literature, tear it into pieces”. For the sake of a minor literature. But a few days before our talk, a bookshop in Semdinli (another Kurdish city of southeast Turkey) was bombed (by paramilitary or we can say, people directly related to special forces). We felt like you could not use a metaphor when you are actually living in it. To be able to use bombing as a metaphor you mustn’t be living in the reality of a bomb! There is a difference between thinking inside the bomb and thinking outside the bomb… *Think about the nomad metaphors of Deleuze. Would you believe that metaphors like these would come from philosophers who really had nomads actually living around them? Metaphors are strong for transforming where we live especially if they come from a distant planet, a distant reality. So we master them, use the blurriness of being far away. Imagine Deleuze as an eastern philosopher, in Mongolia for example, or say Turkey, as a place I know. Would he use the same metaphors? Imagine him in the 70s, in Turkey, as a Turkish philosopher, attacked by fascist commando groups who use metaphors of nomad Turkish warriors of the old times. Would he insist on naming what he refers to as ‘nomad war machines’? Maybe he would name Nomad science what he named Royal Science… Maybe he would choose his metaphor-bombs from French traditions this time. What he said about Nietzsche is crucial: you can’t understand someone without knowing what she/he was against… *Why is it so easy for many to rely on the assumption that anarchism is based on an idea of a good human essence? If we go back and have a look at David Morland’s book on anarchist understanding of human nature, we see that even the ‘usual suspects’ (Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin), do not have such an understanding of human nature. Then where does this cliché come from? (It is also interesting how Dave Morland shows that some of this cliché comes from basic texts on political theory – books that normally anarchists or left intelligentsia would never read but academicians working on related areas may – like Ian Adams’s Political Ideology Today, or Andrew Heywood’s Political Ideologies: an Introduction. [7]) Jesse Cohn made a supporting point when he wrote about the relations between anarchism and Nietzsche: “For Proudhon, “the living man is a group”, “not an origin, a source, but a ‘resultant”. [8] Kropotkin, too, speaks of the subject as a ‘resultant’, the shifting product of “a multitude of separate faculties, autonomous tendencies, equal among themselves, performing their functions independently . . . without being subordinated to a central organ, ‘the soul’. [9] For Bakunin, this multitude is a microcosm of the wider social field, always “in a sort of conspiracy against [itself]” or “[in] revolt against [itself]”. [10] *Legitimization of a need to a poststructralist/postmodern anarchism or a postanarchism. This apologetic attitude is seen in May, Call, Newman and Day but not in Jason Adams. [11] They all legitimize post-anarchism by first trying to show that the Marxist way of leftism has collapsed or failed, or was too problematic to rely on. This means a continuation of taking Marxism as the norm, the ground of comparison. This again is not the case in Jason Adams. Adams, (instead of ending up with) begins from anarchism, moves to ‘68 and comes back to today. Actually the only explanation for making Marxism the ground of comparison for a “new anarchism” could be that Marxism is the strongest leftist political philosophy in many countries and amongst many scholarly platforms. *Why are they so afraid of saying “anarchism”? Why is even whispering it so dangerous for some? Is anarchism a ‘Don’t Watch This Tape’ coming from a horror movie? Is it a Ring 0? *Call refers to the collapse of Marxism and finds proof showing that Marxism’s revolutionary project has failed. [12] If a worldly defeat proves that the ideology was wrong, then how do we defend anarchism? If anarchist revolutionaries won nowhere, then how will they win today? How then does anarchism prove that it can transform the world while it hasn’t transformed any country or region for sufficient time? These questions would follow if we structure the logic like they do. They (Call, May, Day and Newman) all somehow refer to the end of Marxism seen in the collapse of Soviets. This is not fair. Why is Marxism judged by an unsuccessful experiment while anarchism is judged only by its potentials and theories? If the same judgment was applied to anarchism, then it would show anarchists that anarchism was more or less dead after the Spanish revolution, and had proved that it couldn’t succeed, so let’s move onto something else (and this is actually something said by many Marxists here and there – so are we having revenge?). That the collapse of URSS made it easier for anarchism to grow in the world practically, can be taken as a fact that wouldn’t be unfair. But that is all. If, however, we are talking in terms of potentials, this is not the place to start. I also believe there is no need to discuss all possibilities of Marxism (and different branches of it) to show Marxism is not a good answer to our problems, and thus we can begin talking about anarchism. This is simply not needed, as well as being quite an impossible task to complete. What about liberalism or religions then, why don’t we start by answering them all, or why didn’t Holloway start his book (entitled Change the World Without Taking Power meaning ‘change the world in an anarchist fashion for a Marxist purpose and by the agency of Marxists’) by trying to show that anarchism with all its variations are false and problematic and they have collapsed? Well, I am aware that Holloway appropriated anarchist ideas without citing a single reference and I certainly would not advise becoming an anarchist-Holloway, for anarchism has always been based on ethics, not on appropriating others’ ideas or political plagiarism. *Bodies do remember. The body of the political remembers anarchism. Social life, education, arts, culture, they all remember. Collective amnesia is dissipated when the body begins to talk. This is also a demand to remember the ethics of liberation in the body, to sense it in the body. During her Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, Irigaray tells how the sensual becoming comes to Nietzsche with a demand of a dialogue and how this demand is refused by Nietzsche. [13] The concept of demand itself contains a refusability but also a character that is not possible to destroy. It is so that today, Nietzsche feels Irigaray’s call for a dialogue in his body. The brains of the political and the academic closed themselves to the early calls of anarchism. They swiped it away, threw it in the bin. But, bodies of the both realms do remember anarchisms’ call. Isn’t poststructuralist anarchism such a remembering? Irigaray was talking about the role of women as a reflector, sending the truth back and making it sensible. The role of feeding-back. And after this feed back, Nietzsche was unable to recall his own dream as he used to. After Irigaray wrote what she wrote, Nietzsche was not able to tell the story as he used to. Dioynysos can’t be alone as he was before –he is always hearing calls. Anarchists organise through ‘feminine writing’, this is their organisation principle. They organise with the multiplicity of styles. They organise through the writerly texts of Barthes. They listen to their marine lovers. *Using the term postmodern is one of the things that makes Call’s work look less ‘academic’ for many. Nobody continues to insist that there is a postmodern left and a postmodern right, where the postmodern situation is just a situation not a proper ideology as such. Instead, the term postmodern is left to the jungle of a postmodern right, and to indicate that there is anything that is left of some sort, you reject the postmodern world with its own guns and only refer to poststructralist thinkers (although this is obviously not different at all from the ‘postmodern left’ concept of the old days). *May really never thinks twice about who really represents anarchism. Although the whole book is against representation there is no discussion of anarchist history and who represents classical anarchism and why. *There is an assumption that both Marxism and anarchism are modernist political movements suffering the same modernist weaknesses, while anarchism has some potential to get out of this trap. Thus, to realize this we will have to eliminate modernist issues from classical anarchism (which is indeed the greater part of its political philosophy) and use remaining aspects that are in harmony with today’s post-modern/poststructuralist perspective. Well, that was not really true, so let’s go back and start the discussion from there. Anarchism was not a modernist political movement, like Marxism, from the beginning it was an anti-modernist modern movement, and has been an important example of the modern radical movements. (‘Classical anarchism’ was not a Le Corbusierist movement but a Dadaist movement.) Modernist aspects in anarchism, on the contrary, are the minority, and ‘classical anarchism’ is mostly an anti-modernist current, there is little to eliminate in ‘classical anarchism’ and a lot to take if you are talking about a post-anarchism of today. *So the anarchist history feels the need for a thinking with a communal experience in Spain as well as thinking with Kropotkin, thinking with Tokyo and Buenos Aires, thinking with arts, art works, sensing with Recluse as well as sensing with an organisation or a text, to break the institutionalized structures of disciplines, break the discipline of politics, and to sense all these desires in its own history writing. *If we are bound to compare anyway, instead of comparing only Deleuze with Kropotkin, why don’t we compare Emma Goldman with Helene Cixous and Irigaray. Voltairine de Cleyre with Butler and Flores Magon with Homi Bhabha. Why Russian anarchists in the anarchist canon are always Russian anarchists outside of Russia. Why is nobody taking serious anarchists in the Russian revolution – the worse decision of a Russian anarchist was not to leave Russia then, the best and only way to be known as a Russian anarchist was to leave Russia?! Let’s go back to Avrich’s ‘The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution’ and the inspiring “Pan-Anarchist Manifesto”. *Lewis Call thinks his book will be found provocative because he didn’t choose Marxism as a base but anarchism instead (actually his book is found provocative because of his other choice, that is, not choosing the term poststructuralism but choosing instead postmodernism!). Call says that anarchism is much more flexible and fits the postmodern world better – here, there is something Call touches upon remarkably and correctly: we are not only talking about philosophers, we are talking about the world and the life on it! Anarchism also fits the life style of a postmodern world, it is obviously a candidate to be the dominant leftist tendency of the postmodern world. Academics trying to avoid the term postmodern just because it is not respectable these days, are misleading in some sense - making us forget the world… Maybe another ‘clean’ term is needed to mean the same thing… *And as Call adds, his “approach is indeed to broaden the horizons of postmodern anarchism”, “adding not only the Mauss-Bataille-Baudrillard strand of gift theory and radical symbolic critique, but also the Gibson-Sterling strand of cyberpunk fiction”. Here I should note that his approach was in harmony with Turkish anarchist science fiction and cyberpunk magazine Davetsiz Misafir. They published three direct documents on post-anarchism –Saul Newman translations mostly, and organised a talk in Bogazici University – Bogazici was the base of this group. They also invited Turkish post-anarchist writers [Yasar Cabuklu, Kursad Kiziltug and myself] and published this talk as well. So there has been a sister current in Turkey as well, which started well before reading Call, but by reading Baudrillard, cyberpunk and anarchism, we thus can say that there is such an understanding there to take as a possible interpretation, seen in different countries. *Is it possible to read Nietzsche without dismantling him? As a whole? Nietzsche as a whole? For that, you first have to love hopelessly. You should love Nietzsche hopelessly – without any hope of having him in your arms. As Benjamin said, this is the only way to know someone truly. When you chop up Nietzsche into pieces, as if doing an operation of engineering, dividing him into categories or making mosaics out of him, that kind of disintegration of Nietzsche and creating separate Nietzsches would hurt him of course. It would look bizarre. But if you cut him into pieces like a lover who is hopelessly in love, it would be loyalty. Lovers cut into pieces. Think of Beatrice’s ‘greeting’ in the New Life of Dante? The lover knows the loved one so hopelessly that it gives the lover a right to be silent about some features, some parts of his/her love. This does not happen in spite of the whole, it does not happen independently. But it still, has a right to act independently. *Call and Newman suggest that anarchism starts from its anti-state position. So for them, anarchism is first of all a political stance against all states, an anti-statism and everything comes after or from this. That’s obviously not what many anarchists will understand by anarchism. We think that anarchism is pananarchism [14] in nature, a rejection of all authority, hierarchy and representation. Being anti-state is a form of anti-hierarchy, anti-authoritarianism at the nation scale. On the other hand, anarchism carries politics outside the area of a fight for state power. It is always grassroots in this sense as well. You do not first reject the state. You first reject authority, hierarchy, pyramidal societies, representation and domination. Then, as such a person, when the issue comes to states, you of course also reject the state and think of something different like federations, etc. Because the main modernist political discourse runs around governments and states, there exists a modernist history of anarchism where anarchism could be summarized as an opinion mainly about states, like the far-left element of a spectrum on debates on the state. But that was not the paradigm anarchism brought. Anarchism is not a state-centred philosophy, its development is always the opposite, always alarmed and always fighting with hierarchy wherever it may be found. Anarchism has always been a method and an ethics. A way of doing and understanding things. “Power is everywhere” is not news to anarchism. Anarchism is not a Marx with three heads (Proudhon-Bakunin-Kropotkin). The current popular definition of anarchism, as another modernist political movement next to Marxism, is both wrong in the sense of what actually happened at the time, as well as a wrong interpretation of the ‘anarchist effect’, the anarchism ‘thing’, the ‘spirit’, the ‘image’ which kept anarchism alive till today, despite various strong enemies. Historically, anarchism was part of the anti-modernist modern movements, which created radicals in art, politics, culture, everyday, whatever. Also, underlying passages from Kropotkin where he admires science or found a linear line in the development of societies, are misleading comments because nobody becomes anarchist by admiring passages like those. The anarchist effect that continues to live still reflects the anti-modernist principles. (When Benedict Anderson explains why he chose “…anarchism, in its characteristically variegated forms” instead of Marxism, for example, in his Under Three Flags, he is mostly referring to some of these anti-modernist strengths of anarchism.) Arguing that anarchism is not a Marx with three heads, that it has an elusive character, ‘variegated forms’, means that its definition has to include some blurred borders, but on the other hand this doesn’t make anarchism undefinable or unrecognizable. We have to get closer to the elusive network of all anti-modernist movements and there we see a continuity and coherence, which still exists in today’s movements. Anarchism has always been a philosophy of praxis; thought and practice have been in a non-hierarchical relation. So to understand what was (is) anarchism You have to look at 1a) the network of thoughts written by various anarchist writers in different parts of the world 1b) the ideology formed by various people’s and movements’ organisation principles when they have been performing actions and creating organisations under the name of anarchism. It is important to note again that 1b is not simply practising 1a. It is a process of thinking as well in itself. It is itself an ideology and considered like that in the anarchist body. This nature of praxis has a crucial role in anarchism. Consequently I will say that, to categorize anarchism as a political philosophy, you have to take the risk of making interpretations on this vast web of intersections. Limited definitions of anarchism did not change the character of anarchism. And the reason that all these start from post-anarchism lies in the role of poststructuralist theories of philosophy and history in this intersectional web of resistance movements. Post-anarchism does not present a new anarchism to us. But it can create a resistance power against modernist categorizations of anarchist history and concepts. And moreover, it can be an embracement of poststructuralist philosophical contributions to the anarchist movement. Post-anarchism for me is just anarchism but stronger, joining forces with its relatives, network neighbours today and in history, in culture and in daily life. So this is an experiment in understanding anarchism (in its stronger post-anarchist form) as a world wide anti-modernist modern political movement which has existing or potential connections with other anti-modernist modern movements in different disciplines today and in history. *Daniel Colson saw the libertarian workers movements totally inside Nietzsche. Inside Ubermensch. Libertarian workers movements and anarchist movements are interpreted as ubermensch subjectifications. On the other hand Alan Schrift well underlined the importance of ubermensch subjects as elements of radical democracy. [15] *Generally speaking, ‘canonized anarchy’ is modernist in many ways. This canon – usually or dominantly – gives less credit to thoughts of women anarchists, prefering to locate them in anarcha-feminism or anarchist feminism, prefering to totally dismiss third world anarchist writers or just mention them as some local entities (although, leaving the idea of a prevailing ideology behind and understanding practices as the ideology of the movement is a continuous theme of anarchists from the ‘classical anarchist’ Kropotkin to the ‘new anarchist’ David Graeber). It prefers to understand anarchist organisations and practices – even in the West – as mere applications of anarchist theory and never thinks ‘with’ the deed/action. It prefers to understand anarchism in a very linear way where you can easily trace which writer is followed by who, which text was followed by which text, and which texts are represented mostly uncontextually. *Call finds Nietzsche much more radical than Kropotkin and Bakunin because Nietzsche doesn’t reduce power either to capital or the state, but takes power as a cultural entity. Secondly, Nietzsche breaks up the fixed subject and creates the anarchy of the subject. All these values do exist in both classical anarchism itself, and the ‘anarchist effect’ that survived till today. Where they don’t exist is in the historical cliché package of classical anarchism, a product of modernist history writing. *Call says “Nietzsche’s philosophy on the other hand, points to a new kind of anarchist politics”. One thing he doesn’t address is where the “novelty” of Nietzsche’s philosophy comes from? If it is a kind of anarchist politics, it can only be an old kind of anarchist politics; we can even say, if Nietzsche’s philosophy is to be understood as a part of anarchism, chronologically, it should be understood as a part of classical anarchism! Nietzsche himself was a part of the anti-modernist modern movements which included classical anarchism as well. On the other hand, I must admit that I understand why Call calls “Nietzsche’s philosophy” a “new kind of anarchist politics”. It’s because here we are not exactly talking about the man himself or just his writings, but we are talking about Foucault’s Nietzsche, Klossowski’s, Bataille’s and Deleuze’s Nietzsche, the Nietzsche reborn (which became useful in a certain sense) in this ‘strand’. We are not interested in the Nietzsche of the liberals or the Nietzsche of a religious perspective or a fascist one. The Nietzsche who can be understood as a new kind of anarchist politics is the poststructuralist Nietzsche. What is ‘new’ is not Nietzsche’s politics’, but political and philosophical readings of his philosophy. *How did anarchism survive; with which characteristics mostly; how did it survive despite not winning one tiny revolution in one tiny country; how did it come back to the agenda of world politics after decades of silence in the ‘60s and in the ‘90s; how did it find followers all over the world despite the physical, theoretical and political suppression of liberalism, neo-liberalism, Marxism, religions and all kinds of states……: how did it survive despite the ‘conspiratory silence’ of appropriators, various Marxisms ‘til today, even the poststructuralist theories. What main characteristics allowed it to survive? Does the “belief in science” lie behind this story or does the “anti-modernist modern spirit which we can call postAnarchism today”? Is it the obsession with capital and state power or the position of fighting with power everywhere – which started before Foucault but will be stronger with Foucault… *Nietzsche-Neçayev –a ressentiment for anti-ressentiment and a non-ressentiment for ressentiment: Nietzsche, with his great contempt for ressentiment, and his great love for affirmation, was a man of negations and resentment in many of his reactions to people and movements. On the other hand, Nechaev was the opposite. A man who admires ressentiment, and to make ressentiment rule, decides to create a cold blooded rational movement with no emotional status close to ressentiment. In Nechaev’s famous short programme, ‘The Catechism of The Revolutionary’, the revolutionary subject does not act with anger, vengeance or grudge. His vengeance is so huge, it has reached such an extreme level that it can’t be seen anymore, it has become invisible. Dissolved in plans and ratio. The revolutionary subject in the text, is a machine of revolution. Being out of emotions makes this Nechaev’s Rahmetov seem like a homicidal, a man of vengeance and malignancy. Whereas he has banned vengeance already. He brought professionalism instead. A character of a ‘volunteering’ machine. He divided responsibilities between generations, and the responsibility of his generation was only to destroy. Creating another world, a new world, would be the role of the next generation. Nechaev and his comrades were in a phase of destruction, a draconian, universal, dreadful and total destruction. Because such a grand plan wouldn’t be possible to accomplish with revolutionaries who lost their control with feelings of ressentiment, he relied on professional, ‘volunteering’ machines. This revolutionary machine, of course cares about being a dedicated machine more than being a dedicated revolutionary – for their role is so clearly defined in the division of labour. Nechaev’s ressentiment does not hold the melancholy Nietzsche’s ressentiment has. (The difference between murdering Ivanov and embracing the horses is enough to remember that.) While Nietzsche was folding upon himself constantly, Nechaev was mass producing his own image. Nietzsche thought on Nechaev (as Dostoievsky also did) –and I believe he understood him, felt him (did Dostoievsky also understand Nechaev, did he managed to sense him?). And Nietzsche fought with what he felt. This is another example of Nietzsche folding upon himself. Did Nechaev spend time thinking on Nietzsche? Was he hiding an interpretation of Nietzsche as well? Was he hiding melancholy? Who knows… *Todd May, in his The Political Philosophy of the Poststructuralist Anarchism, adds anarchism to his formulation to ensure that it will be possible to propose a general politics without leaving the area of micro politics...So poststructuralism alone is not enough for a political framework but provides many tools for that. But how are we going to use these tools? For that, we must consult the anarchist tradition to learn and borrow ‘techniques’. It is a historical tradition. And it is in harmony with fundamental micro political attitudes. It doesn’t change the character of micro politics, it converges and even helps micro politics to evolve into a general political philosophy. If we turn back to May’s argument, he first puts the structure of the power places of our world. But then to change it, to turn it upside down, to resist, to dissolve this network of dominations and build a network of liberties, poststructuralist philosophy proves insufficient for May. It doesn’t provide the necessary procedures. Here he needs anarchism, although anarchism has a complex inconsistent theoretical and practical tradition in many ways. And anarchist analyses of power are diverse as well. But in anarchism, generally speaking, we see many understandings of power, even weak and amateur, that take power as multi-centred. But more and more importantly, anarchism is the modern history of not settling only with an understanding of the rhizomatic structure of power! Anarchism has put many diverse resistance forms against diverse structures of power. It has a history of resisting them. With these resistances it has had many experiences and acquired different forms in different times and places, and has a serious accumulation. May’s poststructuralist anarchist marriage bonds these two forces against power structures – so as to close the holes on both sides. In May’s project, the essence of poststructuralist anarchism lies in poststructuralism. So priority should be given to that – why then did he need anarchism? Why not just ‘poststructuralism on the streets’ or ‘poststructuralist revolutionarism’ or ‘poststructuralist radical politics’? Why is his book not only a book on poststructuralist politics? As we know Todd May makes his main distinction between strategic and tactical political philosophies in favour of a tactical political philosophy. But, even May admits that in strategic political philosophy, the central problem is considered as ever-changing. Thus the structure with one clear centre is temporary, transitionary. At any time, the central problem of the political pyramid can change. The type of the structure would remain the same, but the core power/problem may change. This means that strategic political philosophy has more in common with tactical political philosophy than you would assume at first sight. They both accept that the place of power is temporary, whilst in strategic political theory these temporary power places dominate all power relations in a given moment. In tactical political philosophy more than one place of power exists at the same time without any one of them dominating all others (sometimes it is even said that they are not reducible at all). This multitude of power nodes determines the power relations. Both believe that power sources are constantly changing but the key difference lies in their respective understanding of reducibility – can all powers be reduced to one at a given time? Simply put, can we get rid of domination in families when we capture the state and make it a communist state, or on a smaller scale, can we solve domination problems in a class room if we solve it at the administration level? This is important because a revolutionary/transformative movement which would look for reversing and neutralizing domination relations would be shaped accordingly. If an ever-changing ‘one’ place of power determines power relations, then in order to stop the oppression, to stop the domination processes, to re-arrange power relations against domination, we will need one revolutionary structure with one core, which is dedicated to fight a similar structure of power. The core of this revolutionary structure will be able to change its main assumptions and ideas as things change, as the centre of the power changes. It is very logical then that this structure is a party or an Organisation, with a Leader, organised hierarchically. Besides, it is obvious that expertise will be needed to follow changes in the centre of the whole power system so the revolutionaries must be professionals. And the positions in the Party should be changeable from below. On the other side, in the ranks of tactical political philosophy, where anarchism also stands, we find the understanding of many places of power, all together at one given time without any reducibility. This is where everybody quotes Foucault passages like “power is everywhere”… This is of course an understanding of power shared by many post theoreticians, not only Foucault – he just gave the passages that are easiest to quote as mottos. At one given time there are more than one centre of power, and if you want to resist them, you have to shape your resistance accordingly – which means, against many places of power, you need many places of resistance. In both approaches (understanding one central place of power or accepting that there are many centres) we anticipate that the resistance would mirror the structure of the supposed power. Is this a must? [16] Usually yes, or usually the answer is yes. But we shouldn’t forget that not always. For example, you can accept that power is reducible, works with one decisive centre at one time, understand it as a pyramidal structure, but you can still fight this structure through anarchistic principles, using ‘tactical political philosophy’, or the logic of affinity. For example guerrilla struggles in many occasions deploy this, even Nechaev's cell structure deploys a network structured movement, and it was not mirroring the structure it was fighting with. Even some global justice movement elements are in this category – take a demonstration against a summit. Making a demonstration against a G8 meeting means that you understand G8 leadership as the core of world power relations at the time. So you find it crucial and decisive for all the world’s power relations and existing domination structures. But you organise anarchistically, use tactics of micro politics, and attack a routine gathering of world’s power-core. You are somehow like anarchistic assassins – where you kill a king but not as a soldier of an army - like an oppositional revolutionary structure, but as an individual, obviously without mirroring the dominating structure. These movements are so close to a kind of post-anarchist, Deleuzeian way of rhizomatic organising, etc., and are against every little domination that can be detected – be it an inside movement or outside – yet, when it comes to putting a stance against world politics, you do not have a floating Empire without a centre in these people’s agenda; instead you have a clear set of countries, organisations and elites, leaders there, obvious cores of world power. It shows that when it comes to political action, activists do not insist that no power relation is reducible – even activists who explore various tactical, anarchistic principles of organisation and politics. And it can be the same on the other side as well, like a Negri/Hardt-Holloway position. You can say the Empire is a worldwide power structure without any apparent centre. Places of power are everywhere, micro nodes are everywhere (you can borrow all poststructuralist analyses of power), but you can still insist that to fight this octopus you don’t have to be a counter-octopus.You have to be a monolithic improved revolutionary android who knows how to fight all kinds of machines and animals, cultural and natural forces anywhere. So, as the power relations are understood as rhizomatic, then there is no need for a universal one Party and one professional organisation. Many everyday life motives of anarchism is thus borrowed and adapted to Marxism by Negri and Holloway. But the main axis is still strategic, you still have one theory, the Theory to fight, One central thinker - Marx - with branches and additions. (Also after accepting the rhizomatic structure of power, you can use non-revolutionary strategies like Badiou does for a better democracy too.) * Revolutionary software -- who are you? Nowadays, it is so common to see someone condemning animosity or anger. Whatever you do, you are expected to do it in a normal, civilised mood. Don’t lose your temper, don’t hate the evil. Don’t nail the Satan. Calmly, vote against the Satan. Or better, despise voting, and demonstrate against Satan, very rationally. Know your reasons well, keep your arguments strong, measure your methods well, and do not make anything you haven’t planned before. Don’t bring delirium to the stage. Don’t create a scene when it is not collectively decided to create one. But then, how will we deal with the history of worldwide resistances, revolutions, revolts, insurrections? A strong element of anger has always been central in all of those. Passionate subjects, obsessive moments, sacrifice, regret, grief, all kinds of emotions –not only affirmative ones. Clutching on to an affirmative perspective does not require turning into affirmative robots. Politics is full of people in anger. Transforming the world is an idea full of all kinds of emotions. Angry women, angry men, angry queers, angry children, angry elders, all are welcome in a resistance. Resistance, insurrection, a new world, a better world, transforming the world, are not really projects of social engineers, calm planners, but they are ideas coming from life moments where pain was dominant. Maybe we need an affirmation of anger. An affirmation of anger, insurgence, resistance, denial. Maybe we need an affirmation of Michael Kohlhaas. Bartleby was not a machine, he didn’t start with a rational plan. ‘Enough is enough’ is an affirmation of resistance. In whatever form. Anger is not despair. It is not depression. It is not envy or jealousy. Affirmation became an anti-political tool today. Neo-liberal discourse prefers affirmative language to the language of negation. Advertisements are affirmative. They may be based on jealousy but they are not based on anger.
Figure 1 – A Marriage of Poststructuralism and Anarchism
Figure 2 – Theories on existing power structures and revolutionary movements
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