What Is the Future for Post-Structuralist Anarchism?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper examines the work of Todd May, Saul Newman and Lewis Call to examine poststructuralist anarchist attitudes to utopia. It presents an account of poststructuralist anarchism, invokes a distinction between prefiguration and utopianism to ground the poststructuralist critique and defends the tension between strategy and tactics to defend a form of utopianism that is consistent with poststructuralist philosophy. The paper is well structured and the argument is clear and well documented.

The author could acknowledge the divergence between May, Newman and Call and perhaps, too, May's detachment from Newman's postanarchism. Given the pre-eminence of Newman's postanarchism, I think it would be helpful to explain the decision to return to the labelling/classification used in the early 2000s.

In my view, the chief weakness rests on the under theorisation of utopia. The concept is associated with a number of familiar (hackneyed) positions – an essentialist construction of human nature (and transformation), a theory of history, notion of cataclysmic revolution and blueprint design. These are staples of postanarchist critique. Yet they are disputed. The author nods to the failure of poststructuralists to entertain the complexity of historical thought (p3) but does not use this observation to unpack the concept or subject it to proper scrutiny. As a result, the modification of the poststructuralist anarchist position reinforces the ‘nightmare’ of utopianism in anarchist traditions. In other words, the theoretical rescue of postanarchist anarchism relies on the same interpretative accounts of history that the author appears to concede are misreadings.

The poststructuralist case is pressed against Habermas, but it’s not clear why this critique is central to the revision proposed. It may be that this argument could be revised to clarify. 

The author cites Brian Morris’s counter to poststructuralist anarchism but there is a lack of engagement with key literature on the topic: Martin Buber’s Paths in Utopia, Rhianna Firth’s Utopian Politics which is theoretically nuanced and explores movement practices, too, as well as her afterword to Marie Louise Berneri’s Journey Through Utopia. Davis and Kinna’s Anarchism and Utopianism (the final section includes work by Newman & critics) and Chrostowska and Ingram’s Politics of Utopia are comprehensive surveys.

It seems to me that the key contribution of the essay is the argument about strategy and tactics. I wonder, then, whether it’s possible to emphasise this element of the paper without building on the strawman of nineteenth century ‘utopianism’. I’m not sure how far the author wants to suggest that the historical misreading explains the poststructuralists ambivalence about utopianism and futurity: if that’s the case, the argument could be tweaked without much difficultly. If the intention is to support or gloss the poststructuralist account, I think the argument would need to be made. 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an excellent enquiry into the temporal nature of anarchist utopias and prefigurative politics.  The article is well written, engaging, and makes a timely and relevant contribution to contemporary debates in this area — advancing current knowledge.  In my view the work fits the scope of the journal and will be of great interest to its readership.

The article considers the sense of future — which the author calls ‘futurity’ — and the notion of utopia for anarchist movements.  Specifically, the article examines the potential problem of ‘presentism’ for post-structuralist anarchism, drawing on the post-structural anarchist theorists Todd May, Saul Newman, and Lewis Call, while at the same time pointing towards examples of these theorists in fact engaging in their own positive ‘futural’ thinking.  However, although the author points out that the term ‘classical anarchists’ (used to differentiate post-structuralists from their ideological ancestors) is a contested term, it might have been useful to give an example of such a ‘classical’ anarchist theorising their own politics of immanence — such as Landauer in his essay ‘Revolution’ (there is a great English translation in Kuhn’s Revolution and other writings: A political reader).

The section examining post-structuralist notions of anti-essentialism and anti-representationalism — and how these speak to the efficacy of focusing political theory and praxis in the here-and-now of what the author calls our ‘multiplicity of presents’ is very impressive and demonstrates the author’s expertise in this field.  As well as this nuanced analysis of the dangers of theorising the future, the author quite rightly then considers the dangers of not doing so.  In remedy, they posit ‘provisional’ utopias as a way to square this circle — an ongoing movement ‘away’ from hierarchical and dominating practices and institutions, rather than ‘towards’ an idealised future.

The conclusion is entirely consistent with the evidence and arguments presented in the article.  The author (in my view!) correctly concludes that it is therefore possible for anarchist theory and praxis to maintain a sense of shared direction(s) without abstracting/concretising a future destination — and repeating the horrors that history has shown to follow.  While the author has made clear the boundaries of this enquiry — engaging solely with post-structuralist anarchists — it might have been useful to also acknowledge other contemporary anarchist theorists who are also engaged in significant work around the temporal aspects of utopia — for instance Laurence Davis’s work on ‘grounded utopias’ and Uri Gordon’s warnings of a ‘recursive prefiguration’ undermining a generative disposition towards the future.  That being said, I would leave that decision entirely to the author, and believe the article is of a very high standard worthy of publication as it stands.

Author Response

To the reviewer of "What Is the Future for Post-Structuralist Anarchism?",

 

Thank you for your very kind review of my work. I agree with your suggestion that my work would be strengthened were I to include a "classical" anarchist who appears to break the mold in which the post-structuralist anarchists prefer to cast anarchism. While I am unable to include a discussion of Landauer as just such an anarchist in the body of the article, I have encouraged readers to seek out Landauer, his essay 'Revolution,' and Kuhn's reader, as a counter-example to post-structuralist anarchist views on historical anarchism. Landauer is now mentioned in a footnote, and Kuhn's book is listed as a reference.

 

Thank you again,

 

--The author

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

To the reviewer of "What Is the Future for Post-Structuralist Anarchism?",

 

Thank you very much for your kind review of my work. You will be happy to note that the original version of this article featured an engagement with the ideas of Chiara Bottici, and that, as a result of your suggestion (and those of other reviewers), I have reinserted that discussion. This material had only been cut for considerations of space, but I see now that it would strengthen the scholarly quality of the article.

 

Thank you again,

 

--The author