Contents
● Call for Submissions Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 32: Power
● New IAS Website
● Book a Speaker Through the Mutual Aid Speakers List
● Coming Soon Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 31: Imaginations
● Out Now! Radiant Voices
Call for Submissions
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 32: Power
In 2020, thanks to the US Presidential election, we’re all going to be thinking about power. Who has it? What is it? How does it work? How do we, as antiauthoritarians, relate to the established political system during a national election year, particularly at this crucial time?
Whatever your stance is on voting, we’ll all be affected by the process, whether through media cycles, policy changes, or public discourse. However, focusing on individuals (such as Trump) risks missing the underlying structures of governance and economic organization that gave rise to him and others like him, as well as those who benefit from his actions. After all, both parties in the US are committed to capitalist social and economic organization. What’s more, as the state and its traditional power structures continue to fall apart at the seams, the circus-like nature of the legitimation crisis is playing out in the context of ecological changes that threaten the future of humanity. Meanwhile, racism and misogyny remain emboldened and dangerous. How can we best focus our work in these times? How do we assemble all the skills and lessons our movements have developed over decades of struggle? It’s time to get out our power tools.
The 2020 issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory will be on the theme of Power, and we’d like to empower you to write for it. Are you an organizer currently engaged in movement work? Have you stepped back to take a break and think things through? Do you have ideas, experiences, or questions that you would like to develop and share with a broad readership? If so, we’re here to help. This is our work: to preserve our histories, suspend our assumptions, further our analyses, and expand our dreams and knowledge as we envision and build a free society. This is part of how we create a better world together.
For this next issue, let’s ask some questions we’re often afraid to ask:
- What do anarchists think power is? Do we want it or do we fight it?
- How can we wield power? Can we wield power?
- What is revolutionary dual-power?
- How can we get at class through race, and race through class?
- How does dysfunction in our movements and scenes help the state?
- How do we, as anarchists, relate to movements made up of people who don’t necessarily share our politics, or who only share some of our politics?
- How do we fight fascism and authoritarianism?
- Is what we’re doing working? What should we do differently?
- How do we win hearts and minds? How do we create and sustain community?
- How do we bring joy into the world?
- What are our wins? How do our victories shift and affect power?
- How do we learn from victories, and defeats? How do we build off them?
- How do we keep going? What are we fighting for and creating?
We will accept submissions through February 10th, 2020. Click https://perspectiveseditorialcollective.submittable.com/submit/151418/perspectives-on-anarchist-theory-no-32-the-power-issue to submit your work.
All submissions should meet the following format requirements:
- Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style for general format and citation guidelines.
- Please use endnotes rather than footnotes and keep notes to a minimum.
- Type your endnotes directly into the text. Please do not use the “insert note” function in Word, as it is incompatible with our layout software.
- Do not include page numbers on your manuscript.
- Do not indent new paragraphs. Use a line break instead.
- Please keep in mind that we seek to share these ideas with a broad readership; write in accessible, clear language. Do not assume an academic audience.
- Be sure to include your name and reliable contact information, as well as a brief (3-6 sentence) bio that you would like printed alongside your article.
Please prepare your manuscript as thoroughly as you can before sending it along for consideration. If you have a concept for an article but are unsure how to develop and refine the ideas or language, we are happy to help you out with the writing process, particularly if you have never written for publication before. Please contact us as soon as possible in order to ensure you are able to meet the publication deadline. We do not accept pitches or ideas without a draft after submissions have closed. As with any publication, please familiarize yourself with our work before submitting.
Send any questions to: perspectivesonanarchisttheory@gmail.com
Please do not send finished manuscripts to our email address for consideration; use the Submittable link above instead.
- Submittable link: https://perspectiveseditorialcollective.submittable.com/submit/151418/perspectives-on-anarchist-theory-no-32-the-power-issue
New IAS Website
Many of you took the time to respond to our website survey, and we want to thank you for that. Come take a look at the results, and let us know what you think! The new Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) website has our Mutual Aid Speakers list bios and topics, on-line Perspectives on Anarchist Theory postings, as well as downloadable back issues of Perspectives. You’ll also find our Lexicon pamphlets produced during Occupy. There are also announcements about upcoming IAS’ events. Come take a look and tell us what you think!
The IAS’ website redesign was done by Dylan Petrohilos. You may recognize Dylan as a former J20 Defendant who overcame serious charges after the mass arrest by DC police on Inauguration Day. Dylan wasn’t even at the protest, but his house was raided by the police and he was arrested because he attended an organizing meeting; read more about Dylan and the J20 Defendant’s case here. Dylan is a talented web designer who can help any organization or project you’re involved with in developing a better web presence. See more of Dylan’s work and contact him here. In addition to the new IAS website, Dylan recently redesigned the website for It’s Going Down.
You can check out our new website at: http://www.anarchiststudies.com
Book a Speaker Through the Mutual Aid Speakers List
Did you know the IAS coordinates a list of radical speakers, through our Mutual Aid Speakers bureau? Mutual Aid Speakers are organizers, writers, and educators with a variety of focus areas from intro to anarchism to police abolition, climate struggle to anarcha-feminisms, who are excited to connect with community.
For example, one of our board member speakers, Lara Messersmith-Glavin, spoke and co-facilitated a workshop on rhetoric, propaganda, and organizing called “Hearts and Minds: A Thinkshop on How Ideas Really Move in the Digital Age” at the Opening Space for the Radical Imagination conference at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon this spring.
Would your community, union, affinity group, or classroom want to host a mutual aid speaker? If a Mutual Aid Speaker resonates with your educational work and community, we’d be honored to work with you!
Mutual Aid Speakers do ask for an honorarium for the speaker’s time and work; honorarium is determined per event, in coordination with the individual speaker. The honorarium is split between the speaker and the IAS, honoring the work of the speaker, and helping fund IAS work promoting anarchist ideas through our publications and educational work, honoring the spirit of mutual aid.
We’re happy to help brainstorm about securing funding, collaborating with multiple groups, or to help create a budget for a speaker from multiple sources.
Check out our full list of speakers here https://anarchiststudies.org/mutual-aid-host-an-anarchist-speaker/ Email us at anarchiststudies@gmail.com to learn more or book a speaker.
Coming Soon Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 31: “Imaginations“
We are excited to announce the upcoming publication of the thirty-first issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, a collection of essays, fiction, poetry, art, and book reviews gathered around the theme of Imaginations.
From the introduction: “Now is a time for courageous imagination, for risking new and untested methods, for allowing our minds to fire and associate freely, and for relying on the darker wisdom of the subconscious. The collective dreaming and deep creativity that drive our connections may be the new tools we need to engage. In this issue, you will find games, pleasures, dancing, and nightmares—new ways to look at the moment in which we find ourselves, and new approaches to build the world we want.”
Stay tuned for release dates via AK Press and Powell’s Books!
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Out Now! Radiant Voices
The IAS is excited to spread the word about the newly released Radiant Voices: 21 Feminist Essays for Rising Up Inspired by EMMA Talks. Radiant Voices is filled with IAS-published authors and activists close to our heart, including editor/contributor carla bergman, and contributors Walidah Imarisha and Lara Messersmith-Glavin. Radiant Voices is inspired by the Vancouver BC-based EMMA Talks speakers’ series that amplifies the voices of women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks.
Find Radiant Voices here: https://www.touchwoodeditions.com/book/radiant-voices/
Support the IAS!
The Institute for Anarchist Studies is funded by donations from people like you: anarchists, antiauthoritarians, leftists, and other like-minded radicals interested in furthering anarchist scholarship.
If you enjoy what we do, would you consider supporting us through a donation, becoming a sustainer, or buying an issue of Perspectives?
We accept secure credit card donations over the Internet through PayPal. You can provide a one time or a monthly donation here: https://anarchiststudies.org/support-the-ias/, or you can mail cash, checks or money orders to: IAS, PO Box 90454, Portland, OR 97290
The IAS also raises funds through the Mutual Aid Speakers List and donations at events. In this way, the IAS is both independent and yet deeply interconnected with, and supported by, anarchist and like-minded folks and movements. The IAS, in short, is about the anti-authoritarian Left sustaining its own public intellectuals and critical intellectual spaces to provide funding for things like child care or taking time off work to enable organizers the time to reflect and write.