Contents

• Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 31: Imaginations is Hot off the Press!   
• Call for Submissions: Perspectives on Anarchist Theory Special Issue – Pandemics from the Bottom Up
• T-shirts and Hoodies In Stock
• Deeper Dive: “If You Don’t They Will”
• Book a Speaker Through the Mutual Aid Speakers List 
• Tell Us About Yourself! Community Survey

Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 31: Imaginations
Available Now

The thirty-first issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory is out now, 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.” 

Get your copies at AK Press and Powell’s Books.  Both also have copies of issues No. 29 Anarcha-Feminisms, and No. 30 Beyond the Crisis if you want one for yourself or a friend!

As with every issue, we want to thank all of the authors and artists for the incredible work shared in this issue of Perspectives. 

Thanks also go out to our friends at Eberhardt Press for another beautiful print job, and to our volunteers who helped collate.  

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Call for Submissions:
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory – Special Issue
“Pandemics from the Bottom Up”

Just as rapidly as COVID-19 spread around the world, top-down responses that have allowed national governments to consolidate their power have proliferated in the opening months of 2020.

At the same time, there has been an outbreak of anti-authoritarian responses to the disease and its impacts that look beyond the state and build power beyond this crisis. As discussions about wealth redistribution, mutual aid, resource sharing, worker and tenant organizing, and government intervention come more into the mainstream, examples of anti-authoritarian principles, practices, and politics in the mainstream are becoming more prevalent. At the same time, we are all navigating difficult material, mental, physical, and emotional terrain. So, let’s check in. 

Responding to the urgency of the moment, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory is seeking reports from the field and short pieces about the ongoing global pandemic for digital publication outside of our regular issues. How are you and your community responding to the pandemic? What strategies have been useful in building up necessary resources and what have turned out to be more trouble than they are worth?

What have you been doing to stay connected with folks during self-isolation? How have you handled care-giving for others, including homeschooling? How do you nourish yourself, physically, mentally, and emotionally? How does what’s happening now connect to larger struggles with which you’ve been engaged? How has it changed them? 

We are open to a range of formats, including but not limited to:

• Short report-backs from groups or networks
• Tool-kits for organizing during a crisis
• Self-care and care for others during physical distancing
• Reflections on the intersections of coronavirus with power, oppression, and resistance 
• Creative pieces, including poetry, nonfiction, short fiction, and visual art
• Annotated reading or watch lists
• Lessons plans for all ages of schooling
• Recipes, shopping lists, or other models for staying nourished

We expect most submissions to be relatively modest in terms of length in order to facilitate an efficient and responsive editing process. We will begin accepting submissions immediately on a rolling basis.

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. 

As with any publication, please familiarize yourself with our work before submitting (http://anarchiststudies.org).

Review the full call for submissions, including format requirements, here. 

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Cute comrades, cute t-shirts!

T-Shirts & Hoodies In Stock! 

Are you team red and black baseball? Or are you more of an anarcho-cat fan? Either way, we’ve got you covered – our merch store is up and running with t-shirts and hoodies in stock! These are screened at a community-run print shop in Detroit, MI. All proceeds go towards general operating funds for the IAS to support radical writers and thinkers. 

Your new favorite t-shirt or hooded sweatshirt is here: https://anarchiststudies.org/shop/

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Deeper Dive:
“If You Don’t They Will”

Want to take a deeper dive into some of the content from Perspectives: Imaginations?  

After reading “Dreaming an Anti-Fascist Politics of Pleasure” in the new Imaginations issue, check out the interactive work of the authors through their project “If You Don’t They Will.” Click through online, host a workshop, or ask your art museum, college, or  contemporary art institute to host their traveling exhibition, no. NOT EVER. 

If You Don’t They Will is a Seattle-based collaboration that provides concrete and creative tools for countering white nationalism through a cultural lens. This includes creating spaces to generate visions, desires, incantations, actions, memes, and dreams for the kinds of worlds we want to live in.

Check out their work here and pass it on in your networks! 

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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 introduction to anarchism to police abolition, climate struggle to anarcha-feminisms–who are excited to connect with communities.

Forexample, 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 last 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; honoraria are 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 ways to secure funding, collaborate with multiple groups, or to help create a budget for a speaker from multiple sources.  Check out our full list of speakers here, and email us at info@anarchiststudies.org to learn more or to book a speaker.

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Tell Us About Yourself! Community Survey

As the IAS expands our community, we want to know who we are reaching. Can we ask you about yourself? 

In an effort to better understand the networks and communities we engage, we’re asking our community to take a few minutes to answer some basic demographic questions and tell us a little about yourself.

Your responses are anonymous and will be used to evaluate our progress as we seek to better serve and reflect the interests of communities of color, queer/trans communities, disabled folks, and other underrepresented or marginalized communities with whom we strive to act in solidarity with. All responses are anonymous.

Click here to participate in our community survey. 

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Support Independent Radical Scholarship 

The Institute for Anarchist Studies is funded by donations from people like you: anarchists, anti-authoritarians, libertarian 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, or you can mail cash, checks or money orders to the address above. 

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.


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