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As 2016 gets its final punches in, many of us are looking for ways to find hope and positivity in dark times, to connect with those we care about, and to recommit to our collective struggles. If you are dedicated to creating a free society, if you believe in equity, liberation, and mutual aid—then here is a way you can help.
The Institute for Anarchist Studies relies on financial support from you to do its work. We are a largely volunteer-run organization—proof that a small number of dedicated individuals can produce inspiring results! Our goals are to further anarchist analysis and to spread the influence of anti-authoritarian ideas and praxis through reflection, dialogue, and education. Our work takes many forms, including:

  • Grants for radical writers,
  • Perspectives on Anarchist Theory magazine,
  • Anarchist Interventions and other book series through AK Press,
  • The Mutual Aid Speakers bureau,
  • Sponsorship of educational events,

and more!

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Until All Are Free: Black Feminism, Anarchism, and Interlocking Oppression, by Hillary Lazar

Black feminism has a particularly deep resonance with anarchist understandings of mechanisms of power, which similarly foreground a linking across all systems of domination. Again, this is important to note, so as to ensure that the impact of Black feminism on contemporary anarchism is not overlooked. This currency across the two schools of thought is also notable, however, as it very well may be the coming together of Black feminism and anarchism that is encouraging the shift in orientation away from a more fragmented conceptualization of struggle, and towards the idea of our struggles as interdependent. And, especially given the increased presence of anarchism in mobilizations since the Zapatista uprising in 1994, it seems plausible that the confluence of these streams of thought is having a powerful combined impact on radical political thought and culture.

Listening for a Multiplicity of Quiet Rumors Within the Anarcha-Feminist Archive: A Review of Quiet Rumors: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader, New Edition (AK Press, 2012), by Raeanna Gleason-Salguero

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In their 1971 manifesto, “Anarcha-Feminism: Two Statements,” the Red Rose and Black Maria Black Rose Anarcho-Feminists define anarchism as “the affirmation of human freedom and dignity expressed in a negative, cautionary term signifying that no person should rule or dominate another person,” and they encourage libertarian socialist feminists to cultivate “all the groovy things people can do and build together, once they are able to combine efforts and resources on the basis of common interest, rationality, and creativity” (15). In a radical response to the repressive, violent, and “pathological structure” of the State, they conclude this manifesto with a demand for “ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION!” (17) Anthologized within the Dark Star Collective’s Quiet Rumors: An Anarchist-Feminist Reader, the Red Rose and Black Maria Black Rose manifesto opens the collection as a reminder of the need to be ever creative in our feminist approaches.  Also, to collectively imagine and manifest complex transformations in how people might relate to one another outside the crushing structures of power and hierarchical notions of human value.

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Brooding Over Revolution and Bending Realities: Sci Fi as Social Movement. A Review of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (2015, AK Press/IAS) and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015, PM Press), by Kim Smith

This book review appears in the current issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (N. 29, on anarcha-feminisms) available here, from AK Press.
Too often I find myself giving into the urgency of organizing, of how this struggle now takes priority over pausing, imagining, reorganizing, reorienting, creating and recreating new worlds, new ways of relating. Of course organizers everywhere are also, everyday, creating many other worlds within this one, but too often it feels as though what takes center-stage in our struggles are the analyses, critiques, and (of course) the too many, too long meetings that stand in for building something different. Spaces for risky, non-utilitarian creativity and inspiration are too often sidelined as inessential. Maybe the appearance of two sci fi books (both from radical presses whose mainstays are political non-fiction) suggests that sci fi is resurfacing as a relevant touchstone for contemporary political movements, signaling perhaps a bit more recognition of creative expression in explicitly political spaces. What exactly is the connection between sci-fi and radical movements and organizing? This question (and some ideas about how to answer it) emerged for me while reading these two humbling anthologies, which I’ll get to in a moment, but first, a little more about these books.
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While Octavia’s Brood (2015, AK Press/IAS) and Sisters of the Revolution (2015, PM Press) appear initially as similar offerings from similar presses, their differences are quite profound. While both are compilations of overtly politically-engaged sci fi, the only near-overlap of content is that Sisters of the Revolution includes a brilliant story (one of the strongest in the collection) from the other book’s namesake, Octavia Butler. Beyond this, they both specifically include writers ‘on the margins’ of mainstream science fiction; in this way, many of the stories in each could be included in the other. The likening of one to the other is otherwise quite superficial, however, as the spirits that animate each anthology as a whole are clearly very different. Sisters is an historical compilation of pieces identified as “feminist speculative fiction” by its editors, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and seeks to bolster a feminist archive of science fiction, whereas Brood is “visionary fiction,” highly cultural production emerging from and meant to feedback into contemporary social justice struggles. Taken each as collections, they each task science fiction with a different function in contemporary politics, and in doing so fill very different niches, and leave the reader with different orientations towards social change and how it happens.

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