Who’s Processing Whom? Digital Commons, Digital Blinders, and a Fraught Social Future
“Are You Doing the Processing, or Are You Being Processed?” —Processed World, #1 (1981) This … signals the metamorphosis of the digital infrastructure from a thing we have to a thing that has us. —Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Almost four decades ago I … Read more
Black Sheep of all Classes: Fifty Years of Consensus Politics in Christiania
Anyone who has been involved in a group project that strives for consensus knows that working shit out together is hard. It’s challenging to collectively do the work of assessing options, making decisions, and executing plans that sometimes carry real individual and collective risks, even … Read more
Living Communism: Theory & Practice of Autonomy & Attack
May Day, 1987: thousands of black-clad Autonomen (“those who are autonomous”) riot in West Berlin. After a decade spent honing their street-fighting tactics, they stage an offensive against state repression by blocking streets, occupying buildings, and fighting a low-intensity urban war against the police. The … Read more
Place as Message: Anarchist Climate Communication Through Performance
“This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated … Read more
From “Trotsky in Tijuana” to “Chernobyl”: Caution & Reason
The promise of historical and speculative fiction is the reconstruction of the past in the present, or of the present in the past, and the contemplation of what might have been, or of what might still be. As the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote, creative writers … Read more
Power Within
“We are in such an unprecedented moment of global uprisings that fall against the backdrop of a global pandemic which is against the backdrop of institutionalized and historical racism and racialized oppression in this country and across the world. In the midst of that, we … Read more
Fundraising Anarchy
“Put in very blunt terms, they had taken power – not by simply changing the names of existing oppressive institutions but by literally destroying those old institutions and creating radically new ones… Social revolutionaries, far from removing the problem of power from their field of … Read more
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory
We are living in interesting and accelerating times! As we move forward through this year, we at Perspectives on Anarchist Theory are reflecting on how the events of the past few years have been continually shifting the ground beneath our feet on a collective level. … Read more
Here are 25 historic moments relevant to anarchism, in no particular order. To mark the occasion of our 25th anniversary, the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) is working to raise $25,000, in part to award grants again in 2022. We could use your help. Please support … Read more
Time Under Tension: Lessons in Organizing from a Kettlebell Gym
Strength is a Skill Your spine is straight. You have shifted your weight back so that your knees are above your ankles—this is such an uncomfortable position until you learn to trust the muscles that hold you there—and you check to make sure the bell … Read more
