Christian Ferrer’s work on anarchism is among the most erudite and eloquent that we know. Refusing to limit himself to merely describing anarchist acts of militancy, or to fruitless ideological debates, he unearths what we could call the “longue durée” of anarchism’s history; its subterranean movements that were fed and feed still so much more than the spectacle of political commentary would lead us to believe.
In a modest effort to share his work with English language readers, we share two essays, along with the introduction (below), from a short anthology of his essays entitled Cabezas de tormenta; Ensayos sobre lo ingobernable/Storm heads; Essays on the ungovernable (2004).
Storm heads: Introduction
Anarchism is a shelter against what not a few people seek. It is curious to call what is today a shadow of its older political and cultural splendour a “shelter”, but sometimes the places or beliefs which give us refuge and certainty fit on the end of a pin head. Ever since I can remember my interest in political thought, I have always felt myself to be an anarchist. The word today sounds less fearful than strange, as if one were speaking of an extinct animal; a heavy bird which was never able to fly or a mammal whose last specimen was seen decades ago. It was, furthermore, an animal accustomed to beatings and to being frequently hunted down. It could be said that impotence, persecution or irreversible demographic decline sealed its fate. However, any advocate of libertarian ideas is conscious of the long record of failures that surround and precede her/him; and also of the scant but very significant successes. Each of these was paid for in blood and each demanded an enormous collective effort.
It will be understand that a movement of such radical ideas was almost born extinct. There tasks were those of a Hercules; their enemies, ancient and immense like pyramids; their forces, limited and, in the end, exhausted. And thus every anarchist feels sometime in their life the weight of so dramatic a history and ponders about “who will be the last of us”. After all, at some moment there was a last Blanquist, a last follower of Garibaldi, a last member of the Carbonari. Every movement of ideas that aspires to remain among men and women should sound out – and eventually play on – the discontent of an epoch. Anarchism has known how to pick that string again and again. For their part, the anarchists themselves have refused to depart. Ethical firmness and political irrepressibility were undoubtedly conditions of survival, for there were times when the word anarchy was synonymous with freedom and not unmotivated chaos. A history of dissidence and of struggles for freedoms denied or violated must necessarily take them into account. They were their wildest minds; the first to announce and promote freedoms that today are enjoyed in some parts of the world. The other sides of their history reveal as much a way of fighting as a loving consideration for men/women and the earth. Had there been no anarchists, our political imagination would be more squalid, and even more miserable. And even though it is only filtered drop by drop, the “idea” continues to be a good antidote against the justifications and crimes of the powerful.
Anarchism has been in my life like a magnet. I readily became accustomed to the precarious and frightful places inhabited by anarchists, as well as having read the classical works of anarchist thought and the testimony of intense and not less often ill-fated lives. I had, like so many others who had read Bakunin and Malatesta, the sensation of having discovered the secret of the domination of man by man. This conviction was both a terrifying and an ethically orienting concept. Nevertheless, doubts regarding so extreme a doctrine were not lacking. Anarchist beliefs seemed to suffer from unreality; there was not even a mooring line tied to some relief of the world as it existed. But even if the anarchists constructed capsules where only their grammar, their symbols and their passions thrive, as happens with the time that children dedicate to play or lovers to their games, it is in itself an antipodal reality which sometimes succeeded in moving and fracturing the institutions and customs of the hierarchical world. Moreover, as the stomach and lungs are so important for the normal functioning of certain bodies, so too are the organs of anarchy.
A hundred years ago, anarchism was an organised movement, culturally significant and politically feared. This momentum, this stimulus, did not reach us. Yet nothing has been lost, neither the words said, nor the ideas published, nor the leaflets and pamphlets distributed, nor the actions carried out. Having now radiated for a long time, its influence has spread beyond its own sympathisers. Tributaries of this frustrated cultural mutation have covertly flowed into the aspirations and conduct of the present. And as anarchists have always been the living witnesses of a promised freedom, the political memory of the present is surrounded by voices and recollections of libertarians who are no longer and of events that recede in time; protests or stories, which in another time were read in books or heard from old militants, are still whispered. … [T]he five essays gathered together in this book aim not so much to celebrate the political myth of anarchism as admire its survival. They are essays born of the love for the libertarian saga. …
Christian Ferrer, “Presentación”, Cabezas de tormenta: Ensayos sobre lo ingobernable. Logroño: Pepitas de calabaza ed., 2004.
Christian Ferrer is a sociologist and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy of technology and contemporary thought at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. He studied Sociology and graduated with a doctoral thesis on the work of writer Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. He is a researcher at the Gino Germani Institute of the Faculty of Social Sciences (UBA). He was a member of the editorial teams of the libertarian magazines Utopía, El Periódico de Anarres, and La Letra A, and of the cultural magazines Fharenheit 450; Babel; La Caja; and El Ojo Mocho. He is currently a member of the editorial team of the magazine Artefacto: Pensamientos sobre la Técnica. He was the editor of Sociedad, a journal of the Faculty of Social Sciences. His published books include: Mal de ojo (1996); Cabezas de tormenta (2004); El sufrir sin sentido y la tecnología (2006); Barón Biza. El immoralista (2007 and 2014); La mala suerte de los animales (2009); El entramado (2012); Camafeos (2013); La amargura metódica (2014); and Los destructores de máquinas y otros ensayos (2015); El corazón empurpurado. Epistolario e historia (2017); El pozo de los vestigios y otros ensayos a contracorriente (2020). As an editor, he has also published El lenguaje libertario. Antología del pensamiento anarquista contemporáneo (1991, 2006, 2014, 2020); Prosa plebeya. Ensayos de Néstor Perlongher (1997, 2013, 2021); Lírica social amarga (2003); Correspondencia: Victoria Ocampo y Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (2013); and Folletos anarquistas en Buenos Aires (2015).
Christian Ferrer: Essays on the ungoverable
Christian Ferrer’s work on anarchism is among the most erudite and eloquent that we know. Refusing to limit himself to merely describing anarchist acts of militancy, or to fruitless ideological debates, he unearths what we could call the “longue durée” of anarchism’s history; its subterranean movements that were fed and feed still so much more than the spectacle of political commentary would lead us to believe.
In a modest effort to share his work with English language readers, we share two essays, along with the introduction (below), from a short anthology of his essays entitled Cabezas de tormenta; Ensayos sobre lo ingobernable/Storm heads; Essays on the ungovernable (2004).
Storm heads: Introduction
Anarchism is a shelter against what not a few people seek. It is curious to call what is today a shadow of its older political and cultural splendour a “shelter”, but sometimes the places or beliefs which give us refuge and certainty fit on the end of a pin head. Ever since I can remember my interest in political thought, I have always felt myself to be an anarchist. The word today sounds less fearful than strange, as if one were speaking of an extinct animal; a heavy bird which was never able to fly or a mammal whose last specimen was seen decades ago. It was, furthermore, an animal accustomed to beatings and to being frequently hunted down. It could be said that impotence, persecution or irreversible demographic decline sealed its fate. However, any advocate of libertarian ideas is conscious of the long record of failures that surround and precede her/him; and also of the scant but very significant successes. Each of these was paid for in blood and each demanded an enormous collective effort.
It will be understand that a movement of such radical ideas was almost born extinct. There tasks were those of a Hercules; their enemies, ancient and immense like pyramids; their forces, limited and, in the end, exhausted. And thus every anarchist feels sometime in their life the weight of so dramatic a history and ponders about “who will be the last of us”. After all, at some moment there was a last Blanquist, a last follower of Garibaldi, a last member of the Carbonari. Every movement of ideas that aspires to remain among men and women should sound out – and eventually play on – the discontent of an epoch. Anarchism has known how to pick that string again and again. For their part, the anarchists themselves have refused to depart. Ethical firmness and political irrepressibility were undoubtedly conditions of survival, for there were times when the word anarchy was synonymous with freedom and not unmotivated chaos. A history of dissidence and of struggles for freedoms denied or violated must necessarily take them into account. They were their wildest minds; the first to announce and promote freedoms that today are enjoyed in some parts of the world. The other sides of their history reveal as much a way of fighting as a loving consideration for men/women and the earth. Had there been no anarchists, our political imagination would be more squalid, and even more miserable. And even though it is only filtered drop by drop, the “idea” continues to be a good antidote against the justifications and crimes of the powerful.
Anarchism has been in my life like a magnet. I readily became accustomed to the precarious and frightful places inhabited by anarchists, as well as having read the classical works of anarchist thought and the testimony of intense and not less often ill-fated lives. I had, like so many others who had read Bakunin and Malatesta, the sensation of having discovered the secret of the domination of man by man. This conviction was both a terrifying and an ethically orienting concept. Nevertheless, doubts regarding so extreme a doctrine were not lacking. Anarchist beliefs seemed to suffer from unreality; there was not even a mooring line tied to some relief of the world as it existed. But even if the anarchists constructed capsules where only their grammar, their symbols and their passions thrive, as happens with the time that children dedicate to play or lovers to their games, it is in itself an antipodal reality which sometimes succeeded in moving and fracturing the institutions and customs of the hierarchical world. Moreover, as the stomach and lungs are so important for the normal functioning of certain bodies, so too are the organs of anarchy.
A hundred years ago, anarchism was an organised movement, culturally significant and politically feared. This momentum, this stimulus, did not reach us. Yet nothing has been lost, neither the words said, nor the ideas published, nor the leaflets and pamphlets distributed, nor the actions carried out. Having now radiated for a long time, its influence has spread beyond its own sympathisers. Tributaries of this frustrated cultural mutation have covertly flowed into the aspirations and conduct of the present. And as anarchists have always been the living witnesses of a promised freedom, the political memory of the present is surrounded by voices and recollections of libertarians who are no longer and of events that recede in time; protests or stories, which in another time were read in books or heard from old militants, are still whispered. … [T]he five essays gathered together in this book aim not so much to celebrate the political myth of anarchism as admire its survival. They are essays born of the love for the libertarian saga. …
Christian Ferrer, “Presentación”, Cabezas de tormenta: Ensayos sobre lo ingobernable. Logroño: Pepitas de calabaza ed., 2004.
Christian Ferrer is a sociologist and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy of technology and contemporary thought at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. He studied Sociology and graduated with a doctoral thesis on the work of writer Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. He is a researcher at the Gino Germani Institute of the Faculty of Social Sciences (UBA). He was a member of the editorial teams of the libertarian magazines Utopía, El Periódico de Anarres, and La Letra A, and of the cultural magazines Fharenheit 450; Babel; La Caja; and El Ojo Mocho. He is currently a member of the editorial team of the magazine Artefacto: Pensamientos sobre la Técnica. He was the editor of Sociedad, a journal of the Faculty of Social Sciences. His published books include: Mal de ojo (1996); Cabezas de tormenta (2004); El sufrir sin sentido y la tecnología (2006); Barón Biza. El immoralista (2007 and 2014); La mala suerte de los animales (2009); El entramado (2012); Camafeos (2013); La amargura metódica (2014); and Los destructores de máquinas y otros ensayos (2015); El corazón empurpurado. Epistolario e historia (2017); El pozo de los vestigios y otros ensayos a contracorriente (2020). As an editor, he has also published El lenguaje libertario. Antología del pensamiento anarquista contemporáneo (1991, 2006, 2014, 2020); Prosa plebeya. Ensayos de Néstor Perlongher (1997, 2013, 2021); Lírica social amarga (2003); Correspondencia: Victoria Ocampo y Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (2013); and Folletos anarquistas en Buenos Aires (2015).