Tomás Ibáñez writes on the inherent (contradictory) duality of the anarchist imaginary and anarchist practice, from Redes Libertarias (05/12/2024).
When I opened the computer to start writing this text, I was tempted to title it: “In Fiery Praise of the Negativity of Anarchism”, since my purpose was precisely to reflect on this inescapable, and often undervalued, dimension of anarchism. However, I soon realised that this forced me to leave out much of what constitutes anarchism. In particular, the positive side of anarchism that also defines it was marginalised. So to remedy this unfortunate amputation, I had no choice but to undertake the elaboration of a second article, entitled this time: “Enthusiastic apology for the anarchist dream and its intermittent embodiments in reality”.
However, as my commitment was to submit a single article to Redes Libertarias, I finally opted to renounce this first title and to merge the two reflections into a single text. There would be no point in recounting this anecdote here, proper to the private sphere of the writer responsible for this article, and it is of no substantial interest, were it not for the fact that the decision to merge the two reflections has had the beneficial effect for me of putting the spotlight on the intrinsically dilemmatic character of anarchism itself. Indeed, from that decision I have come to perceive it as something cut from the same cloth as the two-faced deity called Janus in ancient Rome, endowed with two diametrically opposed but inseparably united faces.
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Duane Rousselle: Georges Bataille’s Post-anarchism
Pushing against the limits of anarchism, with George Bataille, as read by Duane Rousselle.
[Source: The Anarchist Library]
Abstract
Post-anarchist philosophy has widely been regarded as an attempt to challenge the ontological essentialism of the traditional anarchist discourse. The problem for the post-anarchists is that by focusing exclusively on the critique of ontological essentialism and universalism inherent in the ideology of traditional anarchism, post-anarchists have demonstrated that they are unable to envision a response to meta-ethical questions that occur outside of the universalism/relativism pair. As a result most post-anarchists have retreated into an epistemological defence of relativism. In keeping with the ethical trajectory of post-anarchist philosophy, post-anarchists could stand to benefit by responding nihilistically rather than relativistically to the epistemological problem of universalism. They could also take the ontological problematic of non-being to its limit by rejecting the subject as the locus of ethical agency. I shall aim to demonstrate that this latter position is correlative to the meta-ethical position of Georges Bataille.
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