"Anarchism and Poststructuralism"


Paul Nursey-Bray

"Conventional anarchism relies too heavily upon
categories that are politically and epistemologically
suspect. These include scientific discourse, humanism
and rationalist semiotics. As long as anarchists
continue to employ this suspect thinking it is
extremely unlikely that they will be able to develop a
revolutionary theory or praxis that will provice
meaningful challenges either to capitalism or the
state apparatus that sanctions that economic system". -- Lewis Call

There have been a number of attempts in recent year to
achieve a meld of anarchism and poststructuralism.
These attempts have been based on perceived
similarities between the two bodies of theory,
particularly with respect to the iconoclastic approach
of anarchism to the state, authority and accepted
norms, and its proposal, as an alternative to
centralised power, of diffused networks of local
empowerment.Such attempts have received added impetus from a
desire to render anarchism more relevant to the
current age. The traditional anarchism of nineteenth
century origin is held to be an anachronism in the
contemporary world, a hoary, theoretical remnant from
the days when dreams of reason, revolution and
progress could still be entertained and applauded. As
Lewis Call comments;

"It is becoming increasingly evident that anarchist
politics cannot afford to remain within the modern
world. The politics of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin
? vibrant and meaningful, perhaps, to their nineteenth
century audiences ? have become dangerously
inaccessible to late twentieth century readers".

Thus, the argument runs, in a postmodern society,
where ?metanarratives? such as anarchism are, as
Jean-François Lyotard insisted, to be regarded with
?incredulity?, anarchism has no purpose or immediacy
unless it can be reworked to make it appropriate to
the age. The tools for this job are to be found it
seems, somewhat paradoxically in the very theories, of
poststructuralism and postmodernism, that its critics
have claimed reveal its deficiencies and irrelevance.

The shape of the argument is very similar to that
pursued by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical
Democratic Position, where they argue for a reworking
of Marxism in the light of poststructuralism. The
post-Marxist debate that this engendered was fast and
furious. The parallel attempt at reformulation in
anarchist theory has occurred later, and has
occasioned nothing like the clamour. But it is worth
noting in this context that the term
?post-anarchism?has been used.

The present paper will survey a number of approaches
taken to anarchism from a poststructuralist
standpoint, and develop a critique of the various
arguments presented. While there will not be as
vehement a reaction to post-anarchism as that of
Norman Geras or Ellen Meiksins Wood to post-Marxism,
nevertheless it will be contended that, just as Geras
and Meiksins Wood argued that a poststructuralist
Marxism was simply not Marxism, so a poststructuralist
anarchism has lost those essential characteristics
that go to make up a distinctly anarchist view of the
individual and society. Indeed, it ends not so much as
a political theory as an extension of the
poststructuralist critique. At the same time the
historical or traditional form of anarchism will not
be defended without reservation. The call for
contemporary relevance has some force, and
poststructuralist scepticism towards the legacy of the
Enlightenment can be instructive in the framing of
approaches that may address the issue.

It is necessary to begin with some definitional
discussion, since both of our terms, anarchism and
poststructuralism, can raise questions of
interpretation, particularly in the way the latter
term has been utilised by the proponents of
poststructuralist anarchism.

It is, one hopes, unnecessary to distinguish anarchism
from anarchy, but perhaps it should be emphasised that
anarchism is very much about order, but an order, both
personal and social that is to be achieved without
authority. Nor, one hopes, will anarchism and violence
be seen as indissolubly linked. Anarchist supporters
of violent revolution, like Michael Bakunin, were by
no means unique. The necessity of violent revolution
as a catalyst for social change was a commonplace
among radical thinkers and activists of the nineteenth
century. It is unfortunately true that anarchism gave
rise to the first modern terrorists, with the movement
of le propaganda par le fait in the1880s. Indeed, the
figure of the caped, moustachioed anarchist with the
smoking bomb has cast a long shadow over the public
perception of anarchism that still persists today. But
it should also be remembered that both Leo Tolstoy and
Mahatma Ghandi, perhaps the two most influential
theorists of pacifism, were also anarchists.

Anarchism is essentially about individual autonomy and
community, a notion that implies if not complete, then
a large measure of, equality. All anarchists are in
agreement that true autonomy cannot be realised in the
presence of centralised political power, that is the
state. Where they differ is over how the community
should be constructed. William Godwin believed in free
production and distribution on an individual basis;
the communist anarchists like Peter Kropotkin, Errico
Malatesta and Emma Goldman in something akin to the
Marxist vision but without the proletarian state,
where the rule would be, "From each according to their
ability; to each according to their need", although,
as with Marx, they are a little hazy about how it
would work in practice; Proudhon and his
anarcho-syndicalist descendants believed in worker
ownership and return to labour and so on. There are a
considerable number of variants.

It is vital that the two key elements of anarchism,
autonomy and community do not become separated. Often
they are treated as if they are independent variables.
But this is not the case. Anarchism is not about
autonomy and community, but autonomy in community. It
is the idea of community, of living with other human
beings in a voluntary social order, that is vital both
to the central concern of anarchism for equality, and
to the notion of constructing one?s freedom in a
cooperative interchange with others. Sometimes, as
with liberalism, autonomy becomes the main focus. The
result can be a variant, not of anarchism as portrayed
here, but of its right-wing cousin, libertarianism. It
is worth noting that libertarianism has produced a
claimed form of anarchism in the so-called
anarcho-capitalism of Murray Rothbard,a type of free
market model, based on competitive individualism in
the absence of the state and political authority.

Anarchism began in the 1790s with William Godwin and
his Enquiry Concerning Political justice of 1793. It
developed alongside and as a development of the
liberal tradition. Godwin, an ally and supporter of
Thomas Paine, was, like Paine, a member of the English
radical movement and an advocate of freedom and
rights. However, he felt that Paine had not gone far
enough in his assault on the privileges of monarchy
and the entrenched aristocratic classes.

Representative government and minimal interference in
rights was not enough. An end to domination and the
triumph of human freedom required the removal of all
forms of government whatever their character. Godwin
was only accorded his status in the anarchist
tradition much later, by Kropotkin in fact, but the
point of origin is important for our present purposes.
It demonstrates very clearly that anarchism was an
outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Godwin was an apostle
of reason in the style of the philosophes, and a
fervent supporter of reason and perfectability.
Anarchism remained a tradition with its roots firmly
embedded in Enlightenment thinking and thus in
modernity.

Poststructuralism was born, of course, as a reaction
to Structuralism, which in turn had developed in the
early part of the second half of the twentieth century
from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure.
Poststructuralism continued Structuralism?'s focus on
language, but shifted the emphasis from structure to
indeterminacy. Language as a symbolic order of signs,
of signifiers, sets an arbitrary and yet impervious
barrier, it was argued, to our apprehension of
reality. It represented a major challenge to the
epistemology of Enlightenment thinking. No basis for
the old absolutes remains. It was Jacques Derrida, one
of the two key thinkers of the movement, together with
Jacques Lacan, who best exemplifies the leading ideas.
Attacking the idea of any logos, he denied the
centrality of any idea or essence, be it God, reason
of humanity. The human subject was dissolved into the
semiological mix, and theoretical anti-humanism
followed. As he famously observed; ?There is nothing
outside the text?. In short, the subject is now seen
as constituted by discourse. Derrida'?s central idea of
différence, with its implications of a constant
slippage of meaning, coupled with the associated
procedure of deconstruction, negates the idea of
absolute or unitary truth, suggesting plurality and
diversity as the inevitable consequence. The influence
of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger are
obvious and acknowledged. Lacan, of course, developed
his unique reworking of Freud along similar lines,
while Roland Barthes, under the influence of Derrida
and Lacan, repented of his earlier structuralist
errors.

The characteristic position of poststructuralism,
then, is associated with the attack on the idea of an
absolute or single truth, a consequent dismissal of
any centre and the acceptance of plurality, a
rejection of reason and humanism, a shift of focus
away from the human subject as agent to the idea of
discourse as constitutive of subjectivity, and, above
all, a firm denial of representation. Postmodernism,
insofar as we can make distinctions, adopted all of
these philosophical positions and grafted on, in the
hands of people like Jean Baudrillard, specific
cultural concerns, such as loss of affectivity,
pastiche, loss of historicity, simulation and
hyperreality.

It is difficult to place Michel Foucault in all this,
although he is a vital cog in the arguments of the
proponents of poststructuralist anarchism. Foucault
can, it is true, be broadly seen as a structuralist in
his ?archeological? phase and as a poststructuralist
in his ?genealogical? phase. Yet, it is also true that
Foucault, with some degree of asperity, explicitly
denied being either a structuralist or a
poststructuralist. Indeed, it can be argued that the
sheer originality, diversity and breadth of Foucault'?s
work, which accounts for its widespread and pervasive
influence, precludes any narrow categorisation.
Howevr,or the sake of the argument his designation as
a poststructuralist by the proponents of
poststructuralist anarchism will be accepted.

There is also a tendency on their part to elide any
difference between poststructuralist theory and
postmodern theory. While there is certainly a
substantial overlap, and while it is true that
postmodern theory incorporates the basic ideas of
poststructuralism, nonetheless one could make a case
for specific developments taking place that are
normally seen as associated with postmodernism rather
than poststructuralism. For instance we can cite the
ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and their
emphasis on flux, or those of Jean Baudillard with his
focus on simulation and hyperreality. But Todd May, in
his The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist
Anarchism, identifies, as his theorists of
poststructuralism, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and
Jean-François Lyotard, the latter also often
identified with postmodernism. Saul Newman compares
Deleuze with Stirner, while Koch uses Stirner, Derrida
and Lyotard. We are not seeking to be pedantic, merely
to comment on the definitional difficulties, and to
note the acceptance, at their face value, of the
arguments presented.

Poststructuralism represented, if one is allowed the
word, a fundamental challenge to the previously
dominant positions of philosophy, most especially of
political philosophy. In challenging the
preconceptions of modernity poststructuralism was
challenging the preconceptions of the Enlightenment
tradition, reason, humanism, agency and progress.

Poststructuralism, then, would seem at first sight to
be completely antithetical to anarchism, a doctrine,
as noted, that completely incorporated and expressed
the fundamentals of Enlightenment thinking. Given this
clear confrontation, it is obvious that the task of
forging a form of poststructuralist anarchism is one
that will prove taxing.

(For the rest of this essay, visit
Nursey-Bray
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