TOTW: Anarchist geography

L’Homme et la Terre: “Humanity is nature becoming self-conscious.” (a well known image from the world of Reclus)

Topic of the Week - Outside of the core tenet of anarchist make total destroy and the everyday smashy praxis of newspaper boxes in the streets; the most beautiful idea also finds itself sailing across the vast ocean of time and space, which encompasses so much more, like for example - geography. Tim Cresswell, a British geographer and poet has argued that, “anarchism may be the only major political movement that can claim to have geography and the ideas of geographers right at its center.” Notably Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus were two well-known anarchists who found themselves to be in the field of geography. This week we’re discussing anarchist geography and everything that it touches.

What is your anarchist relationship to geography? Who are your favorite anarchist geographers? How are they doing it well and where is there room for improvement? How do you apply geography in an anarchist way in your life? What annoys you the most about the topic of anarchist geography? Has the impending doom scroll of climate chaos impacted your anarchist geography, or is it too soon to move somewhere with long term fresh water and “good” weather?

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Need some inspiration before leaving a comment? Check out the "geography" topic of t@l: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/geography

There are 37 Comments

Posting websites already available is snitching...

Another entry of the collection of "anarchist claims non-anarchists as anarchists so they can win debates".

Almost none of these places ever self-identified as anarchist, some of them are presumably referring to times before anarchism even existed, in which case, hell, why not cover the whole planet? Almost everywhere had people living there prior to the advent of states! "Anarchist" doesn't just mean "stateless society", it has a social context with it, and to appropriate times, places, and people beyond that context is just not useful. By all means, take inspiration from projects everywhere, but how does labeling the entirety of France as a "zone controlled by anarchists at some moment in history" help anyone?

France and half of Saudi Arabia and Iran are anarchist communities!? Indeed you need thoughts, coz you're in lack of any.

Perhaps this totw should've defined geography so as not confuse people with cartography. That map is like a child was playing on ms paint and drew grey blobs on the geopolitical Mercator projection of the Earth. When have ackshual anarchist movements have control over areas on that map and which movements?

One thing that annoys me about the field of anarchist geography is Alexander Reid Ross. ARR is a disgraced antifa researcher, who aside from being a professor of geography also moonlights by collaborating with Homeland Security and other alphabet agencies in their free time. Other than the original couple of articles mentioning their collaboration, I don't believe ARR has really commented on the situation nor have their friends in Portland cancelled them yet. It seems apparent that if you're an anarchist who works with DHS and others, it's okay as long as you're friends with the people doing all the deplatforming (or the actual person doing it). Another thing that annoys me about geography is Bookchin and their idea of the confederation of libertarian municipalities, but I’m more annoyed by the thinker than their actual idea (so, maybe it’s a me problem!).

Hakim Bey with the idea of a temporary autonomous zone (TAZ) is always an inspiration here when it comes to geography. A few years back I picked up their book, "riverpeople" which seems to be a pretty intriguing look into the world of what is around you. I really enjoy these more personal anarchist approaches to location, like homemade maps and learning about the olds. Back to the TAZ, I’m thinking of moments like the Arab Spring, Occupy, Standing Rock, La Zad, Ferguson, Capital Hill Occupation (Seattle), Black Lives Matter uprisings, and Defend the Atlanta Forest to name a few. I’ve been leafing through the 2016 book by Simon Springer titled: “The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Towards Spatial Emancipation” which is an in-depth dive into the world of anarchist geography. In it they write of all the anarchist geographies they see in the world:

"A range of contemporary issues— from the overt uprisings of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement; to the spectacle of street theater, Critical Mass bicycle rides, radical samba, and Reclaim the Streets parties; to the subversive resistance of monkeywrenching, tree sitting, rooftop occupations, and culture jamming; to lifestyle choices of dumpster diving, unschooling, and squatting; to the mutual aid activities of child- minding co- ops, community kitchens and gardens, building
coalitions, and freecycling; to the organizing capabilities of microradio, infoshops, book fairs, and Indymedia— all have decidedly spatial implications, and each would accordingly stand to benefit from analyses that employ an explicitly anarchogeographical perspective. Similarly, on the more theoretical side of things, anarchism has much to contribute to enhancing geographical knowledge, where themes such as state theory and sovereignty; capital accumulation, land rights, and property relations; gentrification, homelessness, and housing; environmental justice and sustainability; industrial restructuring and labor geographies; policing, fear of crime, and critical legal geographies; agrarian transformation and landlessness; urban design and aesthetics; critical geopolitics and antigeopolitics; more-than-human geographies and nonrepresentational theory; activism and social justice; geographies of debt and economic crisis; community, belonging, and the politics of place; geographies of war and peace; community planning and participation; informal economies, livelihoods, and vulnerability; cultural imperialism and identity politics; biopolitics and governmentality; postcolonial and postdevelopment geographies; situated knowledges and alternative epistemologies; and the manifold implications of society– space relations all seem particularly well suited to a more overt infusion of anarchist ideas, and where new research insights and agendas might productively arise."

here and i completely agree with the sentiments. First off, ARR is probably a snitch or is very close to being one at least, my research has indicated that he is probably also more effed in the head than I am. Working with those organizations is all about clearly demarcated and shared data, devoid of stories and knowledge of flora/fauna, those are a matter for another academic or gubernatorial organization...

As far as Geography and TOTW is concerned, i remember reading about some interesting stuff in "Public Secrets", and I did like Hakim Bey's book on TAZ. It would make sense to also talk about the situationists and what they contributed to this subject matter.

Anyways, i will not be on this site for a while because i have had my fill and it's getting a little too much for me (in terms of the hot conversations). I appreciate your interests in these subjects. I'll probably be back within a few months.

For sure, of course. I'm not trying to steer the conversation that way in this thread though, like every other single time their name is brought up about something. Although, in your defense I did call out ARR in my comment and pretty much did the same thing to them. Thanks anon!

Might be abit before your time youngun but don't forget Wounded Knee ;)

I'm really going to look sus but I really like David kilcullens work. In a lot of their work while like the direct opposite of anarchist they have a fonomenal understanding of stuff like how geography is different for radicals.

For instance kilcullen is incredibly worried about war in slums. Fundamentally war on us cities is way easier bc the roads are great for military equipment but most importantly the maps make the terrain legible to authorities.

Genuinely what the US generals know about terrain is the maps primarily. So Google maps is a good reference for base of what they know. A slum is just a satellite image of some shacks filled with roads their trucks can't go down, streets with no names, houses with no numbers ect. They are all squatted so no idea who owns the land ect.

So Somalian slums are a massive problem. They roll in blind and get ambushed all the time. David claimed that initially in the Somalian civil war they would ask the people on their side where they would get ambushed in the slums where and who was dangerous to make a map of. And the information was all shit bc they were like by rich somalis who livr on mansions and never go to the slums.

So they had to do a bunch of work recruiting small business owners who would tell them where in the slums was dangerous, mark in maps which houses had dangerous people, mark where they felt unsafe to talk at night and mark all locations where they know a crime happened.

So they had to take the information and make it legible to them. And this is a theme of ungovernable spaces. The information of geography isn't legible to authority. The jungles and the mountains are major ungovernable spaces bc information gathering is hard and it just isn't legible the same way a city or a agricultural rural area is.

While the ungovernable people who live there adapt easily. My very brief exposure to slums and less governable housing is that it's quite easy to understand just walk around on foot and absorb information. It's something u can only gain by being arround there and not something u can look up in a map.

So I think anarchist geography to me is all about the subconscious understanding of the geography. How ur mind tugs u in the right direction cuz u just know where to go due to absorbing jnfo. Authority libes maps and naming the nameless info. It has to be made legible. And on some level geography is about making land legible which is probably a less anarchist direction

Now time for me to pull up Google maps on my phones to check out the correct highway routes I wanna go on for my hitchhike. Lol

My favorite anarchist geographers all had to quit writing books and get jobs in academia because the anarchist library scanned and posted their books online in their entirety.

Borders aren't real and maps, statistics, and quantitative analyses aren't anarchist. They are the tools of authoritarian

Your first sentence is a false statement.

Your last two sentences are parroting in a parodic manner what I would comment unironically. Do you resent that your trade and its tools are not anarchic?

Your first sentence is an assertion. My first sentence was the truth.

Your second paragraph makes no sense. I do not know you or what you would comment nor would I parrot in a parodic (sic) manner if I did. You do not know my trade nor what tools are involved in my trade therefore your final sentence is equally an ignorant assertion based on nothing but your unfortunate brainworms.

The grass is green and soft to touch. Go now.

A: anarchist geographers I know of had to stop writing books because of shady publishing practices.

B: You are not telling the truth and you are copying me! Your trade and tools are not anarchic!

A: I'm not lying. I don't know you and am not copying you. You don't know my trade. Go touch grass.

B: Lawns are bad! *insane rambling about lawns out of left-field*

A: Grass exists not just on lawns. Yes, lawns are bad.

Moderator: We must defend B and his nonsensical ravings about... lawns! Delete A's comments immediately!
Moderators: For anarchy!

The end.

"Where is the evidence that any author has sued the anarchist library for damages of earnings lost?"

The answer to this out-of-context, random-as-fuck question exists only in the very place that spawned it: your severely broken mind.

One thing that annoys me about anarchist geography is when someone is trying to go down on me and before they start they do a land acknowledgement. I get it and I support it, but you don't need to do that right now, maybe later would be better.

I anticipate this and invade, by going down on them first. Therefore, when they go down, it's like they are paying rent, but contentedly, which makes it uberhot.

I find maps interesting as where symbolic models of the world unambiguously reflect some sort of underlying objective reality. While meaning is entirely contextual, if I have an accurate map of these woods, I can navigate to a particular lake or mountain in a way that I could not without. So I find it helpful to ground deconstruction somewhere, that as much as meanings shift based on our social understandings, there does seem to be an external realness somewhere underneath it all. The map is not the terrain, but the map can be known to reflect the terrain.

That said, there is something insidious about how geography can become cartography can become coding. The cartographer gets to choose what is a lake, what is a mountain. An understanding of what is the world becomes what the world is. I contribute to OpenStreetMap (think the Wikipedia-style alternative to Google Maps), and many of my contributions consist of deleting things others have mapped. A trail gets mapped through these woods, but why is that trail more real than any other path one could take? It may be slightly clearer, slightly easier, but that's a choice anyone who is there can make for themselves. But I don't get to delete property lines on municipal land titles, and how I shift the borders on OSM doesn't shift how the lines were drawn in Sykes-Picot or Versailles, and where you'll get shot for ignoring them. I think it's critical to understand where you live, to know things like how watersheds flow and where gaps allow little things to thrive, but I can't help but worry that how we engage with and share that knowledge in this digital age is liable to become our own little treaties, constraining not just how the world is seen but how the world is, in ways we don't fully understand.

In a discourse that is largely narrative-focused and oriented towards Historicising, I appreciate attention being brought towards geography; as I prefer to pay attention to spaces, locations, environments, etc., personally. But geography as an academic discipline has a history of colonialist and imperialist type abuses, done in the name of "exploration" - so I don't see the academic world of geography as some-Thing that does not warrant some level of "fuck that" response.

I wonder about the potential of anarchist-cartographies as a means of creating a multiplicity of worlds within a space. A town with many anarchist-cartographers could have a single spot signifying many different places to those established by "authorities". Without the need for anarchist-application, I see this as largely already happening - a park signifies play-space to many, work to others, picnic-area to some and home to whoever may live there.

Beautifull stated, JLanger.
I want to feel you inside my borders. Call me :-*

I understand that some people (Reclus) had an actual relationship to, like, the science as it has come to be. But some of the other names being brought up in these comments - Bey, Bookchin, ARR - I don't know that I get what they have to do with (what I think of as) geography.

I have learned, for instance, that ARR is apparently employed as a "geographer" in some sense, but his writings on anti-fascism... are they informed by that? Was Spinoza's philosophy informed by his day job as a lensmaker? If so, it's not obvious to me (tho I am not very familiar with ARR's work in general, I've mostly steered clear).

I would rather think of geography as a way of giving names to space (specifically, on the surface of the Earth), creating maps and/or ideas about space. Some have noted that this could be, or is, "authoritarian" - which I think is a bit asinine, but the point is taken, and maybe even worth stating. Knowledge is power, etc.

So, beyond academics with famous names, I am sort of interested in how anarchists often name the countries and territories they are in by using indigenous names, or trying to learn those names, or saying "so-called", or sometimes coming up with very impractical phrases like the "the occupied territory of the Brazilian state" or whatever. It seems to me that this constitutes sort of a folk "countergeography". I think aspects of it are even important, and I'd love to hear more people trying to talk about this as an actual anarchist practice, or a practice that could make sense as part of a larger anarchist "praxis" (dumb word but I'm using it), and maybe also identify how it might also be, well, a tad insufficient.

Thanks for reading my scattered thoughts.

You seem to still be at the physical spatial dimension whilst this essay is more concerned with the psychological interpretation and translation of being and interacting within the physical realm of existence. I'm not saying your thoughts are insignificant, they can be useful as a tool in locating this space and mapping it for it's intended occupation of 'anarchic freelanders', for want of a better term.

Very true. Every Dasein is always already there and therefore Is Being beyond all these things inauthentic Geographers concern themselves with. Every Dasein knows this.

OooOooh yEeees, I've achieved the Dasein mountain top* without using sherpa physicality.
For geographers :--- * Mount Everest, located in the Himalayas, Tibet, Central Asia, Planet Earth, Solar System. Milky Way Galaxy, Universe.

i hadn't thought of that naming thing being a geographical comment. thanks for that.

I am a nomadic anarchist, like a free atom drifting throw space, my being is free of any boundaries or enclosures, and it flows and ebbs with the currents of my desires and a geography's necessities for my survival. A city, a wilderness, an ocean or lake all suffice as my stage in which I play.

i agree with lettuce leaf in an earlier comment that legibility is one of the most interesting parts of this kind of question. on an individual level i agree as well with the idea of being "tugged" sort of in any given moment by "nameless info" that you have picked up with experience. more critically i think that it's also worth thinking actively about what any given terrain is "saying," i.e. what kind of info you're absorbing, especially when it's hostile in one sense or another. as with anything else if you assume that what you're "hearing" is honest you're being taken for a fool. i think this often takes the form of coming to ignore aspects of your surroundings (including people) that seem useless or static to the point of being uninteresting; these blind spots over time too often sort of snowball into neuroses or the inability to see not just what's right there passing by you all the time, but anything like it, anywhere. a kind of abstraction of the uninteresting. other times it's coming to accept a given logic or strategy of the maintenance and organization of space as a given, especially if you think you have "mastered" it in the sense that you've found a way of life there that works (for now) with your priorities, which i think can lead to complacency and sedimentation of perspective just like with any other ideological fixation.

as for legibility, im uneasy with the idea of geography or any other academic discipline in this context. if it's clearly stated enough to pass muster in the academy sure i might find it useful but so can anyone else. if a theory of a particular urban geography for example leads to the identification of the spaces people have made in it to survive in, or especially the language they use to navigate it, the institutions they're evading will make a map of them and destroy those spaces, or regulate away their character, or buy it all out from under them, as they have time and again.

i'm also not convinced that supplying anarchist or indigenous or any other "outside" perspective to academic analysis improves it in any way that's useful. perhaps it makes the behavior of NGOs a little better, or maybe it makes the state act a little more sophisticated and polite in general when it is in the mood to be "progressive," but maybe it also makes the state that much more sophisticated and savvy when it inevitably turns back towards brutality and expanding its own effective territory.

i'm thinking here in part of bettina escauriza's piece in the TAL geography topic linked in the post. i'm interested in the kind of perspective that escauriza is gesturing towards here: "Ava ñe’ẽ‪‪ is a rebellious language. It moves. It mutates. It refuses to die. It’s always speaking and it creates new territory as it is spoken." leaving aside the question of whether asking the academy to dissolve itself by giving it a bunch of indigenous ideas and language to fawn over is a fruitful strategy, i absolutely agree that trying to find ways to communicate this kind of living language and so living space-time is worthwhile. the trick, i guess, is finding a way to do it that doesn't immediately turn it into another empty gesture, which i suspect boils down to the fact that it has to be done in practice, in an immediate setting, among people who share a sense of their general territory and a desire to navigate in/against it in particular ways, and so cannot be prefiguratively theorized.

Ah, geography…that topic that Americans are stereotypically horrendous at.

“What is your anarchist relationship to geography?”

Oogles, train-hopping, traveler kids, people who bike or backpack across Europe, or wherever, are considered cool. People who know how to couch surf and hop from squat to squat.

“Who are your favorite anarchist geographers?”

Well traveled people, not academics.

“How are they doing it well and where is there room for improvement?”

They gone a lot places and witnessed a lot of things, meeting people. Learning from the locals, when they speak English. Usually there’s room for improvement in learning a second or third language.

“How do you apply geography in an anarchist way in your life?”

I don’t.

“What annoys you the most about the topic of anarchist geography?”

The previous question, and academics.

“Has the impending doom scroll of climate chaos impacted your anarchist geography, or is it too soon to move somewhere with long term fresh water and “good” weather?”

Impending doom scroll? The scroll is impending? I think the word scroll could be omitted. Climate chaos? Isn’t climate as a system inherently chaotic? Which would make the phrase redundant. The implication is disasters set off by climate events. Well, you take the good with the bad. Some places are worse off than others, but none is exempt from the inconveniences (relatively minor, in the grand scheme of things) of a living planet vibrant with tectonic and weather activity. All hail its spinning metal core, its churning magma, its magnetic field, its atmosphere full of breathable air, and all that beautiful water and moisture, one coronal mass ejection away from the sun, surrounded by a dark and cold near vacuum, and yet it’s still so cozy (relatively).

"(relatively)" I'm glad you put this adjective at the end, otherwise the impending doom scroll would have been negated and this would have just been a travelogue introduction ;)

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