Popularizing Autogestión: Punk, Zapatismo, & Anarchist Ethics in Mexico City

From AnthroSource

Autogestión (self-management), has been a popular articulation of radical politics since its emergence in the 1960s. This article examines how Mexico City's anarcho-punk scene transformed autogestión in the 1990s from an anarcho-syndicalist principle into a unique ethical practice detached from industrial material production. It was then popularized and made more mainstream through university rock festivals. As these were Zapatista benefit concerts, autogestión became inadvertently attached to Zapatismo and detached from anarchism and punk. This history is a crucial one for understanding the political development of an entire generation of the political left in Mexico City who were young in the 1990s.

The Anarchy of the Peripheries: Preliminary Notes to a Study of Rebel Peripheries

From Muntjac

In the internal peripheries of various States in the former Third World, State power cannot fully cohere and territorialize. Usually situated among mountainous formations, these internal peripheries have long defied civilizational imposition. James C. Scott described it in the Zomian highlands of mainland Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, peoples would routinely escape the Spanish colony by practicing *remontar* or escaping to the mountains.

Animus: A Queer Anti-Civilization Collection of Anarchic and Anthropological Writings

From Reeking Thickets Press

This collection brings together mostly already-published, excerpted writings by other authors in anarchy (anti-civilization, queer, insurrectionary, illegalist, and nihilist) and anthropology of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, the North American Eastern Woodlands, Siberia, and Oceania (in the currents around ‘new animism’, Amerindian perspectivism, the so-called ontological turn, and on egalitarian ‘societies against the state’ and the relationships with these and with hierarchy/civilization of gender, magic, ontology, and violence – also as it concerns animals or spirits, predation, on ‘supernatural’ planes, or as a quality or possibility), some history, and a few studies of insurgent strategy.

Uncivilized Podcast 63- Interview with Voice of Failure

Artxmis is joined by Voice of Failure (VOF) to discuss the limits and bounds of the traditional anarcho-primitivist critique, such as anthropology, ecology, and the primacy of material reality. Strap in, it’s a dense but interesting conversation!

“A Web of Relations & Tensions” — interview with Return Fire

These questions were completed, as requested, for the first release of No Path[1] – a project aiming to make more links between the ‘anti-civilisation’ and ‘anti-speciesist’ strands in the anarchist world. The invitation to participate was very welcome, and it seemed a good opportunity to offer critical engagement with these tendencies, as well as talk about the upcoming Return Fire book which No Path had taken interest in. However, when the ‘zine went to print, No Path wrote to say that the fifth question and answer (the one relating to the focus of their project) had been cut, citing lack of space. Here is the unabridged version of the interview. For copies of No Path #1 (which will otherwise be offline only), email them at nopath[at]riseup.net

Anarchism in Practice Is Often Radically Boring Democracy

While an exciting idea, anarchism in practice is, well, boring. Far from what window-smashing insurrectionists are doing, it mostly takes the form of an extremely slow-moving and highly rule-bound process of collective deliberation. Anarchy, paradoxically, means more rules, not fewer, and more collective responsibility, not less.

David Graeber: The Anarchist Anthropologist-Provocateur 1961-2020

From Politico By TIMOTHY NOAH 12/26/2020

The economics profession can tell you everything there is to know about money except what money is. If you want to stump an economist, or a Wall Street banker, or a Washington economic policymaker, just ask, “What is money?” You might as well ask a fish to define water.

David Graeber, who died in September at age 59, from necrotic pancreatitis, was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. It’s the job of an anthropologist to explain to a fish what water is, and in that spirit Graeber defined money as an overly precise tool to measure the debt around which all societies are organized.

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