Coming Up: Anti-Nazi Gaming League with St. Andrewism

from Center for a Stateless Society

Join us this Friday for the second Anti-Nazi Gaming League stream with special guest Saint Andrewism (Andrew Sage). Andrew is an Afro-Trinidadian solarpunk anarchist and YouTuber, and we’re excited to have him on the stream to chat about anarchism, Mardi Gras, Carnival, and more. In particular, we’ll take a look at the recent Batman movie The Batman and discuss anarchist perspectives on the franchise, along with boycotts in gaming, new releases, and other news.

The Dark Century of Elsa Morante and Elena Ferrante

From The Transmetropolitian Review

This is an in-depth essay about the works of Elsa Morante and Elena Ferrante, specifically La Storia and The Neapolitan Quartet. Between these five novels, the entire twentieth century is stripped bare, revealing a horrible darkness we are still barely emerging from. While reading any further might lead to some spoilers, these books are too rich to taint with my basic overview, which will dwell on the anarchism, history, celebrity, and anonymity of these Italian authors, one who is far better known than the other. Just like Elsa Morante, I write these words for those who can’t read, the illiterate.

Viva l’anarchia: Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

from Autonomies

If we may venture a claim about a central idea in the films Lina Wertmüller, it is that they express the impossibility of politics without love – such a politics would be reduced to the management of life and the extraction its energy –, and of love without politics – love is shaped and winnowed through the many layers of relations of power that mark everyday life. It is through this lens that Wertmüller reads political ideologies and human behaviour and agency, a lens that can only reveal and revel in tensions, incoherencies and contradictions. If her films defy ideological purity, to the dismay of her critics, she turns the accusation back on them – for those who are willing to see –, unmasking the demands for “purity” as the greatest form of violence, because it can tolerate no disorder, no wild life, no anarchy.

Framing the Mentally Ill

from Bright Lights Film Journal

An Anarchist-Theoretical Understanding of Two “Jokers” by David Christopher

This article aims to demonstrate the ways in which media interests at the levels of cinematic production through to their journalistic reception work to control and marginalize certain progressive ideologies that run counter to their interests, in this particular case by deploying widespread stereotypes of mental illness and instability that map neatly, in the arena of normative ideology, onto the image of the insane clown (always an “anarchist”). It also intends, more specifically, to demonstrate the ways in which progressive anarchist philosophy remains an ideological scapegoat for even ostensibly left-inflected political stances.

Secolo Nuovo: A Film and Review

from The Transmetropolitan Review

We are pleased to belatedly announce the publication of Secolo Nuovo; or, The Times of Promise, published by Detritus Books out of Olympia, Washington. This work of anarchist fiction and history took over a decade to complete and was shaped by many hands, including our own. We wish to congratulate the researchers, archivists, historians, publishers, and thankless scribes who made this book a reality.

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