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20th century 21st century Analytic theory Anti-racism Books Europe Feminism Patriarchy Strategic theory Values theory White supremacy

To Exist is to Resist – Black Feminism in Europe (2019)


Author(s)

Akwugo Emejulu

Francesca Sobande


Contents

“How might we theorise and practise Black feminism and Afrofeminism in Europe today? This is a provocative question for Black women, as our politics are too often erased from or misrecognised in the European imagination.

We define Black feminism as a praxis that identifies women racialised as Black as knowing agents for social change. Black feminism is both a theory and a politics of affirmation and liberation. Black feminism names and valorises the knowledge production and lived experiences of different Black women derived from our class, gender identity, legal status and sexuality, for example.

This insistence on Black women as human, as agents and as knowers is critical to any kind of Black feminist thought. It radically dissents from and subverts the hegemonic con-structions of Black women as either irrelevant and invisible objects or alien Others who disrupt the taken for granted racialised and gendered social and economic order. Crucially, Black feminism is also a politics of liberation. Our struggle for our humanity is revolutionary political action that imagines another world is possible beyond the plunder, exploitation and expropriation that are the bedrock of liberal democracies.

It is important to stress that Black feminism does not merely operate against violence and exclusion but creates and fosters a different way of seeing and being in this world. Black feminism is always a creative and dynamic production of thinking and living otherwise.”

Akwugo Emejulu & Francesca Sobande

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Authors

Emejulu, Akwugo

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16th century 17th century 18th century 19th century 20th century Analytic theory Anarchism Antiquity Books Direct democracy Futures theory Global Longue durée Middle Ages Statism - Representationism Strategic theory Values theory

Anarchism – A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1 (2005)


From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Volume 2 : The Emergence of The New Anarchism (1939-1977)

Volume 3 : The New Anarchism (1974–2012)


Author(s)

Robert Graham


Contents

“Anarchy, a society without government, has existed since time immemorial. Anarchism, the doctrine that such a society is desirable, is a much more recent devel­opment.

For tens of thousands of years, human beings lived in societies without any for­mal political institutions or constituted authority. About 6,000 years ago, around the time of the so-called dawn of civilization, the first societies with formal structures of hierarchy, command, control and obedience began to develop. At first, these hierar­chical societies were relatively rare and isolated primarily to what is now Asia and the Middle East. Slowly they increased in size and influence, encroaching upon, some­times conquering and enslaving, the surrounding anarchic tribal societies in which most humans continued to live. Sometimes independently, sometimes in response to pressures from without, other tribal societies also developed hierarchical forms of social and political organization.

Still, before the era of European colonization, much of the world remained essentially anarchic, with people in various parts of the world continuing to live without formal institutions of government well into the 19th cen­tury. It was only in the 20th century that the globe was definitively divided up be­tween competing nation states which now claim sovereignty over virtually the entire planet.

The rise and triumph of hierarchical society was a far from peaceful one. War and civilization have always marched forward arm in arm, leaving behind a swath of destruction scarcely conceivable to their many victims, most of whom had little or no understanding of the forces arrayed against them and their so-called primitive ways of life. It was a contest as unequal as it was merciless.

[…]

Anarchists and their pre­cursors, such as Fourier, were among the first to criticize the combined effects of the organization of work, the division of labour and technological innovation under capi­talism. Anarchists recognized the importance of education as both a means of social control and as a potential means of liberation. They had important things to say about art and free expression, law and morality. They championed sexual freedom but also criticized the commodification of sex under capitalism. They were critical of all hierarchical relationships, whether between father and children, husband and wife, teacher and student, professionals and workers, or leaders and led, throughout society and even within their own organizations. They emphasized the importance of maintaining consistency between means and ends, and in acting in accordance with their ideals now, in the process of transforming society, not in the distant future. They opposed war and militarism in the face of widespread repression, and did not hesitate to criticize the orthodox Left for its authoritarianism and opportunism.

They developed an original conception of an all-encompassing social revolution, rejecting state terrorism and seeking to reduce violence to a minimum.”

Robert Graham

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21st century Analytic theory Books Europe Patriarchy White supremacy

In the Name of Women’s Rights (2017)

THE RISE OF FEMONATIONALISM


Author(s)

Sara R. Farris


Contents

“The success of the far right in the 2014 elections for the European Parliament attracted a great deal of international attention. Across the continent, nationalist right-wing parties either won an unprecedented number of seats or consolidated their significant popular support.

These electoral achievements, coupled with the harshness of the anti-Islam slogans that characterized the parties’ campaigns, triggered fears of a return of fascism. Yet one of the striking features that distinguishes contemporary European nationalist parties from their older counterparts is the invocation of gender equality (and occasionally lgbt rights) within an otherwise xenophobic rhetoric.

Indeed, despite their lack of concern with elaborating concrete policies of gender equality and their masculinist political style, these parties have increasingly advanced their anti-Islam agendas in the name of women’s rights.

From Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, to Marine Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy — the key animators of the “brown international” upon which this book focuses — one of the central tropes mobilized by these right-wing nationalists is the profound danger that Muslim males constitute for western European societies, due, above all, to their oppressive treatment of women.”

Introduction

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20th century 21st century Analytic theory Antifascism Books Europe North America Strategic theory White supremacy

Antifa : The Anti-fascist Handbook (2017)


Author(s)

Mark Bray


Contents

“This book takes seriously the transhistorical terror of fascism and the power of conjuring the dead when fighting back. It is an unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of anti-fascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the resurgent Far Right.

Based on sixty-one interviews with current and former anti-fascists from seventeen countries in North America and Europe, it expands our geographical and temporal outlook to contextualize opposition to Trump and the alt-right within a much wider and broader terrain of resistance.

Antifa is the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English and the most comprehensive in any language. It argues that militant anti-fascism is a reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat that persisted after 1945 and that has become especially menacing in recent years.”

Introduction

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