At the next Victoria Anarchist Reading Circle, we will take a look at structural violence, in the guise of bureaucracy, through a lively, accessible and interesting article by contemporary anarchist and anthropologist David Graeber. The experience of bureaucratic incompetence, confusion, and its ability to cause otherwise intelligent people to behave outright foolishly, opens up a series of questions about the nature of power.The unique qualities of violence as a form of action means that human relations ultimately founded on violence create lopsided structures of the imagination, where the responsibility to do the interpretive labour required to allow the powerful to operate oblivious to much of what is going on around them, falls on the powerless, who thus tend to empathize with the powerful far more than the powerful do with them.
Please find the article available for download at the top of the right-hand menu. It is also available through this link here: https://www.journals.uchicago.
As usual, we will be meeting at 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen territory. Doors will be open at 6:50pm, and discussion starts at 7pm.