For our next ‘reading’ we are watching a video! Please follow the link to this website and watch Vikki Reynold’s keynote presentation on “Resisting Calling Out Culture.” If you are a keener (and this is by no means obligatory) you can also read the supporting article “Leaning In as Imperfect Allies.”
https://dulwichcentre.com.au/resisting-calling-out-culture-leaning-in-with-respect-and-dignity-by-vikki-reynolds/
As always, we are meeting at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street on unceded Lekwungen Territory. That’s on Tuesday, July 16 @ 7pm (doors at 6:50). See you there!
In this 2012 article, J. Rogue examines the history of essentialism in anarchist and socialist feminist movements. Through transfeminist critiques of essentialist viewpoints, Rogue delivers a powerful statement and call to action for all anarchists to “integrate the principles of (trans)feminism into our organizing within the working class and social movements”.
o Freeman this essay explores power relations within radical feminist collectives and was inspired by her time in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960’s. Joreen reflected on the experiments of the feminist movement in resisting the idea of leaders and even discarding any structure or division of labor. Freeman described how “this apparent lack of structure too often disguised an informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied”. As a solution, Freeman suggests formalizing the existing hierarchies in the group and subjecting them to democratic control.
Our last meeting sparked a lively discussion around art and it’s role in anarchism and resistance. For our next reading we will explore a chapter from Anarchy and Art written by local author, and all around good guy Allan Antliff. In this chapter Allan interviews one of “Anarchism’s better-known contemporary artists”, Susan Simensky and explores the intersection of art, anarchy, and activism. YOU can find a .pdf to download and read for your self on the right hand side of our website.
For the next anarchist reading circle, we will be discussing a selection from Barbara Ehrenreich’s Dancing in the Streets: A history of Collective Joy. A history of how the European peasantry was itself colonized and de-paganized by the Church (and particularly by the Reformation and Enlightenment values), pointing to a discussion of how people of European descent can ‘re-indigenize’.
For the next anarchist reading circle, we will be discussing Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Paradise Built in Hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disaster.’ During our last session we had a discussion about the whole ‘pessimistic/optimistic’ debate regarding human nature, whether or not our intrinsic sociability or orientation to help each other would arise in the event of system collapse (or if we even have such an orientation), etc.
For the next reading we are turning towards the matter of Anarchist Pedagogies with the opening chapter from the edited volume called, aptly enough, Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education. The text is called “Anarchism, the State, and the Role of Education” by Justin Mueller. I am most intrigued by the section differentiating anarchist pedagogical thought from that of Paulo Friere’s. YOU can find a .pdf to download and read for your self on the right hand side of our website.