This week we’ll be exploring different anarchist pedagogies through the writings of Judith Suissa, whose PhD research was on the topic of anarchist education. Today, Judith works as a lecturer in philosophy of education at the Institute of Education, University of London.
You can download the chapter here, as well as on the Anarchist Library.
As always, we will be meeting at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra street, unceded Lekwungen territory. The next session will take place on Sunday, April 14 at 6:30pm.
Join us for a discussion of Palestinian anarchist Mohammed Bamyeh’s article on the 2010-12 uprisings that swept through north Africa and the middle east, overthrowing dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
The essay “There Is No Revolution without Madness.” explores what it means to be dedicated to an opposition to empire and to be confronted with the violence of the status quo, and the machinations of the normative “rational” ideology.
In honour of the late trailblazing Diné anarchist and land defender Klee Benally who joined the ancestors last month, we will be reading and discussing his groundbreaking zine Unknowable: Against an Indigenous Anarchist Theory.
Next circle, we are reading Chapter Six, titled, “Homeland: Anarchy and Joint Struggle in Palestine/Israel” by Uri Gordon. This is the final chapter in Anarchy Alive! (2008) and it offers insights on the issues, challenges, and movements involved in solidarity and direct action struggles within occupied and contested State forms. This will be a good reading to do in preparation for the talk on the 28th.
For our next gathering, we will be discussing Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry (2009) by Richard Singer and Delfina Vannucci, published by AK Press. The authors share their insight about collective organizing experiences in this handbook. The handbook is useful for anarchist organizations, horizontal social or political groups, worker co-ops, or just for trying to incorporate egalitarian processes where they don’t already exist.
We were so inspired by reading Andrew Cornell’s history of the Movement for a New Society that we decided to explore the conversations associated with the movement. Please read the following reflective sections regarding MNS theory and praxis for the next gathering. You can find the reading here:
The next reading we will be considering is a section from Andrew Cornell’s 2011 book Oppose and Propose! Lessons from Movement for a New Society (MNS). MNS spanned across the United States between 1971 and into the 1990s, but was concentrated largely in Philadelphia. As the name of the book implies, MNS was involved in both protest actions (to oppose) as well as in building alternative institutional frameworks (to propose). The section we chose to read outlines the early history of the movement, as well as an analysis of why it dissipated at its end.