AN ANARCHIST IDENTITY?
First of all, I believe that talking about an Anarchist identity can be defined as an oxymoron. It would be better to place the intention in the process of a transit zone, changes and adaptations, buildings and deconstructions, resistance and negotiation, in which giving up transparency allows you to get close to the problem in question with a different perspective. Trying to define an anarchist identity would be defining something that refuses to be defined and that is located in the affirmation of its non-existence?
If the objective is to analyze the processes of identity formation of the urban self-defined anarchists, I think we should begin by taking into account the two ideas that come immediately and are intimately and dialectically intertwined: memory and reconstruction. The first deals with the analysis of current processes of building a libertarian political identity that supports a recovery work of historical memory of the anarchist movement in the way it developed from the early twentieth century (for this it is necessary to become owners of the historical fragments that are devoted to this topic). The second idea, reconstruction, is dedicated to locate, review and relocate those elements of culture and the anarchist tradition that are redefined today by urban groups, that, not being anarchists in an orthodox sense, they use some content of that tradition to set specific forms of cultural and political identity in the current hegemonic context.
To deal with this type of identity we should look beyond the anarchist ideas. Our focus should be the contemporary activists who include in their anarchist behaviors indigenous, feminist, ecological and cultural ideas.
To address the issue I think it is necessary to use a theoretical perspective which can recognize different influences especially from the various studies focused on the analysis of popular culture. Thus, from a transdisciplinary perspective, it would be necessary to use the contributions of cultural studies, the development in communication and culture, historiographical approaches and the studies of everyday life and urban spaces.
If the objective is to analyze the processes of identity formation of the urban self-defined anarchists, I think we should begin by taking into account the two ideas that come immediately and are intimately and dialectically intertwined: memory and reconstruction. The first deals with the analysis of current processes of building a libertarian political identity that supports a recovery work of historical memory of the anarchist movement in the way it developed from the early twentieth century (for this it is necessary to become owners of the historical fragments that are devoted to this topic). The second idea, reconstruction, is dedicated to locate, review and relocate those elements of culture and the anarchist tradition that are redefined today by urban groups, that, not being anarchists in an orthodox sense, they use some content of that tradition to set specific forms of cultural and political identity in the current hegemonic context.
To deal with this type of identity we should look beyond the anarchist ideas. Our focus should be the contemporary activists who include in their anarchist behaviors indigenous, feminist, ecological and cultural ideas.
To address the issue I think it is necessary to use a theoretical perspective which can recognize different influences especially from the various studies focused on the analysis of popular culture. Thus, from a transdisciplinary perspective, it would be necessary to use the contributions of cultural studies, the development in communication and culture, historiographical approaches and the studies of everyday life and urban spaces.
Recalling Bourdieu ideas, I would say that anarchism is a movement that tries to hide the truth of the relationship and the paradox of the situations in which a group cannot exist except as a substitute for another group. But anarchism was born with the idea of "nothing" and can’t be conceptualized in essence, therefore, it can’t contain an ideology per se. In this sense, there is a need that the movement contains a representative body to be formed with a solid identity that allows having a clear starting point and from there to give its conflict with the power within a specific field. If we take the idea that all social settings are significant, it is unthinkable any chance of social convention without any due process of signification. Whatever type of language is concerned, the need emerges in parallel communication with the need for social organization. This discourse then would be understood as inherent meaning to all social organization.
Anarchy is raised on the idea of generalized reciprocity and autonomy of the subject and the abolition of any scale of value, and then the assessments are impossible, trying to define an ideology or cause for anarchist identity would give value to something that contradicts the idea of value itself. Anarchism is opposed to the hierarchical structure of society whose fundamental principles are rules and obedience. Anarchist political culture is born of an imaginary antihierarchy where individuality and self-stand are the fundamental ideas. Then, giving it a value and ideological spaces of identity would be a kind of influence or power or hierarchical obedience. If we start from this point, an anarchist ideology would be impossible because it would imply in extension ideologists and therefore followers of this particular way of thinking. All ideologies involve intellectual hierarchies (experiential and behavioral) which, as I said earlier, it would be an oxymoron. Thus, to raise ideas of ideology and identity, proposes ideas of verticality which goes against anarchism itself.
If we accept that the symbolic order is a social product, understanding how anarchy (as symbol or signifier) will acquire different meanings according to different contexts of signification and its insertion into equally distinct universes of discourse. This is a polyphonic "style", where the joints are abandoned in the pursuit of an anti hierarchical sentimentality where the element of cohesion would be the libertarian attitude that is projected from a personal sense and that is diverted to the idea of collectiveness in a natural way without generating an ideology per se or a sense of identity.
Then, finding ways of being and becoming free individuals, to recover a non-authoritarian sentimentalism to live life in a technocratic efficiency-and brutally unfair world talks about cultural and political necessities and that’s when I think that a review of the identities and ideologies should start from….focusing on these other hemispheres.
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Anarchy is raised on the idea of generalized reciprocity and autonomy of the subject and the abolition of any scale of value, and then the assessments are impossible, trying to define an ideology or cause for anarchist identity would give value to something that contradicts the idea of value itself. Anarchism is opposed to the hierarchical structure of society whose fundamental principles are rules and obedience. Anarchist political culture is born of an imaginary antihierarchy where individuality and self-stand are the fundamental ideas. Then, giving it a value and ideological spaces of identity would be a kind of influence or power or hierarchical obedience. If we start from this point, an anarchist ideology would be impossible because it would imply in extension ideologists and therefore followers of this particular way of thinking. All ideologies involve intellectual hierarchies (experiential and behavioral) which, as I said earlier, it would be an oxymoron. Thus, to raise ideas of ideology and identity, proposes ideas of verticality which goes against anarchism itself.
If we accept that the symbolic order is a social product, understanding how anarchy (as symbol or signifier) will acquire different meanings according to different contexts of signification and its insertion into equally distinct universes of discourse. This is a polyphonic "style", where the joints are abandoned in the pursuit of an anti hierarchical sentimentality where the element of cohesion would be the libertarian attitude that is projected from a personal sense and that is diverted to the idea of collectiveness in a natural way without generating an ideology per se or a sense of identity.
Then, finding ways of being and becoming free individuals, to recover a non-authoritarian sentimentalism to live life in a technocratic efficiency-and brutally unfair world talks about cultural and political necessities and that’s when I think that a review of the identities and ideologies should start from….focusing on these other hemispheres.
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