Reflections on #AnarchistStudies Conference

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear (1 John 4: 18)

The Anarchist Studies Network held their second conference this week. Although I had to miss all the afternoon sessions it was great to be a part of the event and to know that there are so many activists and academics interested in working out the implications of anarchist thought in new contexts.

I decided to stick with the Religious Anarchism stream throughout, partly because of a lack of time to explore the others. I'm glad I did though as it was interesting to see trends emerge and stick throughout. The most obvious is the almost ubiquitous references to Mikhail Bakunin in almost every paper in this stream.

Bakunin was yet another Russian prince turned anarchist, but unlike Kropotkin, the 'gentle anarchist' Bakunin was most likely to be found in the thick of the action of protest and resistance in varoius places around Europe. Both found themselves locked up at one time or another for their actions and views.

Bakunin begin academic life as a theologian but is most famous for coining the phrase, "No Gods, No Masters" that has become something of an anarchist credo. Despite this antipathy to religion it seemed the overwhelming view of contributors to the Religious Anarchism stream that Bakunin had much in common with religious anarchist perspectives. I know!

There was a real mix of content and style at the conference - some very carefully referenced or nuanced, others a little more like apologetics than anything else, but there was a real openness to scruting from all the contributors I saw and a desire to learn from one another.

What I took away of most value from all of this was the idea that anarchism is not about freedom at all, since personal autonomy is really an illusion, but rather it is about a particular freedom: freedom from fear.

It is freedom from fear that allows us to choose the constraints, socially, lingusitically, philosophically, in which we choose to live our lives in relation to the rest of material and spiritual reality.

So the words I want to reflect on as my walking prayer this week:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.(1 John 4: 18).

No Gods! No Masters! Looking ahead to an amazing conference...

I am even more excited about the Anarchist Studies Network conference in September now that I've seen the list of papers being presented and discussed - and this is just the ASIRA group. There are dozens of others going on simultaneously.

It will be possible to book places as of later this week.

author	title
Adams, Matthew	“As harmless as the rats and crows”: Religion and Spirituality in Herbert Read’s Anarchism
Bernhauser, Siegfried and Wörishofer, Birgit	The divine order and anarchy
Cassano, Jay	Jewish mysticism and Anarchism, a question of compatibility
Cudenec, Paul	The sacred soul of anarchy
de Raaij, André	Power to be free through obedience
Diskin, Danny	Theology, Resistance, and the Mistranslation of Scripture
Fiscella, Anthony	Autonomous Religious Movements
Fitch, Richard	Without Dogma, but with Eloquence and Irony: Anarchism, Religion, and Scepticism
Flintoft, Sam	The Egalitarian God: Exploring the Anarchist Implications of Don Cupitt's Theology
Garcia-Guirao, Pedro	Old Stereotypes and New Conceptions: Representations of Religion in Contemporary Spanish Anarchist Film (1995-2011)
Hebden, Keith	If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your religion: Understanding the Atheisms of Anarchism with Simone Weil and Emma Goldman
Kennedy, Karen	The Anarchist Turn and the Ideas of the Free Spirit and the Anarchist Turn
Lagalisse, Erica	Anarchism as Pantheism: Exploring the “Occult” History of the Radical Enlightenment
McHenry, Mark	An Anarchist Critique of Isaiah's Revolution - Developing the Anarchist Hermeneutic in Mainstream Biblical Studies
Meggitt, Justin	Anarchism, anachronism and the historical Jesus
Morris, Brian	Was Berdyaev an anarchist?
Podmore, Simon	Anti-theism & the Self Before God-Kierkegaard & Proudhon on the Freedom of Offence
Rossbach, Stefan	Religious experience and community formation
Stott, Paul	When Malatesta Met Mohammed: The Response of Anarchists to the Rise of Islamism
Strandberg, Hugo	Hardening one’s heart: On the relation of anarchism and religious belief

Occupy Academia!

From 3rd to 5th of September the second Anarchist Studies Network (ASN) conference will take place at Loughborough University. 

With an even greater number of 'streams' of discussion going on it shows that, despite the reputation and misuse of the term, 'anarchist', the field continues to push at boundaries of thought and action, not least in relation to religion. 

The first ASN conference was held at the same venue in September 2008. I think there were about 400 people at the final plenary debate: a tense exchange on the relative merits of academia and activism that one person compared to "the fourth century debate on whether Jesus was fully human or fully divine". 

It was as a result of the 2008 conference that ASIRA (Anarchists and Students Interested in Religious Anarchism) was born and the resulting publication, never likely to break records, surprised us all by requiring a re-print in paperback. 

Alex, who convened in 2008 and will again this year writes of the upcoming conferences religious stream, "‘No Master But God’? Exploring the Compatibility of Anarchism and Religion": 

"Anarchism and religion have long had an uneasy relationship. On the one hand, many anarchists insist that religion is fundamentally incompatible with anarchism, recalling that anarchism calls for ‘no gods, no masters’, ... On the other, some religious/spiritual radicals insist that their religious/spiritual tradition cannot but lead to a rejection of the state..." 

But there are plenty of other areas of discussion to get stuck into on this three day conference, from ontological and bodily anarchy to protest and revolution. The current list of seminar streams is available here. 

If you're interested in politics and how they relate to real life I can't think of an event this year that I would more thoroughly recommend than this one. 

Subsidies available where appropriate: see website. 

Anarchist Studies Network: Call for Papers

Call for paper proposals: 

‘No Master But God’? Exploring the Compatibility of Anarchism and Religion

ASN 2.0 (‘Making Connections’) Conference
Loughborough University (UK)
3-5 September 2012

Anarchism and religion have long had an uneasy relationship. On the one hand, many anarchists insist that religion is fundamentally incompatible with anarchism, recalling that anarchism calls for ‘no gods, no masters’, pointing to the many cases of close collaboration of religious and political elites in oppressing and deluding the masses, arguing that religious belief is superstitious, and so on. On the other, some religious/spiritual radicals insist that their religious/spiritual tradition cannot but lead to a rejection of the state, care for the downtrodden and the quest for a more just society – despite of, indeed sometimes precisely because of, the acceptance (by some) of a god as ‘master’.

A number of recent publications both in religious and anarchist studies have focused on religious anarchism, but consideration of their compatibility in the first place has been rarer. The aim of this stream of panels is to explore critically and frankly the relationship and tensions between these two notions, with a view to publish its proceedings in a peer-reviewed edited collection. The size of the stream of panels will depend on the number of applicants, but the intention is to foster mutual engagement and collaboration. Proposals are encouraged from sceptical as well as sympathetic perspectives, the aim being to foster critical discussion of these themes.

Questions which may be addressed include (but are not necessarily restricted to):

1.      Is rejection of religion (and/or spirituality) a sine qua non of anarchism?

2.      What do we mean by ‘religion’, ‘spirituality’ and ‘anarchism’ when considering their relation?

3.      What is unacceptable to anarchism about religion/spirituality, and to religion/spirituality about anarchism?

4.      Are some religious/spiritual traditions inherently more compatible with anarchism than others?

5.      Why do religious institutions tend to move away from the often radical intentions of their original prophets and founders? How does this compare to non-religious institutions?

6.      What explains differences in the reception of religious/spiritual anarchism across different contexts?

7.      To what extent can religious/spiritual anarchists’ deification of religious/spiritual notions (such as ‘God’) be compared to non-religious anarchists’ deification of secular notions (such as freedom or equality)?

8.      What role do (and can) religious/spiritual anarchists play in the wider anarchist movement, and in their wider religious/spiritual tradition?

9.      What can religion/spirituality and anarchism learn from one another’s history and ideas?

10.  Is religious/spiritual anarchism really anarchist? Is it really religious/spiritual?

Please send abstracts of up to 300 words (along with name and eventual institutional affiliation) to Alexandre Christoyannopoulos on a.christoyannopoulos[at]gmail.com by 31 March 2012 at the very latest. Any questions should also be sent to that address.