Anarchism, Postanarchism and the Problem of Violence

Abstract

The article is devoted to the actual and, perhaps, even painful topic of political violence considered through the prism of contemporary anarchist thought and, in particular, through the understanding of violence in the theory of postanarchism. The aim is to fixate with using the historical-philosophical descriptive approach the intensification of conflict discourse in contemporary radical political philosophy, as well as a specific postanarchist articulation of such type of violence, which would imply going beyond the logic of a standard encounter of opposing political forces. Such articulation in works of the leading theorist of post-anarchism S. Newman is accompanied by the reception of the conceptual apparatus of the German thinker W. Benjamin. The resulting thesis of this work can be considered as the conjugation of the increasing politicization of life with the tendency to think of politics and the political in terms of antagonism, war and, ultimately, violence. In other words, if the political is thought in this way, it can be assumed that the growing politicization of practically all aspects of life is fraught with similar impulses. In the context of the above, the consideration of postanarchism seems not only adequate as an example of reflecting current trends in political philosophy, but also from the point of view of novelty, because the postanarchist theory as such is rather poorly covered in the Russian academia. From this, firstly, the practical significance follows, because the article gives a notion of the little-studied phenomenon of Western political thought, which correlates with the realities of contemporary politics. Secondly, this work sets a number of vectors for further research concerning both the relationship between the theory and practice of contemporary protest movements and the reaction of state institutions to them. In addition, further work on the problematization of the theory of post-anarchism itself, which is not distinguished by uniqueness and homogeneity due to its own methods and approaches (anti-essentialism, deconstructivism, micro-political analysis, etc.), can also become perspective. Therefore, subsequent development of the topic with the involvement of a larger number of primary sources on the postanarchist theory seems to be significant.

Keywords

• violence
• state
• anarchism
• postanarchism
• divine violence
• radical politics
• politicization