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Call for Papers for Panels/Publication on
"Re-Imagining Revolution"
1st Anarchist Studies Network Conference
4th-6th September, 2008 (Confirmed)
Department of Politics, IR, and European Studies,
Loughborough University, UK
What is the meaning of revolution today? From the
French Revolution through much of the twentieth
century, both the theory and practice of revolution
was dominated by the assumption that the violent
seizure of state power was the defining characteristic
of revolutionary change. In recent years, this
assumption has increasingly been called into question
by a wide range of thinkers and activists from across
the radical political spectrum. Yet only a small
minority appear to recognise the extent to which
recent developments were anticipated by the words and
deeds of certain anarchist revolutionaries over a
century ago. As a result, a rich and diverse corpus of
anarchist revolutionary experience has been neglected,
and its relevance to the contemporary world
overlooked.
By way of contribution to the process of remedying
this historical amnesia and generating fresh ideas
rooted in critical reflection on the past, we invite
paper proposals for a series of Anarchist Studies
Network conference panels on the theme of
"Re-Imagining Revolution". More specifically, the aim
of the panels is to creatively re-imagine the concept
of revolution in ways relevant to the times in which
we live, with a particular emphasis on the distinctive
contributions and limitations of anarchism both
classical and contemporary and anarchist(ic)
variants of contemporary counter-cultural social
movements.
While there is no restriction on possible paper
topics, proposals informed by feminist, anti-racist,
ecological, pacifist, utopian, romantic, and
non-Western anarchist perspectives are particularly
welcome. So, too, are papers that promise to
illuminate the relationship between the "personal" and
the "political" aspects of revolutionary change; its
joyous, witty, sensuous, playful, and aesthetic
dimensions; the possibilities for combining
revolutionary spontaneity and organisation; the
conception of revolution as a process unfolding over
time rather than a singular cataclysmic event; and the
roles of direct action, prefigurative politics,
non-violent struggle and organised non-cooperation,
countercultural communal experiments and alternative
lifestyles, affinity groups and networks, social
centres and co-operatives, skill sharing and the
practice of mutual aid, utopian imagination, Luddism,
and the qualitative transformation of work in
generating radically open-ended, popular, organic,
constructive, and creative forms of revolutionary
change.
Some of the speakers confirmed as of January 2008
include Ruth Kinna, current editor of the journal
*Anarchist Studies*; David Graeber, author of
*Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology*; Sasha
Roseneil, author of *Common Women, Uncommon Practices:
The Queer Feminisms of Greenham*; Saul Newman, author
of *From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and
the Dislocation of Power*; and John Jordan, co-editor
of *We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global
Anti-Capitalism* and co-founder of the Clandestine
Rebel Insurgent Clown Army.
Selected papers from the conference will be revised
for publication either in the form of a special
journal issue or as an edited volume.
If you are interested in contributing to the panels,
please send an email to Laurence Davis (the convenor,
at ldavis@???) by 26th March 2008 including
a paper title, 200-300 word proposal, and contact
details. Alternatively, if you wish to propose a
complete three-person panel, please send a panel
title, brief synopsis of the panel, and names and
contact details of all contributors, indicating after
each name whether participation has been confirmed.
Informal inquiries about alternative panel or workshop
arrangements are very welcome.
For further information about the conference, see
http://www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/HomePage.
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