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Heretical constructions of anarchist utopianism
- Author(s):
- Ruth Kinna (see profile)
- Date:
- 2020
- Group(s):
- Anarchism
- Subject(s):
- Idea (Philosophy), History, Political science, Socialism
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Bakunin, Martin Buber, Political Theology, utopianism, History of ideas, history of political thought
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/ybcm-x233
- Abstract:
- This paper examines a relationship between heresy and utopianism forged in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist histories to reveal a significant and pervasive fault-line in the ideological construction of anarchism. I look at Marxist narratives which trace the lineages of socialism to medieval religious dissent and show how the sympathetic assessment of European heretical movements was moulded by a critique of utopianism, understood as the rejection of materialist ‘science’. I argue that strands of this narrative have been woven into anarchism by looking at three accounts: E.V. Zenker’s Anarchism (1897), James Joll’s The Anarchists (1964/1979) and Saul Newman’s From Bakunin to Lacan (2001). Their dominant theme is that anarchism promises the transformation of corrupted nature, typically achieved though ecstatic violence, cataclysmic revolution and future perfection. I describe this Millenarian anarchism as a ‘straw man’ but rather than jettison ‘heresy’ as an investigative tool, I refer to a conception of heresy as choosing to present an alternative account. Using Martin Buber’s analysis of utopianism in Paths in Utopia (1949) and Michael Bakunin’s critique of political theology, I pair utopianism with the rejection of perfection and heresy with faith. This reframing of heresy corrects a deep-rooted, long-standing distortion of anarchist ideas.
- Notes:
- This is a preprint of the published article
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article Show details
- Pub. DOI:
- 10.1080/01916599.2020.1761646
- Publisher:
- Informa UK Limited
- Pub. Date:
- 2020-5-12
- Journal:
- History of European Ideas
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 8
- Page Range:
- 1078 - 1092
- ISSN:
- 0191-6599,1873-541X
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 2 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
- Share this:
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