• 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
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