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Title: What is Autonomy? Author: sub.media Date: 2016 Language: en Topics: autonomy, primer, video transcription, Breadtube Source: https://sub.media/video/what-is-autonomy/ Notes: *a transcription of the sub.media film short of the series “A is for Anarchy”*
Autonomy is one of the most important of all anarchist principles, and a
building block for understanding anarchist philosophy more broadly. So
what is it, exactly? Well... basically, it's freedom. But more than
that, it's a particularly an anarchist type of freedom.. the freedom to
make decisions, and then act out those decisions without asking
permission from a higher power. In some ways, autonomy is similar to
liberty, a political concept that dates back to Europe's so-called “Age
of Enlightenment” in the 18th century. Back in those days, liberty was a
radical new idea that sought to put limits on the absolute power of
kings and queens. Its early advocates argued that human beings possessed
certain inalienable rights, granted to them by God, which rulers had to
respect. This idea was obviously pretty popular, and so it soon became
the rallying cry of the French and American Revolutions, which helped
overthrow feudalism and usher in the era of liberal democracy.
Over the centuries, countless astute, and not-so-astute political
thinkers, from Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, to Alex Jones and Glenn
Beck have claimed liberty as a universal human right. But to say that
this principle hasn't been universally applied would be a gross
understatement. This is because from its very beginnings, the concept of
liberty has existed within a framework of European global conquest, a
process facilitated by colonialism, slavery and genocide. Even today,
the language of liberty is still used to mobilize people's support for
imperialist wars. Remember when the United States government claimed
they were bringing freedom to Iraq? The roots of this contradiction lie
in the fact that liberty has always been tied to the existence of
states, and the associated legal category of citizens. Often this is
described as a social contract. In exchange for obedience to state
authority, citizens are granted rights and freedoms, such as freedom of
expression, freedom to associate, and the right to pursue happiness or
bear arms. Non-citizens, or citizens of other states are not included in
this contract. And even putting aside the problem of who gets to be
considered a citizen, just like anything else that is given to you,
rights can also be taken away. At the end of the day, it's politicians
and courts who get to decide what rights you are allowed to exercise at
any given moment.
Autonomy, on the other hand, doesn't rely on a state-based framework of
rights. Rather than concentrating power and decision-making in the tops
of social and political hierarchies, autonomy starts at the level of the
individual, and scales up. If you’re a visual thinker, it might be
helpful to imagine it as sort of like an inverted pyramid. As the scope
of autonomy grows to include more and more people, we move from talking
about individual autonomy to collective autonomy: the power of groups of
people to make collective decisions on issues that affect them directly.
Individual and collective autonomy are indivisible under anarchism. You
can't have one without the other. Autonomous collectives are made up of
autonomous individuals, who have all made the decision to work together
to pursue their common interests. Unless you’re living in a cabin in the
woods, it's difficult to exercise individual autonomy outside of a
collective, first of all because those in power make it hard to get away
with, and second because human beings are inherently social creatures.
Building collective autonomy is what anarchism is all about. Whether
this assumes the form of an autonomous feminist collective that gets
together to make decisions on how to fight patriarchy, or neighbourhood
assemblies that come together to fight gentrification... or even the
millions of Kurds in Rojava who are building social structures that are
autonomous from the Syrian state. While these are just a few examples,
the thing that connects them all is a shared pursuit of greater
collective autonomy. And that’s something we should all be striving
for…. because at the end of the day… do you really need someone in
authority telling you what you can or can’t do?