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Title: Anarchism in the Academy Author: Jeff Shantz Date: 2012 Language: en Topics: anarchist, anarchist analysis, anarchist sociology, academia, pedagogy, education, schools Source: Philosophers for Change, https://philosophersforchange.org/2012/08/14/anarchism-in-the-academy/
Anarchist academic David Graeber devotes the first section of his book
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology to his attempt to answer the
question, “Why are there so few anarchists in the academy?” For Graeber
this is a pressing question given the veritable explosion of anarchist
theory and lively debates over anarchism outside of the academy,
especially within the numerous social movements which have emerged
recently. Despite the blossoming of anarchist thought and practice,
David Graeber is perplexed that this flowering of anarchism has found
little reflection in the academy. Graeber seems to long for the type of
success that Marxists have enjoyed in their move into the academy
following the rise of Marxist theory among the students of the New Left.
As he notes in his disappointed comparison of anarchist successes with
those of the Marxists: “In the United States there are thousands of
academic Marxists of one sort or another, but hardly a dozen scholars
willing openly to call themselves anarchists” (2004: 2). In his view
this is something that should be a cause of concern for anarchists.
Yet it would seem that Graeber’s fears are quite unfounded. A glance
across the academic landscape shows that in less than a decade, since
Seattle in 1999, there has been substantial growth in the numbers of
people in academic positions who identify as anarchists. Indeed, it is
probably safe to say that unlike any other time in history, the last ten
years have seen anarchists carve out spaces in the halls of academia.
This is especially true in terms of people pursuing graduate studies and
those who have become members of faculty. Several anarchists have taken
up positions in prominent, even so-called elite, universities, including
Richard Day at Queen’s University in Canada, Ruth Kinna at Loughborough
University in England and, for a time, David Graeber at Yale (now at
London). Indeed the Politics Department at Loughborough has actively
recruited graduate students for a program of study that focuses
specifically on anarchism. The flourishing of anarchism in the academy
is also reflected in other key markers of professional academic
activity. These include: Academic articles focusing on varying aspects
of anarchist theory and practice; the publication of numerous books on
anarchism by most of the major academic presses; and growing numbers of
courses dealing in some way with anarchism or including anarchism within
the course content. There have also emerged, perhaps ironically enough,
professionally recognized associations and networks of anarchist
researchers, such as the Anarchist Studies Network of the Political
Science Association in Britain. Suddenly it is almost hip to be an
anarchist academic.
At one time, not so long ago in fact, this would have been a curious
situation for anarchists to find themselves in. There was once among
anarchists a rather healthy suspicion of the academy as an elitist
institution fully bound up with the reproduction and extension of power
structures within capitalist societies. Yet the growing enthusiasm among
some anarchists over their newfound acceptance within the academy, and
the encouragement this gives growing numbers of anarchists to consider
academic programs, has not been matched by critical reflection on the
limitations of a turn to the academy by anarchists. This piece offers
the beginnings of such a reflection and raises certain cautions.
I should be clear that I am in no way criticizing individual anarchists
for choosing to pursue academic work. I am certainly not suggesting that
anarchists stay out of school or leave the academy in the manner of
earlier generations of socialists who abandoned universities to take up
industrial work. For sure the more places in which anarchist thought
might develop and flourish the better. The advances made by
neo-conservative academics in shifting economic and social policies,
providing the intellectual capital for neo-liberal capitalism and
imperialism, while making post-secondary education even less accessible
for working class students, shows what can happen when we abandon or are
defeated in any field of struggle.
At the same time it is important to contextualize anarchist academic
activity in relationship to other types of anarchist activities. If
anarchists are to be effective in waging struggles in the academy, and
even more importantly, if academic anarchism is to contribute anything
to struggles outside the academy, then we need a clear discussion of the
matter, one which does not tilt towards uncritical celebration or an
envious longing for something we could as well do without. I write this
as someone from a blue collar background, the first in my extended
family to go to university, who has also spent perhaps way too much time
in school so I have seen the view from multiple perspectives.
David Graeber describes his recent work Fragments of an Anarchist
Anthropology as “a series of thoughts, sketches of potential theories,
and tiny manifestos — all meant to offer a glimpse at the outline of a
body of radical theory that does not actually exist, though it might
possibly exist at some point in the future” (2004: 1). The theory, the
non-existence of which is of such concern to Graeber is, primarily, an
anarchist current within academic anthropology. I say primarily because
Graeber also asks similarly why there is no anarchist sociology,
anarchist economics, anarchist literary theory or anarchist political
science. In posing these questions, and in failing to acknowledge that
on some level anarchist versions of each of these “disciplines” do in
fact exist, Graeber betrays what is really at the root of his concern.
That is the existence of academic or professional versions of anarchist
thought in these areas and the acceptance of anarchist theories within
established academic disciplines and institutions.
Indeed in asking the question, “why is there no anarchist sociology?”
Graeber entirely overlooks the significant sociological works of people
like Colin Ward, Paul Goodman and John Griffin to name only a few. One
could make the same point in identifying significant contributors to an
anarchist economics, people such as Tom Wetzel and Larry Gambone.
Notably these writers, while extremely important in the development of
contemporary anarchist thought and influential within anarchist circles
occupy only marginal places, if any in academic sociology or economics
circles. So the problem is not so much the existence of anarchist
sociology, but its recognition, acceptance and legitimation among
academics or professional sociologists. Curiously Graeber even overlooks
the contributions of anarchist sociologists who have succeeded in
bringing anarchist theory into the academy such as Lawrence Tifft and
Jeff Ferrell, again, to name only a few.
The case is the same when one returns to anthropology. Graeber (2004:
38) claims that “an anarchist anthropology doesn’t really exist” and
then sets it as his task to lay the groundwork for just such a body of
theory and practice. Yet to make this claim, and even more to set
himself up as the person to correct the situation, Graeber does a
disservice to people like Harold Barclay who have been working
tirelessly for decades to establish an anarchist anthropology within
accepted academic circles. Curiously Barclay is a name that appears
nowhere in Graeber’s writings on this matter.
At this point, however, I would point out, in light of Graeber’s desire
to see anarchism recognized within the academy, that many anarchists
have been quite good at developing analyses that go beyond mainstream
social science. Indeed such has been the invaluable work contributed by
what I call constructive anarchist theorists from Gustav Landauer to
Paul Goodman to Colin Ward. Again the problem has not been the absence
of anarchist theory or theorists, low or high, but rather the acceptance
of those theories and theorists within the academy. This is what
concerns Graeber deeply but I have to ask whether such a concern might
be overemphasized, if not misplaced.
Of course to advocate unproblematically the move of anarchist theory
into the academy is to present an uncritical rendering of the perils and
processes involved in academic knowledge production. Beth Hartung, in a
much earlier, and less optimistic account of the engagement of anarchy
with the academy, sounded this cautious note: “Once a theory is taken
from the streets or factories and into the academy, there is the risk
that revolutionary potential will be subverted to scholarship…; in other
words, knowledge becomes technology” (Hartung, 1983: 88).
As Murray Bookchin (1978: 16) has similarly argued, academic works often
subject social movement perspectives and practices, as in anarchism, to
a reformulation in “highly formalized and abstract terms.” Almost thirty
years after Bookchin’s observation it seems that the recent academic
works on anarchism, produced by self-identified anarchists such as
Newman and Day it might be added, have indeed continued this practice of
making anarchist thought conform to the style and substance of the
academic discourse of the day.
Even with graduate training in social theory and familiarity with the
language used in such texts, I find these works to be rather
inaccessible. They are texts directed primarily at other academics,
addressing issues almost exclusively of concern to academics in a
specialized language that is most familiar to academics. Such approaches
contradict the anti-vanguardist commitment shared by most anarchists.
Some try to excuse this use of language by arguing that the complexity
of ideas being addressed requires a complex language, beyond the grammar
of more down to earth expressions. While this might be a fine position
for mainstream academics I think that anarchists have to work harder to
break the exclusivity of academic discourses.
For anarchists, as Graeber (2004) points out, the role of intellectuals
is in no way the formation of an elite that attempts correct political
lines or analyses by which to lead the masses. Graeber (2004) suggests
that academia might benefit from an engagement with anarchist approaches
to knowledge production and sharing. Such an engagement would, in his
view, allow social theory to be refashioned along the lines of direct
democratic practice. Such an approach, drawing on the actual practice of
the newest social movements, would encourage a move beyond the medieval
practices of the university, which sees “radical” thinkers “doing
intellectual battle at conferences in expensive hotels, and trying to
pretend all this somehow furthers revolution” (Graeber, 2004: 7). An
approach taken from social movements, beyond its rejection of “winner
take all” attempts at conversion, might also allow for a move beyond a
“great thinkers” approach to knowledge.
Yet, I am not convinced that anarchists’ energies are best spent in
trying to reform the academy in this way. The real problem is the
existence of a hierarchical and inegalitarian social structure that
separates and elevates knowledge production in such a way as to
reproduce the existence of universities as exclusive and privileged
institutions. Over the last two decades, largely through the hard work
of feminist and anti-racist researchers, there has been a move to more
participatory and community-based research. This has certainly been an
improvement over the days of grand theory, conjured in an armchair, and
the social science of surveys, statistics and social subjects. At the
same time all of this new research, no matter how “community-based”
still takes place within and is conditioned by its existence within an
authoritarian and unequal political economy of knowledge production. The
presence of a hundred or a thousand more anarchist professors within the
hallowed halls is not going to change this much more than the presence
of a few thousand Marxist academics has over several decades.
My concern is that rather than tearing down the walls between town and
gown, head and hand, academic and amateur, the move of anarchists into
the academy may simply reproduce, reinforce and even legitimize, the
political and economic structures of the academy. It certainly lends a
certain shine to the claims of those conservative academics who like to
crow about academic freedom and the openness of the neo-liberal
university: “Look, we don’t exclude anyone. We even allow anarchists a
place at the table.”
More than this of course is what happens when anarchists, through the
“publish or perish” pressures of promotion and the pursuit of tenure,
begin to mold anarchism to fit the language and expectations of academic
knowledge production rather than the other way around. This has been one
of the fatal flaws of academic Marxism. Taking a language of the people,
born of their struggles and aspirations, and turning it into something
distant, abstract and inaccessible to the people, who have now been
turned into little more than passive subjects of study or “social
indicators” where they appear at all. Much of academic Marxism has
become yet another variant of grand theory, something of a parlor game,
exciting for its ideas perhaps, but of little social concern. Could the
same not happen to anarchism? Some critics of the academically inspired
“post-anarchism”, which has tried to meld anarchist theory with the
esoteric philosophies of post-structuralism might suggest it is already
happening.
There is certainly something of value in drawing upon the works of
social science, for example, to inform anarchist thought. Even
mainstream social science can provide important information and analysis
that might aid anarchists in examining, understanding, critiquing and
changing society. The works of anarchists from Kropotkin to Reclus to
Paul Goodman and Colin Ward have shown the beneficial aspects for
anarchist theoretical development of an informed engagement with
academic research. Similarly there have been a number of amazing works
provided by historians providing insights on anarchist movements that
might otherwise have been lost to time. For sure the works of historians
have made the greatest and longest term contributions to anarchist
movements recently.
Overall, the emphasis should remain on using the academic work to inform
and enrich anarchist analysis rather than using anarchist analysis to
bolster academic disciplines or theoretical positions that have little
connection with people’s lives. In terms of social theory, I would
suggest that the work done by theorists such as Paul Goodman, Colin
Ward, Murray Bookchin and Howard Ehrlich, people who may have been
trained in universities but who have consistently offered complex
analyses in engaging and accessible terms, offer more for anarchist
movements “on the ground.” This is the case both in terms of the
applicability of their analyses and in terms of the issues and concerns
that they devote their attention to.
The primary orientation of anarchist academics must remain the anarchist
movements actively involved in struggles against capitalism and the
state. In some senses anarchist academics are subsidized by the movement
activists who are doing the day to day work of building movements while
the academics are pursuing their own, often very personal, interests.
Anarchist academics need to recognize that while they are doing academic
work, much of which is involved in “departmental work” or “professional
development” which contributes little to social struggles, someone else
is taking care of the organizing work (that they may be theorizing).
This is not to say that anarchist academics are not able to contribute
to organizing at the same time as getting their work done, it is more a
call to remember the division of labor.
I want to point out that I am in no way criticizing those anarchists who
have taken work as professors for their choice of employment. Arguments
that this represents some sort of sell out or compromise are ridiculous.
There are worse jobs under capitalism, trust me I’ve had them, and there
is no shame in taking a job that offers good pay, benefits and generally
decent working conditions: As long as one does not become an academic
boss with teaching and research assistants working for you, of course.
My concern rather is the extent that creating a space within the academy
is taken as a priority for anarchist organizing or comes to take up time
that active and thoughtful anarchists might put into work in less
exclusive contexts.
Bookchin, 1978. “Beyond Neo-Marxism.” Telos. 36: 5–28.
Graeber, David. 2004. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago:
Prickly Paradigm Press.
Hartung, Beth. 1983. “Anarchism and the Problem of Order.” Mid-American
Review of Sociology. VIII(1): 83–101.