Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914)

Bantman, Constance

doi:10.1017/s0020859017000347

Cited by 16 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In this process of differentiation, anarchist eugenics operated effectively as a mediator between 'official' eugenics and 'bottom-up' eugenics and between science and social movements, acting as a 'multiplier effect' in respect of the dissemination and application of knowledge. 19 Even though this process of knowledge transfer between the official eugenics movement and anarchism was far from equitable, the 'eugenicization' of anarchism must be understood as a key mechanism for the reproduction of scientific know-how. The shared emphasis within eugenics and anarchism on transnational organization and the dissemination of knowledge provided a concrete and effective mechanism for such exchanges.…”

Section: Lessons For the Historiography Of Eugenics And Anarchismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conclusion

Cleminson¹

2019

Anarchism and Eugenics

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When Pristino Uxia argued in the Argentinian anarchist daily La Protesta that being trapped by one's inheritance was contrary to anarchist liberty, his aim was not to advocate a fatalistic cul-de-sac from which there was no possible escape. 1 He, like many other anarchists who believed that human beings were in possession of sufficient agency with which to determine their own lives, also identified the means by which people could free themselves from the constraints, both political and biological, which bound them to a degenerate past, a conflictive present and a compromised future. His recognition that atavism and degenerative tendencies existed as recurring phenomena also displayed the profound preoccupation among anarchists that there lay within 'human nature' the seeds of decadence and the root cause of the destruction of progress. Uxia also feared that these powerful negative forces, as José Prat and Ricardo Mella had argued in the Spanish context, placed the anarchist project dedicated to human emancipation and fulfilment in jeopardy. The means by which this negation of a possible anarchist future was to be forestalled would be provided by constructing a careful equilibrium between those factors -both positive and negativethat were understood to be essential in humans and those that were thought to have been acquired through the interaction of heredity and the environment. The resulting libertarian project of amelioration would be brought to term by a combination of traditional anarchist methods of agitation, the written and verbal dissemination of ideas and the transformation of 'the social' in conjunction with the reorganization of the basic foundations that made up human biology. As the old consensus whereby nature would cure all was displaced by a technological process of bodily management, anarchists increasingly accepted the tenets of a cluster of social and scientific techniques ranging from neo-Malthusianism, puericulture and health reform through to eugenics. As part of a pre-figurative undertaking, this optimization of the body through the control of sexuality and eugenics would enhance life for workers in the present and prepare them for a luminous libertarian social order in the future.

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Section: Lessons For the Historiography Of Eugenics And Anarchismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conclusion

Cleminson¹

2019

Anarchism and Eugenics

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“…This does not mean that transnational connections and transfers are considered irrelevant. As several works have shown, anarchist ideas and practices were always embedded in transnational networks (Bantman 2017;Kramm 2021). They have also to be understood in relation to colonial and imperial ideologies, of which they were only partially critical (Deprest 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Political Ecology of the Body: Nature in French Anarchist Pedagogy around 1900

Probst

2023

Histories

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This essay historicizes the concept of nature in French anarchist pedagogy around 1900. I argue that anarchist cosmology was not dualist in the sense that it did not neatly separate the natural from the cultural or social. Nature was rather understood as an ever-evolving realm that encompassed nonhuman and human entities. This example should encourage historical scholarship to look more deeply into what anthropologists sometimes call “naturalist ontology”. Instead of conceiving it as a fixed worldview, we should investigate its genealogy, transformations, and contestations.

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Direct Action: The Invention of a Transnational Concept

Scalmer

2023

Int Rev of Soc His

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“Direct action” emerged as a central concept in labour-movement politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article traces and explains that process of invention. In doing so, it seeks to settle three currently unresolved historical problems: the problem of the meaning of direct action; the problem of its relative novelty; and the problem of its relationship to nation. The article draws upon pamphlets and newspapers published on four continents in English, French, Spanish, and German. It argues that the concept of direct action was used in several analytically distinguishable ways: categorical; performative; and strategic. While aspects of direct action were evident in many nations over several decades, French activists played a decisive and catalytic role in the development of the concept. They welded the categorical, performative, and strategic together. They assembled key performances into an agreed repertoire. And they underlined the revolutionary significance of this combination. This new assemblage was then widely taken up across the global labour movement.

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Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914)

Cited by 16 publications

References 37 publications

Conclusion

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A Political Ecology of the Body: Nature in French Anarchist Pedagogy around 1900

Direct Action: The Invention of a Transnational Concept

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