The Politics of Postanarchism

What is the relevance of anarchism for politics and political theory today? While many have in the past dismissed anarchism, the author contends that anarchism's heretical critique of authority, and its insistence on full equality and liberty, places it at the forefront of the radical political imagination today. With the unprecedented expansion of state power in the name of security, the current 'crisis of capitalism', and the terminal decline of Marxist and social democratic projects, it is time to reconsider anarchism as a form of politics. This book seeks to renew anarchist thought through the concept of postanarchism.This innovative theoretical approach, drawing upon classical anarchist theory, poststructuralism, post-Marxism, critical theory and psychoanalytic approaches, allows for a new engagement with contemporary debates about future directions in radical politics relating to political subjectivity and identity, political organisation, the State, globalisation, liberty and equality today, and the political 'event'.

Saul Newman is Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is author of From Bakunin to Lacan (2001), Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought (2005) and Unstable Universalities: Poststructuralism and Radical Politics (2006).