Rivista Anarchica Online


debate

The person in the mirror
by Federico Battistutta

The challenge of post-anarchism.

 

Present: past and future

Under the heading post-anarchism are merged forms of thought in common the idea that, faced with a society that changes ever more quickly and at every level, there is an urgent need for a reinterpretation of the usual reference models specific to the libertarian tradition, much of which sinks its roots in the culture of the nineteenth century, characterized by an appearance very distant from our contemporary world. In particular, it was also noted that the post-anarchism is presented as a variation on the libertarian side of the readings of the company by category post-modern, post-structuralist.
The reference runs straight to the contemporary French thought, very articulate in it, still bound in brotherhood by the conviction of the need for an exit from the idea of great acting, that is, a narrative explanation and wide-ranging, can provide clear answers and final to the need for understanding and transforming the world. To name a few: Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard (and Lacan, the tutelary deity or deus absconditus of this approach).
One of the recurring criticisms aimed at the post-anarchism is a theory of being overly academic, ineffectual, so devoid of opportunities in practice and in everyday life. In some ways, some of the statements produced by this current are likely to annoy your search for a novum which may seem an end in itself or a lack of context about the strands of libertarians thought questioned. Nevertheless it is plain the jam of some crucial categories in libertarian thought and the need to make a path sufficiently explored and in need to receive an unprecedented sense than the already said and the already known, can provide continuous openings both in thought and in transformative practice.
With it stays the question of the tension between innovation and tradition. On the one hand there is the risk of a plaster cast of his thought and his own practice in a respectful homage, too respectful of a past that can slow down the path. If - in the words of Durruti - this new world is growing at this moment, I must then be fully present, ready to what you're asking me this very moment, without pretense or misrepresentation produced by inadequate interpretation grids. On the other hand I feel the need to hold in your hands that thread that connects me to who in the past, was found by my own party and has set itself the same questions as I have now: the problem is the discovery of traces of memory in the face of social change in the course of dynamics that create and trigger strong discontinuity if not broken (not by chance Toni Negri, in their dark eighties, raised the question talking about a "praise the absence of memory", in the belief that where there is complete displacement there is more memory: "Only the denial of the memory makes us the horizon of life")

 

Federico Battistutta

Translation and summary by Enrico Massetti (Web site on "The other Fabrizio de Andre")