Preliminary Programme

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Wednesday 30 March 2016 14.00 - 16.00
W-3 LAB07a Perfect Cosmopolitans? Foundations
Aula Ramon y Cajal, Nivel 1
Network: Labour Chair: Bert Altena
Organizers: Bert Altena, Lucien van der Walt Discussant: Bert Altena
José Antonio del Barrio, Hiroyuki Usui : Anationalism, a Current or a Future Concern: a Dilemma for Esperanto-speaking Anarchists
Anarchists, to be sure, were/are cosmopolitans, but this does not necessarily mean that they were/are free of ethnic prejudices. And as to Esperanto-speaking anarchists, they had an additional theoretical headache: if Esperanto were to help the world to unite culturally and linguistically (a cosmopolitan standpoint), should they support self-determination of ... (Show more)
Anarchists, to be sure, were/are cosmopolitans, but this does not necessarily mean that they were/are free of ethnic prejudices. And as to Esperanto-speaking anarchists, they had an additional theoretical headache: if Esperanto were to help the world to unite culturally and linguistically (a cosmopolitan standpoint), should they support self-determination of oppressed peoples or not (as self-determination could evoke nationalism)?
Eugène Adam alias Lanti, one of the leaders of the workers' Esperanto-movement, advocated doing away with nations in order to pursue cosmopolitanism in a consistent way here and now. He formulated his cosmopolitism as sennaciismo (“anationalism” in Esperanto) and opposed the classic internationalism of the orthodox communists. His stance concerning national/ethnic cultures was negative. When in his late years Lanti went to Japan for a protracted stay, he noted bitterly that his cosmopolitanism was of little use there, first because of the huge cultural gap, and second because many Japanese Esperantists stayed away from him, fearing he was politically dangerous.
This was a paradox due to the fact that the Esperanto-speaking anarchists possessed a practical instrument of cosmopolitanism, which other anarchists didn’t.
But there were also others less theoretically inclined, who deferred such questions to a nebulous future and could do practical work: e.g. after World War II the Esperanto-speaking anarchists from Spain and Japan contributed collectively to the resurgence of the anarchist movement by publishing anarchist bulletins in Esperanto and disseminating them. We shall see how this worked out and how the Esperanto-speaking comrades from Japan and Spain viewed each other (Europeans looking at non-Europeans and vice versa), comparing this with the above-mentioned case of Lanti. (Show less)

Florian Eitel : The First International and the Jura Federation as the Cradle of Cosmopolitan Anarchism?
The First International (1864-1877) and the Jura Federation (1871-1881) have been taken as the origins of the anarchist movement by scholars. Within these organizations were
developed, for the first time, an anarchist political program and structure. The basic premises upon which anarchism was based were that a class consciousness needed to ... (Show more)
The First International (1864-1877) and the Jura Federation (1871-1881) have been taken as the origins of the anarchist movement by scholars. Within these organizations were
developed, for the first time, an anarchist political program and structure. The basic premises upon which anarchism was based were that a class consciousness needed to be developed among workers and anarchical maxims be accepted by the proletariat world-wide. However, the development of such an all-embracing class consciousness met with strong resistance among the working class.
The process through which a global class consciousness was created and the consequent resistance it entailed will here be presented with primary sources of the Jura Federation. The resistance is exemplified by statements made by the anarchist watch-makers in the Jura against Chinese migrant workers in the North American watch-making industry, in which they are disparagingly described as inferior human beings with animal-like characteristics.
Intellectuals such as Elisée Reclus and James Guillaume stood by the concept of a borderless solidarity and opposed racist statements made often enough among anarchists. In 1874, Reclus wrote upon the theme in his impressive work “Les chinois et l’internationale”, criticizing the slave-like global trade in Chinese forced labour. Guillaume, an editor of the influential newspaper Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne propagated in every edition the borderless solidarity of the proletariat. Reclus and Guillaume however, were partially responsible for the propagation of racially motivated descriptions of the Chinese. Like many other anarchists of their time, they were both followers of what were at the time the most modern scientific theories, such as Linear Evolution, Historical Materialism, Zoology, Geology, etcÉ. Through popular scientific publications (e.g. Guillaume’s universal history also published in Italian and Spanish) and lecture series, Reclus and Guillaume propagated the theories of Charles Darwin, Ludwig Büchner, Georges Pouchet, Émile Burnouf and others, who nowadays are considered the pioneers of Social Darwinism and other race theories.
The question to be addressed and reflected upon is whether the First International and Jura Federation were not only the cradle of Cosmopolitan Anarchism, but also the departure point for racist outbursts in the later history of anarchism. (Show less)

Federico Ferretti : Anarchism, Geography and Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire
Drawing on the recent literature both on transnational anarchism at the Age of Empire (1875-1914) and on the historical and epistemological relationship between geography and anarchism, this paper addresses the cosmopolitan approaches of the Anarchist Geographers Elisée Reclus (1830-1905), Pëtr Kropotkin (1842-1921), Lev Me?nikov (1838-1888), Elie Reclus (1827-1903) and others, ... (Show more)
Drawing on the recent literature both on transnational anarchism at the Age of Empire (1875-1914) and on the historical and epistemological relationship between geography and anarchism, this paper addresses the cosmopolitan approaches of the Anarchist Geographers Elisée Reclus (1830-1905), Pëtr Kropotkin (1842-1921), Lev Me?nikov (1838-1888), Elie Reclus (1827-1903) and others, who built, between the 19th and the 20th century, an original vision of Extra-European world, if compared to the European science of their time. As demonstrated by recent research, these geographers were early denouncers of colonial crimes, European hegemony and Euro-centrism, and claimed for international workers’ brotherhood against armies and exploitation both in Europe and overseas, contributing to shape what Benedict Anderson has called ‘anti-colonial imagination’.
Nevertheless, their positions were not simple claims for Illuminist universalism, whose contradictions are often stressed by present postcolonial and subaltern literature. My main argument is that their elaborations considered what now is called cultural difference, by relativizing the judgment on Others and by renouncing to the concept of European superiority, to found the idea of universal equality on cosmopolitan bases including respect of differences.
I develop my argument through two fundamental examples, based on the texts of the quoted authors. The first is their approach to Eastern Asia. I should argue that Elisée Reclus and Lev Me?nikov, working during their exile in Switzerland with a network of scholars interested in East-Asian languages, made a geo-historical representation of Chinese, Japanese and Korean civilizations which overtly questioned the stereotypes of the Western cultural and technical superiority. Among the topics which, according to Jack Goody, Western thinking considered as its monopole, we find the dialectics between capitalism and socialism; on the contrary, Reclus and Me?nikov insisted on the ancient roots of Chinese socialism, stating that it could be an example for the social movements of their epoch all over the world. I should argue that in this case, their approach to the Others draught more on empathy than on a classical scientific gaze supposing the observer’s superiority. The direct contacts of Reclus’ descendants like Paul Reclus (1858-1941) with early Chinese, Japanese and Korean anarchists witness the efficacy of this cultural transfer, owing to cosmopolite scientific and militant networks between Europe and Eastern Asia.
The second example addresses the vision by Me?nikov, Kropotkin and Elie Reclus of the so-called ‘primitive folks’ as an early tentative to question racial prejudices and to criticize the main sources available for knowing those peoples, namely missionaries, explorers and functionaries, defined as ‘their invaders, those who could understand them the least’. Through the examples of the quoted scholars’ works on peoples of Hunter-Gatherers like the Inuit and the Australian aboriginals, I analyse their strategies to relativize the contemporary despising judgment of these peoples by considering their adaptation to different environments, to appreciate their egalitarian institutions and to propose even an early questioning of the concept of race. According to Me?nikov, ‘no anthropologists have still clearly defined what a human race is’. These approaches also influenced scholars of the following generation like Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and Pierre Clastres, studied by David Graeber in his Anarchist Anthropology. (Show less)

Pascale Siegrist : Cosmopolitan Geographies? Reclus and Kropotkin on Place and Belonging
Anarchists are often represented as highly mobile activists and free-floating intellectuals. This certainly was the case of the circle of anarchist scientists that grouped around the geographers Elisée Reclus (1830 – 1905) and Petr Kropotkin (1842 – 1921) consisting of French, Russian, Swiss and many other nationals. Spending long periods ... (Show more)
Anarchists are often represented as highly mobile activists and free-floating intellectuals. This certainly was the case of the circle of anarchist scientists that grouped around the geographers Elisée Reclus (1830 – 1905) and Petr Kropotkin (1842 – 1921) consisting of French, Russian, Swiss and many other nationals. Spending long periods of their lives in exile, these thinkers corresponded across a far-reaching network and their collaboration can truly be thought of as a cosmopolitan debate.
Quite to the contrary, however, their common interest in geography – both social and physical – seems to imply a concern with matters of space and place not devoid even of environmentally deterministic aspects. Its supposed inability to think universally and transgress the scale of the local and the particular, moreover, has been a standard (Marxist) critique of anarchism and the geographies associated with it.
In my paper, I try to link the ‘placeless’ circumstances of production of Reclus and Kropotkin’s geographical works to the treatment therein of territorial categories such as the commune, the city, the state, the nation, empire and most importantly, the milieu. The latter perceived as bringing together humankind and nature in a dynamic relationship helps us rethink the relationship between the individual and society in anarchist thought. Examining their models of federalism I hope to shed light on whether anarchist geographical thinking in the late nineteenth century can sensibly be thought of as a form of cosmopolitism and to critically explore its limits. (Show less)



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