Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

All days
Go back

Thursday 25 March 2021 16.00 - 17.15
Q-8 POL12 Radical Movements Crossing Time & Space: Mediating Left and Right
Q
Networks: Africa , Politics, Citizenship, and Nations Chair: Stefano Bellucci
Organizer: Carolyn Eichner Discussants: -
Carolyn Eichner : Revolutionary Synchronies: Kabyle, Kanak, & Communards against France
In 1904, at the age of 74 and in ill health, the revolutionary anarchist feminist Louise Michel embarked on an anti-militarism, anti-religion, and anti-colonial speaking and propaganda tour of Algeria. Traveling to the colony fulfilled a promise she had made to her fellow political exiles, the Algerian Kabyle insurrectionists ... (Show more)
In 1904, at the age of 74 and in ill health, the revolutionary anarchist feminist Louise Michel embarked on an anti-militarism, anti-religion, and anti-colonial speaking and propaganda tour of Algeria. Traveling to the colony fulfilled a promise she had made to her fellow political exiles, the Algerian Kabyle insurrectionists she had encountered in France’s penal colony in New Caledonia. The French state had deported Michel to the South Pacific for her participation in the 1871 revolutionary civil war known as the Paris Commune; the French colonial authorities had applied the same punishment to the Algerian Kabyle following their revolt of the same year. Satisfying a decades-long desire to travel to Algeria and demonstrate her solidarity with the Kabyle, Michel hoped her visit would inspire an anti-imperial uprising.

Michel saw revolution as part of the larger universal movement toward human equality. The synchrony of the Paris Commune with the 1871 Algerian revolt, followed shortly by the 1878 uprising of the indigenous New Caledonian Kanak – combined with the instability of France’s conservative Third Republic throughout the 1870s – signaled the state’s vulnerability and the readiness of subjugated groups to rise up. The three revolutions shaped Michel’s politics and worldview. Expanding her perspective outward, while simultaneously underscoring the commonalities of the oppressed, Michel recognized fundamental intersections of imperial and class oppression. Identifying France’s racial and cultural subjugations in locations over 11,000 miles apart, Michel connected the state’s control and destruction of foreign peoples as a single project, thus becoming one the first French leftists to oppose empire. (Show less)

Kathy Ferguson : Emma Goldman’s Women
While they’ve received scant attention from either anarchists or feminists, there were hundreds of women, along with the famous Emma Goldman, who were active in the global anarchist movement during its classical period from the Paris Commune to the Spanish Revolution. I have found about 1000 women world-wide who were ... (Show more)
While they’ve received scant attention from either anarchists or feminists, there were hundreds of women, along with the famous Emma Goldman, who were active in the global anarchist movement during its classical period from the Paris Commune to the Spanish Revolution. I have found about 1000 women world-wide who were directly or tangentially involved as writers, orators, organizers, editors, artists, printers, librarians, translators, teachers, distributors, and supporters. Goldman knew many of them, and she frequently pointed out to other anarchists and the general public that the political and intellectual labor of women was constitutive of their movement.

In this paper I will look at three women who are representative of a significant arena of anarchist organizing:

1. Lizzie Holmes wrote for several anarchist journals, including Free Society. Holmes created a mode of writing that I am calling a think piece, a short, animated reflection on a pressing public issue that challenged readers to rethink some aspect of their personal or political lives. Holmes knew the Haymarket anarchists in Chicago and frequently wrote the annual commemorations of the Haymarket murders, where she analyzed the role of political memory for future constructions of the movement.

2. Lillian Harmon wrote for several outlets and was the printer for the anarchist journal Lucifer: The Lightbearer. She was briefly imprisoned for living with a man outside of marriage, a cause célèbre for the movement in the late 19th century. She later became the president of the British Legitimation League.

3. Agnes Inglis was the primary organizer of the Labadie Collection of radical literature at the University of Michigan. She oversaw the collecting and cataloging of holdings that have grown to be one of the most significant archives of anarchist and socialist literature in the world.

Pulling the work of these women into our understanding of anarchist history both brings more women into anarchist history and more anarchists into feminist history. (Show less)

Anne Marieke van der Wal : Radicalization, Millenarianism and Violent Protest in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa. Old and New Questions, a Case Study from South Africa
Millenarian beliefs flourish in times of distress. South Africa has faced several apocalyptic uprisings which originated in the context of severe imperial and apartheid oppression, such as the infamous Xhosa cattle killing of 1857; the Bulhoek Massacre of 1921 and arguably also the township revolts in the 1980s. Today South ... (Show more)
Millenarian beliefs flourish in times of distress. South Africa has faced several apocalyptic uprisings which originated in the context of severe imperial and apartheid oppression, such as the infamous Xhosa cattle killing of 1857; the Bulhoek Massacre of 1921 and arguably also the township revolts in the 1980s. Today South Africa is faced with the presence of the apocalyptic luring of the international terrorist network ISIS, members of whom have found in South Africa a convenient and strategic hub for (financial) aid and shelter. Understanding how these often fatalistic, anti-modern and sometimes very violent millenarian beliefs found popular support sheds light on the depths of despair in the face of extreme oppression and the social desires of communities who felt and feel marginalized. These movements were not merely struggles for power, aimed at overthrowing existing governing structures, they also sought to anew the purity of society and the collective soul. Exploring how governing authorities responded to these self-proclaimed prophets and how they assessed and valued the images for the future which were propagated in these prophetic callings, allows us to investigate which ideas and ideals were deemed most subversive and destructive to social cohesion and stability. This paper aims to answer these questions by focusing on the first identifiable millenarian uprising in South African history, ‘Onse Liewe Heer’ Jan Paerl and the Khoikhoi uprising against the Dutch Cape Colony in 1788 as well as the present-day struggles of governing authorities to understand the appeal of ISIS at the Cape. By assessing these new and old questions on millenarian beliefs, this papers makes visible the continuing appeal of counter-modern thoughts in colonial and post-colonial South Africa. (Show less)

Leslie Whitmire : Women's Labor in Reconstructing Notions of Masculinity and Gender in Acholiland
n 1986, the spirit Lakwena possessed Alice Auma, an Acholi woman and self-proclaimed messiah, and instructed her to build an army to combat evil forces in Acholi, located in Northern Uganda. At the time, the Acholi were experiencing the beginnings of a civil war between former Acholi soldiers and the ... (Show more)
n 1986, the spirit Lakwena possessed Alice Auma, an Acholi woman and self-proclaimed messiah, and instructed her to build an army to combat evil forces in Acholi, located in Northern Uganda. At the time, the Acholi were experiencing the beginnings of a civil war between former Acholi soldiers and the National Resistance Army of Uganda. After spending forty days in communion with nature on Mt. Opit, Alice recruited former Acholi soldiers to join her Holy Spirits Mobile Forces in an effort to cleanse Acholiland of evil spirits, overthrow the National Resistance Army, and establish a Christian led global government with the Pope at the helm. While Alice’s movement lasted only a few years and ended with her escaping to exile in Kenya, this historical moment continues to have an impact on the Acholi and Uganda as a whole.

Amina Mama, Nargo Okazawa, and Alicia Decker argue that one of the products of militarism are militarized versions of femininity and masculinity. This paper explores the intersection of gender, ethnicity, environment, and spiritualism to place this movement within the discourses of women’s resistance to state sanctioned violence and militarized gender performances. My project explores the Holy Spirits Movement as an unrecognized, yet significant aspect of the Ugandan Women’s Movement by highlighting the connection between Alice’s role as a woman leading a resistance movement and her identity as an Acholi woman and spirit medium, which informed her leadership style and practices. I will also analyze the Holy Spirits Mobile Forces’ early usage of nonviolent tactics which incorporated a reverence for the earth that acknowledged its agency in Acholi traditions in an effort to heal both the land and the people that inhabited it. (Show less)



Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer