Anarchisms in the Making

Author(s)

Felix Ringel

Abstract

Recently, new political but also conceptual hopes have been invested in the study of anarchy as a non-prescriptive, native category, proposing a dialogue between actually existing anarchism and the discipline of anthropology. My article contributes to this anthropology of anarchists with an analysis of a specific form of temporal reasoning exhibited in the social, ethical and lifestyle practices of an anarchist group in the East German city of Hoyerswerda. By developing the term ‘creative presentism’, I present these contemporary anarchist practices as an arena of knowledge production in which the postmodern, neoliberal evacuation of the near future – so convincingly detected by Jane Guyer – is significantly challenged by an urge for a different relationship to the future. Anarchist practices thus ethnographically add to the growing anthropology of the future and additionally offer new grounds for a self-reflexive investigation of the role hope and the future play in our own knowledge practices.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

Critique of Anthropology

Volume

32

Pages

173-188

ISSN

0308-275X

Publication date

2012

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504009 Ethnology

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/838b8ee6-f9a3-4bec-9924-9e96ab3ed619