Specters of Anarchy
Subtitle: Literature and the Anarchist Imagination
Publisher: Algora Publishing
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 281
ISBN-13: 9781628941418
Description: This lively volume featuring works by innovative scholars presents the compelling potency of anarchist literature through distinct voices. Anarchism has greatly influenced literary production and provided inspiration for a diversity of writers and literary movements.

Edited by a longtime anarchist theorist, this exciting collection of engaging works highlights the rich articulations of anarchism and literary creations. It places anarchism at the center of analysis and criticism. Authors examined include Octavia Butler, John Fowles, James Joyce, Ursula LeGuin, Eugene O’Neill, B. Traven, and Oscar Wilde, among others. The collection shows the richness of anarchist movements in politics and culture.

Specters of Anarchy examines critically the generally overlooked intersections, engagements, debates and controversies between literature and criticism and anarchist theories and movements, historically and in the present period. Synthesizing literary criticism with the theory and practice of anarchism, this book offers a re-reading of important literary and political works.

Anarchist politics is a major, and growing, contemporary movement, yet the lack of informed analysis has meant that the actual perspectives, desires and visions of this movement remain obscured. Lost in recent sensationalist accounts are the creative and constructive practices undertaken daily by anarchist organizers imagining a world free from violence, oppression and exploitation. An examination of some of these constructive anarchist visions, which provide examples of politics grounded in everyday resistance, offers insights into real world attempts to radically transform social relations in the here and now of everyday life.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: The Anarchist Imagination: Literature/Culture/Anarchy; label: 1.
title: Wilde and the Victorian Mould: The Artist’s Individualism through Anarchy [Agathe Brun]; label: 2.
title: Anarchy, Ecology, and the Care of the Self: The Legacies of Emerson and Thoreau [James Brown]; label: 3.
title: Suspicious of the State: The Anarchist Politics of James Joyce [Josephine A. McQuail]; label: 4.
title: Representing Chaos: Spanish Anarchism in Literature [Michael D. Gilliland]; label: 5.
title: The Anarchist Imagination and the Materiality of Cultural Production: Anonymous Authorship in B. Traven [Scott Drake]; label: 6.
title: “The Freedom that Allows Other Freedoms to Exist”: Anarchistic Influence in The French Lieutenant’s Woman [Bryan L. Jones]; label: 7.
title: “One Who, Choosing, Accepts the Responsibility of Choice”: Ursula K. Le Guin, Anarchism, and Authority; label: 8.
title: Anarchy in Critical Dystopias: An Anatomy of Rebellion [Max Haiven]; label: 9.
title: Staging Anarchy: On Anarchism and Drama [Jeff Shantz]; label: 10.
title: What Things Could Come? Xenogenesis and Post-Anarchist Feminism [Michelle Campbell]; title: List of Contributors