Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Euthanasia of Government: Classical Anarchism Reconsidered
- 2 Crowned Anarchy: Towards a Postanarchist Ontology
- 3 An Infantile Disorder: Anarchism and Marxism
- 4 The Horizon of Anarchy: Radical Politics in the Wake of Marx
- 5 Debating Postanarchism: Ontology, Ethics and Utopia
- 6 Conclusion: Postanarchism and Radical Politics Today
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Conclusion: Postanarchism and Radical Politics Today
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Euthanasia of Government: Classical Anarchism Reconsidered
- 2 Crowned Anarchy: Towards a Postanarchist Ontology
- 3 An Infantile Disorder: Anarchism and Marxism
- 4 The Horizon of Anarchy: Radical Politics in the Wake of Marx
- 5 Debating Postanarchism: Ontology, Ethics and Utopia
- 6 Conclusion: Postanarchism and Radical Politics Today
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In Chapter 5 I suggested that postanarchism occupies a certain utopian terrain. However, this was to be thought of as a political utopia, a utopia of the here and now; a utopianism that is deeply engaged in political struggles rather than retreating into passivity. In other words, it is important to think of the inevitable utopian dimension of radical politics in terms of action rather than stasis, engagement rather than escape; as a certain political space of insurgency and contestation through which the sovereignty of the existing order is confronted in the name of something other. The central challenge of this book has been to think politics outside the state – to explore the constituent principles and ethical contours of a political space which seeks autonomy from the order of the state. However, the desire for autonomy, which I see as the horizon of radical political struggles today, cannot be realised in any meaningful sense in the form of apolitical separatism, as a retreat from the world of struggle and contestation. The exodus from Empire that Hardt and Negri speak of will inevitably involve an active resistance to domination. The struggle for an outside, for another world, will always be the work of politics, and will involve a contestation with the limits of this world. We should think of autonomy, then, as an open ended project – as something constructed through ongoing practices of opposition and democratisation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Postanarchism , pp. 167 - 185Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010