Podcasts by Anarchist Essays

Essay #69: Benjamin Franks, ‘Anarchism and Elections’ from 2023-12-04T06:39

In this essay, Benjamin Franks identifies the core principles that lead anarchists to reject participation in democratic elections. It then explores the occasions where anarchists have engaged i...

Essay #68: Carne Ross, ‘Anarchy is Love’ from 2023-11-20T06:02

In this essay, Carne explores the spiritual dimension of anarchism, which he once assumed was more a ‘political’ philosophy about how people make decisions and transact business. He concludes th...

Essay #67: William Marling, ‘Anarchism and Rhetoric’ from 2023-11-06T06:41

In this essay, William Marling asks why there seems to be so much rhetoric in/about anarchism. He digs for an answer in his recent book on Ammon Hennacy, finding an answer in the practice of "pa...

Essay #66: Rhiannon Firth, ‘Disaster Anarchy’ from 2023-10-23T06:00

In this essay, Rhiannon Firth reads from an article published in DOPE Magazine issue 22, which is part 2 of a 2-part summary of her latest book, Disaster A...

Essay #65: Gabriele Montalbano, ‘Anarchism and Labour Movements in Tunisia’ from 2023-10-09T06:13

In this essay, Gabriele Montalbano considers the Italian-speaking anarchists of the end of the nineteenth century and their involvement and legacy in trade union movements and strikes in Tunis d...

Essay #64: Javier Sethness Castro, ‘Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography’ from 2023-09-25T06:01

In this essay, Javier Sethness Castro presents a new, queer reading of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy's life and art. By referencing homoeroticism in Tolstoy's diaries and comparing the anarchist...

Essay #63: Ryan Essex, ‘Anarchy, and Why It Matters for Health’ from 2023-09-11T06:21

In this essay, Ryan Essex considers what anarchy could do for health and healthcare. Drawing on a number of historical and contemporary examples he argues that anarchist thinking and praxis is t...

Essay #62: Clara Vlessing, ‘Remembering Louise Michel: From Anarchist Assassin to Banksy Boat’ from 2023-08-28T06:00

In this essay, Clara Vlessing looks at the cultural memory of Louise Michel (1830-1905). The essay compares Michel’s domestic remembrance with her international afterlives to explore how an anar...

Essay #61: Robert Leach, ‘Subverting Good Order’ from 2023-08-14T06:48

In this essay, Robert Leach discusses the gradual awakening of British radicals after the sleepy 1950s, especially some of the festivals that they mounted.

Robert Leach is former lecturer...

Essay #60: Chi Shing LEE, ‘Anarchism and Nationalism: Ng Chung-yin’s Anarchist Envisioning of Hong Kong in the Early 1970s’ from 2023-07-31T06:36

In this essay, Chi Shing LEE discusses the relationship between anarchism and nationalism. He introduces the anarchist thought of Ng Chung-yin, an important anarchist figure in Hong Kong during ...

Essay #59: DaN Mckee, ‘Anarchist: Subverting the System from Within’ from 2023-07-17T06:15

In this essay, adapted from his recently published book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, DaN McKee reflects on his personal experiences with the inner conflict of being an anarchist teacher...

Essay #58: Pablo Angel Lugo, ‘Practices of Disobedience and Clandestine Citizenship: A Proposal Towards an Anarchist Theory of Art’ from 2023-07-03T05:41

In this essay, Pablo Angel Lugo analyzes the involvement of anarchists in assisting illegal immigrants through the production of forged documents, facilitating their lawful settlement in the UK ...

Essay #57: Richard White, ‘A Purity of Rebellion: Anarchism, Animals, and More Than Human Worlds’ from 2023-06-05T06:15

In this essay, Richard White encourages us to think about why anarchists should embrace the plight of farmed animals, insects and more than human worlds. If anarchism is a understood as a ‘purit...

Essay #56: Jesse Cohn, ‘White Anarchism’s Trouble with Modernity’ from 2023-05-15T06:49

In this essay, Jesse Cohn reconsiders the European anarchist tradition's place in modernity. How might our commitments to modernity's foundations compromise our alliances with peoples whom moder...

Essay #55: Spencer Beswick, ‘Anarchist Anti-Fascism’ from 2023-04-17T06:01

In this essay, Spencer Beswick argues that anarchist infrastructure, values, and tactics played a key role in the development of militant antifascism in the late twentieth century United States....

Essay #54: Chris Rossdale, ‘The Limits of Rebellion’ from 2023-04-03T07:22

In this essay, Chris Rossdale reflects on the status of rebellion as a political concept. While Extinction Rebellion have been the most prominent advocates of rebellion in recent times, the essa...

Essay #53: Charlotte Lowell, ‘Is Love a Synonym for Anarchism?’ from 2023-03-06T06:15

Saidiya Hartman asks, “Is love a synonym for abolition?”. bell hooks writes that “true love requires an ongoing commitment to constructive struggle and change”. This essay proposes that anarchis...

Essay #52: Nora Ziegler, ‘Radical Hospitality’ from 2023-02-13T08:00

In this essay, Nora Ziegler critically explores “radical hospitality” as a diversity of tactics that co-construct relationships of mutual aid across differences of power. Her reflections are bas...

Essay #51: Kiara Mohamed Amin&Priya Sharma, ‘Psychedelic Liberation’ from 2023-01-30T08:05

In this essay, Kiara Mohamed Amin and Priya Sharma explore the liberatory potential of psychedelic trips, arguing that such practices possess the potential to humanise parts of the self that hav...

Essay #50: Dai O’Brien&Steve Emery, ‘Deaf People and Anarchism’ from 2023-01-16T07:28

In this podcast, Dai and Steve discuss the issues that deaf people and deaf communities face in capitalist society and the ways in which deaf people have traditionally framed their engagement an...

Essay #49: Kim Kelly, ‘Guns aren’t just for right-wingers’ from 2023-01-02T08:01

In this essay, Kim Kelly discusses her opinions and experiences with the past and present of leftist gun ownership and armed self-defense. 

Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist, and author...

Essay #48: Gloria Truly Estrelita, ‘A Short History of Anarchism in Indonesia’ from 2022-12-19T08:00

In this essay, Gloria Truly Estrelita provides an overview of the history of anarchism in Indonesia. Co-authored with Jim Donaghey, Sarah Andrieu and Gabriel Facal, this essay discusses the earl...

Essay #47: Jim Donaghey, ‘Smash All Systems!’ from 2022-12-12T08:00

In this essay, Jim Donaghey reads the introductory chapter to the newly published book Smash The System! Punk Anarchism as a Culture of Resistance, edited by Jim Donaghey, Will Boisseau and Caro...

Essay #46: Maia Ramnath, ‘The Not So Postcolonial and the Racial Capitalocene’ from 2022-12-05T08:09

In this essay, Maia Ramnath discusses the concept of the racial capitalocene as a framework for linking anticolonialism and climate justice.  As part of a critical dialogue across time with earl...

Special episode: Black Autonomy Podcast, ‘Black Anarchism Across the Generations’ from 2022-10-31T07:04

This special issue of the Anarchist Essays podcast features a discussion between JoNina Ervin, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, and William C. Anderson. It originally appeared on the Black Auton...

Essay #45: Hannah Kass, ‘Food Anarchy and the State Monopoly on Hunger’ from 2022-10-03T08:03

In this essay, Hannah Kass discusses how the state, capitalism, and property are interconnected systems, working together to produce peasant dispossession and hunger. To challenge these systems ...

Essay #44: Jennifer Cole, ‘Social Kropotkinism: The Best New Normal for Survival’ from 2022-09-19T08:02

In this essay, Jennifer Cole discusses how Peter Kropotkin's early writings on mutualism sit alongside Charles Darwin's writings on human evolution and underpin current interests within evolutio...

Essay #43: Laura Galián, ‘Anarchism in the South of the Mediterranean’ from 2022-08-22T08:01

In this essay, Laura Galián delves into the history of anarchism in the south of the Mediterranean from a historical and historiographical perspective by reviewing the anti-authoritarian geograp...

Essay #42: Sophie Scott-Brown, ‘Adventures in Anarchist Autobiography’ from 2022-08-08T08:01

In this essay, Sophie Scott-Brown explores the life and times of anarchist autobiography. From Proudhon to Kropotkin, Goldman to Read, many anarchists have written their life stories and provide...

Essay #41: Nathaniel Andrews, ‘Anarchist Children and Childhoods in the ‘Argentinian Barcelona’’ from 2022-07-25T08:00

In this essay, Nathaniel Andrews explores both the role of children within anarchist activism, and anarchist understandings of childhood, focusing specifically on the Argentinian city of Rosario...

Essay #40: Sarah Gelbard, ‘Practicing Performances of Punk Anarchism in the Academy’ from 2022-07-11T08:20

In this essay, Sarah Gelbard reflects on the messy relationship between punk, anarchy, and anarchism and ways it can be conceived of as identity, politics, scene, performance, and/or practice. F...

Essay #39: Frankie Hines, ’Anarchism, Literature, and the Problem of Representation’ from 2022-06-27T08:05

In this essay, Frankie Hines argues that an anarchist literary theory requires engaging with the anarchist critique of representation and considering possibilities for non-representational liter...

Essay #38: Dorian Wallace, ‘Liberation Music Therapy’ from 2022-06-13T08:01

In this essay, Dorian Wallace discusses the use of music as a source of emancipatory inspiration, revolutionary practice, and transformational communal healing. He addresses the interconnections...

Essay #37: Janet Biehl, ‘Their Blood Got Mixed’ from 2022-05-30T08:01

In this essay, Janet Biehl discusses her new graphic memoir, Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS, an exploration of the Rojava revolution as of the spring of 2019. Sh...

Essay #36: Elizabeth Vasileva, ‘The Curse of Morality’ from 2022-05-16T08:00

In this essay, Elizabeth Vasileva discusses what kind of ethics are compatible with anarchist principles and makes the case for joyful, relational ways of being together.

Elizabeth Vasile...

Essay #35: Mark Bray, ‘The Anarchist Inquisition’ from 2022-05-02T08:35

In this essay, Mark Bray discusses propaganda by the deed and the roles of human rights and 'terrorism' in the anarchist-led transnational campaigns against the "revival of the Inquisition" in S...

Essay #34: Alice Béja, ‘Emma Goldman, the Glorious Undesirable” from 2022-04-18T08:06

In this essay, Alice Béja discusses how Emma Goldman and other anarchists "Americanized" anarchism in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, using national tropes and references...

Essay #33: Chantelle Gray, ‘Algorithms, Automated Politics, and Anarchist Responses’ from 2022-03-21T07:00

In this essay, Chantelle Gray talks about algorithmic governance - a new art of governing and government that treats individuals as data and the social world as a problem of big data sets - and ...

Essay #32: Michael Denner, ‘Anarty’ from 2022-02-14T09:00

In this essay, Michael A. Denner explores anarchism’s aesthetic attitude towards reality: What does anarchism "look like" in art? Using examples drawn from texts by two Russian thinkers, Leo Tol...

Essay #31: Anthony Ince, ‘Uncharted Territory: Thinking about Space Beyond the State’ from 2022-01-24T08:01

In this essay, Anthony Ince explores how a state-centric understanding of the world, how it fits together, and our place in it, limits both popular and academic ideas of what forms of societal o...

Essay #30: Eric Laursen, ‘Climate Change, Anarchy, and the End of the State’ from 2022-01-10T08:01

In this essay, Eric Laursen discusses the roots of the climate change crisis in the forces driving the modern State. He lays out an analysis that locates overreliance on fossil fuels in the Stat...

Essay #29: Jeff Ferrell, ‘Dumpster Diving as Direct Action‘ from 2022-01-03T08:01

In this essay, Jeff Ferrell discusses his lifelong practice of ‘dumpster diving’ (trash picking, skip diving) as a form of anarchist direct action. He argues that dumpster diving constitutes a d...

Essay #28: Hayyim Rothman, ‘Anarcho-Judaism and the Thought of Avraham Heyn‘ from 2021-12-20T08:00

In this essay, Hayyim Rothman discusses religious Jewish anarchism. Beginning with a survey of its historical and some of its theological foundations, he proceeds to highlight central themes in ...

Essay #27: Adam Barker, ‘Pitfalls of Anarchist Solidarity with Indigenous Communities‘ from 2021-12-13T08:00

In this essay, Adam Barker discusses recurrent problems around non-Indigenous anarchists involved in land reclamation actions, along with Audra, a Kanonsionni'on:we (Ga-noon-soon-knee-on-way) re...

Essay #26: Iwona Janicka, ‘Anarchism: Solidarity with Singularity and Mimesis‘ from 2021-11-29T08:00

In this essay, Iwona Janicka talks about one of the possible ways to understand contemporary anarchism in practice, that is, through the concept of ‘solidarity with singularity’ in a mimetic fra...

Essay #25: Laney Lenox, ‘Methodology as Political Process‘ from 2021-11-15T08:01

In this essay, Laney Lenox discusses working as an anarchist anthropologist and the practical implications of designing methodological tools to reflect this political ethos. Through prioritizing...

Essay #24: Vittorio Frigerio, ‘Anarchism and Literature in France: A Complex Love Affair‘ from 2021-11-01T07:01

In this essay, Vittorio Frigerio explores the often-fraught relationship between anarchism and the literary milieu in France, starting with a discussion of Proudhon’s opinions on literature and ...

Essay #23: Hamish Kallin, ‘Anarchism, Marxism, and the Right to the City‘ from 2021-10-18T08:01

In this essay, Hamish Kallin muses on the links between Henri Lefebvre’s idea of a right to the city and the politics of anarchism. 

Hamish Kallin is Lecturer in Human Geography at the Un...

Essay #22: Jim Yeoman, ‘Anarchy on Two Wheels‘ from 2021-10-04T08:00

In this essay, Jim Yeoman explores the intersection of anarchism and cycling, through the case study of Amsterdam's Provo movement of the mid-1960s. Yeoman focuses on the portrayal of the group'...

Essay #21: John-Erik Hansson, 'William Godwin as an Anarchist: Reinventing a Canonical Figure' from 2021-09-06T08:00

In this essay, John-Erik Hansson examines how and why the 18th-century philosopher William Godwin has been portrayed – positively and negatively – as an anarchist by writers in the 20th century....

Essay #20: Emma Brown Dewhurst, 'Recovering Redemption: Maximus the Confessor, Anarchism, and their Importance for Christian Ethics' from 2021-08-23T08:00

In this essay, Emma Brown Dewhurst discusses the relevance and importance of anarchist theory for reorientating Christian ethics, especially in relation to the theology of St Maximus the Confess...

Essay #19: Ruth Kinna, 'Peter Kropotkin: Well-Being for All' from 2021-08-09T08:00

In this essay, Ruth Kinna discusses Peter Kropotkin's defence of communism. Exploring his idea of 'well-being for all' she argues that libertarian communism entails re-thinking economic principl...

Essay #18: Jon Bigger, 'The Case for an Anarchist Exploration of Dr Who' from 2021-07-26T08:00

In this essay, Jon Bigger sets out the case for an anarchist ‘exploration’ of the BBC TV drama Doctor Who.

Jon tutors in A-Level Government and Politics in the UK, regularly contributes t...

Essay #17: James Flexner, 'Food Fight: Subsistence and Stable Heterarchies in Vanuatu' from 2021-07-12T08:00

In this essay, about the islands of southern Vanuatu, which presents an alternative to the traditional Western Civilisation narrative, James Flexner explores the ways that a 5,000 year history o...

Essay #16: Sky Croeser, 'Anarchist Teaching Online' from 2021-06-28T08:00

In this essay, Sky Croeser reflects on her experience attempting to make anarchist interventions into university teaching, including teaching online. She suggests some ways in which university t...

Essay #15: Lauren Golder, 'Voltarine de Cleyre and the Stakes of Anarchist Free Love' from 2021-06-14T08:00

In this essay, Lauren Golder looks at gendered interpretations of free love and sex radicalism through the life of American anarchist-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912). During the Gilded...

Essay #14: Alexander Aston, 'Flame of the Red Flag: Reflections on ecology, social cognition and the Paris Commune' from 2021-05-31T08:00

In this essay, Alexander Aston investigates the relationship between urban ecology, social cognition and the emergence of the Paris Commune of 1871. He considers how an anti-cartesian process-an...

Essay #14: Alexander Aston, 'Flame of the Red Flag: Reflections on ecology, social cognition and the Paris Commune' from 2021-05-31T08:00

In this essay, Alexander Aston investigates the relationship between urban ecology, social cognition and the emergence of the Paris Commune of 1871. He considers how an anti-cartesian process-an...

Essay #13: Anders Sandström, 'Anarchist Accounting' from 2021-05-17T08:00

In this essay, Anders Sandström explores the history of accounting and argues for the need for accounting and bookkeeping also in a future anarchist economy without private capital owners.

Essay #12: Deaglán Ó Donghaile, 'Oscar Wilde: Anarchism and Aestheticism' from 2021-05-03T08:00

In this essay, Deaglán Ó Donghaile discusses Oscar Wilde’s interest in and support for anarchism. Anarchism influenced Wilde’s literary writings enormously, yet he is still regarded by many read...

Essay #11: Craig Clark, 'Publishing is Posh' from 2021-04-19T08:00

In this essay, Craig Clark explores the incompatibility of publishing that hopes to shape events and the publishing industry – and some anarchised alternatives.

Craig Clark is a member of...

Essay #10: Jack Saunders, 'What are we clapping for?' from 2021-04-05T08:00

In this essay, Jack Saunders explores our complex relationship with the NHS, its staff and its history.

Jack Saunders is Lecturer in modern British history at University College London. H...

Essay #9: Dani Spinosa, 'Theft on the Ground Floor' from 2021-03-22T07:01

In this essay, Dani Spinosa reads the contemporary campus as a non-place for the precarious labourer. She considers the role of labour relations and the remote teaching of the pandemic to consid...

Essay #8: Marcus Collins, 'Were the Beatles anarchists?' from 2021-03-08T08:00

In this essay, Marcus Collins considers what the Beatles thought about anarchists and what anarchists thought about the Beatles in sixties Britain. He identifies curiosity and ambivalence on bot...

Essay #7: Geoffrey Swain, 'The Russian Anarchists and the Treaty of Brest Litovsk' from 2021-02-18T12:26:29

In this essay, Geoffrey Swain looks at the impact of the Brest Litovsk Treaty (3 March 1918) on the fragile relationship between the Russian Anarchists and the Bolsheviks. The Russian Anarchists...

Essay #6: Tom Goyens, 'Frederico Kniestedt and the Possibilities of Resistance' from 2021-02-01T11:39

In this essay, Tom Goyens takes a look at anarchist possibilities in the face of transnational militarism and fascism during the 1920s and 1930s through the largely forgotten figure of Frederico...

Essay #5: Catherine Oliver, 'More-than-Human Precarity' from 2021-01-18T13:06:35

In this essay, Catherine Oliver takes a look at the world beyond the human through a critical lens of precarity in Britain, exploring how humans’ lives with other species have been destroyed, an...

Essay #4: Constance Bantman, 'Militant Afterlives: Jean Grave after 1918' from 2020-11-27T17:24:04

In this essay, Constance Bantman argues that looking at periods of defeat and isolation in militant careers is important, and explores these perspectives through the example of the French anarc...

Bonus: Call for Papers: Anarchism&Punk from 2020-11-27T16:27:01

Anarchism and Punk - Call for Chapters We are inviting chapter submissions for an edited volume on the interrelationships between anarchism and punk. Send 250-300 abstracts to Will Boisseau (wil...

Essay #3: James Gifford, 'Rue Sainte-Ursule' from 2020-10-30T16:16:51

In this work of creative non-fiction, James Gifford explores how narrative form can engage with anarchism by looking for evanescent moments of freedom between reactionary nostalgia for the past ...

Essay #2: Ole Birk Laursen, 'Decolonising Anarchism: M.P.T. Acharya, Anticolonialism, and Anarchism, 1922-1954 from 2020-10-19T14:24:42

In this essay, Ole Birk Laursen looks at the Indian anarchist M.P.T. Acharya (1887-1954), his activities within the international anarchist movement, and his attempt to bring anarchism into Indi...

Essay #1: Lisa Matthews, 'Solidarity, the Sea, and Subverting State Power' from 2020-09-23T10:32:44

In this essay, Lisa Matthews looks at examples of refugee and migrant solidarity, the importance of that solidarity not being limited to nation-states and citizenship, and the sea as a site of p...