Postanarchism: A Politics of Anti-Politics

This article outlines a politics of postanarchism, which is based on a radical renewal—via poststructuralist theory—of classical anarchism’s critique of statism and authority and its political ethics of egalibertarianism. I contend that while many of the theoretical categories of classical anarchism continue to be relevant today—and indeed are becoming more relevant with the collapse of competing radical projects and what might be seen as a paradigm shift from the representative politics of the party and vanguard to that of movements and decentralized networks—its humanist and rationalist epistemological framework needs to be rethought in the light of poststructuralist and postmodern theories. Here I develop an alternative understanding of anarchism based on a nonessentialist politics of autonomy