New Anarchist Research Group Programme: January-March 2018

As usual, all meetings will be held in the MayDayRooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH

Please note there is a small charge to cover the cost of room hire.  

"Our meetings are friendly and informal, and we would like to hear from you if you would like to make a presentation at one of our future meetings." 

 Saturday 27th January 2018  2:00pm - 4:30pm

Would anarchism be good for our health? A look at libertarian theory and practice in relation to medical services.

Liz Willis

Starting from some of the work in the RaHN (Radical History Network) booklet “The NHS is 60” (2008), the talk will look briefly at the history of medicine, challenging the narrative of (male-dominated) progress and bringing out critiques of the medical establishment. It will look at alternative theories about how health services and medical care might be provided in a different kind of society and at a few attempts to implement some of these ideas, whether as political policy (other ways the NHS might have gone), small-scale experiment (the Peckham Centre) or on a wider scale in social revolution (Spain 1936). Discussion might focus on how practical these various sorts of initiative might be now; whether technological change has made medicine more or less accessible and its practice more or less authoritarian (is “patient power” achievable/desirable?); and how libertarians might contribute to debates about providing better health for all as well as taking defensive action to prevent things getting worse. 

Liz Willis has a political background in YCND (Aberdeen), anarchism, and Solidarity (London). A main focus since 2006 has been the Radical History Network based in North East London and its blog (http://radicalhistorynetwork.blogspot.com). Her pamphlet ‘Women in the Spanish Revolution’ was published by the Solidarity group in 1975 and has been reprinted in various editions. She has self-published a few other small pamphlets, e.g. ‘Mary Wollstonecraft and the Doctors’ (2017).

Also available (most of it) online in two parts at smothpubs.blogspot.com

Previously on this blog: 
Can Medicine be Libertarian?
Writing about medicine and health care in the Spanish Civil War 
And elsewhere, related: 
NOT INSIDE FOR THEIR HEALTH: Some medical considerations relating to London prisons,  c.1750-1850 (20-page online pamphlet) ; Book review, The Health of Prisoners: Historical Essays.
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Saturday 24th February 2018 2:00pm - 4:30pm

Anarchist Cartography participatory session

Rhiannon Firth

Critical cartography starts from the idea that maps – like other texts such as the written word, images or film – are not (and cannot be) value-free or neutral. Maps reflect and perpetuate relations of power, often in the interests of dominant groups. Critical cartography builds on this critique to advocate possibilities for alternative mapping practices. A lot of the existing literature focuses on theory and practices that aim to provide tools for communities to make rights and resource-claims from powerful entities. These approaches have been criticised because they often rely on making a single representation of very diverse communities, thus perpetuating existing exclusions and hierarchies. They tend to mimic existing mapping practices and spatial representations, and they frequently operate to legitimate the agencies they are making claims from. Dominant mapping conventions are often internalised so it is difficult not to fall into the trap of attempting to use the Master's tools to dismantle his house. There is a need for further work and discussion around the potential for using maps and map-making as part of self-organised resistance. The purpose of this session is to think through the conditions for an anarchist cartography. The session will involve an introduction to critical cartography literatures, a discussion of existing activist initiatives, and a facilitated map-making session.

  

Rhiannon Firth is Research Fellow at the University of East London, where she conducts research and teaching at the intersection of Political Theory and Education Studies. She supervises PhD students and lectures undergraduate students on radical social movements, community organising and global politics. She received her PhD, funded by the ESRC, from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Her thesis involved ethnographic work with intentional communities throughout the UK. She has since published articles on topics including urban utopianism, critical pedagogy and methodology, utopian theories of time and temporality, critical cartography, pedagogies of the body and feminist consciousness-raising. She is currently writing about anarchist approaches to organising around natural disasters.

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Saturday 24th March 2018  2:00pm - 4:30pm

Louise Michel in London (1890s-1905): a Political Reassessment

Constance Bantman 

This talk will propose a political reassessment of the long period of time spent in London by the French Communard-turned-anarchist Louise Michel (1890–1905). It emphasises the breadth of her militant activities as well as her very concrete engagement in specific political projects, and highlights the coherence of her political outlook and activities. This perspective challenges predominantly masculinist portrayals of Michel, which focus heavily on sentiment as an explanation for her political activism, and downplay her overall agency as a militant. It also highlights the limitations of methodological nationalism in analysing Michel’s activities in exile. Four key aspects will be examined: Michel’s print and open-air propaganda; her network-building activities; her contribution to libertarian pedagogies through the ‘International socialist school’ which she set up in Fitzrovia in the early 1890s; and her campaigning activities for the defence of the right of asylum and support for political refugees, at a time when liberal understandings of asylum were being questioned.

  Constance Bantman is a senior lecturer at the University of Surrey. Her main research interest is the history and methodology of anarchist transnationalism, with specific reference to the French movement before 1914. She has written a book on French anarchist exiles in London before 1914 (https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/60219; free access at  https://www.surrey.ac.uk/englis writer and editor Jean Grave (initial findings here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-review-of-social-history). 

"An English tribute to the French Commune
dedicated to the workers of both countries."

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For some more early 2018 listings, see earlier post.