The Ethos of Autonomous Space

: Paradoxical Experiments in Everyday Liberation

Abstract

As an ongoing experiment in the abolition of domination in all its forms, anarchist social centres aspire to prefigure a freer more equal world in the present. Within the experimental character of these practices, however, is the recognition that they may not always not live-up to their emancipatory aspirations. Calling attention to such failings, so as to modify existing practices, is one of the central aims of movement critique, and it is within this critical tradition that I position this thesis.

Where movement critique has been oriented to the revelation of asymmetric power relations and a re-distribution of power to already-formed subjects, in this thesis I engage with the ways in which domination 'returns' through practices of liberated subject-formation. I argue that as anarchism is assembled at the social centre site, the subjects performed and presupposed by anarchist practices vary. Through a detailed autoethnographic study of two anarchist social centres in Bristol, England, I critique what I argue are the three dominant modes of liberated subject-formation enacted at these sites: the resisting subject, the rational subject and the subject of liberated desire. I argue that these forms of freedom are flawed in virtue of their commitment to sovereign subjectivity, which, in turn, positions personal freedom and collective equality in an intractable antagonism. As a route through this problem, I draw on Foucault's later work on the care of the self to analyse already-existing antioppressive practices enacted at these sites. In doing so, I propose and develop a mode of anarchist subject-formation that is at once liberating for the individual and inherently egalitarian.

Date of Award	7 Jan 2014
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Sponsors	Economic and Social Research Council
Supervisor	Wendy Larner (Supervisor) & Mark Jackson (Supervisor)