pacifism - book - 1966 - Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History

Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History
Staughton Lynd (ed)
Bobbs-Merrill
1966
530 pages

Nonviolence in America is a large anthology of texts that all share the advocacy of non-violent resistance as a means of effecting social change. The book is edited by Staughton Lynd, an American dissident and historian who, over the course of his life as an activist, has taken on a variety of social causes and deployed an equally diverse number of strategies to raise awareness of them. Nonviolence in America is one of the first publications in a fairly lengthy and impressive bibliography that has continued up until 2011.

Lynd’s anthology of writings by American authors espousing techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience was published in the mid-1960s and it was likely compiled, in part, as an inspiration to the burgeoning anti-war movement and the new left, to show a long history of such forms of activism in American society. The earliest writings include late 18th century texts written by Quaker abolitionists, and proceeds from there to the contemporary-to-publication Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the United States.  The anthology is great for including items such as Henry David Thoreau’s classic essay Civil Disobedience in their entirety rather than reducing such an important piece to excerpts or key passages.  Furthermore, the book also includes pieces from seemingly unlikely sources such as anarchists like Voltairine De Cleyre and labour leaders describing auto-worker sit-down strikes during the most dramatic period of organized labour history in America.

The anthology never waivers from its focus and demonstrates a strong history of effective non-violent direct action activism in a society that appears obsessed with violence. It is a testament to the historical repetition of the enormous moral power of enduring violence without returning it. The book was published in the year before the Black Panthers formed their first chapter in Oakland and fingered the trigger of revolutionary violence in 1960s America. The emergence of the BPP produced an already forming schism in the American Civil Rights movement and inspired other groups such as the SDS splinter group, The Weathermen, to pursue violent action. Lynd’s anthology was published again in 1995, when the anti-globalization movement was building, and the debates of the merits of violent vs non-violent protest tactics were renewed and continue today.

anarchism - book - 2010 - We Are An Image From the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008

We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008
A.G. Schwarz, Tasos Sagris, and the Void Network (eds)
AK Press
2010
371 pages

We Are an Image from the Future is a collection of statements and testimonies pertaining to the anarchist uprising in Greece that began at the end of 2008.  The spark was the December 6 killing, by police, of a teenager named Alexandros Grigoropoulos, in the Exarchia neighborhood (essentially an anarchist/activist district) of Athens.  Rioting began within an hour of the shooting, and it hasn’t really stopped.

Makeshift Memorial at the site of Alexandros Grigoropolous' shooting

This book is almost 400 pages of photos and statements about the riots that erupted in Athens and other Greek cities following Grigoropolous’ killing.  The immediate anti-athoritarian frustrations that the rioters expressed in those initial few weeks evolved into a variety of concerns that have carried a vast and complex social movement through daily direct actions right up to this year.  The book’s title is prophetic, of course, as most of the anti-austerity outbursts in Europe, the Wisconsin strikes, the “Arab Spring” and the Occupy movement, and all of the general global unrest, has followed Greece.  

Schwarz and Sagris’ book includes many testimonies by riot participants and activist organizers, describing what they did, and what they witnessed.  Included are many accounts of street fighting with police and discord amongst activists over planning and ideology (which are pretty standard components of such books) and expressions of outrage over the actions of police and government.  Aside from the killing of the Athens teen and the resulting riots, there were three stories included in We Are an Image that stood out to me.  The first was a description of the occupation of a television station while it was broadcasting from one of its studios.  The second was the discussion with photographer Kostas Tsironis, who took a photograph of a police officer pointing a gun at protestors and was subsequently censored and fired from his position at a conservative newspaper called Eleftheros Typos.  

Tsiorias' photo of the police

The third story, which was referred to often by other contributors to this book, was of the vicious acid attack on labour leader Konstantina Kuneva, who survived the attack which has since been regarded as a symbolic example of the intense cruelty of a capitalist system in decline.  The first of these stories details the brazenness of the activists involved in these riots

We Are an Image of the Future is good for providing readers with the voices (it should be noted that many of the texts it includes were translated from Greek) of those people who were directly involved with the Greek riots of 2008.  It primarily gives readers the anarchist perspective on events, and more moderate leftist perspectives are largely absent, and the perspectives of the far right are not included to any extent.  Also this book is quite extensive and lengthy, and yet it only covers the first year of the events in Greece that have continued for at least three more years.

PS, a google image search on Kostas Tsiorias will result in many more images of the uprisings in Greece.

book - 2001 - Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader

Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader
Chris Kraus and Sylvère Lotringer (editors)
2001
Semiotext(e)
421 pages

Semiotext(e) is an American publishing company founded by French expatriate, Sylvère Lotringer, with at least a thirty year history of producing interesting and high quality texts on a wide array of topics.  Semiotext(e) began in the mid-to-late 1970s as a journal of cultural theory, however in the early 1980s the journal became a book publisher of radical political theory, avant-garde fiction, and postmodern philosophy.  Semiotext(e) was also, in fact, one of the first publishers to bring translations of French cultural theory to American markets.  Thinkers like Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard owe some of the credit for their ascendancy in North American scholarship to Semiotext(e).  

    Hatred of Capitalism, first published shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, contains a collection of brief texts that represent much of the eclectic publisher’s repertoire.  The reader including writings on radical politics by European (see text by German RAF terrorist, Ulrike Meinhoff) and American activists (see Black Panther member,  Assata Shakur)  and brief works of cultural theory by thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault, Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Jean-Francois Lyotard.  Short pieces by a number of other writers are also present, including associate of filmmaker John Waters’, Cookie Mueller, the surrealist philosopher Georges Battaille, and the transgressive writers Kathy Acker and her literary godfather, William S Burroughs.  These readings are collected into a number of sections grouped according to a vague literary theme.

The book was published following an agreement made between Semiotext(e) and MIT Press for the latter to distribute the books of the former.  This agreement followed the dissolution of an alliance between Semiotext(e) and the Brooklyn NY based anarchist publisher Autonomedia, which produced a number of great books.  Not represented in Hatred of Capitalism, then, are the books with titles that reference Semiotext(e) but were possibly published more a result of Autonomedia’s work - including the radio-themed Jim Flemming-edited volume, Radiotext(e). Also missing are any excerpts from the far reaching anthology, Semiotext(e) USA, which seemed to be a product of Lotringer’s contacts with French theorists and the Autonomedia contacts with American underground writers and mail artists. The status of these books with regards to the Semiotext(e) catalogue is unclear, but they contained some great material and it is unfortunate that they are not represented in Hatred of Capitalism.  Meanwhile, other early anthologies, such as the book Polysexuality, edited by François Peraldi (a now deceased Canadian psychoanalyst), and the recently republished The German Issue, are heavily represented.

The bulk of Hatred of Capitalism is made up of the writings of reputable philosophers, writers, and radicals, whose current reknown (and certainly already by 2001) has extended well beyond the Semiotext(e) milieu.  The presence of these writers make the reading of this volume worthwhile, especially since many pieces are culled from the very early, difficult to find Semiotext(e) journals of the late 1970s.  It seems like some pieces are present simply so a particular theorist is represented, such as the Jean-François Lyotard piece titled ‘Energumen Capitalism’ which is largely an expression of approval for the work of Deleuze and Guattari.  What I most appreciated about Hatred of Capitalism, however, were the pieces of creative writing, which were quite good, and which I previously ignored when browsing the company’s catalogue.  Furthermore, some pieces are from books that I cannot find in the Semiotext(e) catalogue, and were likely never published, making Hatred of Capitalism the only source for certain materials.

This book is relevant as a survey of Semiotext(e)'s publishing history, but it also relevant for denoting  how a book publisher can be a site for a number of divergent radical tendencies.  Semiotext(e) has been, since the early 1980s, a preeminent book publisher with regards to a number of strains of countercultural activity.  The company has consistently published strong and critical texts in the fields of fiction, philosophy, politics and art.  Also Semiotext(e) has been a site of convergence for a radical academia and street activism and arts.   Hatred of Capitalism allows a reader to glimpse these aspects of the publisher’s decades long mission.