Modern Marronage: Black Anarchism as a Black Atlantic Tradition, 1969-1989.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: History Faculty
Abstract
My thesis explores a distinct and oft unrecognised historical force and identity: black anarchism. Continuing and expanding upon my MPhil research, the chief concern of my DPhil is to historicise and comprehend the presence of radical libertarian ideologies and actions in black diasporic communities in the 1970s and 1980s. My DPhil research is motivated by my desire to widen comprehensions of the 'black radical tradition' to encompass anarchism.
When engaging with the existing historiography of anarchism and the black radical tradition one finds two distinct discourses with minimal points of overlap. My engagement with the intertwined narratives of both illustrates a contrasting historical reality, allowing me to accentuate an almost unexamined tradition within a tradition: a strain of black radicalism engaged in practices and rhetoric elsewhere understood as anarchism. Moreover, the narratives I am interrogating have seldom found form outside of the master narrative of blackness or anti-racism in historiography. By framing black radical narratives in the specific context of anarchic practice and ideology, I will illuminate their nuances as well as the underappreciated breadth of black activism. Through emphasising the appeal and invocation of anarchism within black radicalism, I will be in direct dialogue with recent and influential work on black radical politics such as Rob Water's Thinking Black, James G. Cantres' Blackening Britain, and Keisha Blaine's Set the World on Fire, challenging and contributing to historiographical trends which are yet to consider black anarchism's existence or significance.
I offer black anarchism not as a rigid or closed political identity, but, instead, as a historical phenomenon of black individuals and communities using anarchistic practices, principles, and rhetoric in search of black liberation. Although the chosen timeframe is not exhaustive of this tradition, it does highlight a crucial moment of black radical politics. Taking form in Black Power's wake, along with black feminism's growing purchase, and the renewed global reach of Rastafarianism, black anarchism finds itself entangled in the engendering of, and responses to, numerous conjunctural moments in the 1970s and 1980s. My thesis will centre the temporal and spatial factors that influenced black anarchism's invocation and efficacy and explore how black lived experience moulded its articulation. There are two political genealogies this research should alter: how is anarchism, as a political theory and historical phenomenon, modified by the inclusion of black radical history? And, correspondingly, how do these narratives of anarchism adjust the history of black radicalism?
To answer these questions, I will utilise case studies found at the margins of black history and beyond the radar of anarchist history. For example, one chapter will focus on the establishment of black communes in London, primarily the 'Black House', led by Trinidadian born Black Power activist Michael X. This offers a window into Black Power's proximity to anarchism and will give a hitherto neglected narrative the archival attention it warrants. I will then turn to the intricacies of radical black feminist political action throughout the period. Olive Morris' pivotal involvement in the squatters' movement in the 1970s, for instance, begins to illustrate the relationship between anarchist activities and black women's radical politics. Crossing the Atlantic, I will dedicate a chapter to the Philadelphia black revolutionary group MOVE, contextualising their anarcho-primitivist black identity. The anarchy of Caribbean consciousness will comprise a through-line of my thesis, as I ask how radical Caribbean identities, such as Rastafarianism, conceived of (and dealt with) the state and the influence this had throughout the diaspora. These four constitutive elements of my thesis are tied together not by a teleological historical assumption, but rather the ma
When engaging with the existing historiography of anarchism and the black radical tradition one finds two distinct discourses with minimal points of overlap. My engagement with the intertwined narratives of both illustrates a contrasting historical reality, allowing me to accentuate an almost unexamined tradition within a tradition: a strain of black radicalism engaged in practices and rhetoric elsewhere understood as anarchism. Moreover, the narratives I am interrogating have seldom found form outside of the master narrative of blackness or anti-racism in historiography. By framing black radical narratives in the specific context of anarchic practice and ideology, I will illuminate their nuances as well as the underappreciated breadth of black activism. Through emphasising the appeal and invocation of anarchism within black radicalism, I will be in direct dialogue with recent and influential work on black radical politics such as Rob Water's Thinking Black, James G. Cantres' Blackening Britain, and Keisha Blaine's Set the World on Fire, challenging and contributing to historiographical trends which are yet to consider black anarchism's existence or significance.
I offer black anarchism not as a rigid or closed political identity, but, instead, as a historical phenomenon of black individuals and communities using anarchistic practices, principles, and rhetoric in search of black liberation. Although the chosen timeframe is not exhaustive of this tradition, it does highlight a crucial moment of black radical politics. Taking form in Black Power's wake, along with black feminism's growing purchase, and the renewed global reach of Rastafarianism, black anarchism finds itself entangled in the engendering of, and responses to, numerous conjunctural moments in the 1970s and 1980s. My thesis will centre the temporal and spatial factors that influenced black anarchism's invocation and efficacy and explore how black lived experience moulded its articulation. There are two political genealogies this research should alter: how is anarchism, as a political theory and historical phenomenon, modified by the inclusion of black radical history? And, correspondingly, how do these narratives of anarchism adjust the history of black radicalism?
To answer these questions, I will utilise case studies found at the margins of black history and beyond the radar of anarchist history. For example, one chapter will focus on the establishment of black communes in London, primarily the 'Black House', led by Trinidadian born Black Power activist Michael X. This offers a window into Black Power's proximity to anarchism and will give a hitherto neglected narrative the archival attention it warrants. I will then turn to the intricacies of radical black feminist political action throughout the period. Olive Morris' pivotal involvement in the squatters' movement in the 1970s, for instance, begins to illustrate the relationship between anarchist activities and black women's radical politics. Crossing the Atlantic, I will dedicate a chapter to the Philadelphia black revolutionary group MOVE, contextualising their anarcho-primitivist black identity. The anarchy of Caribbean consciousness will comprise a through-line of my thesis, as I ask how radical Caribbean identities, such as Rastafarianism, conceived of (and dealt with) the state and the influence this had throughout the diaspora. These four constitutive elements of my thesis are tied together not by a teleological historical assumption, but rather the ma
Organisations
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ORCID iD |
| Caine Lewin-Turner (Student) |