Erica Lagalisse - Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples

Erica Lagalisses Occult Features of Anarchism is a wonderful and learned provocation. Taking the concept of modern politics as a form of theology and magical ritual, she traces some aspects of the origins of socialist and anarchist politics and performance to the Hermetic tradition that influenced the Radical Enlightenment and its originators, in, for example, the work of Spinoza. But she also argues that this magical or Hermetic tradition rested on a masculinist coup against womens knowledge, especially in the transformation of women healers into malevolent witches. This work, however, is not merely a work of academic research. Lagalisse then argues that the gatekeeping behavior of anarchist and radical militants in the global justice movement, the Occupy / Square movements, and their more recent spin-offs reproduce the masculinist guardians of the esoteric knowledge of the Freemasons and other secret societies that draw directly or indirectly on the Hermetic tradition. Thus, forms of indigenous knowledge in the Global South and the widespread popularity of conspiracy theories in the Global North are belittled, ignored, and not engaged to the peril of the lefts emancipatory project. Lagalisse applies to the concepts of cultural capital and indirectly the New Class a new and interesting synthesis.

Dr. Carl Levy, professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of works including Social Histories of Anarchism, Journal for the Study of Radicalism (2010)

Occult Features of Anarchism is an engrossing read that hijacked my attention from start to finish. Lagalisse excavates the theological, spiritual roots of anarchism to identify some of the contemporary shortcomings of left activism. Engrossing, enlightening, and often surprising, the book delights and dazzles as it ruminates on a stunning array of topics from gender and intersectionality to secret societies, the occult, and conspiracy. A must read for those interested in the history of anarchism, rethinking the role of secrecy in revolutionary movements, and emboldening anarchist organizing today.

Dr. Gabriella Coleman, professor of anthropology at McGill University and author of works including Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (2015)

This is surely the most creative and exciting, and possibly the most important, work to come out on either anarchism or occultism in many a year. It should give rise to a whole new field of intellectual study.

Dr. David Graeber, professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and author of works including Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011)

A tour de force. Any self-respecting radical should know this history, right down to the dirty history of the A-for-anarchism sign from its origins within Freemasonry to its association with magic. Ripping apart with historical detail our contemporary common sense we learn the tactics of how elite radicals claim power through difference. The significance of this history for the politics of now should not be underestimated and should most certainly be more widely known. Essential reading.

Dr. Beverley Skeggs, director of the Atlantic Fellows program at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science and author of works including Class, Self, Culture (2004)

Lagalisse deftly demonstrates the gendered qualities of anarchism and how these have been undertheorized. Trained as an anthropologist, she applies her astute ethnographic eye to a historical study of the left, unearthing the development of classical anarchism and socialism within private brotherhoods defined by gendered exclusion, yet granted as the public sphere of politics. Her study of anarchism as a historical object complements her previous ethnographic studies of the public and private taken for granted within todays anarchist social movements, for example, her essay Gossip as Direct Action (2013). Fun and fascinating, playful and serious at once, Occult Features of Anarchism further reveals why and how the social worlds of the left often carelessly reproduce and even further entrench mainstream forms of gendered power.

Dr. Sally Cole, professor of Anthropology Emerita, Concordia University, and author and editor of works including Contesting Publics: Feminism, Activism, Ethnography (2013)

In ancient Greek philosophy, kairos signifies the right time or the moment of transition. We believe that we live in such a transitional period. The most important task of social science in time of transformation is to transform itself into a force of liberation. Kairos, an editorial imprint of the Anthropology and Social Change department housed in the California Institute of Integral Studies, publishes groundbreaking works in critical social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, geography, theory of education, political ecology, political theory, and history.

Series editor: Andrej Grubai

Kairos books:

Practical Utopia: Strategies for a Desirable Society by Michael Albert

In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism: The San Francisco Lectures by John Holloway

Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism edited by Jason W. Moore

Birth Work as Care Work: Stories from Activist Birth Communities by Alana Apfel

We Are the Crisis of Capital: A John Holloway Reader by John Holloway

Archive That, Comrade! Left Legacies and the Counter Culture of Remembrance by Phil Cohen

Beyond Crisis: After the Collapse of Institutional Hope in Greece, What? edited by John Holloway, Katerina Nasioka, and Panagiotis Doulos

Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Silvia Federici

Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples by Erica Lagalisse

Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language by Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater

The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava by Thomas Schmidinger

Occult Features of Anarchism

Erica Lagalisse

2019 PM Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 9781629635798

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931523

Cover Image: Mixed media collage by author, 2017. The collage features images from the Rosicrucian Manifestos (The Temple of the Rose Cross, Teophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, 1618), Tommaso Campanellas Civitas Solis (City of the Sun, first edition, 1623), Laurence Dermotts rendition of the Masonic Arch (1783), the Pyramid of Capitalism, popularized by the Industrial Workers of the World (circa 1911), as well as designs and artwork by Giordano Bruno, William Blake, and others less famous, including a fragment from the zine Anarchism and Hope by Aaron Lakoff (Montral, 2013).

Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com