Four years ago this month, the word "anarkata" made its way to the internet through the learning and theorizing spaces we created. It was in conversation with a Black anarchist trajectory of mutual aid and political education we came out of that unfolded during the 2010s.
This trajectory was shaped by how the Black Lives Matter, Occupy, Standing Rock and other struggles interacted with a general tendency towards different forms of decentralized, and ideologically variegated resistance to the State and to class society, esp the Pigs and Property.
That tendency itself has to be viewed in light of the anti-colonial and socialist struggles of the 20th century, both their points of unity and their fractures, the latter of which was exploited by reactionaries internal to said movements and the ruling classes of the West.
Authority often defined how "power to the people" was conceived of in these struggles, even as autonomous elements that had their roots in generations prior, aided and advanced the revolutionary cause.
The transformation of the Political landscape into State capitalism and neocolonialism, not merely just feudal and bourgeois liberal structures, came with an entrenchment of class society, the expansion of Patriarchy (Grand and Minor), and of coercion over the body.
Somehow, oppressed people had to respond to these four major pillars of modern authority, the gendered imbrication, and economic domination plus environmental devastation they are tied with. The responses have been diverse but one unifying theme is a renewed anti-imperialism
An anti-imperialism that rejects hierarchy, critiques liberal humanism, redefines the dialectic/material analysis, and grounds itself in bodily autonomy and an ecology. Some of the radicals moving in this vein have claimed Anarchism, some have not.
Within and around Anarchism there have been several decades of revolutionary theory to bring clarity to these developments, especially among people of color, particularly Black/African folks, and in the 21st century, alot of them have been lumpen, disabled, queer/trans.
"Anarkata" was never about subsuming this all into one label or tendency, but rather to open a conversation among Black anarchist/autonomist radicals to examine this. And, we see the fruits of the conversation we hoped to have playing out, both online and offline.
It is a blessing and gift to be able to study, to struggle, to build solidarity, and to honor spirit in and around the Anarkata Turn. To learn and to fight, to love and to get free, to teach and inspire, to fly and set the World ablaze, to call the whirlwind and give them a storm
It is now the 2020s. Things feel apocalyptic precisely because the Man done made a house of the planet, but it can't stand for too long. And we locked up under the floorboards and in the closet, and pushed into the fields: we the damned, the maimed & mad, the reviled, must fight
We must be the WILD THINGS that el hombre no puede domar.
(Anarkata is for Black ppl only btw)
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