"Good Politics" - Property, Intersectionality, and the Making of the Anarchist Self

"Contemporary anarchist activists aim to manifest non-hierarchical social relations within their own social milieu, as well as topple the social hierarchies that characterize the dominant society, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism: Anarchists observe the importance of "means" matching "ends" and work to bring about "a new world in the shell of the old". I argue however that anarchist activism in North America does not entirely subvert the logic of neoliberalism. Colonial property relations, bureaucratic legalism, and statistical fantasies of the sovereign state (among other linear equations) continue to inflect anarchist politics and self-making projects: the rhizome is re-territorialized.This multi-sited ethnography explores anarchist networks that cross Québec, the United States and Mexico to demonstrate how anarchist practice is mired in contradiction, especially to the extent that this practice is shaped by notions of self and property (propriety) dominant in English-speaking North America. My comparative study illustrates similarities and differences among diverse anarchist scenes, throwing into relief the particular practices of university-educated Anglo American leftists, and draws on anthropological, feminist and critical race theory to show how they have preempted the black feminist challenge of "intersectionality" by recuperating it's praxis within the logic of neoliberal self-making projects and property relations, a particular economy of value in which certain identities are foregrounded and others--especially that of class--are effectively concealed. Ultimately the anarchists are presented as a limit case: even within their "autonomous" everyday practices, the propertizing self prevails in what I call the game of "good politics" - the Bridge of all prestige games, and one which structures much contemporary critical academic scholarship as well. " --