Description: This volume of collected essays brings together conversations, papers, and debates from the Third Annual North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nathan Jun and Jorell A. Melendez aspire to go beyond a simple collection of papers and instead aim to maintain a dialogue among different academic fields with the sole task of comprehending and re-thinking anarchist studies. With over twenty-one chapters written by a diverse range of activists, organizers, musicians, artists, poets, and academics, this book transgresses the apparent simplicity of the study of anarchism with a dynamic and interdisciplinary approach that crystallizes and emulates the heterogeneous nature of the anarchist ideal. From theory and philosophy to historical analyses, methodologies, and perspectives, from different manifestations in the arts, media, and culture to religion, ethics, and spirituality, from the intersectionality of animal liberation and queer struggles to contemporary praxis and organizing, the authors explore different topics from a critical perspective that is often lacking in their respective academic fields. This book is a must- buy for critical teachers, students, and activists interested in studying anarchism and the different ways in which we can transform our reality.
Brief description: Nathan Jun is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and coordinator of the Philosophy program at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. He is the author of Anarchism and Political Modernity (2011) and the co-editor of Deleuze and Ethics (with Daniel W. Smith, 2011) and New Perspectives on Anarchism (with Shane Wahl, 2009). Jorell A. Melendez Badillo is the author of Voces libertarias: Los origenes del anarquismo en Puerto Rico (2013) and is one of the founding members of the Colectivo Autonomo C.C.C. He is a teacher and radical historian by trade and has been an active member of his local punk community for more than a decade.