For our twenty-third reading group we will be reading the first half of From Bakunin to Lacan by Saul Newman. From the blurb:
In its comparison of anarchist and poststructuralist thought, From Bakunin to Lacan contends that the most pressing political problem we face today is the proliferation and intensification of power. Saul Newman targets the tendency of radical political theories and movements to reaffirm power and authority, in different guises, in their very attempt to overcome it. In his examination of thinkers such as Bakunin, Lacan, Stirner, and Foucault Newman explores important epistemological, ontological, and political questions: Is the essential human subject the point of departure from which power and authority can be opposed? Or, is the humanist subject itself a site of domination that must be unmasked? As it deftly charts this debate’s paths of emergence in political thought, the book illustrates how the question of essential identities defines and re-defines the limits and possibilities of radical politics today.
We will be reading From Bakunin to Lacan over two months. This month we will be reading the introduction and the first four chapters. A free online version of the book can be found on the Anarchist Library here.
Our friends at Freedom Press here host the reading group for free, so please support them by using them for your supply of radical books and zines.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 28th of July, 19:00, at Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX. You are welcome to come and join in the discussion even if you have not finished the reading.