In this essay, Pranay Somayajula critically examines the anarchist movement’s relationship to anticolonial politics. Drawing on a rich history of anticolonial movements, from the Kurds in Rojava to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who have sought national liberation and self-determination without being confined by the nation-state, he argues for an anarchist politics of anticolonial solidarity rooted in a radical conception of nationhood without nationalism.
Pranay Somayajula is an Indian-American writer, researcher, and cultural critic currently based in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in outlets including Jacobin, The Nation, and The Drift, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock. He can be found on Twitter at @p_somayajula.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro.
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Essay #62: Clara Vlessing, ‘Remembering Louise Michel: From Anarchist Assassin to Banksy Boat’
Essay #61: Robert Leach, ‘Subverting Good Order’
Essay #60: Chi Shing LEE, ‘Anarchism and Nationalism: Ng Chung-yin’s Anarchist Envisioning of Hong Kong in the Early 1970s’
Essay #59: DaN Mckee, ‘Anarchist: Subverting the System from Within’
Essay #58: Pablo Angel Lugo, ‘Practices of Disobedience and Clandestine Citizenship: A Proposal Towards an Anarchist Theory of Art’
Essay #57: Richard White, ‘A Purity of Rebellion: Anarchism, Animals, and More Than Human Worlds’
Essay #56: Jesse Cohn, ‘White Anarchism’s Trouble with Modernity’
Essay #55: Spencer Beswick, ‘Anarchist Anti-Fascism’
Essay #54: Chris Rossdale, ‘The Limits of Rebellion’
Essay #53: Charlotte Lowell, ‘Is Love a Synonym for Anarchism?’
Essay #52: Nora Ziegler, ‘Radical Hospitality’
Essay #51: Kiara Mohamed Amin & Priya Sharma, ‘Psychedelic Liberation’
Essay #50: Dai O’Brien & Steve Emery, ‘Deaf People and Anarchism’
Essay #49: Kim Kelly, ‘Guns aren’t just for right-wingers’
Essay #48: Gloria Truly Estrelita, ‘A Short History of Anarchism in Indonesia’
Essay #47: Jim Donaghey, ‘Smash All Systems!’
Essay #46: Maia Ramnath, ‘The Not So Postcolonial and the Racial Capitalocene’
Special episode: Black Autonomy Podcast, ‘Black Anarchism Across the Generations’
Essay #45: Hannah Kass, ‘Food Anarchy and the State Monopoly on Hunger’
Essay #44: Jennifer Cole, ‘Social Kropotkinism: The Best New Normal for Survival’
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