From Anarchist Studies Volume 31 (2023) Issue 1

Laura Galián, Colonialism, Transnationalism, and Anarchism in the South of the Mediterranean
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, 2020; 218pp; ISBN 9783030454487

Laura Galián’s explicit aim in this study is to locate practical ways of decentring anarchism by shedding its Eurocentric presuppositions. Her method follows the question: who has the right to write the history of anarchism? Refusing to be coerced by ‘the guardians-of-the-temple’, Galián calls for an opening of the canon in order to be inclusive of anti-authoritarian activists South of the Mediterranean, even if these latter barely view their activism as anarchist. Galián deems the leaderless movements of the Arab Spring that erupted in 2011 onward anarchist. To her, the hesitancy of the Arab Spring activists to connect with anarchist literature is understandable given the late-nineteenth century European anarchists’ paternalistic postures vis-à-vis the struggle the colonised had to instigate against colonialism. Historiographical work highlighting divergence and difference in anarchist experiences can reverse the bias against anarchism. For Galián, if the content of the militancy shaping political contention is overlooked, a crack in the canon of anarchism becomes a logical outcome.

The book heavily invests in effecting the crack, specifying that it is true to the spirit of anarchism to decentre all centres, including anarchism. Almost paternalistically, the book assumes that only anarchism will lend Southern Mediterranean activists the necessary substance that is capable of subverting the dictatorships of the market they have been suffering from. Galián is aware that spontaneous eruptions, while important, are not enough to sustain the struggle in the long run. Many readers will agree with Galián, since it is the lack of genuine alternatives that ushered in the restoration of the pre-2011 order. Towards that end, the author promotes anarchism as a philosophy which can be at home with postcolonial studies. Indeed, the author thinks that once the educated elites start introducing anarchism as a commonplace variation of postcolonial studies, a classless and state-less world order will automatically follow suit.

By the end of the book, Galián’s implicit aim emerges. She actively works to transcend Marx’s charge against oriental societies regarding their alleged closed temporalities. The theoretical abstractions pertaining to universality, enlightenment and modernity, or colonialism establish her claim that anarchism can be mobilised South of the Mediterranean for the struggle against dictatorships. Theoretically, readers will find Galián attuned to the practicalities of the struggle in the contexts studied; since in bringing radicalism to the centre of discussion, she insightfully seizes how globalisation has left no stone unturned, levelling all temporalities.

Still, one wants to ask if anarchism is, indeed, the kind of radicalism these subalterns of the south will want to embrace. By leaving money out of the discussion, the likelihood of ending with a quasi-radicalism in lieu of genuine radicalism is more than a mere suspicion. While real domination of capitalism is extinguishing the few remaining vestiges of freedom, Galián insists that radicals from South of the Mediterranean should be viewed on an equal footing with their counterparts from the north! That insistence is, at best, short-sighted. Is it not true that capitalism is fine with the disappearance of the state as long as money is the means for the exchange of commodities? The current situations of Libya, Yemen and Syria are excellent cases proving the point. Hence, capitalism can always drain the subversive radicalism from militants by co-opting them with managerial roles that used to be covered by state officials, all for the ultimate benefit of capitalism.

Fouad Mami, Université d’Adrar (Algeria)

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