Rhiannon Firth
My research focuses on utopianism, social movements, radical pedagogy and DiY-culture and their relationships to structures of domination and resistance. I have done ethnographic and participatory research with housing and worker's co-operatives, intentional communities, eco-villages and social movements. I am currently working on projects about disaster anarchism and radical politics of technology.
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Books by Rhiannon Firth
Or email author for more information: r.firth"@essex.ac.uk
This book considers how the UK government’s response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic disadvantages the working class, and how mutual aid, based on anarchist principles, can be used as a force for social change.The authors draw on Marxist and anarchist thought in class theory and social movement analysis to demonstrate that the virus and its material and discursive consequences are an active part of continuing class struggle and class interpolation. Preston and Firth examine how plans for quarantine and social isolation systematically work against the needs of the working class, and rely on classed assumptions about how markets and altruism operate.
In the face of neoliberal methods of dealing with a pandemic, ranging from marketization, disaster capitalism, to a strengthening of the State, Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the UK explains how radical alternatives such as social movements and mutual aid can be implemented to better cope with current and future crises.
By re-examining central concepts and thinkers in political theory, this book re-casts the concepts of utopia and citizenship both as part of the classical philosophical tradition and simultaneously as part of the cutting edge of radical alternatives. This book includes never-before published ethnographic research, interviews and photographs from a range of autonomous UK communities, including intentional communities, social centres and eco-villages, to show how the boundaries of politics and citizenship can be questioned and proposes an innovative methodology inspired by classical and post-structural anarchism. By considering ideas and practices that are generally considered to be marginal to mainstream political theory and practice, the book encourages readers to think about longstanding and central political debates in an entirely new, and creative way.
Utopian Politics will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, ethics and citizenship.
Papers by Rhiannon Firth
In addition to the original foreword by George Woodcock there is an excellent new introduction by Matt Adams which situates Berneri’s work in the context of her life and her 1940s milieu surrounding Freedom Bookstore in Whitechapel, London (just down the road from my house, and where 80 years later I also hang out sometimes!).
There is also a postscript by Kim Stanley Robinson and an Afterword by me in which I attempt to carry on Berneri’s work by charting the trajectory of utopianism since her death.
Thanks James Proctor for inviting me to do this & for excellent editorial support & all my friends who read drafts
Available now in the US from https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1008 with 50% off using the coupon code: JULY. Available for pre-order in the UK from https://pmpress.org.uk/product/journey-through-utopia/ with 50% off using the coupon code: preorder. Also keep an eye out for copies at your local bookstore.
The chapter moves on to the intentional communities movement as a living example of critical, anarchistic utopianism. It is argued that intentional communities are incredibly diverse, not all are anarchist, though many draw on anarchist principles. This section explores anarchist approaches to property relations, decision-making and geographic scale and federation in the movement. Finally, the chapter covers controversies and tensions within and between anarchism and the intentional communities movement, including leftist versus post-leftist visions of social change, commitment to longevity versus temporariness and informality versus democratic structuring.
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this chapter seeks to critique pedagogies of
moulding and to map and theorize alternatives. We begin by summarizing “moulding,”—why it is incompatible with post-representational politics, and the ways in which it persists in contemporary pedagogical theory. We then explore Stirner’s anarchism, demonstrating the complicity of moulding pedagogies with political representation. We draw on further sources of inspiration including Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) three stages of schizoanalysis as well as practices of feminist consciousness-raising in the 1970s. Using these diverse sources, we seek to provide a working model of pedagogy without moulding, which can give rise to autonomous, self-valorizing subjects of becoming.
towards activist initiatives, a lot of the literature focuses mainly on theory and is light on alternative practices, failing to explore their pedagogical and transformative value. Furthermore, those literatures that do study practice tend to focus on ‘counter-mapping’, for example enabling indigenous communities to make resource claims. Such practices undoubtedly have progressive uses but have also been criticized for investing in dominant spatial practice and for perpetuating exclusions and hierarchies.
This paper argues for a critical cartographic practice based on an anarchist ethos of anti- rather than counter-hegemony, drawing ideas of cartographic pedagogy as affect, affinity and performativity. Furthermore it argues that such practices already exist and ought to be expanded. Using David Graeber’s ethnographic methodology of ‘utopian extrapolation’ the paper will draw on material found in the ‘map archive’ of the 56a infoshop in London to begin to inspire and imagine an anarchist cartographic pedagogy.
Or email author for more information: r.firth"@essex.ac.uk
This book considers how the UK government’s response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic disadvantages the working class, and how mutual aid, based on anarchist principles, can be used as a force for social change.The authors draw on Marxist and anarchist thought in class theory and social movement analysis to demonstrate that the virus and its material and discursive consequences are an active part of continuing class struggle and class interpolation. Preston and Firth examine how plans for quarantine and social isolation systematically work against the needs of the working class, and rely on classed assumptions about how markets and altruism operate.
In the face of neoliberal methods of dealing with a pandemic, ranging from marketization, disaster capitalism, to a strengthening of the State, Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the UK explains how radical alternatives such as social movements and mutual aid can be implemented to better cope with current and future crises.
By re-examining central concepts and thinkers in political theory, this book re-casts the concepts of utopia and citizenship both as part of the classical philosophical tradition and simultaneously as part of the cutting edge of radical alternatives. This book includes never-before published ethnographic research, interviews and photographs from a range of autonomous UK communities, including intentional communities, social centres and eco-villages, to show how the boundaries of politics and citizenship can be questioned and proposes an innovative methodology inspired by classical and post-structural anarchism. By considering ideas and practices that are generally considered to be marginal to mainstream political theory and practice, the book encourages readers to think about longstanding and central political debates in an entirely new, and creative way.
Utopian Politics will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, ethics and citizenship.
In addition to the original foreword by George Woodcock there is an excellent new introduction by Matt Adams which situates Berneri’s work in the context of her life and her 1940s milieu surrounding Freedom Bookstore in Whitechapel, London (just down the road from my house, and where 80 years later I also hang out sometimes!).
There is also a postscript by Kim Stanley Robinson and an Afterword by me in which I attempt to carry on Berneri’s work by charting the trajectory of utopianism since her death.
Thanks James Proctor for inviting me to do this & for excellent editorial support & all my friends who read drafts
Available now in the US from https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1008 with 50% off using the coupon code: JULY. Available for pre-order in the UK from https://pmpress.org.uk/product/journey-through-utopia/ with 50% off using the coupon code: preorder. Also keep an eye out for copies at your local bookstore.
The chapter moves on to the intentional communities movement as a living example of critical, anarchistic utopianism. It is argued that intentional communities are incredibly diverse, not all are anarchist, though many draw on anarchist principles. This section explores anarchist approaches to property relations, decision-making and geographic scale and federation in the movement. Finally, the chapter covers controversies and tensions within and between anarchism and the intentional communities movement, including leftist versus post-leftist visions of social change, commitment to longevity versus temporariness and informality versus democratic structuring.
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this chapter seeks to critique pedagogies of
moulding and to map and theorize alternatives. We begin by summarizing “moulding,”—why it is incompatible with post-representational politics, and the ways in which it persists in contemporary pedagogical theory. We then explore Stirner’s anarchism, demonstrating the complicity of moulding pedagogies with political representation. We draw on further sources of inspiration including Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) three stages of schizoanalysis as well as practices of feminist consciousness-raising in the 1970s. Using these diverse sources, we seek to provide a working model of pedagogy without moulding, which can give rise to autonomous, self-valorizing subjects of becoming.
towards activist initiatives, a lot of the literature focuses mainly on theory and is light on alternative practices, failing to explore their pedagogical and transformative value. Furthermore, those literatures that do study practice tend to focus on ‘counter-mapping’, for example enabling indigenous communities to make resource claims. Such practices undoubtedly have progressive uses but have also been criticized for investing in dominant spatial practice and for perpetuating exclusions and hierarchies.
This paper argues for a critical cartographic practice based on an anarchist ethos of anti- rather than counter-hegemony, drawing ideas of cartographic pedagogy as affect, affinity and performativity. Furthermore it argues that such practices already exist and ought to be expanded. Using David Graeber’s ethnographic methodology of ‘utopian extrapolation’ the paper will draw on material found in the ‘map archive’ of the 56a infoshop in London to begin to inspire and imagine an anarchist cartographic pedagogy.