Anarchism in the United States
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Anarchism in the United States spans a wide range of anarchist philosophy, from individualist anarchism to anarchist communism and other less known forms. The first American anarchist publication was The Peaceful Revolutionist, edited by Josiah Warren, whose earliest experiments and writings predate Pierre Proudhon. Major individualist anarchists include Henry David Thoreau, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Murray Rothbard. Other influential anarchists include anarcho-communist Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, social ecologist Murray Bookchin, and linguist Noam Chomsky.
America has two main traditions, native and immigrant, with the native tradition being strongly individualist and the immigrant tradition being collectivist and anarcho-communist. Individualist anarchism in the United States is strongly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In the arts
Many American artists of the early 20th century were influenced by anarchist ideas, if they weren't anarchists themselves. The Ashcan School of American realism included anarchist artists, as well as artists such as Rockwell Kent and George Bellows that were influenced by anarchist ideas. Abstract expressionism also included anarchist artists such as Mark Rothko and painters such as Jackson Pollock, who had adopted radical ideas during his experience as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration. Pollock's father had also been a Wobbly.
David Weir has argued in Anarchy and Culture that anarchism's only had some success in the sphere of cultural avant-gardism because of its failure as a political movement; cognizant of anarchism's claims to overcome the barrier between art and political activism, he nevertheless suggests that this is not achieved in reality. Weir suggests that for the "ideologue" it might be possible to adapt "aesthetics to politics" but that "from the perspective of the poet" a solution might be to "adapt the politics to the aesthetics". He identifies this latter strategy with anarchism, on account of its individualism. Weir has also suggested that "the contemporary critical strategy of aestheticizing politics" among marxists such as Fredric Jameson is a product of the demise of marxism as a state ideology. "The situation whereby ideology attempts to operate outside of politics has already pointed Marxism toward postmodernist culture, just as anarchism moved into the culture of modernism when it ceased to have political validity".
In the late 20th century, anarchism and the arts could primarily be associated with the collage works by James Koehnline, Johan Humyn Being, and others, whose work was being published in anarchist magazines, including Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed and Fifth Estate. The Living Theatre, a theatrical troupe headed by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, were outspoken about their anarchism, often incorporating anarchistic themes into their performances.
In the 1990s, anarchists were involved in the mail art movement, which can be described as "art which uses the postal service in some way." This is related to the involvement of many anarchists in the zine movement. And many contemporary anarchists are involved in making art in the form of flyposters, stencils, and radical puppets.
See also
