LITERATURE, COMMUNITY AND UTOPIA: OUTLINES OF AN ANARCHIST READING
(Abstract)

Known mostly for its social critique, for its preaching of insurgency or for its so-called utopian imagining of the future stateless communities, anarchism has always been involved in the literary and theoretical discussions of its time. It should be of no surprise then that anarchism has developed with and out of its extremely prolific literary production. Of course, we cannot speak of literary anarchism as of one unitary or coherent body of work. However, we can speak of it in the sense of a deleuzian minor literature. The study tries to illustrate, on one hand, the specific understanding that anarchism has regarding literature as a method and as an ethic engagement; and, also, its understanding of literature in relation to community. The examples are taken mainly from 19th century French anarchist literature and critique. The paper does not aim to an exhaustive presentation, but rather wishes to formulate some possible further research directions. On the other hand, using some of the concepts presented by Jean-Luc Nancy concerning community and literature, we propose a reading of anarchist theory and literature, underlining the possible contact and translation points with Nancy’s perspective and direction of thought.

Keywords: anarchism, anarchist literature, utopia, community, minor literature, politics.