Anarchist Studies: No. 16.1

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that history looms large in this issue: Allan Antliff's examination of abstract art takes us back to the '30s and focuses on Herbert Read. Alexandre Christoyannopoulos provides an assessment of Tolstoy's Christian anarchism and its enduring relevance; Charles Thorpe and Ian Welsh take inspiration from Bakunin, in their analysis of anarchism, science and technology; and Ginger Frost examines ideas of free love in Edwardian England. I don't think this marks a 'return to the sages', as John Quail lamented in last issue, at least not in so far as any of the authors here are looking for answers or solutions or timeless truths or in the sense that they are re-treading familiar, well-worn ground.Rather, the historical bent of this collection reflects a far more complex and nuanced set of ideas: a desire to recover a long-neglected, poorly understood and badly misrepresented past; to discuss the parameters of anarchist thought (perhaps the relationship between anarchism and the anarchistic); to develop new concepts using the insights of past theory and/or to reflect on early experiments in anarchist living and the some of the problems of what's now called prefigurative politics or the politics of everyday life.
Brian Martin asked what anarchist theory should be and where it should be going. Maybe, as part of this discussion, we need to reflect of the point of history and/or the kind of history we think is relevant to anarchist studies.