Year: 2020

Working Translations

Flowers of Solitude… — Chapter II — Education and Sentiment

August 27, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Flowers of Solitude and Points of Reference — project page Chapitre II — Education et sentiment Chapter II — Education and Sentiment SUR L’ÉDUCATION Toutes hypothèses mises de côté, chaque genre, chaque espèce possède une intelligence adaptée à son stade d’évolution morphologique, à son existence intrinsèque. Une fourmi possède l’intelligence d’une fourmi et un dromadaire l’intelligence d’un dromadaire. L’intelligence d’un lion est aussi éloignée de l’intelligence d’un homme que l’intelligence d’une taupe de celle d’un pigeon. L’intelligence d’une terre-neuve ne ressemble pas plus à celle d’un lévrier que l’intelligence d’un parisien à celle d’un hottentot. Autres sont l’intelligence de l’habitant […]
Working Translations

E. Armand, “L’abîme / The Abyss” (1910)

August 21, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
All the avant-garde sociétaires — social-democrats, revolutionaries of every shade, various communists — say that the individual is a “product of the environment.” It would be more precise to say that individuals are products of their environment. And to add that the individual is more specifically the outcome of an ancestral line whose origin goes back to the animal night. Taking into account that in certain individuals the characteristics of temperament and constitution of a particular ancestor essentially dominate.

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Contr'un

Notes on “Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism”

August 20, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
These are notes from a Reddit debate on “lifestylism.” They are by no means an exhaustive critique of Bookchin’s most divisive text, but perhaps they give some reasons to believe that more is not necessarily needed. Looking at Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, these problems jump out immediately: Part 1: Bookchin makes his sweeping statements about the two tendencies in the anarchist tradition, focusing on what he thinks of as “[a]narchism’s failure to resolve this tension, to articulate the relationship of the individual to the collective, and to enunciate the historical circumstances that would make possible a stateless […]
Working Translations

E. Armand, “Le choix / The Choice” (1906)

August 14, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Le choix. Il faut choisir : laisser la route large à d’autres : Prendre un sentier perdu, mal ou peu fréquenté, Où l’on croise des fous, des pionniers, des apôtres ; Sombre tant que le cœur frémit, épouvanté ! Ah! ce n’est pas la voie qui mène vers la gloire ; Les efforts les plus purs demeurent incompris ; C’est la lutte sans trêve et jamais la victoire; On sème avec ardeur, on récolte mépris ! L’infâme trahison vous guette à chaque pas ; Vous pleurez, à vos pleurs l’écho répond : méfiance. Vous peinez, mais en vain : jamais […]
Featured articles

Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism — No. 6

August 9, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Life as experience tears up programs, treads decorum under foot, breaks the windows, descends from the ivory tower. It abandons the City of Established Facts, out through the Gate of Settled Matters and roams, vagabond, in the open countryside of the Unforeseen.” Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism: Project page Related links: Posts:   Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism No. 6. — Songs of Solitary Selves Just when it looked like summer had settled in for good, August delivered a bit of rain. And just when I thought I had pretty well wrapped up this set of […]
Working Translations

“L’authentique embusqué / The Genuine Shirker” (1915)

August 6, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
This text, which was apparently separately published in mid-1915 and is preserved in the Paris Archives de la préfecture de police, is attributed to E. Armand in Les En-dehors: Anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes à la “Belle Époque.” It is noted as a response to an article in La Guerre sociale denouncing the embusqués (wartime shirkers), after that paper turned from antimilitarism to support for the Union Sacrée. This apparently incomplete (and perhaps not entirely reliable?) transcription has circulated online and in pamphlet form under Armand’s name. There is nothing about the prose that strikes me as particularly characteristic of Armand’s […]
Working Translations

Georgette Ryner, “If I returned to your country” (1924/1926)

August 5, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Georgette Ryner was the daughter of Han Ryner, a teacher and a regular contributed to E. Armand’s paper l’en dehors. The prose poem translated here is presented in two slightly different versions. The first appeared in La pensée française in 1924 and the second is the form in which it was published in the collection Dans la ronde éternelle in 1926. Si je retournais dans votre pays (La pensée française) Si je retournais dans votre pays, comme il serait triste ce retour au pays autrefois aimé, au pays où vous n’êtes plus ! Dans l’escalier quand je le gravirais, je […]
Featured articles

Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism — No. 5

August 3, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Life as experience tears up programs, treads decorum under foot, breaks the windows, descends from the ivory tower. It abandons the City of Established Facts, out through the Gate of Settled Matters and roams, vagabond, in the open countryside of the Unforeseen.” Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism: Project page Related links: “The Gift Economy of Property“ “Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks“ “Property, Individuality and Collective Force“ “What could justify property?“ Pierre Leroux in “The Present” and “The Spirit of the Age” Posts: Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism No. 5. — Give and Take: The First Society I would, […]
E. Armand

E. Armand — 1901

July 30, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: E. Armand [main page] Bibliography and Chronology L’Ère nouvelle (1901-1911) [Fragments] [Presse Anarchiste] [Bianco] E. Armand, “La grève générale,” L’Ère nouvelle 1 no. 1 (Mai 1901): 1. E. Armand, “Avis importants: A nos abonnés,” L’Ère nouvelle 1 no. 1 (Mai 1901): 3. E. A., “Pages de l’évangile: La vie,” L’Ère nouvelle 1 no. 1 (Mai 1901): 3. E. A., “Au cours de la plume,” L’Ère nouvelle 1 no. 1 (Mai 1901): 4. E. A., “Une médiation par mois,” L’Ère nouvelle 1 no. 1 (Mai 1901): 4. E. A., “La scission de Lyon,” L’Ère nouvelle 1 no. 2 (Juin […]
E. Armand

E. Armand — Chronology and Bibliography

July 27, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
E. Armand — Chronology and Combined Bibliography This page will remain very much a work-in-progress, but the goal is to gradually incorporate all of the details gleaned from various more focused searches into the skeleton of a biography. My intent is to begin working chronologically through Armand’s career, filling in gaps let in earlier work. The fact is, however, that research seldom respects such tidy intentions, so all I can promise is that earlier sections will tend to be more complete than the later ones. An important part of the work here will be assembling an edition of E. Armand’s […]