Contr'un

Fresh Summer Threads

My sense is that anarchy is always related to the enormous quantities of collective force emerging from modern social organization. In otherwise archic, governmentalist societies, it manifests as an often destructive force, threatening governments but not sparing the people. […]

Featured articles

Constructing Anarchisms: Notes for a Preface

If asked, I generally say that I have been an anarchist for close to thirty years. And because of all the other things that I have been for much longer—a big nerd, basically—that has translated into nearly three decades of sometimes obsessive research into anarchist history and theory, art and literature, etc. At this point, it’s hard to imagine thinking of myself as anything other than an anarchist. I have worn a large number of hats over the years and continue to do so, but few of them represent anything like an identity. I have mixed feelings, in general, about identities. “I am large, I contain multitudes”—and those multitudes don’t always get along in a particularly unified or even dignified manner. With anarchist, however, the unity and the multiplicity seem to be simultaneously implied. Je suis anarchiste—I am anarchic. […]

Featured articles

Alceste, “Louis Moreau, Engraver” (1923)

A serious or charming illustrator of daily labor, wanting to bring into the life of the humble a little hope and a bit of the ideal, Louis Moreau, with a big heart overflowing with kindness and justice, strives to stylize in a few sober notations the touching environment where the workers work and live. […]

Working Translations

Albert Soubervielle, “Vivre / To Live” (1923)

Most people submit, blissfully follow the path that was laid out for them beforehand, disputing nothing and taking their place in the ranks assigned to them in the herd. They are perfect citizens, respectful of the catechisms taught and the laws imposed, but we could not see in them beings living according to nature and reason. […]

French texts

Jacques-Antoine Vila, “Les Mémoires d’un Forçat” (1898)

A Cayenne, quelques-uns de mes camarades de chaîne et moi, ceux dont l’énergie n’était pas atteinte et éteinte par le genre de vie cruelle du terrible pénitencier nous nous étions souvent jurés, si nous parvenions une bonne fois à nous évader, de faire connaître au monde civilisé, à l’univers entier, les horreurs épouvantables, les perpétuelles tortures subies par des êtres humains dans cet autre dit de justice. […]