Projects

Contr'un

The Anarchism of the Encounter: A Distillation

July 28, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur
Ultimately, the most robust forms of anarchist thought are likely to result from the connection — encounter, conjugation, etc. — of more detail-oriented sorts of synthesis with this kind of distillation in the context of ongoing practical application. In a book, the scope of application is obviously limited, but hopefully that can be one kind of strength.

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Contr'un

PROJECT: Vital Things

May 23, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
There is an element of anarchist theory that keeps imposing itself on my studies, often in the most unexpected times and places, which I think of — very imprecisely, I’ll admit — as a kind of vitalist tendency. By this I mean that there is a surprisingly common tendency, when attempting to speak about anarchy in its positive aspects, to make a connection to a range of ideas (life, sex, fecundity, progression, etc.) that are at once “natural” and disruptive of any very fixed, authoritative form of living or organizing social life.

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Contr'un

Extrications

August 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Posts in the series: [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] It’s been roughly 25 years since I first committed myself to the study of anarchist history and theory. And I can break that span down into three general periods: two decades during which I understood the work as a simple matter of “filling the gaps” in a traditional anarchist narrative that I had not yet come to seriously challenge, five years during which the tensions between anarchist history and anarchist tradition have posed all kinds of theoretical and practical problems, and, at this point, a few […]
Projects

Proudhon Library Projects

May 23, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] The next phase in the organization of the Proudhon Library archive is a series of projects, with the goal of establishing more clearly the development of Proudhon’s though, particularly in the later works. These are long-term, exploratory projects, often focused on the notebooks and unpublished fragments, so expect that they will all advance by fits and starts as relevant material is unearthed. Proudhon’s Social Science — Goal: To summarize key principles of Proudhon’s social scientific theory. Principles of Nationality and Property — Goal: To establish French texts and English translations of the theoretical portions of Proudhon’s […]