Vital Things

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. […]