The Anarchism and Punk Book Project is publishing four books about the relationships between anarchism and punk. It's 'by the punks, for the punks' - we have 96 contributors from all over the world, and the books will be published by punk-anarchist stalwarts, Active Distribution. We are Crowdfunding to cover translation costs, to provide free books to contributors, and as a subvention for publication costs to make the books as affordable as possible.
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-anarchism-and-punk-book-project
The project started out as a series of panels at the Anarchist Studies Network international conference last September. Building from that, Caroline Kaltefleiter, Will Boisseau, and myself put out our 'Call For Chapters' late last year, and it was way more successful than we had anticipated - so the project quickly expanded from 1 book to 4. We knew that close discussion of the relationships between anarchism and punk has often been lacking in the wider world of punk writing, and that huge response, from a wide diversity of places, really confirmed that for us. It was exciting stuff (despite the massively increased workload!).
It's not that people necessarily reject the relationship between anarchism and punk (though that sometimes happens), but it's very often taken-for-granted, or loosely alluded to in the background of some other area of discussion. Punk and anarchism are nebulous entities, and, as such, the relationships between them are really varied and complex - there's a lot to say here, as the large number of contributors suggests.
The international aspect is also important. Recent writing about punk has really got to grips with this, the concept of 'Global Punk' is prominent, the Punk Scholars Network has just published the Trans-Global Punk Scenes book too. In terms of anarchism and punk, the global resonance is crucial - the response to our call was particularly strong in Latin-America, South East Asia and post-dictatorship Europe. In these contexts, it was very often the case that punk re-introduced anarchist ideas after periods of communist or fascist dictatorship. That's profoundly different to the UK or US, where pre-existing anarchist movements (usually) took quite a snooty attitude to the punk-anarchist upstarts. Snoot versus snot!
We've got contributors working in academia, activists from trade unions and environmental groups, people working in punk-related cultural production - all sorts. Anyone involved in punk has critical thinking skills, just from being part of punk culture - we're always arguing about something, right? So, for us, it's been great to bring the academic critique and on-the-ground activist/cultural producer critique side-by-side. We're encouraging the use of accessible language, and demystifying any jargon along the way, so the books should have a really wide audience.
And they'll be affordable too. Active Distribution have always been committed to keeping prices as low as possible, and with the money we raise through the CrowdFunder, we can help push those prices even lower. I'm starting to sound like an advert for supermarket here ...
The Crowdfunder campaign has had a strong start - hopefully the rewards bundles of free books and posters have been enticing - but we need all the help we can get. If people can't donate directly, it's really helpful if they share it with their networks, friends and comrades (especially the rich ones).
Editors:
Will Boisseau – will.boisseau@hotmail.com
Caroline Kaltefleiter – Caroline.Kaltefleiter@cortland.edu
Jim Donaghey – j.donaghey@qub.ac.uk