Anarchy, Power, and Poststructuralism

“Finally came Stirner, the prophet of contemporary anarchism.”
— Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feurebach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886)

In 1994 Todd May initiated a new turn in contemporary theory–poststructuralist anarchism, commonly abbreviated to “post-anarchism.” May’s seminal study, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism called attention to ways in which the political philosophy of anarchism echoes the concerns of poststructuralist thought, notably in its critique of oppression. Taking aim at Marxism, he (rightly) argued that anarchism has a more sophisticated grasp of how oppression disperses across the social field. According to May, Marxists did not address the hierarchical relations sustaining this state of affairs. Instead, they called for the seizure of the reigns of power by a benighted proletariat that would subordinate society to its will by restructuring economic relations in the image of socialism (49).1 Historically, anarchists opposed this, because they were suspicious of any social formation, however well intentioned, exercising power over others. Anarchism interrogated relations of domination with the goal of destroying all representational forms of power, precisely because such politics are always already at one remove from the represented (May, 50).