A review by samdalefox
Anarchism: The Feminist Connection by Peggy Kornegger

informative inspiring medium-paced

3.5

I bought this from the Pink Peacock (a queer, yiddish, anti-Zionist, anarchist, vegan pay-what-you-can cafe and info-shop in Glasglow which has now sadly closed) so I was hoping for a little more from this book. First published in 1975, I was expecting some parts to be dated, but I was disappointed at just how lacking in intersectionality it was. Kornegger is American - did she deliberately ignore the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army and their vocal anarchists at the time, such as Assata Shakur and Kuwasi Balagoon? Kornegger definitely sticks firmly to second wave white binary feminism in her essays. 

That being said, I liked the conciseness of writing and enjoyed reading about the Spanish Revolution and Paris Commune. I found this much easier to understand than the same history examined by other anarchists, for example Chomsky or Kropotkin respectively. I would have liked her to expand upong the pacifism/armed resitance discourse from a feminist perspective. I also greatly appreciate the referencing throughout and definitions section, this makes the text more accessible to people not familiar with anarchist theory. Kornegger defines anarchism by three major principles:
  1. Belief in the abolition of authority, hierachy, government
  2. Belief in both individuality and collectivity
  3. Belief in both spontaneity and organisation

And buckets the tactics for preparation into:
  1. Educational - how we share our stories with one another
  2. Economic/Political - direct action through sabotage, strike, and boycott
  3. Personal/Political - anarchist affinity groups

Quotes:

[Referring to the French student protestets and wide civil unrest in 1968]
"What is crucial here is the fact that it happened at all. May-June 1968, disproves the common belief that revolution is impossible in an advanced capitalist country. The children of the French middle and working classes, bred to passivity, mindless consumerism, and/or alienated labour, were rejecting much more than capitalism. They were questioning authority itself, demanding the right to a free and meaningful existence. The reasons for revolution in modern industrial society are tus no longer limited to hunger and material scarcityl they include the desire for human liberation from all forms of domination."

"Feminist are dealing with the male domineering attitude toward the external world, allowing only subject/object relationships. Traditional male politics reduces humans to object status and then dominates and manipulates them for abstract 'goals'. Women on the other hand, are trying to develop a conciousness of 'Other' in all areas. We see subject-to-subject relationships as not only desirable but necessary... Together we are working to expand our empathy and understanding of other loving things and identify with those entities outside of ourselves, rather than objectifying them and manipulating them. At this point , a respect for all life is a prerequisite for our very survival."

"Radical feminist theory also criticises male hierachial thought patterns...which alienate us from the continum of human experience. Women are attempting to get rid of these splits, to live in harmoney with the universe as a whole, integrated humans dedicated to the collective of our individual wounds and schisms."

"If we want to 'bring down the patriachy', we need to talk about anarchism, to know exactly what it means and to use that framework to transform ourselves and the structure of our daily lives. Feminism doesn't mean female corporate power or a woman President; it means no corporate power and no Presidents...When we say we are fighting the patriachy, it isn't always clear to all of us that means fighting all hierachy, all leadership, all government, and the very idea of authority itself."

[On prefiguration]
"So what I'm talking about is a long-term process, a series of actions in which we unlearn passivity and learn to take control over our own lives. I am talking about a hollowing out of the present system through the formation of mental and physical (concrete) alternatives for the way things are.

"What we want is not the overthrow of the government, but a situation in which it gets lost in the shuffle."

"Hope is a woman's most powerful revolutionary tool; it is what we give each other every time we share our lives, our work, and our love. It pulls us forward out of self hatred, self-blame, and te fatalism which keeps us prisoners in separate cells. If we surrender to depression and despair now, we are accepting the inevitability of authoritarian politics and patriachal domination. We must not let our pain and anger fade into hopelessness or short-sighted semi-"solutions". Nothing we can do is enough, but on the other hand, those 'small changes'e make in our minds, in our lives, in one another's lives, are not totally futile and ineffectual. It takes a long time to make a revolution: it is something that one both prepares for and lives now. The transformation of the future will not be instantaneous, but it can be total."