Facing Autonomy: Recent Episodes
Zara Richter and Sher Ali Khan
Sher Ali Khan and Zara Richter have formed this project named "Facing Autonomy" as a combination of Marxist author CLR James and the global movement most well known for originating in Italy named Autonomist Marxism. Specifically Facing Autonomy is a leftist blog and podcast in honor of American-British author CLR James and his mid twentieth century combination of anti-racist politics, Trotskyist deviationism and Anarchist or Council Communist approaches. James' work in many parts of his life represents the wide swath of leftist political approaches used in the American and European 20th Century. In addition to James, Autonomist Marxists from Italy, such as Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri and Sylvia Frederici, among others, have been key in exposing the failures and limits of traditional forms of marxist, anarchist and liberal organizing which attempt to sway the working class through a vanguardist organizational sensibility that institutes a divide between organizational leadership and the rank and file. Facing Autonomy takes on all of these questions in our blogs and podcasts on a weekly basis! Feel free to email us or tune in to expand your notion of how the organized left can connect to the freely expressive workers whose autonomy is always manifesting in differing forms.
In this podcast, host Zara along with newly added Facing Autonomy Collective member Flo of London UK interview Psychiatric patient activist Sasha Durakov about his website Unsoundmind.org and about his work in Hearing Voices Network and his broader stances on matters of antipsychiatry in relation to anarchism.
Zara, Sher, Arturo and Tancrede have a conversation about “Critique Of Violence” by Walter Benjamin. We discuss the various notions of “political general strike” and “proletarian general strike” contained in Benjamin’s landmark essay and we also relate the notions of violence in the essay to current events such as the farmer’s protest in India, the right wing attack on the US government of January 6th and the George Floyd Uprising of last summer.
In this interview with Zara and Sher of the Facing Autonomy Podcast, famed Anarchist writer Peter Gelderloos initially sketches out his personal history of organizing both in the US and in Barcelona, Spain as well as his early work before moving to an in-depth discussion of his most recent essay “Diagnostics of the Future” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-diagnostic-of-the-future and his newest book project concerning colonization and ecology.
In this Marxist and Anarchist Transfeminism themed podcast, trans woman anarchist Violet Chrysanthemum and trans woman autonomist Zara Richter interview Conrad Bongard Hamilton author of Sex In The Age Of Capital linked here: https://tripleampersand.org/sex-age-capital/. In our interview we discuss the treatment of trans existence on the left, by productivist marxian thinkers in academia, by queer theorists and by feminist thinkers. We side with a broad transfeminist marxist/anarchist consensus on the function and role of transgender materiality in a capitalist age.
In this interview with anarchist thinkers Tancrede Fulconis and Violet Chrysanthemum we consider the piece they cowrote "The Specter of Antifa"
(https://discursiveconstructs.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/the-spectre-of-antifa-a-reterritorialisation-of-the-uprising-1/) and we discuss their anarchist and proletarian readings of poststructuralist thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze
Sound mixing for this episode was done by Maxence Fulconis
In this interview with postleftist thinkers Tancrede Fulconis and Violet Chrysanthemum we consider the piece they cowrote "The Specter of Antifa"
(https://discursiveconstructs.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/the-spectre-of-antifa-a-reterritorialisation-of-the-uprising-1/) and we discuss their anarchist and proletarian readings of poststructuralist thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze
Sound mixing for this episode was done by Maxence Fulconis
In this post-US election podcast, Sher and Zara of the Facing Autonomy Podcast enjoy an assorted number of panelists and their commentary on the results of the US election and how it relates to political economy issues. Featured among this podcast's panelists is renowned Autonomist feminist Silvia Frederici but also internet-famous anarchosyndicalist transfeminist Piper Tompkins and autonomist feminist media scholar Arlen Austin as well as Marxist Humanist thinker Will
We enjoy a lively debate on whether the US election is a sign of the power or of the alienation of the working class and whether capitalism continues to reproduce without limits internally or whether there is a limit to capitalist reproduction.
For this podcast, Sher and Zara of the Facing Autonomy Team interview UK Anarchist Zoe Baker partially on her excellent piece in the Anarchist Library entitled "Means And Ends" which is an examination of the debate around the subject of the state, state power and organization within in communist and anarchist history. A discussion on the longstanding legacy and vision of Maltesta. This followed by a necessary discussion on the experiences and positions regarding the politics of identity, current state of left politics and gender.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchopac-means-and-ends
For more on Zoe's work check out her blog at
https://anarchopac.wordpress.com/
In this podcast we make an effort to amplify our podcast host Arturo's recent essay The Return of John Brown. While we are proud of the great work of our cohost, we interview him and raise some objections and some praise for his excellent work.
In this interview, cohosts Zara, Sher and Arturo interview PhD Student at Brown University, Arlen Austin on his continuing research on the Dalla Costa Autonomist Feminist Archive and get to hear him to clarify some misconceptions about Autonomy as a political movement.
Hosts Zara, Sher and Arturo talk about the global autonomy movement, its roots in the work of Mario Tronti and its eventual influence in Italy, Germany, Iran and the US
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cnm_W9WmQs4
For this podcast, the three hosts Zara, Sher and Arturo take various positions with Zara acting out the leftcommunist and communizer positions on antifascism and fascism while Sher represents Anarchist defenses of antifascism and definitions of fascism and Arturo moderates and summarizes the two sides. Note that this conversation takes place in order to represent debates currently happening on the ultra-left and among scholars of critical race theory.
For this podcast, we interview Ammar Ali Jan who is a historian, marxist thinker and public intellectual from Pakistan. Recently, Ammar was fired from FC college in Lahore only this last month due to his participation in the student solidarity march in Pakistan after which he was arrested under the draconian anti-sedition laws which have been used to target students, activists, workers, and scholars. He has also key organizer with Haqooq e Khalq Movement (People’s Rights Movement) who recently held national day of action mobilize workers and students in different cities around the anti-people IMF policies of the current regime. In this podcast we discuss the situation in the universities and possible alternatives to the old left alliances present there.
For this podcast, hosts Zara and Sher talk with Facing Autonomy Collective member Arturo about his recent blog published entitled Theses On The George Floyd Rebellion located here https://illwilleditions.com/theses-on-the-george-floyd-rebellion/
Facing Autonomy collective founders Sher Khan and Zara Richter explain the source of inspiration for their new podcast series and explain what autonomy truly means in history and the present.
In this podcast, we introduce Sher Ali Khan and Zara Richter, two grad students of the disciplines of English and Geography respectively with a history of work on left causes and we introduce the title and theme of this podcast Facing Autonomy.
This podcast is called Facing Autonomy because every episodes will be premised with a recognition of the autonomy of the working class from the organizational bureaucracies created both capitalists and within almost every faction of the left.
In recognizing the working class as having its own autonomous experience and organization, what CLR James called "self-activity", we no longer have to remain staunchly backing one single leftist sectarian approach and are able to integrate our own basis in Autonomism, Anarchism and the Johnson Forest Tendency with the broader spectrum of cross-sectarian thought on the left, such as marxist leninism, maoism and trotskyism but also the New Left and identity-oriented versions of leftism.