Yiddish Anarchism: New Scholarship on a Forgotten Tradition

Submitted by Juan Conatz on January 29, 2019

There was an event recently at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York titled 'Yiddish Anarchism: New Scholarship on a Forgotten Tradition'. The event featured a number of speakers, including Spencer Sunshine, Kenyon Zimmer, Tom Goyens, Anna Elena Torres, Mark Grueter, Nina Gurianova, Ben Gidley, Reynolds Hahamovitch, Lilian Türk, Diana Clarke, and Anatole Dolgoff.

The entire event was broadcast on Facebook and can be found here.

syndicalist

5 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by syndicalist on January 29, 2019

I look forward to listening. Having known and participated in some stuff with a number of the immediate pre-WWII and post WWII FAS comrades, "The Challenge", "The Vanguard", Libertarian Book Club people (in many cases, really an overlap of the same folks) over years, I'm curious to hear how they are presented. Of course, Anatoly Dolgoff's presentation is first hand knowledge and that should be of value.

Ugg

5 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Ugg on January 31, 2019

Thanks for posting.

One of the things I've noticed when trying to read about the USSR some of the sources would be in Yiddish. I wonder how much more we would be able to learn if we could translate everything.

Juan Conatz

5 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Juan Conatz on February 2, 2019

I haven't yet got around to watching this whole thing. Think I need to convert into audio and break it up by speaker. I did listen to Spencer Sunshine's part. Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about that, particularly about how classical anarchism tried to see how things fit in with its principles vs contemporary anarchism borrowing wholesale from other tendencies. He seemed to be talking about national liberation and privilege politics? I'm not sure but found it interesting.

syndicalist

5 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by syndicalist on February 2, 2019

Right quick.

how classical anarchism tried to see how things fit in with its principles vs contemporary anarchism borrowing wholesale from other tendencies.

I not heard the vid yet, but, this is largely trueish in my estimation. I would say that prolly up to the 1950/60s this was mainly, though not exclusively, true. And many of the folks that, I am assuming, that were honored and spoken about at the conference would dos def fit into that category.

AnythingForProximity

5 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by AnythingForProximity on February 2, 2019

Yeah, Sunshine's intro was a good, succinct diagnosis of what's wrong with much of contemporary anarchism – as borne out by the ambiguous, if not outright supportive attitude toward Kurdish and Catalan nationalism taken in some quarters, or the bizarre promotion of the bourgeois legal-theoretic concept of "intersectionality", lifted straight from US academia, to a key element of anarchist theory.

(Of course, that's not to say that classical anarchism didn't have problems of its own. Rocker's characterization of anarchism, quoted approvingly by Sunshine, is incredibly and dangerously confused; and there's much to be said for Pengam's observation that the classical anarchocommunism of people like Kropotkin or Malatesta was already somewhat confused and regressive compared to its earliest form represented by Dézamy or Déjacque.)

Reddebrek

5 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Reddebrek on February 9, 2019

Its an interesting talk but the audio seems to have degraded really badly on the later parts, making it difficult to figure out what's being said.

I had a go at boosting the audio to make it clearer, here's the link if anyone else was struggling. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs2TxwyLLUrg4uFFLmjkYBUxRWm-qJYGJ

Juan Conatz

5 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Juan Conatz on February 16, 2019

They've just posted videos on Youtube and broken them up into sections and speakers

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtPOkhh8R4wx0r1gmJ2aouhNUEah6YVYJ