Dissertation Proposal Defense: Michael Loadenthal -The Politics of Direct Attack: Insurrectionary Struggle & Structural Violence

Dissertation Proposal Defense: Michael Loadenthal

Friday, January 24th
10:00am - 11:30am 
Metropolitan Building Conference Room 5000 

Since the decline of the “anti-globalization” movement, the nature of militant anti-capitalist and anti-statist protest shifted away from broad-based mobilization protests and towards an emergent politic of clandestine insurrection. Like the era of summit hopping that preceded it, this new period of insurrectionary struggle based its politics around anarchism—a political framework reinvigorated by its prominent role in the 1994 Zapatista uprising, and the 1999 “Battle of Seattle.” Insurrectionary anarchism has remained a frontline ideology and has inspired underground, decentralized networks that have carried out thousands of attacks in the so-called "social war."

Globally, this insurrectionary milieu carried out thousands of attacks utilizing vandalism, sabotage bombs, arson, and even the shooting an Italian nuclear scientist. With each action, the attackers have distributed communiqués claiming responsibility and providing a space for political critique and analysis. These communiqués are then translated and distributed by a network of online projects collectively known as the 'informal counter-information network.' The proposed study seeks to interrogate these texts with the aim of applying their critical framework and prefigurative politics towards manifestations of structural violence. In the final analysis, this project seeks to answer the question: What does this collective theory—as told through the text of communiqués—contribute to a new understanding of systemic violence and the transformation of structural conflict?