or terrifying before. When people find their bellies filled and their minds sharpened among communal kitchens and libraries, hatred for capitalist ways of life grows amid belonging and connection. When someone receives comfort and support from friends, they find themselves willing to confront the abuse they have been facing. When people develop or recover a connection to the places where they live, they may find themselves standing in front of bulldozers to protect that place. When people begin to meet their everyday needs through neighborhood assemblies and mutual aid, all of a sudden they are willing to fight the police, and the fight deepens bonds of trust and solidarity. Joy can be contagious and dangerous.
All over the world, there are stories of people who find themselves transformed through the creation of other forms of life: more capable, more alive, and more connected to each other, and willing to defend what they are building. In our conversations with others from a variety of currents and locations, we have become increasingly convinced that the most widespread, long-lasting, and fierce struggles are animated by strong relationships of love, care, and trust. These values are not fixed duties that can be imitated, nor do they come out of thin air. They arise from struggles through which people become powerful together. As people force Empire out of their lives, there is more space for kindness and solidarity. As people reduce their dependence on Empire’s stifling institutions, collective responsibility and autonomy can grow. As people come to trust their capacity to figure things out together rather than relying on the state and capitalism, they are less willing to submit to the fears and divisions that Empire fosters.
These emergent powers are at the core of the Spinozan lineage, of this book, and (we think) of many vibrant movements today. Drawing on Spinoza, we call them common notions. To have a common notion is to be able to participate more fully in the web of relations and affections in which we are enmeshed. They are not about controlling things but about response-ability, capacities to remain responsive to changing situations. This is why they are a bit paradoxical: they are material ideas, accessed by tuning into the forces that compose us, inseparable from the feelings and practices that animate them. Abstract morality and ideology are barriers to this tuning-in, offering up rule-bound frameworks that close us off from the capacity to modulate the forces of the present moment.
Similarly, we have come to think that while trust is fundamental in transformative struggle, it cannot be an obligation; trust is always a gift and a risk. Common notions are inherently experimental and collective. They subsist by hanging onto uncertainty, similar to the Zapatistas’ notion preguntando caminamos: “asking, we walk.” For the same reason, common notions are always in danger of being stifled by rigid radicalism, which tends towards mistrust and fixed ways of relating that destroy the capacity to be responsive and inventive. Joyful militancy, then, is a fierce commitment to emergent forms of life in the cracks of Empire, and the values, responsibilities, and questions that sustain them.
II
Beyond optimism and pessimism
While we want to insist that there are potentials bubbling up everywhere, it doesn’t always feel that way. This is not an optimistic book. We are not interested in sacrificing the present for a revolution in the distance, nor are we confident that things will get better. They may get worse, for many of us, in many ways. However, we are equally wary of pessimism and cynicism. Among others, feminist essayist Rebecca Solnit has taught us to see optimism and pessimism as two sides of the same coin: both try to remove uncertainty from the world. Both foster certitude about how things will turn out, whether good or bad. Optimism and pessimism can provide a sense of comfort at the expense of openness and the capacity to hang onto complexity. They can drain away our capacity to care, to try, and to fight for things to be otherwise without knowing how it will turn out. A fundamental premise of this book is that no matter what, things can be otherwise—there is always wiggle room, Empire is already full of cracks, and the future is always uncertain. Uncertainty is where we need to begin, because experimentation and curiosity is part of what has been stolen from us. Empire works in part by making us feel impotent, corroding our abilities to shape worlds together.
In this book we hope to affirm a diverse array of struggles and alternatives in the making, including prison abolition and transformative justice, feminism and anti-violence, youth liberation, and Indigenous resurgence and land defense, among others. This kind of connection is less about adding up movements as if they could be unified, and more about illustrating the productiveness of their difference; like combining different tones and rhythms to see how they resonate.
To think and feel through this process, rather than creating new norms or positions, may be frustrating for some readers. It might sound a bit fluffy to insist that experimentation and struggle go hand in hand, or that celebration and love are linked to militant resistance. They aren’t always connected. Yet creativity and experimentation are vital in the face of forces that not only crush disobedience but also steer desires. We want to affirm the ways that creative destruction and combative resistance can be linked to walking with questions, and all of this can make us more alive and capable together. Joyful militancy is a dangerous, transformative, and experimental process, generated collectively and held gently.
On anarchism
“Q: if an anarcho-syndicalist, an insurrectionary anarchist, and an anarcho-primitivist are sitting together in the back of a car, who’s driving?
A: A cop!”
This book is also an intervention into anti-authoritarian movements, especially anarchism. Many threads of anarchism infuse our lives and the lives of those we care about, and we have been inspired and influenced by a range of different anti-authoritarian currents. At its most vibrant, anarchism is not an ideology but a creative rejection of the ideologies of the state, capitalism, and the Left. Crucial to anarchism is the attempt to escape the certainties of Empire and the certainties that can arise in struggle. Anarchism can support a trust in people’s capacities to figure out for themselves how to live and fight together rather than constructing a model or blueprint for resistance. Whereas dominant currents of Marxism and liberalism assume the necessity of the state and activate desires for unity and sameness, anarchism often nurtures autonomy, decentralization, and difference.
The anarchism we are interested in does not tell us what we should do. For us this is crucial. Anarchism can help us inhabit spaces by trusting our own capacities and relating in ways that are emergent and responsive to change. But as with any other tradition, anarchism can also crystallize into a fixed ideology. It can produce closed and stifling milieus. It can lead to duty-bound collectivism or simplistic individualism. It can feel like a club whose boundaries are policed or a badge to display one’s radical cred. Anarchist spaces can feel cold, unwelcoming, and scary. Anyone familiar with anarchist milieus knows that there can be vicious sectarian conflicts, which often entrench rigid loyalties and positions.
We do not focus much on these debates here, nor do we situate ourselves as particular types of anarchists. This is partly because we have learned from many different currents, and it seems counterproductive to elevate one above the others. We also want to avoid some of the debates that, to us, have become sedimented and stale. At its best, we think, anarchism nurtures trust in people’s capacity to figure things out, while also supporting autonomy and leaving room for conflict. We are inspired by all the ways that anarchists are able to inhabit situations with strong values and fierce care, while also respecting and even welcoming difference.
We are particularly interested in currents of anarchism and anti-authoritarianism that have emphasized the importance of affinities over ideologies. Affinity is a helpful concept for us because it speaks to emergent relationships and forms of organizing that are decentralized and flexible but not flimsy. Organizing by affinity basically means seeking out and nurturing relationships based in shared values, commitments, and passions, without trying to impose those on everyone else. Affinity is also important because many of the currents that inspire us either reject anarchism—along with all other “isms”—or just don’t have much interest in it. Some of the people we interviewed are self-proclaimed anarchists who are known in anarchist milieus. Others have been deeply influenced by anarchism, and it inflects their projects and their lives, but they don’t identify much with the political label. Others have traditions of autonomy and resistance that come from other sources, including Indigeneity and other non-Western