Simon Springer

Violent Accumulation: A Postanarchist Critique of Property, Dispossession, and the State of Exception in Neoliberalizing Cambodia

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of a triadic system: capital/primitive accumulation, law/violence, and civilization/savagery, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing “trilateral of logics.” This is a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal processes, and its civilizing effects that together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Using the empirical frame of Cambodias contemporary neoliberalization, I offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique and to argue that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodias legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

Human geography without hierarchy

Responding to neoliberal decentralization, Marxists pair centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. Such a view considers hierarchy to be necessary and horizontal organization as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate prefigurative politics, treating horizontality as a future objective. This temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting. In terms of spatiality, Marxian centralized hierarchy deems horizontality inappropriate when ‘jumping scales’. Yet by rejecting this vertical ontology we may immediately disengage capitalism through a rhizomic politics. Consequently, human geography without hierarchy gains traction when we embrace an anarchist flat ontology.

Why a radical geography must be anarchist

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a project, which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism, while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas—such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship—that are long past their expiration date.

BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE: VIOLENCE AND ACCOMMODATION IN THE CAMBODIAN LOGGING SECTOR

From the deadly raids launched upon Burundi’s capital by Hutu rebels hiding in the nearby Tenga forest, to the multimillion dollar exploitation of teak along the ThaiBurmese border by the Karen National Union, insurgents have repeatedly used forests as a refuge or a source of finance. Located near roads and towns that are of military importance, or along border areas offering political sanctuary, forests provide some of the safest terrain from which to prepare or launch guerrilla operations. Forest products are among the most conspicuous resources financing wars in a post-Cold War era where business and predation have replaced foreign state support (Le Billon, 2001). As rebels take advantage of their location in forests to control or establish logging operations, underfunded or financially self-interested government military forces deployed for counterinsurgency purposes frequently join in. Logging companies also seem to accept a higher degree of risk than entrepreneurs in most other sectors, for instance to access increasingly rare and valuable old growth forests. The war in Cambodia during the early 1990s became emblematic of links between forests, armed groups and logging companies, due to the pioneering advocacy work of Global Witness (1995a, 1996). This London-based human rights organization carefully collected and widely publicized evidence on the role of the logging sector in financing the war, demonstrating the complicity of neighboring countries, the collusion of Cambodian political parties in power, and the massive costs for the population and the environment. Forests not only offered the main stronghold and source of finance of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla force, before it was militarily ousted in 1979 by Vietnamese troops. Forests, and timber in particular, were the subject of numerous conflicts and accommodations between divergent actors, including poor farmers, enterprising generals, and large regional companies. Ironically, the end of the century importance of the Cambodia forest sector was itself in part the result of previous hostilities. Despite massive bombing in the eastern half of the country by the United States (US), 20 years of tragic history had arguably saved the

War and pieces

There is increasing recognition among human geographers that conceptualising the spatiality of peace is a vital component of our collective disciplinary praxis. Within this emergent literature, this paper seeks to position anarchism as an ethical philosophy of nonviolence and the absolute rejection of war. Such an interpretation does not attempt to align nonviolence to any particular organised religious teaching, as has recently been advocated by some geographers. Instead, the paper argues that the current practices of religion undermine the geographies of peace by fragmenting our affinities into discrete pieces. Advancing a view of anarchism as nonviolence, the paper goes beyond religion to conceptualise peace as both the unqualified refusal of the manifold-cum-interlocking processes of domination, and a precognitive, pre-normative and presupposed category rooted in our inextricable entanglement with each other and all that exists. Yet far from proposing an essentialist view of humanity or engaging a naturalised argument that reconvenes the “noble savage”, the paper contextualises the arguments within the processual frameworks of radical democracy and agonism in seeking to redress the ageographical and ahistorical notions of politics that comprise the contemporary post-political zeitgeist.

Neoliberalism in denial

In responding to Weller and O’Neill’s ‘Argument with Neoliberalism’, I question the novelty of their approach and the problematics of denying the critical power and associated violence that neoliberalism continues to wield in our world. While they do raise an important epistemic challenge, a closer reading of the geographical literature on neoliberalism reveals that Weller and O’Neill tend to paint with the broad strokes of caricature. Notions of neoliberalism as inevitable or as a paradigmatic construct have long been debunked by human geographers replaced by protean notions of variegation, hybridity, and articulation with existing political economic circumstances. A discursive understanding of neoliberalism further reveals it as an assemblage and thus to hold neoliberalism to a sense of purity is little more than a straw man argument. Despite the positive desire to allow space for alternatives, Weller and O’Neill unfortunately construct their argument in such a way that positions it as part of an emerging genre of ‘neoliberalism in denial’.

Leaky Geopolitics: The Ruptures and Transgressions of WikiLeaks

The unfurling of violent rhetoric and the show of force that has lead to the arrest, imprisonment, and impending extradition of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, serve as an exemplary moment in demonstrating state-sanctioned violence. Since the cables began leaking in November 2010, the violent reaction to WikiLeaks evidenced by numerous political pundits calling for Assanges assassination or execution, and the movement within the US to have WikiLeaks designated a ‘foreign terrorist organization’, amount to a profound showing of authoritarianism. The ‘Wikigate’ scandal thus represents an important occasion to take stock and think critically about what this case tells us about the nature of sovereign power, freedom of information, the limits of democracy, and importantly, the violence of the state when it attempts to manage these considerations. This forum explores a series of challenges inspired by WikiLeaks, which we hope will prompt further debate and reflection within critical geopolitics.

The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation

The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation advances several arguments. On the one hand, it wishes to recover and applaud the legacies of two anarchists who were also geographers—Kropotkin (1842– 1921) and Reclus (1830–1905)—and celebrate others. Then there is an argument for anarchism to be central to a reworked radical geography today and that Marxism (which Springer capitalizes) has crowded out anarchist voices. There are also arguments about what anarchism might mean and how this involves space. Geography is represented as anarchic in itself as a discipline and in opening Springer seeks “to remind readers that geography has never had, and nor should it desire, a single disciplinary plan or pivot” and that periodic attempts to impose one have failed. This is a point that many others have reflected on; as one of us has argued elsewhere, in a textbook account of Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American Human Geography since 1945, geography comprises “a set of linked yet frequently anarchic communities” (Johnston and Sidaway 2016, 399). Such an interpretation was also reiterated in a set of commentaries on Geography and Geographers that appeared in this journal (Boyle et al. 2017). Moreover, according to Springer: “The sheer diversity of topics that geographers could potentially engage from an anarchist perspective speaks to the notion that the discipline of geography is highly undisciplined . . . it is the freedom of geography that positions the discipline as an ideal location from which to explore the ongoing relevance and potential of anarchist thought and practice” (p. 42).

Space, time, and the politics of immanence

This is a reply to:Kiersey, Nicholas. 2014. “Occupy Dame Street as slow-motion general strike? Justifying optimism in the wake of Ireland’s failed multitudinal moment.” Global Discourse. 4 (2–3): 141–158. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10.1080/23269995.2014.898530.

For anarcho-geography! Or, bare-knuckle boxing as the world burns

Responding to the set of dialogues on my original article, ‘Why a Radical Geography Must Be Anarchist?’, I throw my hat back in the ring and offer a blow-by-blow commentary on the sucker punches and low blows that some Marxists continue to want to throw at anarchism. In particular, I go toe-to-toe with the fallacious idea that Marxism remains the only viable politics on the left and demonstrate why anarchism is not only up to scratch, but in a world that continues to be marked by domination, as far as emancipation is concerned, anarchism is a heavyweight contender. While I pull no punches with the two Marxist pugilists, the remaining commentators are in my corner, and I welcome their thoughtful critiques by taking it on the chin. Yet rather than throw in the towel, I attempt to set the record straight by repositioning anarchism as an ethos that merges rebellion with reciprocity, subversion with self-management, and dissent with direct action, where the potential combinations are infinite. Anarchism is to be thought of, quite simply, as an attitude. When we remember this quality, without attempting to pin anarchism down to a particular set of commitments or distinct group of activities, we begin to recognize that anarchism can both float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. The reason for this multifarious character is because anarchism is not an identity but is instead something you do. Anarchism consequently has knockout potential to unite diverse strategies and tactics under the black flag of this radical political slogan. Insofar as the future of radical geography is concerned, anarchism has got the guts, the spirit, and the heart to go the distance. Let’s get ready to rumble!