Political Theory
Nildo Avelino
Abstract
At the 1990s post anarchism brought forward analogies between 19th and 20th Century anarchist thought, and
what we may call poststructuralist thinking. This allowed anarchism to be returned to the academy, not as an
object of study, but as an analytical tool for studying the exercise of power. None the less, according to post
anarchists, anarchism don’t makes distinctions between its own thinking and Marxist or liberal theories on the
subject of power, in that anarchism understands power as essentially repressive and acting against a
fundamentally good human nature. In this paper I take a positive approach to anarchism, offering an analysis in
terms of the relations of forces in the political arena; this is a fundamental approach in studies in
governmentality. Foucault, rejecting both legal and liberal as well as Marxist approaches in his analysis of
power, brought to bear what he called the “Nietzchean hypothesis”, which examines together both principle and
motive in political power in society, in war, struggle and confrontation. Proudhon understood war as stemming
from a state of continual conflict of forces, operating at the level of the individual, the state and the economy.
With this understanding of struggle, he distanced himself from the lawcentric influences of the French
Revolution and also from the historical school of Savigny, directing his critique at government as a practical
authority. Proudhon bases his analysis of government on the way it works, on how government power is used.
Keywords: Anarchism, Postanarchism, Proudhon, Foucault, Power, Government
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