social space and the practice of anarchist history - tom goyens

8/11/2019 Social Space and the Practice of Anarchist History - Tom Goyens

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Social space and the practice of

anarchist historyTom Goyens

a

aDepartment of History , University of Virginia's

College at Wise , Virginia, USA

Published online: 20 Nov 2009.

To cite this article:Tom Goyens (2009) Social space and the practice of anarchist

history, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 13:4, 439-457, DOI:10.1080/13642520903292476

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Social space and the practice of anarchist history

Tom Goyens*

Department of History, University of Virginias College at Wise, Virginia, USA

This essay argues for the integration of a spatial analysis in historicalresearch and writing. The history of anarchism and other oppositional,

decentralized movements can be better understood when the spatialimplications of their ideological practices are critically examined. Theuses, production, and conceptualization of space and places should bean essential dimension of historical research and interpretation.

Keywords: anarchism; social space; urban space; place; mapping;decentralization

Introduction1

One of the most familiar features of the contemporary anarchist movement

is the infoshop, a combination of cultural center, meeting place, and

bookshop. Some infoshops are short-lived, but others have managed to

sustain themselves for decades. In many cases, infoshop activities literally

spill out into the streets and surrounding neighborhood. They form nodes in

a network of solidarity and grassroots direct action. Infoshops themselves

are seen as forms of direct action; an inkling of anarchist living amidst a

dominant culture based on property and competition. One of Torontos

most successful infoshops was named The Anarchist Free Space (Shantz

2003), and in Britain during the 1980s, autonomy clubs emerged as part of

the social centres movement (Hodkinson and Chatterton 2006).The idea behind the infoshop, however, is as old as the anarchist

movement itself, going back to the radical clubs of the French Revolution.

Anarchism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America and

Europe certainly agitated in public campaigns sometimes with violent

results, and this image has stuck with mainstream society. But the anarchist

places that existed in most large cities have been all but forgotten. These

places served as locales of resistance during the late nineteenth century when

the United States became a breeding ground for radical philosophies at a

time when few people had made up their minds about the benefits of

*Email: [email protected]

Rethinking History

Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2009, 439457

ISSN 1364-2529 print/ISSN 1470-1154 online

2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13642520903292476

http://www.informaworld.com

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capitalist industrialization. But uncertainty was not tolerated forever. By the

mid-1890s, the economic and political elite succeeded in curbing a tide of

protest by implementing a politics of exclusion, drawing a line around the

good society and dismissing the outsiders (Wiebe 1967, 156). The anarchists

became outsiders recreant undesirables.

The central theme of this essay is the spatiality of anarchism, then and

now. Space and time are inextricably linked, and a geographic sensibility has

become necessary when describing human action and social relationships.

Michel Foucault (1986) hoped for a contemporary epoch of space in

scholarship in order to correct the nineteenth-century obsession with history

as temporal progress striding confidently through crisis and cycle.

Philosophers and geographers such as Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and

others who pushed for a spatial turn in the human sciences contend that

social space is multifaceted and is produced through social practices. In2007, this journal presented a forum on the spatiality of history spearheaded

by Philip Ethingtons thoughtful article (2007), Placing the Past and

multiple responses to it. Ethington urges historians to theorize about time

and space. He argues that all human action must exist in space, that the past

is the set of places made by human action, and history is the map of these

places (2007, 465).

Even though few historical studies exist that examine the spatial

dimension of their particular topic, historians, by closely reading sources,

can detect spatiality. Numerous exemplary studies on spatiality exist in thesocial sciences, including urban studies, sociologies of crime and vagrancy,

human geography, urban planning, anthropology, and social ecology

(Amster 2004; Sharp et al. 2000; Massey 1994; Ferrell 2001a, 2001b;

Purchase 1997; Sennett 1970).

In this essay, my arguments are grounded in my research on the spaces

and places of German-speaking anarchists the first to fashion a

revolutionary anarchist movement in the United States. However, I also

consider other anarchist movements then and now; and I draw on broader

theoretical considerations of space and place in order to venture beyond justone location, and hopefully contribute to a discussion about the historians

craft in relation to oppositional movements. I reflect on techniques available

to the historian that allow narrative to be grounded in space, places, or

geography without neglecting motion and change over time. Spatial and

temporal dimensions must coexist within the historical narrative and no

subordination of one to the other is needed. Time, as Ethington states, may

simply be a culturally specific reading of the dynamic environment so that

change should be seen as occurring through space, not time (2007, 471). The

process whereby historians integrate insights from source evidence into a

coherent narrative will have to include a sensitivity to change through

space, a realization that the history of human action always stands in

relation to the natural environment.

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Why urban anarchists?

Oppositional groups such as anarchists are better understood when we

examine their spatial practices. Indeed, Lefebvre (1974, 33) insists on a

symbiotic relationship between social agents and space, and elaborates on

this with the notion of spatial practice, the production of spaces which

always contains an element of performance. Social space, according to

Mark Gottdiener, arises from practice (1993, 131). Anarchism is certainly

in need of more critical scholarship, since it has often been evaluated by

outsiders, which has tended to produce distortions and stereotypes (Phillips

2003; Hong 1992). This process of marginalization, criminalization, and

occasionally demonization, was often exacerbated by isolated actions of

movement members themselves. This is true with the anarchist movement at

the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where individual actsof violence by discontented members confirmed for the mainstream the

inherent criminal nature of the entire movement (Merriman 2009; Gage

2009; Clymer 2002).

The international anarchist movement, however, was much more than

insurrectionary agitators who seemed to drive the movements public

campaign. Anarchists also built alternative communities all their own, and it

is this forgotten and under-researched dimension of anarchism that benefits

most from a holistic investigation of the movement. Historian Bruce Nelson

has written (1988, 2401) about the socialist and anarchist movements inChicago and found that anarchists created and maintained a self-

consciously visible, vital and militant movement culture. Without its club

life, press, unions and culture, Nelson asserts, the ideology of that

movement is unintelligent. Historians should investigate social movements

literally on their own turf.

It is important to state that anarchists and socialists during the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were well aware of how contested

spaces could be. They may also have been aware of the connection

between ideology and spatial practices. The German anarchist movementoriginated in the growing socialist movement in Imperial Germany before

the Great War. While socialism and its adherents were distrusted and

often repressed by nineteenth-century European states, their situation in

newly unified Germany during the 1870s became untenable. Germanys

project of unification was largely led by Conservative forces with

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck at the helm. After a series of attempts

on the life of the Kaiser, Bismarck uncritically blamed the socialists. In

1878, he helped pass a sweeping antisocialist law suppressing all aspects

of the movement, especially the press and the network of associations.

This law caused hundreds to leave Germany, some forcibly, and

eventually helped to create exile communities in London, Switzerland,

and the United States. A large number of German radicals who would

Rethinking History 441

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build an anarchist movement abroad came of age during this period of

state repression.

All liberationist movements face the problem of finding a place to meet,

to nurture solidarity, reciprocity, and community. In Germany during the

years of suppression (18781890) this essential spatial issue became known

at the time as Lokalfrage or locale question (Lidtke 1985). Police

surveillance and repressive action by the state forced a social movement

to reconsider its relationship with public spaces. Socialists turned to taverns

and beer halls and transformed them into places for formal activities under

the guise of lighthearted relaxation. Taverns in Germany became the only

bulwark for political freedom for the proletarians,2 according to socialist

Karl Kautsky (Roberts 1980, 127).

However, socialists and anarchists grew apart and by 1880 formed two

distinct movements based on unbridgeable differences in ideology andpractice, both in Europe and America. This historical split (often falling into

open hostility) is crucial for crafting a spatial analysis. Socialists do not

ignore the state; they participate in representational politics, which provides

an outlet for their ideas. Anarchists shun official channels and deny the

legitimacy of bourgeois institutions. I argue that anarchist meeting places

therefore assume, for anarchists, a much more important role in the running

and conception of the movement simply on account of their rejectionist (but

not wholly negative) philosophy. In other words, anarchists may very well

experience their political identity in more spatial ways than socialistsbecause the latter live and experience their ideology alsoon a temporal plane

with the preparation and anticipation of elections accompanied by dead-

lines, expectations for the future, and office term limits. This is not to say

that urban anarchists were wholly isolated from the outside world by their

own volition. Anarchists need their places to be more wholesome and

sustainable for they are the new society in miniature.

The historian as cartographer or choreographer?

If the past only occurs in space, then the historians work of recovery,

reconstruction, and interpretation resembles that of a cartographer. The

sense of time, the temporal vector of human affairs is simply reflected or

inscribed in space. But historian Thomas Bender (2007) in his commentary

on Philip Ethingtons article Placing the Past, criticized the mapmaker

analogy because it renders the human past too static as if anchored to a fixed

geography at a fixed time. This obfuscates the historians main task: to

produce a narrative of motion in space. Ethington does mention the work of

Georg Simmel, who insisted that all social forms are in a perpetual state of

dynamism through sites of interaction (Ethington 2007, 480). Ethington

sees in Simmels work a choreographic sensibility, which Bender thinks is a

much better metaphor. The historian cannot work with a model that only

442 T. Goyens

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addresses presence in space without what Bender calls the mobility of

history (2007, 497). Historical narrative provides the essential thrust of

motion within space, a quality that is missing from a purely cartographic

approach. Places do not move around, but history makers do, says Bender

(2007, 498). The choreographer combines a sense of space with a sense of

motion.

Discussions on the appropriate metaphor for the historian have had a

bearing on the presentation and evaluation of my own research of an urban,

immigrant anarchist movement. From 1880 to 1914, a vibrant German

anarchist movement existed in the Greater New York area, leaving for

posterity 15 German-language periodicals, personal letters, and pamphlets.

Simply listing chronological events of the movement tended to isolate the

movement from the rest of New Yorks geopolitical reality. In other words,

my own evolving education about my subject inadvertently detached itselffrom its spatial moorings.

An examination of anarchist periodicals changed my perspective. A

typical movement paper consisted of two sections. The first was devoted to

articles, opinion pieces, and news. The second, which initially seemed of

secondary importance, consisted of announcements and advertisements

pertinent to the movement. These announcements proved to be a gold mine.

Over 80 anarchist groups in New York alone, ranging from agitation clubs

and reading clubs to theater troupes, rifle clubs, and musical associations,

regularly announced events by listing locations, often with directions onhow to get there. An announcement for a picnic to be held on Staten Island,

for example, might suggest which ferry to take, or in which saloon advance

tickets were available. Announcements for weekly club meetings might

specify not only addresses but also the block of the meeting place.

Nearly 200 German beer halls associated with the movement have been

identified in the greater New York City area in addition to large lecture halls

rented for intergroup celebrations or protest meetings (Goyens 2007). In

order to visualize the movements spatial existence, I mapped these locations

using a street-map software program that allowed for specific searches ofaddresses (see Figure 1). Naturally, the location of house numbers has

changed, but only slightly. The occasional block information in some

announcements acted as a test of approximate accuracy.

For now, this method remains strictly cartographic, but some important

insights did emerge. Nearly every German-speaking anarchist settled among

his or her compatriots in the ethnic enclave known as Little Germany in the

Lower East Side of Manhattan (Nadel 1990). It is perhaps not so self-

evident that German anarchists would settle among their countryfolk, but

they did. German Catholics, for example, lamented the presence of godless

cousins in their midst (Lapham 1977, 70). There was, as the cartographic

method showed, no anarchist neighborhood per se, only clusters of

anarchist meeting places sprinkled across the larger German district. It is


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Figure1.

PrincipalGermananarchi

stmeetingplacesontheLow

erEastSide,

New

York,

18

801914(Goyens2007).

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important to state that these meeting places mostly beer-hall backrooms

were indeed anarchist places, not socialist.

Mapping meeting places of German anarchists in the ethnic neighbor-

hoods of New York, Brooklyn, and northern New Jersey also revealed what

Robert E. Park called an ecology of the modern city. As one of the pioneer

scholars of the urban condition, Park is of particular interest here because he

penned much of his ideas (in 1916), only slightly after immigrant anarchists

were fashioning their own spheres within the city. His ecology of the city

consisted of separate moral worlds coexisting along class and ethnic lines.

He believed that this mosaic of little worlds influenced the emotional

experience of city dwellers (1969, 126). Anarchists inhabited just such a

world, a moral space with little interpenetration from other worlds.

Anarchists, in other words, had their own moral climate (1969, 126).

But mosaics and maps reflect static space. Motion and narrative must beinjected to make the story come alive. For example, overlapping a

geography of radicalism with other spatial practices some mappable

such as trolley and ferry lines, urban development projects, police precinct

stations, and contemporary description of the metropolis, allows for a

deeper analysis of the lived space of an oppositional movement. The

closeness of residences to the various meeting places within the neighbor-

hoods shows the movement in a largely walkable terrain.

Writing the story of the anarchist movements motion through space

its choreography requires a study of the evolution of its groups, thecornerstone of a decentralist movement. Some groups did not last longer

than a few months owing to lack of commitment, isolation, or deliberate

choice. Some neighborhoods declined, others grew at different points during

a 25-year period. With enough sources, I constructed an inventory of all

groups, their locations, and their beginning and end dates. In order to

capture spatial shifts through time, I created two separate lists: one of the

number of groups foundedper neighborhood for each decade from 1880 to

1914, the other of the number of groups in existence per neighborhood per

decade. This distinction allows the historian to identify elements of stability,rate of turnover, and geographic change through time. For instance, after

1890 most newly founded anarchist groups emerged in the Yorkville (in

Manhattans Upper East Side) neighborhood, reflecting a trend visible for

the entire German American community, namely a move out of the crowded

tenement districts to more liveable areas on the periphery (Goyens 2007,

150).

Contested spaces: anarchists in the urban landscape

The spatiality of an urban anarchist movement can be studied on two levels:

first, its connections to the dominant space, and second, its uses of particular

places. This distinction between space and place has animated many


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philosophers and social scientists. In neo-Marxist terms, space is objective

and universal, and the repository of exploitation and alienation that

overdetermines all else. Places, on the other hand, are seen as subjective and

experiential, and according to Edward Casey (1997), they are the primary

category for creative interpretations of human action. In my own research, I

take elements of both interpretations but reject a sterile determinism of

space over place. I favor David Featherstones notion of translocal

connections that integrates activities in places with the contestations of

national space or public space (2008, 4).

The oppositional nature of anarchism, its defiant style, and the negative

perceptions of it by mainstream culture have all been documented. These

mainstream perceptions and values can be said to be part of a dominant

liberal-capitalist space, in which the anarchist movement receives or finds its

oppositional character. But how dominant is this space? For that, thehistorian of anarchism must first turn to anarchist ideology. Its marginal

status deserved or not is of critical importance for any interpretation or

evaluation of its past. This does not mean that anarchists now and then are

wholly detached from society, but anarchist tenets and convictions have

circumscribed the movement to some extent as one would expect. What then

is the connection between ideology and spatial practices?

Decentralization is one of the central tenets of anarchism and provides it

with an essential spatial awareness. It is the idea of multiplying nodes of

decision-making and thereby reducing significantly the potential for coerciveand abusive power. Anarchists envision participatory democracy as

essentially decentralist. Society functions through voluntary organizations,

small councils that make decisions locally, while at the same time

cooperating with each other on a regional or even international scale. The

spatial implications of this idea come alive in the work of modern anarchist

thinkers such as Paul Goodman and Colin Ward, who contend that a

decentralized society already exists and that what is necessary is to extend

these practices and relationships until they cover all of human society.

Goodman writes that decentralization is a kind of social organization; itdoes not involve geographical isolation, but a particular sociological use of

geography (quoted in Ward 1973, 245).

Decentralized modes of social organization generated vastly different

spatial patterns in rural Spain during the Civil War of 1936 to 1939. Myrna

Breitbart studied the spatiality of anarchist decentralism and pointed out

that existing conditions such as the traditional closeness of the Spanish

people to their localities helped to pave the way for the implementation of

communal agriculture and nonhierarchical, federalist forms of civic life.

Spanish anarchism during this period still provides the best example of a

functional anarchist organization in a relatively large area. Anarchists

adopted a federalist model whereby autonomous localities are linked to

regional centers through intermediaries or delegates without obstructing the

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independence of local federations. This enabled them to break down the

isolation and divisions among working people that had existed under a

centralized system. A social revolution which began by initiating change in

people, writes Breitbart, thus ended up creating a significantly new

environment3 (1980, 114).

Immigrant anarchists in the United States also set up a decentralized,

federalist network of groups. Since the 1870s, Germans formed the largest

contingent of anarchists in the United States, but not until the arrival of

Freiheit editor and firebrand Johann Most in New York in 1882 was a

proposal for a federative network advanced. At a congress in Pittsburgh in

1883, Most and others drafted a manifesto for a nonauthoritarian

organization based on anarchist principles. The Pittsburgh Manifesto

outlined a blueprint for the formation of autonomous groups, an

Information Bureau, and the endorsement of anarchist papers as officialmouthpieces of the movement. Key objectives included gender and race

equality, and cooperative production and exchange.

The newly formed International Working Peoples Association (IWPA)

exemplified the federalist principle (no central authority) by acting as an

umbrella organization for completely autonomous groups. In cities where

more than one group existed, a General Committee to coordinate joint

actions was formed. The IWPAs Information Bureau had no executive

powers but facilitated communication between the often polyglot groups,

and also served as an archive for the movement. The center of activity,though, remained located within the local group with memberships ranging

from a dozen to one hundred each.

Furthermore, the IWPA was international in scope. Anarchist news-

papers edited in the United States were smuggled into Europe, and for a

while most subscribers to Freiheit, the paper edited by Most in New York,

were European activists. An alternative and international (or transnational)

network thus existed within a dominant, capitalist space. The two spheres

were interrelated because all anarchist groups formed under IWPA

guidelines were located in industrial areas or large cities, reflecting thespatial reality of industrial capitalism. Also, communications occurred

through the postal service, which was controlled from above.

Placing anarchist forms of organization in a spatial context raises the

difficulty of assessing how successful anarchists really were in revolutioniz-

ing dominant space. Neo-Marxist thinkers such as David Harvey contend

that working-class movements are, in fact, generally better at organizing in

and dominating place than they are at commanding space (1989, 236).

Harvey cites various nineteenth-century revolutions the Paris Commune of

1871 and the 1877 railroad strike in the United States that failed to control

national space, which remained the purview of the bourgeoisie. Harveys

assessment holds true for the anarchist movements, but one can still

question his stark dichotomy between space and place. There is no doubt


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abundance of literature on this seminal event, but Ross re-examined it as a

significantspatialmovement (1988, 4). One poignant illustration from 1871

is the dramatic pulling down of the Vendome Column (glorifying

Napoleons exploits) as an attack on verticality by Commune activists

who thus inscribed in the urban landscape their anti-hierarchical ideology

(1988, 58). Urban anarchists in Gilded Age New York never took over the

metropolis, which had become vertical with skyscrapers that symbolize

modernity. Still, for American immigrant anarchists, the Commune

commemoration was a major event on their calendar when elaborate

festivals were organized in decorated lecture halls throughout cities such as

New York, Chicago, Buffalo, and Philadelphia. Ross concludes that

certainly in France the Commune retained its power in the collective

memory of the generation of the 1960s, when the event was seen by many as

the first realization of urban space as revolutionary space (1988, 4).

Anarchist utopia and prefigurative politics

We can now further analyze ways in which anarchists conceived of specific

places, such as beer halls and even picnic grounds. For that we must turn

again to the tenets of anarchist philosophy and its relationship to

mainstream society.

The predominant view of anarchists in the nineteenth century was that of

unsettled malcontents violent, mentally impaired, probably foreign andfanatical. While a few individuals may have fit such a description, the

majority of anarchists were loath to commit acts of violence. The popular

image of the cloaked bomb thrower is largely a distortion resulting in what

one anarchist paper termed Anarchophobia (The Rebel, 20 October 1895).

Despite such an image, anarchist speakers found an audience during the

Gilded Age, a society so intensely stratified and unequal that a climate of

discontent and protest allowed anarchist ideas to surface and contribute to a

broad agenda of opposition. This momentum created a backlash, and, after

some crushing defeats for the labor movement during the 1890s, theanarchists were subsequently excluded from the mainstream. But this did

not defeat them; anarchists simply went ahead to create their own

subculture.

Anarchisms view of change and organization is in part encapsulated in

the concepts of anarchist utopia and what historian Wini Breines (1989)

calls prefigurative politics. Both bear directly on a spatial analysis. Utopia

is often interpreted as an unachievable, unscientific program for the future,

and utopia literally becomes no place. However, anarchists argue for a

much richer meaning of the word. From their perspective, utopia signifies

no place to stand still. To claim or define the perfect society implies too

much authority, and may in fact be delusional. Randall Amster, who has

written on contemporary anarchism, vagrancy and public spaces, writes that


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utopia in its anarchist variety is a dynamic process and not a static place4

(2004, 23). Anarchists, in other words, view their movement in space as a

permanent revolution, a continuing rebellion against our own tendencies

toward entrenchment and domination (2004, 234).

This discussion on the nature of utopia is not merely a sociological

argument or model imposed on historical reality. Anarchists themselves

discussed those issues in their meeting places. In 1907, a group of German

American anarchists launched a new paper,Das freie Wort(The Free Word)

in which appeared just such a debate on the nature of revolution. Abe Isaak

Jr, one of the contributors, rejected the notion of revolution as a single

cataclysmic event. Instead, he saw revolution as a long process of liberation.

The best way to achieve a free society was not waiting for the millennial

kingdom, but rather the practice of freedom in the present (Isaak Jr.

1907). This view was adopted from the philosophy of Gustav Landauer(1978), a contemporary anarchist in Germany who spoke of revolution as

regeneration, a spiritual renewal, a process rather than an event. Behaving

differently and defiantly in relation to the state, Landauer pointed out, is

itself a revolutionary act. Anarchism for Landauer is the actualisation and

reconstitution of something that has always been present, which exists

alongside the state, albeit buried and laid waste (quoted in Ward 1973,

11).

In essence then, anarchists attempted to create a community that

contained the realization of their core principles as much as possible. Theidea was that, although a public campaign of antagonizing the state seemed

useful, a parallel, constructive activism that could build relationships outside

the system was essential. Wini Breines, speaking of New Left organizations

of the 1960s called this prefigurative politics, because the ideal society was

prefigured in anti-establishment forms of organizing. While struggling to

liberate the world, said Greg Calvert, a leader of Students for a Democratic

Society (SDS) during the 1960s, we would create the liberated world in our

midst. While fighting to destroy the power which had created the loveless

anti-community, we would ourselves create the community of love TheBeloved Community5 (quoted in Breines 1989, 48).

Modern anarchist writers emerging in the 1950s and 1960s have built on

the ideas of Landauer and others. A free society cannot be the substitution

of a new order for the old order; wrote New Left forerunner Paul

Goodman, it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up

most of social life6 (quoted in Parisi 1986, 26). British anarchist Colin

Ward, writing a year after Goodmans death, stated that

an anarchist society, a society that again sees itself without authority, is always

in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the stateand its bureaucracies, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices,nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their super-stitious separatism. (1973, 11)

450 T. Goyens

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Another classic, contemporary exposition of the present-ness of anarchism

is Peter Lamborn Wilsons (using the nom de plumeHakim Bey)T.A.Z.: The

temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchism, poetic terrorism. Wilson/

Bey, using an eccentric style, fashions a concept of an anarchist place of

resistance, rebirth, and anti-authority (Bey 1985). The TAZ is not to

replace the vision and commitment of a comprehensive revolution, but can

be seen as an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a

guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination)

and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, beforethe State can

crush it (1985, 99). Bey adopts Michel Foucaults notion of heterotopia, a

place of deviation, a countersite, or a kind of effectively enacted utopia

(Foucault 1986, 24). These theoretical models are grounded in real

neighborhoods and meeting places. Anarchists do envision these places

and zones as miniature anarchist societies in which their principles ofnonhierarchy and mutual aid are practiced as if they actually lived in a

world they would wish to live in. The idea of a parallel community and its

success within a dominant system clearly has spatial connotations.

The German anarchist movement in the United States at the turn of the

twentieth century practiced prefigurative politics, even though most

Americans associated the movement with a public campaign with at least

the possibility of violent insurrection. Historians of anarchism, however,

must provide balance to this picture. The anarchists liberated community

forged through prefigurative politics holds the key to linking the staticgeography of radicalism (map of meeting places) to a dynamic spatial

movement in motion.

Conceptualizing anarchist places

After clarifying the distinctions between space and place, and examining key

concepts of anarchist philosophy, it is time to delve back into the record of

the German anarchist movement in New York in order to analyze

anarchists use of specific places, beer halls foremost among them. By usingLefebvres notion of the production of space, I seek to demonstrate that the

anarchists practice of prefigurative politics constitutes the appropriation

and conceptualization of certain urban places and that this process is an

integral part of anarchists identity and movement. The anarchist beer hall is

not simply a box of unchanging space in which anarchists convened.

Instead, they transformed it into a uniquely anarchist place to suit their

needs.

Urban anarchists produced a spatial community that they conceived as

the embodiment of anarchist ideals what Calvert, cited earlier, described as

the beloved community (Breines 1989, 48). They not only ascribed an

anarchist function to such places, but also inscribedtheir philosophy in it.

Activities such as backroom lectures, discussion evenings, singing rehearsals,


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mass celebrations, and outdoor recreation produced, and at the same time,

signified the radical space in contrast to the surrounding space.

While working-class saloons were ubiquitous and nearly all looked the

same, such places reveal certain features that made it congenial for small-

scale club life (Duis 1998; Powers 1999; Kohn 2003). Nearly all saloons had

a backroom, which the Germans called Halle, or hall. This was a separate

space used for meetings or celebrations. By transplanting older German

traditions of tavern culture, German anarchists mostly skilled, class-

conscious artisans conceived of their beer halls as a bohemian space freed

from the ethos of mechanization and mass production. Radical saloons in

New York restored a modicum of artisan solidarity and camaraderie amidst

the frenzy of industrial capitalism.

The spatiality of this urban anarchist movement is further visible in the

ways in which anarchists conceptualized their meeting places as an anarchistsociety in miniature. They decorated interiors with symbols and representa-

tions from the labor movement and radical tradition. These inscriptions of

meaning and memory onto the ordinary space of a saloon distinguished it

from other taprooms. The walls at Greifs, a radical saloon in Chicago, were

covered with pictures of Lassalle, Marx, Bebel, and Liebknecht, and a bust

of Louis Lingg . . . on a pedestal. (Lingg was one of the defendants in the

18867 Haymarket affair, but committed suicide in his jail cell.) Other than

physical alterations, occupants frequently expanded the initial function

that of a drinking establishment to include uses that further conceptua-lized their space as alternative and oppositional. Anarchist groups and

radical unions chose saloons as a storage room for their paraphernalia and

even book-keeping. Various unions kept minutes, flags, and other insignias

in large cupboards (Ensslen 1988, 170).

Journalist John Gilmer Speed once visited Zum groben Michel (Tough

Mikes), a popular meeting place on East 5th Street in New York.

Consistent with other saloons, he described the place as a narrow, dark, and

dingy bar-room, with the name placed in white letters on the window. But

the sights and sounds indeed the entire atmosphere transcended theordinariness of most workingmens saloons.

This is the basement under a tenement house, and there are two rooms. Thebar is on one side of the front room. In front of it is a large table at which menwere drinking beer and on which was a zither and a man thumping out theMarseillaise . . . Beyond the table was a reading desk, upon which were filesof anarchistic papers, and above them portraits of the anarchists that havebeen executed for their crimes . . . Just beyond the bar, the table, and thereading stand was a pool table stretching nearly across the room, and leavingscantspace at either hand for the handling of a cue. Several men stood about

this table with cues in their hands, but they ceased playing when Ientered . . . Beyond the pool table was a smaller room, and in the centre ofthis was a table at which half a dozen men sat drinking beer out of those largeglasses known on the Bowery, I believe, as schooners. And still beyond, at a

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smaller table, and next to a window that looked out into a small dark courtyard, sat a young woman [Emma Goldman] who, had she not seemed soentirely at home, would have appeared out of place in such surroundings. Shewas reading a book, with a glass of beer by the side of it on the table. (Speed1892, 7989)

In 1887, Comyns Ray penned a revealing description of the editorial office

of Freiheit, a popular paper edited by Johann Most. The ground floor of

number 167 William Street was a lager-beer saloon while the offices were

located upstairs. Ray reported matter-of-factly that upon entering the

hallway you will notice, as soon as your eyes are able to penetrate the

darkness, a large red banner on the wall bearing the inscription, Vive la

Commune. Alluding to the notoriety of the editor, he resumed: A cast-

iron letter-box, marked John Most, attracts ones attention for a moment,

and then we ascend two flights of narrow, creaky stairs, and step into alarge, dilapidated room, extending over the entire top floor of the building.

What fascinated Ray about the office is not so much its function as a

production facility for an anarchist paper, but rather, the way its occupants

chose to decorate it.

The walls of the room are almost totally covered with pictures, portraits,newspaper headings, etc. In crazy-quilt fashion is arranged Lieske, Shakspere[sic], Hoedel, Rousseau, Karl Marx, Feurbach [sic], Stuart Mill, ThomasPaine, Richard Wagner, Marat, Hans Sachs, St. Simon, LaSalle, Proudhon,

Anton Kammerer, Stallmacher [sic]. (McLean 1972, 2401, 2445)

In addition, anti-anarchist cartoons from popular magazines were displayed

with a sense of pride. Again, an ordinary place was transformed into a

countercultural space adorned with its own heroes as a reaction to their

presumed neglect in mainstream society.

Picnics are another place-event worth considering in this context. On the

one hand, picnics clearly constituted an escape from oppressive tenement life.

Outdoor excursions were common with most working-class Americans, but

German American anarchists fashioned a picnic culture all their own byadding a political dimension. Interestingly, most parks frequented by

German anarchists in the New York City area were privately owned

nearly all by Germans and featured picnic tables, concert podiums, dance

pavilions, shooting galleries, fishing and boating amenities, and of course,

prepaid kegs of beer. Public parks were rarely used, and never were anarchist

activities recorded in Central Park, the playground for the middle classes.

Not only was the park grounds a real space, but anarchists conceived it

as an anarchist space in which their ideals could be practiced in the here and

now. Several descriptions hint at this potentially revolutionary meaning of

picnics. For instance, in praising the success of a festival in Manhattan, one

anarchist paper wrote: Everyone thoroughly enjoyed a few hours of

unrestrained joy of life, an obvious reference to an anti-authoritarian


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agenda (Der Anarchist, 1 October 1892). The best description of a picnic by

a participant in which an anarchist spirit and the notion of oppositional

space are interwoven comes from a review in 1898:

Kro bels large park including the giant dance pavilion could of course by nomeans be filled, but even so, a splendid crowd of men and women appeared.And, the main thing was that there existed an altogether anarchist harmony.Arrangements were not well planned, but instead instantly improvised so thateverything proceeded like clockwork and a spontaneous order prevailed. Therewas no program so that the various conversations never stopped. Sundaydrinking laws were flouted and the police were conspicuous by its absence.(Freiheit, 15 October 1898)7

Anarchist picnics were pageants and always featured a politically

subversive exhibition. Speakers stated their oppositional views in an

open space, to display solidarity and defiance. As the socialist historianFriedrich Sorge observed of the radical movement in Chicago: every

appropriate event in public life was used to shake up the people, the

workers, and to bring them to a realization of their condition and also,

certainly, to frighten the philistines and politicians (quoted in Nelson

1988, 127). Speeches were accompanied by musical bands, singing, and a

full-fledged, military-style flag ceremony performed with grace and pride

on the park grounds. It was an elaborate dedication of trade unions and

agitation groups who unfurled their flags and banners, or paid tribute to

fallen comrades.The dynamic of oppositional politics at these outdoor gatherings worked

both ways. On a few occasions, outsiders became the audience for the

anarchist performers. Sometimes anarchists were harassed or intimidated by

angry onlookers. A well-attended picnic of several radical organizations in

Weehawken, New Jersey, for instance, was targeted by vagabonds of the

American specialty, as one anarchist sheet called them, who forced their

way into the private park. When that was prevented, they threw stones while

one even fired shots at the picnickers. According to the reviewer, one of the

intruders was apprehended by anarchists, given a beating, and thrown overthe fence (Freiheit, 18 June 1887). The fence here is the perfect metaphor

for the anarchists sense of identity forged in a temporary radical space,

namely the space of the picnic ground they occupied and made their own

even if just for an afternoon.

Conclusions

Social movements make, transform, and are possible in space and places.

Alternative and revolutionary practices always interact with space. The

study of anarchism, especially its movement history, is in need of a

reinterpretation based on an awareness of spatiality. While this commitment

is helpful for any study of past human behavior, anarchisms ideological

454 T. Goyens

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goals and claims demand an integrated study of its temporal and spatial

dimensions. By doing this, a more balanced view emerges of the nature, the

impact, and perhaps the achievements of the anarchist movements of the

past. Anarchism is often interpreted as a failure by liberals, conservatives,

and Marxists. A spatial analysis shows that anarchists appropriated places

and successfully built a spatial community that gave meaning to them.

Horizontal, oppositional movements are seldom obviously visible, but they

do exist in parallel networks (with varying degrees of effectiveness to be

sure), and are made up of alternative, meaningful places that are crucial for

any impartial investigation.

Notes on contributor

Tom Goyens teaches American history at the University of Virginias College at

Wise in Wise, Virginia. He is the author ofBeer and revolution: The German anarchistmovement in New York City, 18801914(Illinois, 2007), and is currently working on abiography of Johann Most. He has published articles on anarchist history inRethinking History, Social Anarchism, and Brood en Rozen.

Notes

1. Excerpts of this article have been adapted fromBeer and revolution: The GermanAnarchist movement in New York city, 18801914. Copyright 2007 by the Boardof Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the Universityof Illinois Press.

2. Translation by the author.3. Italics in original.4. Italics in original.5. Italics in original.6. Italics are mine.7. Italics are mine.

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social space and the practice of anarchist history - tom goyens

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