Masters Thesis

Allegorical anarchy

In this work, I deploy allegory as a methodological tool within postanarchism which utilizes Max Stimer as a proto post-structuralist to reveal the power of place of the dialectic alongside the phantoms of liberal values therein. Through a deconstruction of political values, power is revealed as nonexistent in of itself, and thoroughly dependent upon voluntary servitude. In the deployment of voluntary inservitude, the subject finds herself at an uncontaminated, nonessentialist outside. Whereas postanarchist literature to date focuses on ontological anarchy at the outside, when Walter Benjamin's concept of allegory is put into constellatory communication with postanarchism, ontological anarchy is found to exist within the failure, the ruin, of power. Furthermore, whereas postanarchism finds insurrection preferable to revolution, I argue that the insurrectionist rupture created in allegory gives rise to revolutionary opportunity within the failure of the power of the dialectic. In sum, allegorical anarchy reveals the unseen anarchy of our daily lives within failed power, alongside operating as a potential revolutionary springboard when acknowledged and organized upon.

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