Towards anarchist futures? Creative presentism, vanguard practices and anthropological hopes

Abstract

Recently, new political but also conceptual hopes have been invested in the study of anarchy as a non-prescriptive, native category, proposing a dialogue between actually existing anarchism and the discipline of anthropology. My article contributes to this anthropology of anarchists with an analysis of a specific form of temporal reasoning exhibited in the social, ethical and lifestyle practices of an anarchist group in the East German city of Hoyerswerda. By developing the term ‘creative presentism’, I present these contemporary anarchist practices as an arena of knowledge production in which the postmodern, neoliberal evacuation of the near future – so convincingly detected by Jane Guyer – is significantly challenged by an urge for a different relationship to the future. Anarchist practices thus ethnographically add to the growing anthropology of the future and additionally offer new grounds for a self-reflexive investigation of the role hope and the future play in our own knowledge practices.