A Brief Essay on Two Files for Counter-Histories: An Investigation into the History of Anarchism and an Activist Editorial Project in the Present, from Prison

Abstract

In this work, I am interested in relating two cases of thought and action that center on the relationship between politics and language, based on a conceptual framework in development situated within the tradition of “glotopolitics”, while also addressing some tensions regarding those aspects of the political that the term encompasses. It is important to connect two cases of thought and action regarding the political relationship and language, based on a conceptual framework in construction that is situated within the tradition of glotopolitics, while also raising some tensions about those aspects of the political that the term involves, focusing on the discursive practices of the anarchist movement in Santa Fe (Province of Santa Fe, Argentina) and Paraná (Province of Entre Ríos, Argentina) in the early decades of the 20th century. These two cities are geographically close, separated by the Paraná River, but connected through the circulation of activists and support among groups. The other case stems from an activist experience in which, along with colleagues with whom I form the collective Contraversiones, we have been conducting workshops and productive projects in contexts of incarceration since 2018, while also supporting individuals who are released from prison in the city of Santa Fe. Specifically, I am part of the team that runs reading and writing workshops and coordinates the Barrett Editorial Community project. While these involve different forms of action and temporalities, a series of commonalities emerge in both cases. Social actors who are often ignored, a “speaking out” [prise de parole], and the question of how to intervene publicly in cases where, due to the nature of the actions, there is either no possibility or desire to conquer positions of governmental power. In both cases, editing and circulating printed materials appear as a political and linguistic praxis; they also contribute to the formation of a dispersed and fragmented archive, resulting from activisms that converge in policies and poetics constructed from a practice -always somewhat unpredictable- that is difficult to translate institutionally. These are archives that are built and simultaneously opened up to think counter-histories: of the political and cultural life of medium-sized cities in the Argentine interior; of prison life and the lives affected by incarceration.