Content area
Full Text
Tom Goyens (eds), Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab's Saloon to Occupy Wall Street Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017; 258pp; ISBN 9780252082542
As a global city and media centre, New York City has always attracted outsized attention, and its anarchist scene is no exception. But little scholarly attention has been paid to the latter. As someone who has lived in the city for almost two decades, and met or been involved with many of the authors, subjects, and groups in this book, Radical Gotham is a welcome corrective to this.
The first four essays are nice complements to each other. They document sequen- tial waves of pre-war anarchists - Germans, Jews, Italians, and Spanish-speakers - as each established itself in the city's immigrant enclaves, and the anarchists rose and fell in popularity. These essays (by Tom Goyens, Kenyon Zimmer, Marcella Bencivenni, and Christopher J. Castañeda, respectively) pay close attention to each group's ideological differences. Many of the same debates can be heard in anarchist circles today, such as fights between advocates of structured, public organisations and anarchists who engage in clandestine, insurrectionist activity. Each essay adds little-known information that helps flesh out the poorly-documented early history of the U.S. anarchist movement, which was dominated by these largely non-English speaking groupings.
The rest of the book is less coherent. Three of the groups covered have received scholarly attention: the Living Theater, Catholic Worker, and Black Mask/Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UATWMF). Allan Antliff's Living Theater piece explores founders Judith Malina and Julian Beck...