Evolution and revolution: Anarchist geographies, modernity and poststructuralism

International audienceThis paper addresses the recent rediscovery of anarchist geographies and its implications in current debates on the ‘foundations’ of science and knowledge. By interrogating both recent works and original texts by early anarchist geographers who have greater influence on present-day literature such as Elisée Reclus (1830-1905) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), I discuss the possible uses of a poststructuralist critique for this line of research by first challenging ‘postanarchist’ claims that so-called ‘classical anarchism’, allegedly biased by essentialist naturalism, should be entirely dismissed by contemporary scholarship. My main argument is that early anarchist geographers used the intellectual tools available in their day to build a completely different ‘discourse’, criticising the ways in which science and knowledge were constructed. As they openly contested ideas of linear progress, racism and European supremacy, as well as anthropocentrism and dichotomized definitions of ‘man’ and ‘nature’, it is hard to make them fit simplistic definitions. The body of work I address stresses their possible contributions to critical, anarchist and radical scholarship through their idea of knowledge, not limited to what is now called ‘discourse analysis’, but engaging with social movements in order to transform society

Utopian and Developmental Mediterranean Spaces: The Example of the Inland Sea of Martins, Lavigne, Roudaire et al. (1869–1892)

Following the example of the tremendous success of the digging of the Suez Canal during its time, scientific and technical progress led us to believe, for more than a century and a half, in a Nature that could be modelled by Man. The nineteenth century saw the triumph of modern thought (Rabinow 1995) and the figure of the engineer, as well as the proliferation of major projects in the field of land planning, projects nowadays called “utopian”. This resea=rch will attempt to present an example to our emblematic sense of this era: the project of Captain Roudaire on the creation of an Inland Sea (1874–1884) in the southern Algerian and Tunisian borders. Our aim will be to complete the brilliant analytical work done by Olivier Soubeyran and Ahmed Benckeik (1993) by making a new point about the origins of the project and its fertile descent. Thus, we will endeavour to show that the utopian projects do not die and reappear very regularly, according to the current events and the international preoccupations – and it is the case of the Inner Sea – proof that they have not been forgotten and they “haunt” the long-term world of global planning