Relationship Anarchy: Occupy Intimacy! - Paperback

by Pérez-Cortés (Author), Amanda Foy (Translator), Elisabeth Sheff (Foreword by)

A revolution from intimacy is the main proposal of this book, which interweaves the principles of social anarchism with the desire to extend the realm of the political to the forms we give to our relationships.

Contemporary formulations of this "relationship anarchy" took shape in Sweden in the twenty-first century's first decade. They draw not only on the long tradition of anarchism, but also on contributions from sociology, anthropology, feminism, queer theory and non-monogamous activisms. At a time when revolutionary perspectives seem to have moved beyond the horizon, the challenge of relationship anarchy is to build from below networks of bonds and ways of caring for each other, models of coexistence with those who accompany us in accordance with the same ideals that we would like to govern society, overcoming normativity, inherited power and authority structures and stereotyped control mechanisms.
Relationship anarchy is not a reckless notion proposing new relationship models, arbitrarily substituting some normativities for others. It doesn't annul love, desire or desires, their orientations, identities, or anything of the sort to establish a repressive norm. It is not an improvised ethical reformulation. It is the product of thought forged and shared by generations of authors, activists, and organizations of an anarchist stripe through experiences, efforts, sacrifices, failures, and successes over the last two centuries. Here, it is applied to a theory of social construction where utopia is focused around relationships as the seed of a new form of collective organization, not just the result of it