Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus - Paperback

by John P. Clark (Editor), Camille Martin (Editor), Elisée Reclus (Author)

Anarchy, Geography, Modernity is the first comprehensive introduction to the thought of Elisée Reclus, the great anarchist geographer and political theorist. It shows him to be an extraordinary figure for his age. Not only an anarchist but also a radical feminist, anti-racist, ecologist, animal rights advocate, cultural radical, nudist, and vegetarian. Not only a major social thinker but also a dedicated revolutionary.

The work analyzes Reclus' greatest achievement, a sweeping historical and theoretical synthesis recounting the story of the earth and humanity as an epochal struggle between freedom and domination. It presents his groundbreaking critique of all forms of domination: not only capitalism, the state, and authoritarian religion, but also patriarchy, racism, technological domination, and the domination of nature. His crucial insights on the interrelation between personal and small-group transformation, broader cultural change, and large-scale social organization are explored. Reclus' ideas are presented both through detailed exposition and analysis, and in extensive translations of key texts, most appearing in English for the first time.

Author Biography

John Clark is the Curtin Distinguished Professor in Humane Letters and the Professions, a professor of philosophy, and a member of the environmental studies faculty at Loyola University-New Orleans. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, most recently, The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism; comoderator of Research on Anarchism, an international multilingual discussion list and research archives; editor of the online journal Psychic Swamp: The Surregional Review; and the author of the "Imagined Ecologies" column for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism. He lives in New Orleans. Camille Martin is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Looms and Sonnets. She is the founder of Rogue Embryo, a literary blog. She lives in Toronto. Elisée Reclus was a renowned French geographer, writer, and anarchist. In 1892 he was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society for his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes (Universal Geography), despite his having been banished from France because of his political activism.