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Reviewed by:
  • Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism by Laura Portwood-Stacer
  • John Lennon
Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism. By Laura Portwood-Stacer New York: Bloomsbury. 2013.

In anarchist studies (and informal conversations), there are often heated debates regarding the role of lifestyle in contemporary US anarchism. While some see lifestylism as a manifestation of the practical everyday cultural work of political resistance intimately interconnected within a larger anarchist project, others discount it out-of-hand as misguided, self-aggrandizing theater. The debates easily become ideological shouting matches as both sides create much noise but offer no clear pathways to navigate toward an understanding of the state of US anarchism in the twenty-first century. Into this fray enters Laura Portwood-Stacer’s timely and resourceful mediation that bridges these two vantage points by examining the context surrounding lifestylism. Taking the everyday lives of anarchists seriously but without romanticizing them, Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism offers a lucid examination of both the possibilities and limitations of anarchists attempting to enact their political ideologies within their quotidian lives.

Portwood’s most significant contribution is that she situates lifestyle anarchism within the current historical-cultural conditions of neoliberalism that capitalizes on radical tendencies by framing them as individualistic and consumerist choices. Instead of easily equating lifestylism with neoliberalism (which many scholars do), Portwood investigates this relationship by using “strategic ethnography” to interview radicals who are struggling with the fact that to live an anarchist lifestyle inherently involves [End Page 109] ethical compromise. But this struggle is articulated by the interviewees as they attempt to understand their lifestyles within a broader anarchist framework and as a direct response to living within a neoliberal state. While these choices do not, perhaps, offer a comprehensive response to the macropolitical systems in play in the US, they are also not merely a naïve false consciousness; lifestylism represents a vision of the radical anarchist project that is being tested out, with all of its warts and contradictions plainly in view. Portwood takes these responses and her own observations and frames them within a lucid theoretical discussion of the postmodern condition, emphasizing the performativity of political dissent. Concentrating on enactments of sexuality to self-identity to personal consumption practices, Portwood underlines the fact that anarchism (like most contemporary social movements) is fluidly defined and operates squarely within the cultural sphere. This understanding of anarchism, the author points out, is not something that should be ignored nor romantically elevated but dealt with evenly and head-on.

How specifically these microscopic lifestyle interventions interact within the larger milieu of radical struggle is not the focus of Portwood’s examination. Her work is more foundational, trying to clear the room of the shouters who speak of the “chasm” between the two camps. Instead, she states a clear starting point for future scholarly work: Lifestyle activism is a set of tactics that can be incorporated into a radical political anarchist strategy. It is a basic thesis that shows how much work there is to do in the field of radical politics, but one that needs to be heard clearly before more work can be done.

John Lennon
University of South Florida
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