Anarchist Women and the Politics of Walking

• Date: 01 December 2017
• Author: Kathy E. Ferguson
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912917732417
• Subject Matter: Symposium: The 2016 Maxwell Lecture

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917732417

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(4) 708 –719

© 2017 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912917732417

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Symposium: The 2016 Maxwell Lecture

. . . mankind stumbles on its task of understanding the world.

—Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason, p. 90

It’s a long walk, that’s all.

—Alexandra David-Néel, in Foster, Forbidden Journey,

p. 201

In the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, two

remarkable women appeared briefly in the European

anarchist movement, made distinctive contributions, and

then seemingly disappeared from anarchism’s political

ranks. Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) was a French

anarchist, Buddhist, prolific writer and translator, and

world-famous outdoorswoman; Lily Gair Wilkinson (?–

1957) was a Scottish anarchist and painter, enthusiastic

hiker, and author of one splendid essay. While Alexandra

was an individualist anarchist, and Lily embraced com-

munist anarchism, both saw anarchism as a philosophy

and political practice that rejects centralized, hierarchical

authority, including states, churches, corporations, patri-

archies, and empires, and works to create egalitarian rela-

tions in which individuals cultivate their freedom while

organizing themselves into voluntary, self-governing

communities.

Lily and Alexandra are the starting point of my reflec-

tions, the first point in an interactive triangle of ideas.

They are two of at least one thousand women (so far iden-

tified) who were active in the international anarchist

movement from the Paris Commune (1871) to the Spanish

Revolution (1939).1 A few, notably Emma Goldman, are

well known today, but most have faded into obscurity,

occluding both women’s vigorous presence in anarchism

and anarchism’s notable contributions to feminism. My

goal is to reverse that process: first, to bring women’s

lively presence back into our historical accounts of the

anarchist movement, to invite them to surprise us with

their insights and adventures; second, to bring anarchism

more fully into feminism, including anarchist feminists’

radical critiques of capital, religion, patriarchy, and the

state and their insistence on living a transformative way

of life.

To rethink both anarchism and feminism, I dig through

old publications, correspondence, and life histories,

rounding up these occasionally bizarre, always interest-

ing women, one stubborn figure at a time. I am configur-

ing these radical women as narrative personae, engaging

them in the same sense that feminist philosopher Maria

Tamboukou (2016, 9) following Deleuze and Guattari

connects with past radical women “whose actions leave

behind them storylines to be followed in the pursuit of

meaning and understanding.” Narrative personae are

made up of political and personal stories that express

ideas and constitute events so that we can interact with

732417PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917732417Political Research QuarterlyFerguson

research-article2017

1University of Hawai’i, Honolulu, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kathy E. Ferguson, Departments of Political Science and Women’s

Studies, University of Hawai’i, 640 Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way,

Honolulu, HI 96813, USA.

Email: kferguso@hawaii.edu

Anarchist Women and the Politics

of Walking

Kathy E. Ferguson1

Abstract

Two anarchist women from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, Alexandra David-Néel and Lily Gair

Wilkinson, combined their politics with radical engagement in walking. In both the literal sense, moving their bodies

along the earth, and the figurative sense of calling on peripatetic tropes to express their ideas, they found walking

to be a constitutive element of freedom. This paper brings the ideas of Whitehead and other process philosophers

into conversation with material and semiotic dimensions of walking and with anarchist politics. In the political lives of

Wilkinson and David-Néel, I see struggles to live anarchist lives, lives into which one could walk.

Keywords

anarchism, feminism, walking, process philosophy, Whitehead