Minor Perambulations, Political Horizons: Comment on Kathy Ferguson’s “Anarchist Women and the Politics of Walking”

DOI10.1177/1065912917732419
Published date01 December 2017
Date01 December 2017
Subject MatterSymposium: The 2016 Maxwell Lecture
https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917732419
Political Research Quarterly
2017, Vol. 70(4) 728 –734
© 2017 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912917732419
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Symposium: The 2016 Maxwell Lecture
Introduction
Among what seem, at first glance, quite disparate ele-
ments—anarchist women, walking, Whitehead’s pro-
cess philosophy—Kathy Ferguson identifies rich and
unexpected connections. Engagingly weaving in her
own story of walking lost and—incrementally, collab-
oratively, incompletely—regained, she helps us pay
careful attention to what the concept of process might
mean for political thinking, and what the process of
walking might mean for political life-practice. In
attuning readers to key resonances between the mirac-
ulous physiological complexity of walking, the
immersive sensory richness of walking as a kind of
praxis, and the latter’s enactment in the anarchist fem-
inist lives of Alexandra David-Neel and Lily Gair
Wilkinson, Ferguson reorients our sense of both the
actual and the possible. This triangulation showcases
Ferguson’s keen sense, here and in her work more
broadly, of the political valences of everyday prac-
tices. At the same time, it seems to me that the triangle
fails to cohere entirely. Where the sections on
Whitehead and physiological walking hum with the
vibrant complexity of life in process, David-Neel and
Gair Wilkinson’s walking praxes depend in some
degree on the disavowal of complicating factors.
Namely, white supremacist frames of reference under-
gird their respective conceptualizations of freedom.
Moreover, Ferguson’s circumscription of the politics
of walking to exclude situations of coercion and vul-
nerability to violence correspondingly raises the ques-
tion of what and for whom the politics of walking is
for. The first two sections of this comment detail this
appreciation and this criticism in turn. In the third and
final section, I suggest that a radical politics of walk-
ing must not only open its horizons to nonvoluntary,
threatened, and resistive perambulatory modes and the
histories that they carry, but avow these feminist anar-
chist ancestors’ disavowals along with their achieve-
ments as part of a living radical lineage.
732419PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917732419Political Research QuarterlyMenzel
research-article2017
1University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
Corresponding Author:
Annie Menzel, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies,
University of Wisconsin, 3321 Sterling Hall, 475 N Charter St.,
Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Email: acmenzel@wisc.edu
Minor Perambulations, Political
Horizons: Comment on Kathy
Ferguson’s “Anarchist Women
and the Politics of Walking”
Annie Menzel1
Abstract
In “Anarchist Women and the Politics of Walking,” Kathy Ferguson identifies rich and unexpected connections
between anarchist feminists, walking, and Whitehead’s process philosophy. In attuning readers to resonances between
the physiological and sensory complexity of walking, and the latter’s role in the lives of anarchist feminists Alexandra
David-Neel and Lily Gair Wilkinson (and Ferguson’s own), her essay sheds crucial light on the concept of process for
political thinking and what the everyday process of walking might mean for political praxis. At the same time, I argue
that the anarchist feminist walking praxes of David-Neel and Gair Wilkinson depend in some degree on disavowed
white supremacist frames of reference. Moreover, Ferguson’s circumscription of the politics of walking to exclude
situations of coercion and vulnerability correspondingly raises the question of what and for whom the politics of
walking is for. I suggest that a radical politics of walking must not only open its horizons to nonvoluntary, threatened,
and resistive perambulatory modes and the histories that they carry, but avow these feminist anarchist ancestors’
disavowals along with their achievements as part of a living radical lineage.
Keywords
anarchism, feminism, walking, whiteness, race, freedom

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