Journeying through Utopia: Anarchism, geographical imagination and performative futures in Marie-Louise Berneri's works

Abstract

This paper addresses works and archives of transnational anarchist intellectual Marie-Louise Berneri (1918-1949), author of a neglected but very insightful history of utopias and of their spaces. Extending current literature on anarchist geographies, utopianism and on the relation between geography and the humanities, I argue that a distinction between authoritarian and libertarian utopias is key to understanding the political relevance of the notion of utopia, which is also a matter of space and geographical imagination. Berneri's criticisms to utopia were eventually informed by notions of anti-colonialism and anti-authoritarianism, especially referred to her original critique of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Then, I argue for a connection between anarchist, humanistic, cultural and historical approaches to geography, to extend the empirical and theoretical reach of the discipline and its relations with the 'humanities'. This paper likewise contributes to recent scholarship on transnational anarchism, arguing that the anarchist tradition cannot be understood outside its transnational, cosmopolite and multilingual networks and concrete practices: Therefore, only relational, contextual and space-sensitive approaches can make sense of its specificity.