Introduction

This chapter explores practices that may help nurture the development of more loving politics. Anarchism offers something other than a politics of representation, normativity, and policing. By transcending dichotomies of personal/political, art/activism, care/justice, and inside/out, feminist analysis queers social movement, undermining and overflowing dominant representations of radical politics. The anarchist tradition has long recognized that normativity and representation are intertwined with hierarchy. The declaration of oneself or one’s group as superior to another is dependent upon a convincing representation, a narrative in which beings are cast in their roles of superiority and inferiority. While the dominant representations of politics focus on the spectacles of statecraft and its discontents, numerous transformative processes go unnoticed. In a political action, the intention may be to show solidarity, to protect living beings from violence, to feed people. Dropping the borders between people, between nations, between any constructed categories of identity involves dropping the protective barriers built around the heart.