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Punk Anarchism

An Anti-Politics of Resistance

Punk Anarchism cover

Punk Anarchism

An Anti-Politics of Resistance

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Pre-order. Available Jan 22 2026
$18.68 RRP $23.35 Website price saving $4.67 (20%)

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Description

Punk Anarchism is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, situationism and political nihilism.

Arguing that traditional approaches to political change are ineffective in the face of the climate crisis and the failures of liberal institutions, the book advocates for rejecting the possibility of meaningful political change within the existing political system.

Drawing on historical cultural movements like the Russian and Japanese nihilists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Sean Parson calls for a politics of pure negation, centered on the destruction of the current social order, rather than its reform – advocating for a revolutionary politics that embraces resentment against the wealthy and rejects hierarchical power dynamics. Punk Anarchism asks: what if resistance were motivated by a sense of playfulness and enjoyment, rather than hope for a better future? Ultimately, Parson proposes an anti-theory of negation as a way to imagine political agency beyond traditional frameworks.

Table of Contents

An Anti-Introduction: A Leap Into the Void
I. Anti-Theory: Dada, Situationism, Stirner, and Punk
II. An Outline of Things to Come: An Anti-introduction

Chapter One: The Crisis of Representation and the Collapse of the Liberal Order
I. The Mediated Reality, the Hyperreal, and the Crisis of Representation
II. The Collapse of the Post-war Spectacle
III. The Current Crisis of Representation
IV. Concluding Thoughts: Past, Present, Future and the End of History

Chapter Two: Industrialism is a Death Camp
I. Industrial Objects and the Materiality of Symbolic Anxiety
II. A Genealogical Analysis of the Gas Mask: From Plague Doctors to Anti-state Protestors
III. Industrialism as Suicidal Blackmail

Chapter Three: The Climate isn't Real
I. The Simulacra and Disaster Management: The Environment and Climate
II. The Politics of Models: Administrative Rationalism and the state regulation of Illusions:
III. Accepting the Nonidentity of Nature: Solaris, Cthuhlu, and the Masterless Object
IV. Anti-World Politics: Revolutionary Demonology and the Destruction of Enlightenment Order

Chapter Four: A Rising Tide Sinks All Art Galleries
I. Art, the Economy, the State:
II. Negation as an Artistic Medium: Activism as Performance Art
III. Mausoleums of our Extinct Culture
IV. Art as Resistance and Resistance as Art

Chapter Five: No Future, No Hope
I. What the End of the World Means…
II. Temporal Nihilism
III. “The Revolutionary is a Doomed Man”: Towards Political Nihilism in the 21st Century

Chapter Six: Without Gallows Humor There is Only the Gallows
I. “Dancing on the Corpses Ashes”: Russian Political Nihilism and Clearing the Rubble of Social Collapse
II. “The Goal of my Activities is the Destruction of all Living Things”: The Revolutionary Nihilism of Kaneko Fumiko
III. “We All Die in a Yellow Submarine”: Resentment and the Tragi-comedy of Dead Billionaires
IV. Conclusion: Cabin in the Woods and the Politics of Armed Joy

Chapter Seven: Towards A Nihilistic Politics of Attack
I. “The Revolutionary Handbrake": Walter Benjamin on Revolution and the Future
II. A Strategy of Attack: Against Accelerationism and Withdrawal
III. “The misplaced optimism of the doomed”: Snowpiercer (2013) as Destituent Power and An Insurrectionary Handbreak

Conclusion: A Requiem for Our World

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Jan 22 2026
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 240
ISBN 9781350537354
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 4 b&w images
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Sean Parson

Sean Parson is Professor in the Department of Poli…

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