{"id":8482,"date":"2015-11-29T22:36:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T03:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8482"},"modified":"2015-11-29T22:47:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T03:47:15","slug":"the-rojava-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/29\/the-rojava-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rojava Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Enzinna’s New York Times Magazine article on “The Rojava Experiment<\/a>” finally gives mainstream recognition to what has been happening<\/a> among the Kurds of northern Syria. As he writes,<\/p>\n

“In accordance with a philosophy laid out by a leftist revolutionary named Abdullah Ocalan, Rojavan women had been championed as leaders, defense of the environment enshrined in law and radical direct democracy enacted in the streets.”<\/p>\n

Ocalan’s philosophy, in turn, is a revolutionary Kurdish version of eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin’s philosophy of\u00a0“social ecology” and “libertarian municipalism.”<\/p>\n

In Enzinna’s account, the hundreds of communes making up Rojava’s three cantons of Qamishli, Afrin, and Kobani\u00a0are “Bookchin’s utopian idea materialized”, with “municipal assemblies” as the building blocks of an eco-socialist-feminist order in which all upper-level government positions are shared between a man and a woman, all\u00a0police recruits “receive their weapons only after ‘two weeks of feminist instruction’,” and where\u00a0the enemies — the Islamic State and the Assad regime (along with Turkish president Erdogan’s propaganda war, and sometimes worse, on the Kurds) — make for as harsh a set of circumstances as one could possibly\u00a0imagine.<\/p>\n

“ISIS,” one of the Kurdish militants suggests in the article’s finale, “has chosen the side of slavery. We’ve chosen the side of freedom.” She continues:\u00a0“Ideas, like people, die if we don’t fight for them.”<\/p>\n

The irony here may be that those ideas are being implemented on a large\u00a0scale because of the force by which they were communicated by a charismatic political leader — Ocalan, whose earlier Marxist-Leninism was upended as he read Bookchin’s works in Turkey’s Imrali prison — who, in turn, took them from another idealistic and forceful communicator (Bookchin) who had by that time lost all faith in political change.<\/p>\n

Such change is occurring in northern Syria because, as another interviewee put it, “the whole world collapsed.” In Bookchin’s America, meanwhile, the world chugs on.<\/p>\n

Enzinna’s calling Bookchin an “obscure Vermont-based philosopher” who is “mostly forgotten” today may not be exactly accurate — at least not for\u00a0eco-activists and -theorists — but what’s more important is that this article\u00a0may make it much less accurate. That would be a good thing.<\/p>\n

(Janet Biehl’s new biography<\/a>\u00a0of Bookchin may\u00a0help with that as well.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wes Enzinna’s New York Times Magazine article on “The Rojava Experiment” finally gives mainstream recognition to what has been happening among the Kurds of northern Syria. As he writes, “In accordance with a philosophy laid out by a leftist revolutionary named Abdullah Ocalan, Rojavan women had been championed as leaders, defense of the environment enshrined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691215],"tags":[17866,350204,350202,123580,350205,123581,350203,277,12622],"class_list":["post-8482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-bookchin","tag-kurdish-revolutionary-movement","tag-libertarian-municipalism","tag-murray-bookchin","tag-ocalan","tag-pkk","tag-rojava","tag-social-ecology","tag-syria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2cO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8032,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/02\/16\/the-ecology-of-syriankurdish-freedom\/","url_meta":{"origin":8482,"position":0},"title":"The ecology of Syrian\/Kurdish freedom","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Eco-theorists may recognize the title of this post as a variation on the title of Murray Bookchin's audacious and\u00a0deeply\u00a0influential (for many, including myself) 1982 book The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (pdf here). What's little known to anyone following recent news about the war in Syria\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/_38eVyMfag0\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8902,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/12\/assessing-murray-bookchins-legacy\/","url_meta":{"origin":8482,"position":1},"title":"Assessing Murray Bookchin’s legacy","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Damian White has posted an excellent review\u00a0of Janet Biehl's book Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin at the Jacobin blog. Bookchin's legacy has undergone something of a revival of late\u00a0thanks to the\u00a0efforts of Kurdish eco-socialist communitarians in Rojava. As he did in his 2008 book Bookchin: A Critical\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9316,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/06\/23\/bioregionalism-primer\/","url_meta":{"origin":8482,"position":2},"title":"Bioregionalism primer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"When I began my involvement with environmental politics in the 1980s, the main currents of radical or critical thought were represented by deep ecologists\u00a0(or biocentrists), social ecologists (gathered around Murray Bookchin and his Institute for Social Ecology), and ecofeminists, and they seemed more at odds with each other than united.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10034,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/12\/19\/rojava-at-risk\/","url_meta":{"origin":8482,"position":3},"title":"Rojava at risk","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I've posted here before about the Kurdish experiment in social-ecological-feminist radical democracy that's been unfolding in the unlikeliest circumstances in the northern Syrian region of Rojava. Donald Trump's sudden announcement of a complete U.S. military withdrawal from Syria now leaves that experiment extremely vulnerable... which puts anti-war* activists into an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1079,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/05\/30\/between-continental-environmental-philosophy\/","url_meta":{"origin":8482,"position":4},"title":"between continental & environmental philosophy","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Responding to a post on this blog, Kvond, a little while ago, raised the question of the relationship between Arne Naess, originator of \u201cdeep ecology,\u201d and Spinoza \u2013 which made me think of the interesting if sporadic\/uneven\/episodic relationships between the main traditions of continental philosophy and environmental thought. A glance\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1154,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/14\/nagarjuna-ecophilosophy-the-practice-of-liberation\/","url_meta":{"origin":8482,"position":5},"title":"Nagarjuna, ecophilosophy, & the practice of liberation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"John Clark\u2019s recent article in Capitalism Nature Socialism, \u201cOn being none with nature: Nagarjuna and the ecology of emptiness,\u201d has gotten my neurons firing in a productive way. Clark is a political philosopher whose book The Anarchist Moment had long ago excited me about the prospect of melding together a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"QCI%20045.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/11\/QCI-045.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8482"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8487,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8482\/revisions\/8487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}