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A review by zaraven
The Nation on No Map by William C. Anderson
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Anderson argues that abolition requires an end to statehood / nations, and that Black people need to be (and already are) building experiments in alternative ways of living and meeting each other’s survival needs outside of the state. I appreciate all of his points and the ways he pulls from and cites a variety of Black revolutionary thinkers - Lucy Parsons, Sylvia Wynter, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, Aime Cesaire, Angela Davis, Saidiya Hartman, Frantz Fanon, Huey Newton, the list goes on.
where I struggled with this book was the lack of deep dives and the lack of specificity. If you’re going to tell me to be cautious about authoritarian leftist movements I am so here for that critique but say more and be as specific as possible!! if you’re going to say that Black folks are already building experiments in survival outside the state, I’m so here for that and agree but would have loved to see an exploration of 1-2 of those experiments, what’s going well, what challenges they’re facing, how they’re navigating those challenges. If you’re going to tell me about the failures of the Marxist movement in Guayana, tell me what happened! I just felt like there was a lot thrown out there and I have my own ideas about the specifics of any of these points, which is why they so deeply resonated, but would have hoped the book would have gotten more specific about fewer things.
One thing I really liked is how Anderson touches on this question of the shortcomings of nationalism even within sovereignty movements, because that’s definitely something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought as I try to figure out how best to support sovereignty movements while holding critiques of nationalism and statehood, and also recognizing the need to resist colonization at least to some extent on the terms of the oppressor (eg I think about Hawai’i, and how the spoken language was banned and there had never been a written language, and colonizers emphasized the supremacy of the written language, and so to fight back Hawaiians developed a written language and a newspaper to counter colonial narratives). So I appreciated seeing this beginning to be explored but would have really loved a more in depth exploration.
Still really enjoyed this book!!!
where I struggled with this book was the lack of deep dives and the lack of specificity. If you’re going to tell me to be cautious about authoritarian leftist movements I am so here for that critique but say more and be as specific as possible!! if you’re going to say that Black folks are already building experiments in survival outside the state, I’m so here for that and agree but would have loved to see an exploration of 1-2 of those experiments, what’s going well, what challenges they’re facing, how they’re navigating those challenges. If you’re going to tell me about the failures of the Marxist movement in Guayana, tell me what happened! I just felt like there was a lot thrown out there and I have my own ideas about the specifics of any of these points, which is why they so deeply resonated, but would have hoped the book would have gotten more specific about fewer things.
One thing I really liked is how Anderson touches on this question of the shortcomings of nationalism even within sovereignty movements, because that’s definitely something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought as I try to figure out how best to support sovereignty movements while holding critiques of nationalism and statehood, and also recognizing the need to resist colonization at least to some extent on the terms of the oppressor (eg I think about Hawai’i, and how the spoken language was banned and there had never been a written language, and colonizers emphasized the supremacy of the written language, and so to fight back Hawaiians developed a written language and a newspaper to counter colonial narratives). So I appreciated seeing this beginning to be explored but would have really loved a more in depth exploration.
Still really enjoyed this book!!!