Prefigurative Anarchist Resistance: The Application of Anarchism to Disputes over Space between Individual Land-dwellers and Large Institutions

As the human population grows, and technology plays a larger and larger role in people’s lives, demand for energy is positioned to sky rocket. The U.S. Energy Information Administration in 2013 “projects that world energy consumption will grow by 56% between 2010 and 2040, from 524 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) to 820 quadrillion Btu” (international Energy Outlook). This, combined with the finite nature of petrol reserves, is causing a whole series of new developments in energy production. These new developments will necessitate a government or other large institution like a corporation to be undertaken, and a space to take part in, hydro-electric plants and solar plants need a lot of space. In finding space for these projects, new property lines will be drawn and people will be displaced. The contest over territory is enormously complex. The contested space of the forests of Northern New Mexico, as shown in Understories by Jake Kosek, have roots in everything from old Spanish land grants to secret government experiments, and influence feelings from passionate environmentalism to disdain for an anthropomorphic forest fire fighting bear. These complexities are inherent in spaces in which institutions and individual land dwellers grapple of territory. This is the story of the crises created by social fixes, how anarchist views on authority and property help better ground and understand the complexities of these encounters, and how the same development which has led to the crises might allow for more effective forms of anarchist resistance.
To ground this discussion one case that I will be referring to is a planned hydro-electric project in Chile. The proposed five dams are to be located in the Aysen region of Chile in sout...

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...h people, with more often than naught a non-coincidently negative result.
Capitalist institutions are doomed to a cycle of crises and spatial fixes, which throws them into conflict with individual land-dwellers. The anarchist approach to property allows for the analysis of the spaces in a more equitable sense, avoiding the acceptance of institutional domination of defining legality. The anarchist ideology rejecting all authority, when deviated from, has resulted in violence which destabilizes the resistance. The advent of the internet has further opened doors for non-violent resistance and delegitimizes violent propaganda of the deed. The future for individualized anarchist resistance against institutions must be organized following the same principles as the future society desires and must protect the internet from becoming an institutionally controlled interface.