Abstract

The French philosopher Alain Badiou is one of a number of contemporary theorists whose work has been identified has a source for postanarchism. This essay questions that identificatoin by focusing on Badiou's sustained criticism of anarchist and libertarian currents for thier failure to engage fully with the difficulties of political power, and in particular their failure to break with capitalist and statist political forms. Although problematic, these criticisms converge with existing debates in the 'movement of movements', which have started to address the difficulty of finding egalitarian forms of practice to sustain the movement. These debates lead us towards the often elided problem of the relationship between postanarchist theory and anarchist practice.