This text, since it publication, has inspired many anarchists in their projects, proposals and practice, but it is with no sense of nostalgia that we have reprinted this booklet, rather because we realize that its central questions and critiques are more relevant than ever: how to identify the enemies of freedom, those in the ivory towers, those on the streets, those within our struggles?
“Published in May 1998 by NN editions, a publisher started only seven months earlier by some anarchists who had participated in the weekly newspaper Canenero, this booklet, has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, German. Since then, it has nourished reflections, offered suggestions, strengthened tensions, raised doubts, as well as provoking much irritation (the concept of ‘the existent’ in particular, in its bursting totality, has proven rather indigestible for those who aspire to administer the State in any way). In its small way, At Daggers Drawn has contributed to the spread of an autonomous, insurrectional anarchist perspective. A perspective that is inherently irreducible to “small reformist steps” and not seduced by “a revolt for a few intimates to the sound of pyrotechnics and poorly crafted slogans”. Forged in the rejection of the false choice between citizenist reformism and vanguardist armed struggle, these pages assert the immediate necessity and possibility of an insurrectional poetry carried out by all. This should not be confused with pathetic political propaganda, nor with boastful and self-referential communiqués.
[…]
It is well known who the authour of this text is: no one. Born from long and continuous discussions, writing, re-writing, additions, changes, suggestions and corrections, At Daggers Drawn should belong to anyone who recognises themselves in it, just as it always should be. Like everything that is the work of no single individual, it belongs to everyone in general.”
– From the introduction of Ai ferri corti, ed. L’oro del tempo, 2015
At daggers drawn: an expression that can be traced back to a variety of historical anecdotes, commonly defining a very specific moment of a violent conflict – the crudest, in the greatest physical proximity and the closest to its end. For those choosing to not look away, nor accept, nor reproduce the miserable and tragic existent that authority imposes, conflict seems inevitable.
As power, its promises, its progress, its blackmails, keep scaring and seducing even those who speak of freedom from authority, we are still faced with the same frustration. We find, over and over, and closer and closer, anarchists making choices based on logics of convenience, efficiency, political strategy and the spotlights of the spectacle, rather than defending, no matter what, anti-authoritarian ethics. So yes, conflict also against the false critics, those who talk about freedom, but when “necessary” throw away our ideas and practices for the sake of favourable alliances, popular acceptance and a chance at a by-all-means-necessary “victory”.
So what these pages declare is permanent conflict: anti-authoritarian ethics are under permanent attack, from all sides, and if those who carry them in their hearts do not defend them, even when it’s exhausting, uncomfortable and inconvenient, their existence in space and time and memory will be relinquished to where authority wants them…
It is with the same passion and urgency that shook us the first time we read these pages that we announce a new print run, in English and German.
Available at: rupture.noblogs.org