Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture

Kathy E. Ferguson's Letterpress Revolution explores the importance of printers in galvanizing anarchist movements from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s. Printers arranged text, ink, images, graphic markers, and blank space within the architecture of the page, creating dynamic and entangled networks that brought the decentralized movements together. Their correspondence and radical ideas contributed to the persistence of anarchism in the face of harassment, arrest, assault, deportation, and exile. Ferguson suggests methods for cultivating contemporary political resistance by investigating the political, material, and aesthetic practices of anarchist print culture.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 24 February 2023
Publisher: Duke University Press

While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printer at a printing press. In Letterpress Revolution, Kathy E. Ferguson explores the importance of printers, whose materials galvanized anarchist movements across the United States and Great Britain from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s. Ferguson shows how printers, whether working at presses in homes, offices, or community centers, arranged text, ink, images, graphic markers, and blank space within the architecture of the page. Printers extensive correspondence with fellow anarchists and the radical ideas they published created dynamic and entangled networks that brought the decentralized anarchist movements together. Printers and presses did more than report on the movement; they were constitutive of it, and their vitality in anarchist communities helps explain anarchisms remarkable persistence in the face of continuous harassment, arrest, assault, deportation, and exile. By inquiring into the political, material, and aesthetic practices of anarchist print culture, Ferguson points to possible methods for cultivating contemporary political resistance.

While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printer at a printing press. In Letterpress Revolution, Kathy E. Ferguson explores the importance of printers, whose materials galvanized anarchist movements across the United States and Great Britain from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s. Ferguson shows how printers, whether working at presses in homes, offices, or community centers, arranged text, ink, images, graphic markers, and blank space within the architecture of the page. Printers extensive correspondence with fellow anarchists and the radical ideas they published created dynamic and entangled networks that brought the decentralized anarchist movements together. Printers and presses did more than report on the movement; they were constitutive of it, and their vitality in anarchist communities helps explain anarchisms remarkable persistence in the face of continuous harassment, arrest, assault, deportation, and exile. By inquiring into the political, material, and aesthetic practices of anarchist print culture, Ferguson points to possible methods for cultivating contemporary political resistance.

Weight: 520g
Dimension: 152 x 231 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478019237