The Funambulist 34 Featured

The Paris Commune and the World

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Welcome to the 34th issue of The Funambulist, an internationalist issue for the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune.

The Paris Commune and the World constitutes an attempt to extract this 150-year-old revolutionary event from the imaginary of the white left to place it instead in a rhizome of similar communal experiences in the Global South. From the 1927 Guangzhou Commune (Tings Chak) to the contemporary Venezuelan (Geo Maher) and Syrian (Leila Al-Shami) communal councils, we discuss the radical change of modes of sovereignty the Commune implies. Female Communardes are placed in dialogue with women of the foundational 1870 Insurrection of Southern Martinique (Jacqueline Couti) as well as Mexican Morras (Irmgard Emmelhainz). The ceremonialized destruction of the Vendome Column that appears on the issue’s cover is discussed in relation to an ongoing decolonial rage against monuments (Joachim Ben Yakoub). The barricade, inseparable from the Paris Commune, is the object of an architecture analysis (Charlotte Grace). Last but far from least, we take a walk in Paris’ working-class neighborhoods to exhume their political layers from the Paris Commune to today’s antiracist activism (Mogniss H. Abdallah & Hajer Ben Boubaker).

In the issue’s “News From the Fronts,” Brintha Koneshachandra provides a diasporic perspective on the bulldozing of Tamil monuments in Eelam, Sidahmed Jouly writes about the struggle against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, and Panos Aprahamian & Jessika Khazrik reflect on the modes of solidarity with Artsakh and Armenia under the same Israeli-made drones that fly in the skies of Gaza and Beirut.

Editor-in-Chief: Léopold Lambert
Head of Strategic Outreach: Margarida Nzuzi Waco
Editorial Assistant: Caroline Honorien
Intern: Amel Hadj Hassen
Contributing Copy Editor: Carol Que

This issue is now in full open-access. You can read each article’s online version by clicking on the features below.

Past Issues

The Funambulist 52 Featured
52

Prison Uprisings

Rebellions, No-Wash Protests, Hunger Strikes, and Spoon-Dug Tunnels in Kurdistan, Ireland, Chile, the US, Tunisia, France, Palestine, and Colombia

The Funambulist 51 Featured
51

Undocumented International

The spaces of the border regime beyond the space of the border in the US, Dominican Republic, France, South Africa, Britain, Comoros, Fortress Europe, and elsewhere

The Funambulist 50 Featured
50

Redefining Our Terms

Open Access

A glossary reflecting on our political concepts such as Indigenous, Intifada, Blackness, Ubuntu, Genocide, Decolonial, Queer, Violence, or Banlieues

The Funambulist 49 Featured
49

Schools of the Revolution

Radical education initiatives in several geographies across the world, and in spaces as different as the mangrove, the prison, the street, the kitchen table, or reading groups.

The Funambulist 47 Featured 1
47

Forest Struggles

An issue on political struggles taking place in and for forests in Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, India, St. Vincent, West Papua, Europe, the U.S., and Palestine