Kristian Williams

This coming weekend I’ll be giving four talks in British Columbia — three in Victoria and one in Vancouver.

I’ll be speaking twice on the cops and twice on Oscar Wilde and anarchism:
Wilde is chiefly remembered as a wit, a dandy, and a gay icon;
but the depth of his thought and the radicalism of his politics are
often forgotten. His aestheticism was more than a flamboyant pose.
It represented an entire system of values, from which Wilde critiqued
capitalism, the state, and Victorian morality.

Here are the dates:

Victoria BC; Friday, April 17th, 6pm
“A World Without Cops”
(with Gord Hill, Olympics Resistance Network)
Camas Books, 2590 Quadra
http://camas.ca/?q=node/181
I’ll be speaking about the history of the police, and specifically
about the class-control aspects of “quality-of-life” policing.

Victoria BC; Saturday, April 18th, 6pm
“A World Without Cops”
(with Zoe Blunt of the Victoria Forest Action Network, and Gord Hill)
Camas Books, 2590 Quadra
http://camas.ca/?q=node/182
I’ll be speaking about alternatives to policing.

Victoria BC; Sunday, April 19, 1pm
“Oscar Wilde: Aestheticism and Anarchism”
(with Alan Antliff, author of Art and Anarchy)
Camas Books, 2590 Quadra

Vancouver; Monday, April 20th, 7:30pm
“Oscar Wilde: Aestheticism and Anarchism”
(with Allan Antliff)
Spartacus Bookstore; 684 E. Hastings
http://mostlywater.org/oscar_wilde_literature_anarchy

In the latest issue of Make/Shift I have a review of Darius Rejali’s book Torture and Democracy. In it, I take issue with his definition of “torture.” In particular, I argue against his dismissal of the notion of “mental torture.”

This is actually the second review I’ve written on Rejali’s book. A much longer piece appeared in the International Socialist Review back in the fall. In that essay I scrutinized Rejali’s definition of “democracy.”

Only the ISR piece is online:
“Hidden Torture, False Democracy.” International Socialist Review. September-October 2008. http://www.isreview.org/issues/61/feat-torturedem.shtml

March 31 (Tuesday) at 6:30 pm
The Continental Club
1658 12th Street, West Oakland

I’ll be giving a talk on police and violence, trying to put some recent events in context. Q&A to follow.

The March/April issue of Against the Current includes an article I wrote on the Critical Resisistance prison abolition conference, back in September. The article is not online, but you can learn about Critical Resistance here: http://www.criticalresistance.org/

Social Anarchism, meanwhile, has just reprinted a speech I gave at last year’s Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco. Titled, “What Anarchism Contributes to Our Understanding of Torture,” it is exactly what it sounds like. It’s not online either. But you can read about the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair: http://sfbookfair.wordpress.com/

Tying these two strands together, the Institute for Anarchist Studies just gave me a grant to write an essay on Oscar Wilde’s experience in prison, his writing about prison, and his anarchism. This essay, “A Prisoner with a Noble Face,” will serve as one chapter in my book on Wilde and anarchism.

The IAS website doesn’t have anything about the project yet. But here’s a link anyway: http://www.anarchist-studies.org/