Edited by Hjalmar Joffre-Eichhorn and Patrick Anderson
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn is a German-Bolivian Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, compulsive reader – printed books only – and reluctant writer. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to publishing activist books and in spite of his ever-deepening Left Loneliness he is still toying with the idea/desire of opening a leftist bookstore-cum-dancehall in the not too distant future. As a result, he has been obsessively hunting red kitsch, aka Communist memorabilia, to eventually be exhibited and worshipped in the store. So, if anyone wants to get rid of their Lenin busts, Angela Davis posters or Che Guevara beret, please do get in touch.
Patrick Anderson is a lifelong student of language and people, conflict and harmony, relationship and solitude. He has an admiration bordering on reverence for words, written and spoken, and the profound, at times circuitous yet always unbroken, lines of revelation and meaning they preserve. Cryptic crosswords and etymological databases unsurprisingly number among his chief sources of pleasure. Having lived, worked and studied in five continents, and with an MA in Conflict Resolution, his professional life largely consists in supporting individuals, organisations and diverse communities to navigate the world with courage, purpose and levity.
Contributors
Lena Grace Anyuolo is a writer and a poet from Kenya; Nina Bagdasarova has a PhD in Educational Psychology and works as a professor at the Psychological Department of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Ismail Beşikçi is a Turkish sociologist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer; Derefe Kimarley Chevannes is a native from Jamaica. He holds a PhD in Political Science. Chevannes primarily specializes in political theory and is also trained in the field of public law. His research focuses broadly, on Africana political theory, with an emphasis on Black liberatory politics; alejandra ciriza is a feisty feminist activist and human rights defender. She currently leads the master’s program in feminist studies at UNCuyo, Argentina, supporting the emergence of new researchers in this field; Sevgi Doğan gained her doctorate degree from Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. She is currently a precarious pos-doctoral researcher at the same university, where she also collaborates with the Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) – Italy. Her doctoral thesis, Marx and Hegel: On the Dialectic of the Individual and the Social, was published by Lexington Books (2018); Richard Gilman-Opalsky is Professor of political theory and philosophy in the School of Politics and International Affairs at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He is the author of many articles and book chapters and six books, including The Communism of Love, Specters of Revolt, Precarious Communism and Spectacular Capitalism; Jane Anna Gordon is Professor of Political Science with affiliations in American Studies, El Instituto, Global Affairs, Philosophy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut; Giulia Longoni is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Pisa. Her research interests focuses on the concepts of gender, class and “race” as theorized by the philosophical current of Marxist feminism, with particular attention to Rosa Luxemburg’s work; Georgy Mamedov is a curator, artist and activist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Georgy co-authored and co-edited several publications including “A Book on Happiness for Young (and not so) and LGBT (and not only) People” (Bishkek, 2020), the pioneering Russian language collection of feminist and queer science fiction, Utterly Other (Bishkek, 2018); Queer Communism is Ethics (Moscow, 2016); and Bishkek Utopian (Bishkek, 2015). He teaches history and theory of modern and contemporary art at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek; Bruno Sena Martins is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (CES/UC). His research interests include disability, human rights, racism and colonialism. He is co-coordinator of the Doctoral Program “Human Rights in Contemporary Societies” and lectures in the Doctoral Program “Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship.”; Lena Stoehrfaktor is a Berlin-based rapper and hip hop artist; Leo Zeilig is a writer and researcher. He has written extensively on African politics and history, including books on working-class struggle and the development of revolutionary movements and biographies on some of Africa’s most important political thinkers and activists. Leo is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy – the radical African-studies journal founded by activists and scholars in 1974 – and an Honorary Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
CONTENTS
In Lieu of a Prologue:
Spelling Out Left Loneliness
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn
Introduction
Alone Together – The Singing Veins of Left Loneliness
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn
How the world works (Poetry)
Lena Grace Anyuolo
The Practicality of Utopianism: Capitalist and Communist Forms of Life and Loneliness
Richard Gilman-Opalsky
A Red Rooster Does Not Give Up – Subjectivity and Politics. Notes on Defeat
alejandra ciriza
Bridging the Gaps (Rap)
Lena Stoehrfaktor
The Eurocentric Left and the Loneliness of Colonial Legacies
Bruno Sena Martins
A Reasonable Doubt – Should I Stay Alone?
Nina Bagdasarova
“Solitude is Freedom (Yalnızlık özgürlüktür)” – An Interview with İsmail Beşikçi
Sevgi Doğan
It is going to be alright (Poetry)
Lena Grace Anyuolo
“A Lonely Warrior”: Left-wing Isolation in the Early Adult Life of Ida B. Wells
Jane Anna Gordon
The Problem of Pathology: Meditation on Race, Disability & Loneliness
Derefe Kimarley Chevannes
A diabolo, qui est simia dei
Georgy Mamedov
Left Loneliness and Feminist Love
Giulia Longoni
2084 (A Short Story)
Leo Zeilig
Bloom (Poetry)
Lena Grace Anyuolo