A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #16-26 - "Power has not yet corrupted us." Louise Michel - a philosopher a month (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"It is true that women love revolt. We are no more worthy than men, but 
power has not yet corrupted us." ---- Louise Michel was born in 1830 and 
died in 1905. She was a teacher, writer, Communard, and French 
revolutionary who became an anarchist, by her own admission, during her 
forced exile in New Caledonia: "Power is cursed, and that is why I am an 
anarchist." A Communard, because in that Paris that in 1871 witnessed 
the realization of the first great experiment in contemporary 
self-government, the Commune, Michel played a leading role that would 
ultimately cost her a trial, a conviction, and then a seven-year exile.

Michel arrived in Paris in 1856, after an early youth spent in the 
provinces, educated by her Catholic aunt and her liberal Enlightenment 
grandparents, studying as a governess, and developing an increasingly 
independent mind. In Paris, she found a city in crisis, yet still 
grappling with the defeat of Sedan and the subsequent transition-or 
rather, return-from Empire to Republic. After further historical and 
political events and upheavals, after some hopes had proven to be 
illusions, the experience of libertarian-socialist self-management that 
was the Commune materialized. In this context, Michel was in the company 
of many other women, equally active and militant, often overshadowed by 
the male power of the Commune itself: "Women didn't ask themselves if 
something was impossible; it was enough that it was useful, and they 
managed to carry it through."

Action as a priority, then. Action as a political practice. But also the 
ability to look beyond the horizon of the possible. Michel writes of 
herself: "My existence is composed of two very distinct parts. They form 
a complete contrast: the first, all dream and study, the second, full of 
events, as if the aspirations of the period of calm had come to life in 
the period of struggle." Upon closer inspection, her struggle also 
contains her dream.

Louise Michel was an anti-speciesist anarchist whom today we would call 
intersectional, and to give a measure of the magnitude of her dream and 
her struggle, I reproduce a conversation with Pietro Gori, transcribed 
by Gori himself in the preface to The Commune, Michel's celebrated work.

The two met for the first time at a meeting of political dissidents held 
in London in the winter of 1894-1895. Gori had arrived at that meeting, 
accompanied by Kropotkin and others, while Michel was speaking. In the 
aforementioned preface, Gori describes Michel's appearance (...) and 
temperament in detail: "I have never forgotten her attitude that 
evening, nor that apparent contradiction between her rebellious pride 
and her nun's piety[...], an apparent contradiction,[...]since every 
outburst of revolt in her was nothing but an exacerbation of her spirit 
of universal charity, offended by an injustice she had 
witnessed.[...]She hated only out of too much love."

A few pages later, after recounting some anecdotes from everyday life in 
which Michel defends non-human animals from the bullying of some humans, 
Gori brings the confrontation between himself and Michel back to the 
theme of the difference (which becomes abuse) between species.

"Ah, inferior beings, that's the pretext for all domination!... Inferior 
why? Why did others, more violent or more cunning, succeed in 
subjugating or killing them?... Or aren't those who build their own 
happiness on the unhappiness of others by devouring, exploiting, 
enslaving, morally inferior?... You will answer me with the harsh law of 
selection, with the triumph of the fittest, with the empire of the 
strongest. But I know another law, which is not of oppression or 
death-but of freedom and life: that of solidarity... You delight in 
spit-roasted birds, and I prefer the trill of the goldfinch, singing 
there, on that tree, to all the orations of you lawyers... Different, 
yes, inferior, no..."

"But between humanity and other zoological species..." I ventured.[Gori]

"Well[...]it is precisely because humanity wanted to trample on other 
beings, which you call inferior, that it found itself trained to rage 
and tear itself apart. The inferior races, the inferior classes, the 
inferior sex, which you mockingly call gentile-this is the same 
classification transferred from the animal realm to the human one... But 
struggle, you will say, was the condition of all progress... Yes, but I 
don't love struggle for struggle's sake; I only want it so that from it, 
instead of antagonism, the brotherhood of all beings may arise..."

There it is, intersectionality.

If.

https://umanitanova.org/il-potere-non-ci-ha-ancora-corrotte-louse-michel-una-filosofa-al-mese/
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