Life Under the Jolly Roger

Gabriel Kuhn

Description

Over the last couple of decades, an ideological battle has raged over the political legacy and cultural symbolism of the “golden age” pirates who roamed the seas between the Caribbean Islands and the Indian Ocean from roughly 1690 to 1725. They are depicted as romanticized villains on the one hand and as genuine social rebels on the other. Life Under the Jolly Roger examines the political and cultural significance of these nomadic outlaws by relating historical accounts to a wide range of theoretical concepts—reaching from Marshall Sahlins and Pierre Clastres to Mao Zedong and Eric J. Hobsbawm via Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. With daring theoretical speculation and passionate, respectful inquiry, Gabriel Kuhn skillfully contextualizes and analyzes the meanings of race, gender, sexuality, and disability in golden age pirate communities, while also surveying the breathtaking array of pirates’ forms of organization, economy, and ethics.

Life Under the Jolly Roger also provides an extensive catalog of scholarly references for the academic reader. Yet this delightful and engaging study is written in language that is wholly accessible for a wide audience.

This expanded second edition includes two new prefaces and an appendix with interviews about contemporary piracy, the ongoing fascination with pirate imagery, and the thorny issue of colonial implications in the romanticization of pirates.

Sujets

• Libertatia
• Ethnography
• Romanticism
• Egalitarianism
• Cultural Studies
• Libertalia

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629638034
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE FOR LIFE UNDER THE JOLLY ROGER
In addition to history, Gabriel Kuhn s radical piratology brings philosophy, ethnography, and cultural studies to the stark question of the time: which were the criminals-bankers and brokers or sailors and slaves? By so doing he supplies us with another case where the history isn t dead, it s not even past!
-Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged and coauthor of The Many-Headed Hydra
Kuhn has written a tract pointing the way for tomorrow s revolutionaries.
-B.R. Burg, author of Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition
Even if you think you d never be interested in the history of pirates, take a look at this book and you will be.
-Nora R thzel, Institute for Migration and Racism Studies, Hamburg
Stripping the veneers of reactionary denigration and revolutionary romanticism alike from the realities of golden age piracy, Gabriel Kuhn reveals the sociopolitical potentials bound up in the pirates legacy better than anyone who has dealt with the topic to date.
-Ward Churchill, author of Acts of Rebellion
Life Under the Jolly Roger is an absorbing mixture fulfilling both the needs of the theorist and the curiosity of the pirate-story lover. This book will be enjoyed by anyone who sees no contradiction between adventure and scholarly care.
-Katharina Lacina, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna
Life Under the Jolly Roger is a carefully researched account of golden age piracy that departs from the usual ideological banter. Its fresh perspective on the cultural and political implications of pirates breathes new life into dusty historical accounts, connecting them to contemporary social issues with insight and clarity.
-Emily Gaarder, author of Women and the Animal Rights Movement
I m astounded by how clearly the book cuts into the mythos of the golden age pirates and immediately shows you what is fucked up and what is interesting.
-Margaret Killjoy, author of The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion
If you re someone whose knowledge of pirates stops with Errol Flynn and Jack Sparrow but you want to learn more, Life Under the Jolly Roger will be just the grog you re thirsting for.
-J.M. Hielkema, The Tiger Manifesto
Win/win, really.
-Deric Shannon, editor of The End of the World as We Know It?

Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy, Second Edition
Copyright 2020 Gabriel Kuhn
This edition copyright 2020 PM Press
All Rights Reserved
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-62963-793-8
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-62963-803-4
LCCN: 2019946101
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Cover art by John Yates
Printed in the USA
C ONTENTS
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the Japanese Edition
0. Introduction
1. Background
1.1. Privateers, Buccaneers, Pirates: Matters of Terminology
1.2. What Golden Age ? A Little History
2. Enemy of His Own Civilization : An Ethnography of Golden Age Piracy
2.1. From the Sea : Maritime Nomads
2.2. Smooth vs. Striated : The Question of Space
2.3. Pirate Captains and Indian Chiefs: Remembering Pierre Clastres
2.4. Potlatches, Zero-Production, and Parasitism: Pirate Economy
2.5. No State, No Accumulation, No History: Pirates as Primitives ?
2.6. Cultural Contact : Pirates and the Non-European People of the Caribbean
3. Social Origins, or The European Legacy: Golden Age Piracy and Cultural Studies
3.1. Fashion, Food, Fun, Lingo: Circumscribing the Pirate Subculture
3.2. Villains of All Nations ? Piracy and (Trans)Nationality
3.3. Satanists and Sabbatarians: Piracy and Religion
3.4. A Colorful Atlantic? Piracy and Race
3.5. Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and a Co-opted Myth: Piracy and Gender
3.6. On Sodomites and Prostitutes: Piracy and Sexuality
3.7. Escaping Discipline and Biopolitics : The Pirate Body
3.8. Eye Patches, Hook Hands, and Wooden Legs: Piracy and Disability
4. Ni dieu, ni ma tre : Golden Age Piracy and Politics
4.1. From Brethren of the Coast to a Commonwealth of Outlaws : Pirate Organization
4.2. Flying the Black Flag: The Jolly Roger
4.3. Is This Anarchy? Matters of Definition i
4.4. The War Machine: Reading Piracy with Deleuze and Guattari
4.5. Tactics: Pirates and Guerrilla Warfare
4.6. Revolutionary, Radical, and Proletarian Pirates? Matters of Definition ii
4.7. Pirates as Social Bandits: Homage to Eric Hobsbawm
4.8. Libertalia: Another Reading
4.9. Safe Havens, Onshore Settlements, Pirate Utopias: Pirates on Land
4.10. Piratical Imperialism, Hypocrisy, and the Merchants Wrath: Piracy and Capitalism
4.11. Victims of Circumstance or Bloodthirsty Sadists? Piracy and Violence
4.12. Vengeance as Justice: Pirate Ethics
4.13. Dionysus in the West Indies: A Nietzschean Look at Golden Age Piracy
5. Conclusion : The Golden Age Pirates Political Legacy
6. Notes on Pirate Literature
Appendix
Interview with Darkmatter
Interview with Junge Welt
Interview with No Quarter
Interview with Radio Dreyeckland
Interview with Radio Obskura
Email Exchange with Anna Vo
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Preface to the Second Edition
I T ALWAYS FEELS REWARDING if a book you ve authored sees a second edition. With regard to Life Under the Jolly Roger , it is also a testimony to the ongoing interest in golden age piracy. Like everything, this goes in waves-anything from a new Hollywood flick to a new wave of modern-day piracy can cause an upsurge-but the overall fascination with pirate life in the Western world is very steady. The so-called golden age receives particular attention since it has given us all of the popular images we are familiar with, from the peg leg to the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger.
While there is always some new material unearthed by scholars, the basic sources that researchers on golden age piracy are working with haven t changed in a couple of hundred years. What has been changing are the interpretations of them. This book was an attempt to contribute to these debates, mainly by trying to find a way out of the stalemate between the demonization of pirates on the one hand and their idolization on the other.
The original text has been corrected, and the notes and the index have been updated and improved. Most significantly, an appendix has been added with a number of interviews I was invited to do after the first edition was released. There was a surge of piracy along the coast of Somalia at the time, and many people were wondering about the relationship between the golden age pirates and contemporary forms of piracy. The questions I was asked also revealed what political readers seemed to be most interested in concerning the golden age pirates themselves: race, social organization, and revolutionary consciousness were recurring themes. The interviews that originally appeared in German were translated for this edition.
Repetitions are inevitable in such a collection of conversations, but each interview includes questions not discussed in others-or, for that matter, in the original book. Some interviews have been slightly abbreviated to avoid redundancy. The conversations can be treated as a supplement, summary, or introduction to the book, depending on the reader s preference. The last conversation stands out, as it is not an interview but rather the documentation of a 2018 email exchange I had with a person who attended the very first launch of Life Under the Jolly Roger in Sydney, Australia, 2009.
Gabriel Kuhn, Stockholm, October 2019
Preface to the Japanese Edition
I N A PRIL 2010, TEN Somali pirates were arrested by Dutch soldiers after boarding the German-registered freighter Taipan near the Somali coast. They were handed over to German authorities, which led to the first piracy trial in Germany in four hundred years. The trial was held at the district court of Hamburg, the country s most famous port, where the legendary pirate Klaus St rtebeker and seventy-two of his men were executed in 1401.
The Somali pirates escaped this fate. In October 2012, they were sentenced to prison terms between two and seven years. During the trial, a support campaign for them was organized, which included public talks and discussions, demonstrations outside the courthouse, legal advice, and a solidarity fund. The campaign was primarily run by political radicals. This was no coincidence.
The piracy witnessed along the coast of Somalia in recent years is, in many ways, very different from the piracy of the so-called golden age, which is the subject of this book. Modern-day pirates use speedboats, machine guns, and satellite navigation systems, not sailing vessels, grappling hooks, and magnetic compasses. Modern-day pirates also have a limited interest in the cargo that merchant ships carry; they are more interested in getting hold of the ship itself, including its crew, in order to demand a ransom. Finally, modern-day pirates don t constitute a society of seaborne outlaws, uprooted, and with its own laws and regulations; instead, they live in coastal towns as regular members of the community and engage in piracy as an illegal profession. Still, their lives and actions, too, contain elements that attract radical activists: they challenge the law and international powers; they interfere with capitalist trade; they risk their lives for riches rather than working underpaid jobs; and they retain elements of the noble robber: they take from the rich to give to the poor, and they defend the waters of their ancestors against overfishing and toxic waste. In short, the myth of the ou