Political theory and philosophy in European academia reliant on a Western canon inevitably starts with the polis – the Greek city-state that saw its heyday from 480–323 BCE. Critiques of the polis often mention that it’s a society based on enslaved labor, and a class society. Yet the Ancient polis can offer a profound starting point for anarchic approaches to living – the only thing one needs to get rid of, is the polis itself. In this talk, Mijke van der Drift proposes a way of knowing our world that relies on the overarching referent of the Ancient world, which is in contrast to humanity’s current nature of subjectivity. Ancient ethics can be understood as a way of being in touch with one’s environment, and its localism might offer a way out of imperial and infrastructural extractivism, without recourse to plundering Indigenous philosophies for how to relate to one’s environments. Shedding the polis from a possible ethics provides a bulwark against contemporary alienation, and allows a rethinking of how to relate to the world. The resultant ethics is anarchic and anti-imperialist in an accessible, local, and liberating form.

Mijke van der Drift works on transfeminist and anti-imperial ethics through philosophies of movement, collective action, and counter-cultural production. This work takes the form of writings, performances, and sound pieces, often by way of interdisciplinary collaborations. With poet and activist-scholar Nat Raha, Mijke co-authored Trans Femme Futures (Pluto, 2024). Mijke has also been published in Alternatives, Social Text, and Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and with Cambridge University Press and many other outlets. Mijke is Research Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London and co-chair of its Union branch, as well as a founding member of arts collective Red Forest.