Stateless Democracy

modelled on Marxist-Leninist theory to an ethnically diversified
political movement aiming for radical, gender-equal,
grass-roots democracy. Pınar Öğünç’s interview with David
Graeber, titled No. This is a Genuine Revolution, describes
Graeber’s experiences travelling to the Rojava region in relation
to his own politics of anarchist libertarian-socialism.
Janet Biehl’s diaristic account, Revolutionary Education: Two
Academies in Rojava, describes her intimate experiences
with the educational and political revolution in Rojava, set
against her own life-long collaboration with Bookchin. Hito
Steyerl’s witness account in Pîrsus (Suruç), Kobanê is not
Falling, raises the question of the role of art in the times
of emergency. Jonas Staal’s essay, Theater of the Stateless,
is an attempt to answer Steyerl’s question on the role
of art at the heart of political struggle through interviews
that he conducted with several educators, musicians, and
artists that are part of the Rojava Revolution. An excerpt
of Kajal Ahmed’s poem Bird forms the final document of
this reader. The poem allegorizes the fate and struggle of
the Kurdish people, who are often referred to as the largest
nation without a state, through the figure of the bird:
a nomadic species, whose destiny is shaped by struggle,
travel, and exile.
On behalf of New World Academy, we would like to
thank all the contributors to this reader: Kurdish revolutionaries,
solidary artists, academics, and writers who
together propose a radical new imaginary of a stateless
democracy. We wish to thank in particular academic representative
of the Kurdish Women’s Movement, Dilar Dirik,
who has displayed endless patience with us, explaining
the history, goals, and political intricacies of the Kurdish
movement. Our gratitude is also due to the representatives
of Rojava’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), Sheruan Hassan
and Amina Osse, who warmly welcomed us in Rojava and
guided us and other representatives of our organization,
the New World Summit, through the region, aiding us with
endless translations so that we could understand the dayto-day
political and cultural struggle of the Rojava Revolution.
Their hospitality and care was exceptional, especially
in times such as these, when the communities of Rojava
are living through such severe crises. We further thank the
International Free Women’s Foundation, the Kurdish Federation
in The Netherlands, and the web platform Kurdish
Question for all of their support in developing this reader.
Last but certainly not least, we want to thank Maria
Hlavajova and her team at BAK — in particular Arjan van
Meeuwen, Niek van der Meer, Şeyma Bayram, and Marieke
Kuik — for their ongoing commitment to New World Academy,
as well as the Centraal Museum and its director Edwin
Jacobs for having contributed to making this publication
on the Kurdish Women’s Movement financially possible.
As we are an academy that strives towards progressive
artistic and cultural practices, making art in the world as
it exists is not enough: our challenge is to make a world.
But that does not happen in isolation. In order to make
this possible, we need coalitions with progressive political
movements, but also with progressive art institutions. New
World Academy is privileged to have worked with such
partners, collaborators, and friends.
At the very beginning of our collaboration, Maria Hlavajova
asked: “What if democracy was not a show?” Having
arrived at this fifth reader with the Kurdish Women’s Movement,
titled Stateless Democracy, we feel that we can finally
answer this question. If democracy is not a show, it means
that we have to take its practice beyond the limitations of
the capitalist nation-state. Stateless democracy proposes
a concrete aesthetic and ethical engagement that does not
await the promise of a better future, but claims autonomy
through practice in the here and now. It does not outsource
its demand to a future that might never come, but dedi-
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