William Blake and Anarchism: Hierarchy, Autonomy, and the Critique of Domination

Table of Contents Cite This Article × Cite This Article Choose a citation style and copy the reference. MLA 9 APA 7 Chicago Copy Citation William Blake spent most of his life in a quiet fury against anyone who claimed the right to rule other people’s minds or bodies. He did not care whether the ruler wore a crown, a black gown, a factory owner’s coat, or the mask of pure reason. What he kept attacking was the basic relation itself: one side commands, the other is expected to obey. That is why his work sits so naturally beside an anarchism that starts from hierarchical systems rather than from class alone. In this view of anarchism, hierarchy is a structure of relations. An elite position accumulates power (religious, political, epistemic, patriarchal, monetary, symbolic) and converts it into the capacity to dominate. Domination itself works through many modes at once: ruling and being ruled, speaking and being spoken about, defining the rules and living inside them, claiming knowledge while con…