An ‘Anarchist Rarity’ Reappears, 1889

Abstract

In Malatesta’s return to Europe in 1889 one can see paradigmatically reflected several issues that have generally troubled the historiography of anarchism as a movement. When Max Nettlau met Malatesta for the first time that year, he thus described the encounter: ‘Right there, then, I finally had in front of my eyes, in the flesh, one of the most notable anarchist rarities, the disappeared Malatesta’ (Errico, 146–7). The perception of Malatesta’s stay in South America as a ‘disappearance’ and his return to Europe as a ‘reappearance’ is common in standard accounts, reflecting a more general tendency to describe the history of Italian anarchism as following a cyclical pattern of appearances and disappearances. Moreover, Malatesta’s decisions and movements, such as changes of residence, often seem to have a chance character in his biographies, conveying an image of anarchism as being at the mercy of events.