Burning the Boundaries of Political Action: Feminism, Anarchy, and Militancy in Anne Hansen’s Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla

In this paper, I situate Canadian political anarchist Anne Hansen’s writing within the genre of feminist memoir, and her activism within feminist history. On November 22 1982, the firebombing of three Red Hot Video stores in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland made national media headlines. The nascent feminist group the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade—of which Hansen was a part—claimed responsibility for the action, declaring it an act of “self-defense against hate propaganda.” I suggest that the firebombing marks a turning point for Canadian feminist activism not simply because of the use of violence by women against the state and private capital, but because of the failure of the state to intervene on a new form of capitalism that commodifies violence against women. In demonstrating how the materiality of violence against women was undergoing a remarkable historical shift through the creation of and distribution of commercial representations of sexualized violence against women, I argue that feminists in early 1980s Canada were facing unchartered political terrain.

Despite the novelty of the firebombing, the only publication that examines this event thoroughly is Ann Hansen’s memoir. I suggest that Hansen’s memoir may be overlooked within feminist literary studies due to her theorization of women as active participants in oppositional violence and criminal sabotage. Through an examination of her personal writing, communiqués, and court statements, I examine her politicization via anarchist and feminist principles. I argue for the importance of disrupting what counts as feminist agency under particular historical conditions, and for the inclusion of narratives of women’s violence within our own stories of what counts as feminism.