Max Stirner on Silent Protest and Negative Citizenship
Anarchist Studies - Print ISSN 0967-3393 - Online ISSN 2633-8270
Volume 34 Number 2 (2026)
Max Stirner on Silent Protest and Negative Citizenship
Brian Smith pages 66‑92
DOI: 10.3898/AS.34.2.03
Abstract
Utilising Max Stirner’s conception of ‘ownness’, this paper reinterprets the strategic hypocrisy of preference falsification as a type of silent protest. Ownness is a form of self-possession where through a radical self-love the egoist internally purges or renders irrelevant externally imposed categories of value and meaning. In this process, the egoist is unmoored from social influence and employs various strategies of resistance, ranging from antisocial behaviour to strategic hypocrisy, all of which help to manifest internal opposition to being arranged. This array of strategies constitutes the embodied praxis of what I call negative citizenship. While the egoist has the power to invalidate social meaning from within, they do not have the power to change the world, at least not directly. The egoist therefore occupies a position of what Agamben calls destituent power, where the negative citizen refuses to challenge social forces outright but instead renders them irrelevant through negation. When this destituent power becomes sufficiently pervasive, political structures become vulnerable and risk imminent collapse. Negative citizenship offers an alternative understanding of political disaffection beyond the transactional modalities of dissent, either direct confrontation or apathetic withdrawal, which shows how strategic detachment can fundamentally undermine social cohesion and precipitate social collapse in both authoritarian and democratic regimes.
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To cite this article
Brian Smith (2026) Max Stirner on Silent Protest and Negative Citizenship, Anarchist Studies, 34(2), 66-92 . https://doi.org/10.3898/AS.34.2.03