Janet Biehl

Janet Biehl (born September 4, 1953) is an American author, copyeditor, and artist. She authored several books and articles associated with social ecology, the body of ideas developed and publicized by Murray Bookchin. Formerly an advocate of his antistatist political program, she broke with it publicly in 2011 and now identifies as a progressive Democrat. She works as a freelance copyeditor for book publishers in New York. She is also a graphic artist.

Education

Biehl grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1974 as a theater major. She studied acting as well as set and costume design at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. She then moved to New York City, where she appeared in off-off-Broadway productions, including the world premiere of ''Fefu and Her Friends'' by Maria Irene Fornes. Biehl studied drawing and watercolor painting at the Art Students League of New York. In 1985 she enrolled at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she earned an M.A. in liberal studies.

Social ecology

In 1986 she attended the Institute for Social Ecology, in Vermont, where she met the social theorist Murray Bookchin. In January 1987 she moved to Burlington, Vermont, to study further with Bookchin. They began a collaborative relationship to advance and promote social ecology.

From 1987 to 2003 they co-wrote and co-published the theoretical newsletter ''Green Perspectives'', later renamed ''Left Green Perspectives''. Biehl edited and compiled ''The Murray Bookchin Reader'' (1997), which Bookchin considered to be the best introduction to his work. To summarize Bookchin's ideas on assembly democracy, known as libertarian municipalism, she wrote ''The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism'' (1998). She wrote numerous articles about or related to Bookchin's ideas.

Since Bookchin's death in 2006, she authored '' Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin,'' published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. In 2011 Biehl separated from social ecology, explaining that she could no longer advocate an antistatist ideology.

Kurdish freedom movement

After the Kurdish freedom movement leader Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party, was captured and imprisoned in 1999, he became an avid reader of Bookchin's work in Turkish translation and recommended it to the movement. Drawing in part on Bookchin's ideas, he formulated democratic confederalism as a political program, which the PKK adopted. In 2004 several intermediaries tried to arrange a dialogue between Bookchin and Öcalan but were unsuccessful due to Bookchin's failing health. In 2012 Biehl translated (from German to English) the book ''Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan'' by the solidarity group TATORT Kurdistan, a field study of democratic institutions built by the Kurdish movement in southeastern Turkey to implement democratic confederalism.

In 2014 and 2015 she visited Rojava, the multiethnic region of northeastern Syria where many Kurds live and where the Kurdish movement implemented democratic confederalism, gender equality, and ecology. She published several articles about her visits.Biehl
"Rojava's Communes and Councils"
January 31, 2015
"Revolutionary Education"
February 7, 2015
"Rojava's Threefold Economy"
February 25, 2015
"Thoughts on Rojava"
February 16, 2016; and with others
"Joint Statement of the Academic Delegation"
January 17, 2015.

In October 2016 her (German to English) translation of ''Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in Northern Syria,'' written by Michael Knapp, Anja Flach, and Ercan Ayboga, was published by Pluto Press. Biehl then translated (German to English) the three-volume memoir of Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the PKK in 1978 and progenitor of today's strong Kurdish women's movement.

In the spring of 2019 Biehl returned to Rojava to work on a documentary film. She wrote and drew about the experience in her graphic novel, ''Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS,'' published by PM Press (2022).

Selected works

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References

External links

Janet Biehl Illustrator

Sketchery

Correspondence between Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan

{{DEFAULTSORT:Biehl, Janet
1953 births
American feminists
American libertarians
American political philosophers
American political writers
Libertarian theorists
Feminist studies scholars
Living people
Social ecology (Bookchin)
Green anarchists