The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:29, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nihilist Communism[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This article started off as a stub about a book, but was recently expanded in scope to imply the existence of a homonymous tendency. At a glance, it doesn't appear to meet the standards of our general notability guidelines.

Of its 11 cited sources, 2 are links to pages where it has been sold, 1 is the NC book itself, 2 are other articles written by the author, 2 are author landing pages on an anarchist website, 1 is a Goodreads landing page for the author, 1 is another goodreads landing page for a different primary source by the same author and 1 is another web page for buying it. Only one cited source (Cunningham 2011) is a secondary source and that easily failed verification, only mentioning "nihilist communist" briefly in passing and citing the NC book for a statement about its authors.

As this appears to fail GNG and I can't find any substantial reliable sourcing for it anywhere else, I'm recommending this article for deletion. Grnrchst (talk) 09:28, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Philosophy and Politics. Grnrchst (talk) 09:28, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per OP, this does appear to fail GNG. No substantial independent reporting, some of the sources are tenuously linked. Seems to be a minor concept from a non-notable book by non-notable authors. — Czello 09:59, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Nom's analysis of sources in the article is correct. Searching for additional sources throws up various uses of the term but without much consistency - more often it seems to be people putting two established concepts together. There is a little discussion of the book, rather than the concept ([1], [2]), but still not enough to pass GNG. WJ94 (talk) 11:05, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or redirect. It's not completely non-notable. It gets a few hits in Google Scholar but the Google Books hits are mostly people using the term in a different, pejorative, sense. It does not seem to merit a whole article but, if somebody wants to give it a couple of sentences in some other appropriate article, then I'd have no objection to a redirect. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Soft delete - Sadly I can't argue against the points raised, I have tried to improve the article but it is still below the necessary standard. I have a copy I will continue to work on keeping an eye for reputable sources, but for now we will have to lose the article. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 08:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment generally, can accept that this might well be a case for TNT, but I'd also argue, in line with WP:NEXIST, that there is actually adequate sourcing to satisfy WP:NBOOK and have an article on this text: discussed over two pages in an eight page review of "Freedom of things" by Gilman-Opalsky,^[1] discussed over four pages in de Acosta's 2010 article in Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies.^[2] I also find a handful of passing mentions to the text (PhD theses^[3]^[4] and peer-reviewed texts^[5]^[6]). The text appears to be acknowledged within academic anarchist studes to have had an impact and hence notable.

References

^ Gilman-Opalsky, Richard (31 January 2020). "Book Review: Harrison, Peter, The Freedom of Things: An Ethnology of Control". Theory in Action. 13 (1): 240–241. doi:10.3798/tia.1937-0237.2010.
^ Acosta, Alejandro de (2010). "Anarchist Meditations: Or, Three Wild Interstices of Anarchy and Philosophy". Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies (1): 128–131. ISSN 1923-5615.
^ HINES, FRANCIS (2021). "EVADING REPRESENTATION: THE LITERATURE OF CONTEMPORARY U.S. ANARCHISM" (PDF).
^ Ritner, Scott. "The Critical Spirit: The Pessimistic Heterodoxy of Simone Weil - ProQuest". www.proquest.com.
^ Vitale, Sarah E. (2020). "Post-Marxist Political Ontology and the Foreclosure of Radical Newness". Philosophy Today. 64 (3): 651–669. doi:10.5840/philtoday2020107352.
^ Aarons, Kieran (2020). "Destitution and Creation: Agamben's Messianic Gesture" (PDF). Journal of Italian Philosophy. 3: 51–89.

Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 22:49, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Goldsztajn thanks for sharing these. To be honest, I'm not sure how much these would provide for an article on the subject.

Gilman-Opalsky provides the most substantial information: that the book is a critique of the left; that it's familiar with Marxism; that it doesn't provide an "alternative to the left"; and that it's critical of "limits of anti-capitalist radicalism". Acosta talks far more about a different one of Dupont's texts (species being), with its only reference to NC being a small quote in a footnote. Hines only references the term in passing, as part of a broader look at "total liberation" (so I added it to that article). As far as I've looked, Ritner never mentions the term or its author once (am I missing something?). Aarons references it in passing in a footnote, where he describes its take on prefigurative politics as "objectivist". As for Vitale, I unfortunately don't have access to that text.

Really, going by summary style, the amount of information provided here would give us maybe a couple sentences? I'm still not sure that's enough for an article. -- Grnrchst (talk) 09:16, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Grnrchst My mistake with Acosta, scanned too quickly and didn't fully see the references to the other Dupont text. I've not !voted here as I can see this is pretty borderline, although with all the sources available there's possibly an article on Frére Dupont. I don't disagree with the direction of this AfD (delete/draftify/redirect...although no clear target for the last option), just that I think there are sources to justify an article broadly speaking, although we're just not there yet. Perhaps @Cdjp1's suggestion is the best option. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 23:35, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per rationales above and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anarchism#Nihilist Communism. The above sources do not meet the general notability guideline or book notability guidelines. While the first two listed sources are a start, there isn't an indication that this topic has been widely treated as an independently notable topic. Theses, dissertations, and other manuscripts without peer verification only are treated as self-published and only stand on virtue of their author's expertise. We don't use them to prove wider notability and only barely include them in the encyclopedia for minor details. Articles should generally be based on reliable, secondary source coverage, in depth enough to write an article worthy of the subject. czar 23:20, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete maybe keep it in draft for a little instead of immediately deleting it.

NatriumGedrogt (talk) 23:28, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.