La Ciudad Anarquista Americana. Obra de construccion revolucionaria. Con el plano de la Ciudad libertaria

Buenos Aires: La Protesta, 1914. First Edition. First printing. 12mo (19cm). Printed card wrappers; 283,(1)pp; one folding plan inserted at p.72. A sound, Very Good copy in the original wrappers; old adhesive stain (possibly from bindery) to verso of rear wrapper; the plan with small punctures at folds; text fresh and unopened. Text in Spanish.

A rare and curious work by this French-born Argentinian anarchist who, though little-known outside his native country, produced nearly twenty works of anarchist philosophy, both theoretical and imaginative, in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The current title, probably his best-known (it was reprinted by a Spanish academic publisher in 1991 and has been the subject of considerable academic analysis in recent decades), is a future utopia depicting the ideal libertarian city, to be built on the ruins of the now-defunct El Dorado, featuring, in addition to a host of standard anti-statist utopian tropes of the period, a few novel ones - including a death ray to be deployed against the "enemies of anarchy;" and separate housing for women, allowing them to escape the entanglements of marriage and the nuclear family in order to practice a form of free love based upon successive monogamies. Quiroule goes into some detail regarding the ideal relations of the sexes, as captured by critic Laura Fernandez Cordero: "... 'tournaments of love,' moments of furtive glances and modest agreements defined by 'solitude and mystery,' whether they take place in the house of the companion or in nature, 'with the silent complicity of the lush vegetation and intoxicating perfume of the flowers'... And do the women, once 'removed from the selfish domination of the male' - choose the most beautiful men? No, the 'superior feminine soul' is attracted to great moral and intellectual qualities; she gives herself only with extreme discretion..." (Laura Fernández Cordero, "Amor y sexualidad en las utopías anarquistas," in Nueva Ciudad Jan-Feb 2024; translation ours).

Of special interest to Falconnet/Quiroule's work is the elaborate color-printed folding plan that comprises the book's only illustration. The plan depicts a city laid out on a symmetrical grid, with grand crossing boulevards with names such as "Avenue of Harmony;" "Avenue of Peace"; "Avenue of Humanity," etc. At the city center is a public square, the "Plaza de la Anarquía," for public performances and debates; outside the main boulevards the city is ringed by homes in groups of six, each with their own woods and gardens, with community swimming pools and schools, all connected by an elaborate network of pathways. In a genre noted for obsessive attention to planning and mechanical detail (we are reminded, certainly, of the phalansteries of Fourier), La Ciudad Anarquista stands out as a particularly detailed and imaginative exemplar.

A scarce work, especially in North America. Noted in Molina-Gavilán's (et al) "Chronology of Latin American Science Fiction 1775-2005" (in Science Fiction Studies, v.34 no. 3, Nov. 2007); but not in Sargent or Negley; not noted (nor is any work by Falconnet) in Paul Nursey-Bray's Anarchist Thinkers and Thought: an Annotated Bibliography (1992). OCLC notes only four physical holdings in North America and four more worldwide (likely overlooking a number of South American institutions, however).