Affects and Aesthetics of the Undercommons

AFFECTS AND AESTHETICS OF THE UNDERCOMMONS

Call for Papers: Affects & Aesthetics of the Undercommons

As part of the 8th Art of Management & Organization Conference
1st-4th September 2016 @ Bled, Slovenia
Conference theme: Empowering the intangible: exploring, feeling and expressing through the arts
See: http://www.artofmanagement.org/bled-slovenia-2016/

What affects circulate within the undercommons today (Harney & Moten, 2013)?

What is the relation between affective spaces and aesthetics in the construction of forms of collective intelligence and subjectivities, particularly in the ways this relation is worked with to expand forms of political action? The undercommons are organized through “engaging aesthetic rationality in the process of political transformation, of turning politics into art, everyday life into an aesthetically governed domain” (Katsiaficas 2001) – a “minor politics” (Thoburn 2003): one that is not based upon calling forth an already existing identity or position, but rather a politics based on a continual intensive and affective engagement of constant self-institution.

Might it be possible that we are already enmeshed in a world of unidentified autonomous organizations, a milieu of potential liberation that has remained imperceptible because of a narrow understanding of what organizations are? And might it not be that this imperceptibly, rather than being a condition to be addressed as a problem, could rather be part of building of what Robin D.G. Kelley and James Scott (2002) call an infrapolitical sphere: a space for politics coming out of people’s everyday experiences that do not express themselves as radical political organization at all.

As a conference stream “Affects & Aesthetics of the Undercommons” proposes to explore the these temporary and constantly shifting, yet always renewed, forms of organizing: the organizing that takes beneath and below as well as outside of formal organizations. These relations and their affectivity embody and express the movement of the social imaginary, or the constant process of becoming. Revolutions of everyday life, whether unseen or encoded in a hidden transcript, exists as a privileged location for political analysis and action precisely because it is where forms of collective intelligence, creativity, and social wealth are manifested.

Please send proposals / abstracts to s.shukaitis@essex.ac.uk by December 7th, 2015.
This stream is welcoming of non-standard forms of presentation, performance, and intervention.

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com