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

The Communism of Capital?

THE COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL?

Ephemera Volume 13 Number 3 (August 2013)

Ephemera is at: http://www.ephemerajournal.org

ISBN 9781906948207

Current Issue

The communism of capital? What could this awkward turn of phrase mean, and what might it signify with regards to the state of the world today? Does it merely describe a reality in which communist demands are twisted to become productive of capital, a capitalist realism supplemented by a disarmed communist ideology? Or does the death of the capitalist utopia mean that capital cannot contain the antagonism expressed by Occupy and other movements any more, and therefore must confront communism upfront?

The 12 contributions to this latest issue of ephemera explore the valances of the paradoxical and seemingly incoherent expression that is ‘the communism of capital’. Collectively they stake out new territory for the theorisation and organization of political struggle in a context in which capital has become increasingly aware that its age-old nemesis might today be lurking at its very heart.

You can order a print copy of the whole issue now at your local bookstore!

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editorial

The communism of capital?

Armin Beverungen

Anna-Maria Murtola

Gregory Schwartz

article

Spectre of the commons: Spectrum regulation in the communism of capital

Rachel O’Dwyer

article

Infecting capitalism with the common: The class process, communication, and surplus

David Carlone

article

Pro Bono? On philanthrocapitalism as ideological answer to inequality

Mikkel Thorup

article

Communism, occupy and the question of form

Saroj Giri

note

Does capital need a commons fix?

Massimo De Angelis

note

Communicity

Colin Cremin

note

Common as silence

Peter Fleming

note

Recomposing precarity: Notes on the laboured politics of class composition

Stevphen Shukaitis

review

Theorizing debt for social change

Miranda Joseph

review

The spectre of anarchism

Thomas Swann

review

Friendship and counter-conduct in the neoliberal regime of truth

Richard Weiskopf

review

'Of luck and leverage'

Joyce Goggin

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Debt and the Commons Three-Day Seminar

DEBT AND THE COMMONS THREE-DAY SEMINAR

August 18, 19, and 20 – Three-Day Seminar on Debt & the Commons – with Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, David Graeber

CONTENTS:
0. About the Seminar
1. Longer Introduction
2. Seminar Schedule
3. A Bibliography
_____________________________

0. About the Seminar

When: Thursday, Friday, Saturday / August 18,19,20
Who: Free (please rsvp, details below)
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, New York City
What: 3 Day Seminar with Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, David Graeber

Beyond Good and Evil Commons is a three day seminar focusing on debt, economic crisis and the production of commons

The seminar organizes itself with and around the work of three individuals: Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, and David Graeber

It will take the shape of 2 sessions per day, each session building around a talk by Silvia, George, and/or David and followed by collective discussions.

It is being organized in the spirit of collective inquiry inspired particularly by recent anti-debt organizing in NYC but draws also from a number of international contexts in which new political cultures have developed to challenge the command of money, austerity and debt in the crisis. Moreover, it builds off previous seminars organized in the space with friends over the last years.

The idea is, at least partially, to develop and test political concepts that help us better orient our understanding of these new political cultures but also aid us in further developing our own. Our starting point is an attempt to bring together a politics through both an analysis of debt anthropologically and an anti-capitalist perspective on the commons.

The hope is to achieve some focus, to sharpen our terminologies and analytical tools, to direct our collective intelligence toward a new orientation of existing organizing efforts and guide new interventions as well, to better know what, how and with whom. It is a difficult and elusive hope. It also relies on enough of us approaching the seminar with the idea of collectively enacting an enlarged framework for political action (which implicates many different practices).

We know that many on our list also live in different parts of the world. For this reason, we have put together a website with many readings as a resource. We also hope to be able to put some recordings from the presentations for those who are interested in following or connecting with this seminar. We also make the effort to articulate the motivations for the inquiry in the hopes that we can also build upon one another's efforts.

For those planning to attend, we ask you to please RSVP, as it will allow us to better prepare.

You can do so by writing to seminars [the at sign] 16beavergroup.org with rsvp in subject line.

The event is free, but we will be making a daily collection to cover basic expenses.

_____________________________

1. Longer Introduction

Molecular Investigations / Seminars

This Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we will continue a collective journey and experiment.

Over the last years, we have tried to organize with friends collective seminars (e.g., Continental Drift, Connective Mutations, Something Becomes Visible) which give participants an opportunity to have a rich intellectual experience attempting to raise critical questions about how we live, think, struggle - in an open, autonomous, non-institutional, non-commodified, non-authored situation. Those seminars have attempted to cross-weave intellectual efforts with activist and artistic practices. Moreover, rather than merely become attempts to represent ideas, knowledge, or knowingness, the seminars have been a part of an effort to situate and suggest, through the work of specific individuals, where we may devote further work collectively in the coming years. And to build potential solidarities across disciplines, practices, and approaches.

At their best, they have been like small, concise, intellectual bombs detonated carefully, collectively, not far from Wall Street, with all intents to illuminate the cracks in the edifices of those buildings, and on the ground, on the very terrain we cohabit. They have been suggestions for paths of individual, collective projects, militant investigations: artistic, intellectual, political, economic, activistic, and beyond.

In a period which has seen the neoliberal machine produce a seemingly invincible force of financialization, mega-gentrification, and militarization: together with a multitude of friends and contributors, we built up a counter-image and research of those aforementioned cracks. We have done this collectively, autonomously, and as a direct counter-force to the commodification and competitiveness that has all too often marked intellectuality in these same times. In doing so, we have placed ourselves, along with many other initiatives emerging globally, into a new situation, for the generation and maintenance of critical discourses, analyses, and practices.

An important struggle today is to realize how these practices, whether artistic, intellectual, or otherwise can most effectively combat the emergent paradigms of racism, militarization, and a more formulated, articulated war by the wealthiest elite and corporate interests on the very fabric of human and planetary reproduction.

For some people, six years ago, an introduction like this may have appeared as potentially catastrophic (or utopian), alarmist, or delirious.

In the midst of the recent insurrections in London, massive revolts against forced austerity measures in Spain, Greece, and throughout Europe, revolutionary resistance in North Africa and the Middle East, we find ourselves having to acknowledge that these efforts of collective research have not only been substantiated, but today ask how can they conjoin to actions, global political processes unfolding in our midst.

Today, the cracks appear as gaping holes, through which one of the most radical transformations of the world irrupts before our eyes.

Living amidst the civil war in Lebanon, a friend of the space once remarked that there is no official day, where everyone is notified that a civil war has commenced. It begins as a small series of loosely related events, which only later, can be reconstructed as a civil war with precise dates of commencement and end.

'Returning to Normal life'?

How can one speak of returning to 'normal life' in the midst of a post-nuclear Japan? Where do we draw the limits of solidarity with that reality? Is the solidarity expressed as far as the radioactivity travels? Or will it end with the struggle to end nuclear plants or nuclear arms in every country? How can one speak of returning to 'normal life' in the midst of this historic transfer of common wealth to private banks and the continued intransigence on the part of those who govern (and in most cases, even their opposition parties) in confronting (rather than engendering) growing inequalities, processes of enclosure, social and ecological destruction? Will the outrage end when each particular group, being effected by cuts, saves a small piece of the pie to continue doing what they were before with even less resources? Will it end with a broad 'new deal' or 'social contract' as even many of the staunchest critics of neoliberalism hope?

Or can we imagine and build toward another horizon of struggle beyond the specificity of resisting nuclear technology or local/national austerity measures tied to financial speculation and crimes? How to connect to already occurring processes of revolt or production of commons? And can the efforts to build upon such processes of resistance be done without addressing the basic terms upon which we reproduce our lives?

The Proposal

The proposal is to collectively approach two notions which have valence in contemporary movements but call for further interrogation:

The Commons

There has been a great resurgence over the last decade or more in thinking about and elaborating the notion of the commons. As George Caffentzis writes: "The ‘commons’ has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last fifteen years, from a word referring rather archaically to a grassy square in the centre of New England towns to one variously used by real estate developers, ‘free software’ programmers, ecological activists and peasant revolutionaries to describe very different, indeed conflicting, purposes and realities., ... "What accounts for this resurgence? What are the merits of this concept and its potential dangers as 'two streams, coming from opposing perspectives' begin to utilize and mobilize it?”

In exploring the prospects for a commons that is resistant to capitalism, one key position of this seminar, and it is a position, time and again, emphasized by Silvia Federici's work, is the incorporation of basic insights of feminist critique concerning the centrality of reproduction within any social, economic, or political regime. Moreover, her consistent attention to women's struggles to maintain spaces which are common – engender communal forms of life and social reproduction (historically and today), especially in impoverished parts of the world – points us to the necessity of learning from and using these experiences to better understand what resistance to capitalism can mean.

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis have been two very important figures in conceptualizing and interrogating this notion of the commons as well as historic and contemporary processes of enclosures. In addition to their own writings, their work within the Midnight Notes collective has been an inspiration for sustained, collective, engaged research outside of the disciplining / enclosing that can happen in the university or academy. With their collaborators, they have offered some of the most decisive, direct, historically and geographically expanded account of capitalist accumulation and struggles of resistance. Their political commitments have sometimes overshadowed their theoretical contributions, and this seminar will be an opportunity to give space to those contributions and begin what we hope will be a longer inquiry together with them.

Debt

Whether it is through the imposition of or the resistance to debt, processes from above or below, one can see that debt obligations have been a central figure of political considerations.

From student debt strikes

To millions losing their homes or being foreclosed upon; from financial instruments imposed upon countries underwriting new enclosures; to the dismantling of social provisions and justifying politically motivated austerity measures, which rely upon seemingly objective 'hard' economic 'realities': debt is the terrain upon which various actors and discourses take shape.

But can an anthropological inquiry into debt help us view these processes and struggles in a new light? Can such an inquiry help us build upon contemporary struggles against debt?

David Graeber is among other things, an anarchist, a thinker, an anthropologist, and an activist. His intellectual contributions have been timely, pertinent, useful, and yet antagonistic to the established norms pertaining to each of those three terms. Thus one could speculate, under the regime of capitalist realism, his contributions would be characterized as 'historical', 'inapplicable', 'unrealistic'; but somehow this has not been the case. David's accessible approach to writing, as well as his insistence to situate his work in places where struggle takes place, has made his work resilient to dismissal. His current book entitled 'Debt: The First 5000 Years' is more than a theorization of debt: it is also a trenchant treatise exposing tangible limitations of imagination and language for describing the range of human relations existing historically and today. As David writes:

"This book is a history of debt, then, but it also uses that history as a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like—what we actually do owe each other, what it even means to ask that question. As a result, the book begins by attempting to puncture a series of myths—not only the Myth of Barter, which is taken up in the first chapter, but also rival myths about primordial debts to the gods, or to the state—that in one way or another form the basis of our common-sense assumptions about the nature of economy and society. In that common-sense view, the State and the Market tower above all else as diametrically opposed principles. Historical reality reveals, however, that they were born together and have always been
intertwined. The one thing that all these misconceptions have in common, we will find, is that they tend to reduce all human relations to exchange, as if our ties to society, even to the cosmos itself, can be imagined in the same terms as a business deal. This leads to another question: If not exchange, then what?"

One Goal

A hope is, that for these three days, we could give our energies to these three individuals and one another. And construct together a kind of machine which could collectively take us to the center of two critical nodes in perceiving, understanding, and struggling with/against our contemporary reality.

A short parting note on London and beyond:

In 2005, with the revolts in Paris, pundits could characterize and particularize those revolts as disaffected and disenfranchised youth or even worse dismiss them by mobilizing xenophobic fears. There never was room for entertaining the racist readings of those events. And the events in Norway this summer further clarify where such a critique is coming from and headed. But the events in Paris still left many wondering what was the political horizon or meaning of those revolts.

In the summer of 2011, any analysis of events, like those in London unfolding these last days, cannot but be read as part of a disarticulated yet emerging globalized picture of revolt against 'capital', capitalists, and the various state forms that have advocated on their behalf.

Thus, this seminar takes place in the midst of these events and struggles. Thus, there is an additional hope that collectively we can consider what global solidarity can look like, unfolding across different modes of doing, producing, and thinking in light of such events.

The seminar has been organized with and by Silvia, George, David, 16 Beaver Group, This Is Forever, and various individuals affiliated and not affiliated with other spaces and initiatives in New York.

_____________________________

2. Schedule

THURSDAY - August 18
Doors open at 4:00

Session 1
4:30 - 6:45 Silvia / George
light food
Session 2
7:15 - 9:30 David

FRIDAY, August 19th
Doors open at 4:00

Session 3
4:30 - 6:45 Silvia / George
light food
Session 4
7:15 - 9:30 David

SATURDAY, August 20th
Doors open at 1:00

Session 5
2:00 - 4:30 David
light food
Session 6
5:00 - 7:30 Silvia / George
food

Please note:
This schedule is a script of what we have planned. The actual seminar times and order may be altered according to how things unfold. Best place to follow changes or updates will be on our website for the seminar: http://www.16beavergroup.org/silvia_george_david/

_____________________________

3. The Bibliography

A full and updated bibliography can be found on the seminar website with additional texts: http://www.16beavergroup.org/silvia_george_david/

Below, we have listed a shorter selection of readings:

-\ \ \ Midnight Notes
The New Enclosures n.10: http://www.midnightnotes.org/newenclos.ht

-\ \ \ Silvia Federici
Feminism And the Politics of the Commons: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/federici_feminism_politics_commons.pdf

-\ \ \ George Caffentzis
The Future of 'the Commons': Neoliberalism's 'Plan B' or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?
http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/caffentzis_future_commons.pdf

-\ \ \ David Graeber
Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (overview from Mute 2009): http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_overview_mute.pdf

All from DEBT, THE FIRST 5, 000 YEARS

On the Experience of Moral Confusion: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_debt_chapter_1.pdf

A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Economic Relations: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_debt_chapter_5.pdf

1971–The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_debt_chapter_12.pdf

______________________________________

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10004

For directions/subscriptions/info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org/

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
2,3 Wall Street
J,Z Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry
R Whitehall


**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowsk i
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/

On the Commons

ON THE COMMONS

BANFF RESEARCH in CULTURE (BRiC) / Research Residency ProgramBanff Centre for the Arts / University of Alberta

THEME: On the Commons; or, Believing-Feeling-Acting TogetherApplication deadline: December 1, 2010

APPLICATION AND PROGRAM INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE AT: http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1068

Guest Faculty: Lauren Berlant, Michael Hardt, Pedro ReyesOrganizers: Imre Szeman, Heather Zwicker, Kitty Scott

Program dates: May 9, 2011 - May 27, 2011

Email contact: bric@ualberta.ca

(Note: There are only 25 spots available in the residency program this year)

The commons has emerged as one of the key concepts around which social, political, and cultural demands are being articulated and theorized today. Harkening back to the displacement of people from shared communal spaces and their transformation from public into private property — a central act in the development of European capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries — the commons insists on the fundamentally shared character of social life: that everything from language to education, from nature to our genetic inheritance, belongs irreducibly to all of us. As an increasingly rapacious capitalism draws ever more elements of social life into its profit logic and renders seemingly every activity and value into a commodity, thinking with and through the commons has become an important means of generating conceptual and political resistance to the multiple new forms of enclosure that continue to take place today, and which need to be confronted and challenged forcefully and directly.

The commons is a concept used in analyses and interventions in popular culture, art, new media, political philosophy, social theory, law, literary studies, and more. The ease with which neoliberal ideology — which celebrates the supposed rationality of privatization and has managed to transform taxation into an act feared above all else — has become embedded in the beliefs and lived structures of everyday life demands an intensive examination of how and why we have come to prefer enclosure to the commons in almost every area of social life. Just as importantly, it also requires us to investigate and invent new ways of being-in-common--ways of believing, feeling and acting together, of creating the commons that seem everywhere to be receding from view.

The aim of this year’s Banff Research in Culture workshop is to give scholars, cultural producers, and artists an opportunity to explore how we believe, feel, and act together, and the ways in which we are prevented from doing so. How might we shape new collectivities and communities? What are the capacities and dispositions essential to producing new ways of being? What lessons can we learn from history as well as contemporary struggles over the commons (from challenges to intellectual property to indigenous struggles)? What concepts and vocabularies might we develop to aid our critical and conceptual work with respect to the commons (e.g. Alain Badiou’s revival of communism or Jacque Rancière’s reconfiguration of equality and democracy)? How does artistic and cultural production participate in the production of new collectivities and defense of the commons? Where do we go from here-a moment in which neoliberalism seems to have stumbled and lost its forward momentum? We welcome projects dealing with the full range of issues and topics related to being-believing-feeling-acting together today.

On the Commons will run concurrently with the thematic residency La Commune. The Asylum. Die Bühne led by artist Althea Thauberger, providing opportunities for interaction and collaboration with artists in residence. (http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1094)

PROGRAM DETAILS

Developed by Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Heather Zwicker, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, and Kitty Scott, Director of Visual Arts at the Banff Centre, On the Commons is part of Banff Research in Culture (BRiC), a new residency program designed for scholars engaged in advanced theoretical research on themes and topics in culture. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty, and practicing artists from across Canada and beyond will convene at The Banff Centre to pursue their work — and, ideally, to incubate new collaborations and creations — for three weeks. During the residency, participants will attend lectures, seminars, and workshops offered by distinguished visiting faculty from around the world, each of whom will stay at Banff for a week or more and will be available to discuss projects and ideas. Participants will also be encouraged to present their work to colleagues through readings, talks, and presentations held over the course of the program.

As a residency program, BRiC is designed to allow participants to devote an extended period of time on their own research in the company of others with similar interests. In addition to giving researchers and creators from different disciplinary and professional backgrounds an opportunity to exchange opinions and ideas, it is hoped that participants will develop new artistic, editorial, authorial, and collective projects during their time at Banff, both individually and in connection with others. We are especially pleased by the opportunity that BRiC affords visual artists and researchers to work together on issues of common interest.

APPLICATION AND PROGRAM INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE AT: http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1068

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com