Citizenship, Orientalism and the Commons

David Harvey

CITIZENSHIP, ORIENTALISM AND THE COMMONS

 

Dear All

OECUMENE PROJECT and TEATRO VALLE OCCUPATO would like to make you aware of a 4-Day Seminar Event to be held at Teatro Valle in Rome:
CITIZENSHIP, ORIENTALISM AND THE COMMONS
25th – 28th September 2013

The event takes theatre to be a laboratory for the performances of critical political imaginaries on citizenship. Its conceptual core is a dialogue and translation between art, politics, and economics with a critical reflection on acts and practices of public engagement, common property, debt, and co-work. Bringing together scholars, artists and activists the event explores participatory forms of knowledge production, livelihood, civic action and resistance in and outside Europe through collective rehearsals, discussions and staged film performances. The Teatro Valle Occupato becomes our stage in which such political, ethical and aesthetic experiments are tested and played out.

Main speakers (there will be short commentaries and plenty of discussion time):

COSTAS DOUZINAS, DAVID HARVEY, and ENGIN ISIN.

The event is free and open to the public.
A pdf of the programme is available here: http://www.oecumene.eu/files/oecumene/Oecumene%20Project%20-%20Teatro%20Valle%20-%20ENG.pdf

Webpage (English): http://www.oecumene.eu/events/citizenship-orientalism-and-the-commons

Webpage (Italian): http://www.teatrovalleoccupato.it/lotte-spaziali-una-settimana-seminari-workshop-performance-dal-22-al-28-settembre-2013

—————
Dr Andrea Mura
Oecumene Project
The Open University
Faculty of Social Sciences
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
Direct +44 (0) 1908 659 304
http://www.oecumene.eu/people/andrea-mura

 

**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

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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

 

Open Science Economy

Cognitive Capitalism

OPEN SCIENCE ECONOMY

Policy Futures in Education – www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS for a special journal issue on the theme:

OPEN SCIENCE ECONOMY: CREATIVITY, COLLABORATION AND THE COMMONS

The open-science economy (OSE) is a rapidly growing sector of the global knowledge economy utilizing open-source models and its multiple applications (e.g. open access, open archiving, open publishing, open repositories) in distributed knowledge and learning systems. This rich-text, highly interactive, user-generated OSE has seen linear models of knowledge production give way to more diffuse, open-ended, decentralized, and serendipitous knowledge processes based on open innovation and technology.

These peer-to-peer distributed knowledge systems rival the scope and quality of traditional proprietary products through the diffusion speed and global access of open-source projects, especially in both software and open-source biology. OSE encourages innovation-smart processes based on the radical non-propertarian sharing of content, cloud data computing, and the leveraging of cross-border international exchanges and collaborations.

Furthermore, it encourages a culture of distributed, collaborative, decentralized model of research that is genuinely participatory, involving the wider public and amateur scientists along with experts in the social mode of open knowledge production. OSE provides an alternative to the intellectual property approach to dealing with difficult problems in the allocation of resources for the production and distribution of knowledge and information. Increasingly, portal-based knowledge environments and global science gateways support collaborative science.

Open-source informatics enables knowledge grids that interconnect science communities, databases, and new computational tools. Open science is seen as a means for revitalizing public institutions and for developing scientific creativity and innovation at a global level through international collaboration. This special issue explores the concept of “open science economy”, its dimensions and its significance.

Please send expressions of interest including a title and abstract to:
Professor Michael A. Peters at mpeters@waikato.ac.nz

**END**

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

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

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Anarchism and Autonomism – Call for Interventions

Autonomia

ANARCHISM AND AUTONOMISM – CALL FOR INTERVENTIONS

Call for Interventions: Anarchism & Autonomism, for the ASN 2.0 Conference ‘Making Connections’ at Loughborough University September 3rd – 5th, 2012
Coordinator: Stevphen Shukaitis (Autonomedia / University of Essex)

Over recent years anarchist and autonomist traditions of politics and analysis have proliferated in multiple and overlapping forms. While these currents are often conflated they emerge from distinct political trajectories, at times diverging over key questions.

This workshop is designed to tease out and compare the convergences, divergences, and productive tensions between these approaches. The goal is not to endlessly rehash debates between anarchism and marxism that seek to establish the superiority of one to the other, or to create a conceptual division of labor where anarchism handles ethics & tactics while marxism takes care of economics & strategy, but rather to create a space for transversal encounters ideas and practices.

Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
– The meaning and practice of autonomy today
– Communization & the commons
– Class composition & workers’ inquiry
– The refusal of work & the work of refusal
– Escape & the imperceptible politics of the undercommons
– The multitude & its dark side
– Affective labor & social reproduction
– Convergences / divergences between anarchism and autonomism
– Dialectics versus immanence
– Precarity & the autonomy of migration
– Schizoanalysis & class formation
– Anarchist and autonomist approaches to aesthetics

Send proposals of 200-500 words (along with bio and affiliation if applicable) to Stevphen Shukaitis (stevphen@autonomedia.org) by March 24th. Proposals for forms of intervention other than the reading of papers are highly encouraged.

Anarchist Studies Network: http://anarchist-studies-network.org.uk
Minor Compositions: http://www.minorcompositions.info

Stevphen Shukaitis is an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.

**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)

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

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

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

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

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

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Tony Benn and Paul Mason on Gerrard Winstanley

Gerrard Winstanley

TONY BENN AND PAUL MASON ON GERRARD WINSTANLEY

NEW TITLE FROM VERSO’S ‘REVOLUTIONS’ SERIES:

GERRARD WINSTANLEY:­ A COMMON TREASURY

Introduced by TONY BENN

Published 10th April 2011

—————————

EVENT:

TONY BENN in conversation with PAUL MASON at the Southbank Centre on WINSTANLEY, the Diggers and English radicalism.

Monday 23rd May, 2011

Part of the Festival ofBritain

More information and tickets: http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/tony-benn-57704

—————————-
”Sick to death of the royal wedding? Then where better to take refuge than in the radical ruminations of Gerrard Winstanley, the voice of revolutionary republican England?…a useful and inspiring collection” — SOCIALIST REVIEW http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11625

”With house prices at ridiculous levels and employment plummeting, perhaps this neat introduction to Winstanley’s writings could provide an excellent instruction manual for a new breed of 21st century Digger?” —  MORNING STAR http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/content/view/full/103449
—————————–

In Spring 1649, at the end of the English Civil War, Gerrard Winstanley and his comrades, the Diggers, went to St George’s Hill to farm the common land and to distribute the food amongst themselves. Winstanley’s extraordinary writings from this period have remained a huge influence for many on the left, and are cited as some of the earliest examples of communist thought.

Legendary voice of the left, Tony Benn, introduces this collection of Winstanley’s work and shows how it still has the power to inspire us to turn our world upside down. Benn credits the Diggers, along with the Levellers, with helping to launch into the public domain ideas about freedom, equality and democracy which, though now regarded as normal were then hugely threatening of the status quo, and are “some of the most important radical ideas of all time.”

Winstanley and the Diggers saw the earth and its natural resources as belonging to all mankind, a “common treasury”.  Since the 15th century, the enclosure of land by private landlords had meant that the poor were unable to farm and increasingly had to rely on wage labour. The Diggers attempted to seize the revolutionary moment to reclaim these common rights to the land through both argument and direct action.  Protestant agrarian socialists, the Diggers are an example of the long-standing relationship between Christianity and radicalism.

Emerging at the end of the English Civil War, the Diggers started their colony at St George’s Hill on 1st April 1649, just two months after the King, Charles I had gone to the scaffold. While the Diggers were ultimately unsuccessful in reclaiming the common land and destroying the system of “enclosures”, Winstanley’s ideas resonate to this day.

———————————
ISBN: 978 1 84467 595 1 / $15.95 / £8.99 / CAN$20 / 192 pages
—————————
For more information and to buy the book visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/479-a-common-treasury
——————————-

Part of Verso’s REVOLUTIONS series
http://www.versobooks.com/series_collections/6-revolutions

Other titles that may be of interest include:

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON presents THE LEVELLERS:­ THE PUTNEY DEBATES
http://www.versobooks.com/books/297-the-putney-debates

and

WU MING present THOMAS MÜNTZER :­ SERMON TO THE PRINCES
http://www.versobooks.com/books/367-sermon-to-the-princes

——————————-
Academics based outside North America may request an inspection copy please contact tamar@verso.co.uk

Academics based within North America may request an examination copy please contact clara@versobooks.com

Please check the guidelines at http://www.versobooks.com/pg/desk-copies and include all necessary information.
———————————–

***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

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

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Spaces of Capital, Moments of Struggle: Eighth Annual Historical Materialism Conference

World Crisis

SPACES OF CAPITAL, MOMENTS OF STRUGGLE: EIGHTH ANNUAL HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE

Central London

10–13 November 2011

The ongoing popular uprisings in the Arab world, alongside intimations of a resurgence in workers’ struggles against ‘austerity’ in the North and myriad forms of resistance against exploitation and dispossession across the globe make it imperative for Marxists and leftists to reflect critically on the meaning of collective anticapitalist action in the present.

Over the past decade, many Marxist concepts and debates have come in from the cold. The anticapitalist movement generated a widely circulating critique of capitalist modes of international ‘development’. More recently, the economic crisis that began in 2008 has led to mainstream-recognition of Marx as an analyst of capital. In philosophy and political theory, communism is no longer merely a term of condemnation. Likewise, artistic and cultural practices have also registered a notable upturn in the fortunes of activism, critical utopianism and the effort to capture aesthetically the workings of the capitalist system. 

The eighth annual Historical Materialism conference will strive to take stock of these shifts in the intellectual landscape of the Left in the context of the social and political struggles of the present. Rather than resting content with the compartmentalisation and specialisation of various ‘left turns’ in theory and practice, we envisage the conference as a space for the collective, if necessary, agonistic but comradely, reconstitution of a strategic conception of the mediations between socio-economic transformations and emancipatory politics.

For such a critical theoretical, strategic and organisational reflection to have traction in the present, it must take stock of both the commonalities and the specificities of different struggles for emancipation, as they confront particular strategies of accumulation, political authorities and relations of force. Just as the crisis that began in 2008 is by no means a homogeneous affair, so we cannot simply posit a unity of purpose in contemporary revolutions, struggles around the commons and battles against austerity. 

In consideration of the participation of David Harvey, winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize, at this year’s conference, we would particularly wish to emphasise the historical and geographical dimensions of capital, class and struggle. We specifically encourage paper submissions and suggested panel-themes that tackle the global nature of capitalist accumulation, the significance of anticapitalist resistance in the South, and questions of race, migration and ecology as key components of both the contemporary crisis and the struggle to move beyond capitalism.

There will also be a strong presence of workshops on the historiography of the early communist movement, particularly focusing on the first four congresses of the Communist International.

The conference will aim to combine rigorous and grounded investigations of socio-economic realities with focused theoretical reflections on what emancipation means today, and to explore – in light of cultural, historical and ideological analyses – the forms taken by current and coming struggles.

Deadline for registration of abstracts: 1 May 2011

See: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/8annual/submit

Preference will be given to subscribers to the journal and participants are expected to be present during the whole of the event – no tailor-made timetabling for individuals will be possible, nor will cameo-appearances be tolerated.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Paul Mason: ‘From Tehran to Madison’ – What is New in the Great Unrest of 2011?

World Crisis

PAUL MASON: ‘FROM TEHRAN TO MADISON – WHAT IS NEW IN THE GREAT UNREST OF 2011?

Tuesday, 12th April 2011, 11am – 12.15
Venue: David Sizer Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London (Mile End Campus)
Paul Mason is BBC Newsnight’s Economics editor and author of ‘Live Working or Die Fighting – How the Working Class Went Global’ and ‘Meltdown – The End of the Age of Greed.’

Christian Marazzi: ‘The Common and Money’
Wednesday, 13th April 2011, 1pm – 2.45
Venue: David Sizer Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London (Mile End Campus)
Christian Marazzi is Professor and director of socio-economic research at the Scuola Universitaria della Svizzera Italiana and author of ‘The Violence of Financial Capitalism.’

Both events are free and open to all and are part of the 14th Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN): http://www.busman.qmul.ac.uk/newsandevents/events/items/43116.html

Contact and further info: a.alele@qmul.ac.uk

Maps and directions here: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/about/howtofindus/mileend/index.html
http://www.cfep.org.uk

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Post/Autonomia – Call for Papers

Autonomia

POST/AUTONOMIA – CALL FOR PAPERS

Post/autonomia – Call for Papers

Amsterdam, 19-22 May 2011

University of Amsterdam/SMART Project Space

Keynote speakers include:

Franco Berardi (‘Bifo’)

Vittorio Morfino

Stevphen Shukaitis (to be confirmed)

Immaterial labour; multitude; the communism of capital; commons; precarity; biopolitics: autonomist thought has undoubtedly provided contemporary critical theory with some of its major concepts and/or allowed for an important reconsidering of these. Most importantly, autonomist thought has been at the forefront of thinking the crucial shifts in contemporary capitalism and its effects in both the social and cultural sphere. Autonomism’s impact on current critical theory in both European and American academia can therefore hardly be underestimated. Moreover, today we witness a resurgence of autonomist models of activism and thought in social movements in for example Italy, Greece, the UK and California.

‘What can ‘post/autonomia’ mean today?’ therefore is one of the pivotal questions in contemporary critical theory and activism. Rather than packaging it as ‘Italian Theory’, we would like to explore the international dissemination of autonomous thought and activism today and their possible futures; in particular we would like to explore critical engagements and uses of autonomist ideas that shape what we might call post/autonomia. It is precisely the dynamics, tensions and ruptures between autonomia and its possible futures (or ‘posts’) that we would like to investigate. What are the effects of autonomia, as a thought and a movement, in a variety of domains: from critical theory to cinema, from activism to academic practice?

Crucial questions raised by the notion of post/autonomia are:

* How did autonomist thought move from what was in fact a specific local context to the global activist and intellectual sphere?

* What are the possible connections between (post)autonomia and other contemporary conceptualizations of ‘communism’?

* What is the role of (post)autonomist thinking in current efforts to reassemble and reconstitute the militant left?

* What are possible connections/convergences between (post)autonomism and post-situationism, anarchism or the green movement?

* How can post/autonomia be situated in the aftermath or even afterlife of the ‘no global’ moment?    * How is post/autonomia taking shape in diverse cultural and artistic interventions?

* What is the significance of autonomist thought in non-western/global contexts (e.g. the debates concerning precarious labour in China)?

* How does the current the interest in autonomism and its relevance relate to political discourses concerning the ‘heritage’ of 68/77 and their alleged ‘liquidation’ (by Berlusconi/Sarkozy); to what extent does it encourage or block these debates?

* What elements of autonomism remain unaddressed today (e.g. the feminist heritage)?

* What particular nexus between theory/militant practice takes shape in post/autonomia (e.g. in media activism and precarity-movements)?

* What new perspectives/connections can be created: e.g. post/autonomia and queer, the metropolis, bioeconomy, etc. etc.

The conference will provide a platform for addressing these and other important questions. Papers may address the following topics (but are by no means bound to these):

Post/autonomia and:

–       contemporary activism

–       conceptualizations of bio-politics

–       the neo-liberal state

–       precarity

–       media activism

–       academic activism and new student movements (L’Onda che viene etc)

–       post-situationism

–       queer autonomy

–       feminism

–       the work of individual theorists (e.g. Negri, Virno, Berardi, Guattari, Lazzerato, Marazzi etc)

–       semiocapitalism

–       artistic and cultural activism

–       political/cultural memories of autonomia

–       the metropolis and the social factory today

–       the new communism

–       transversality

–       new spinozisms

–       (the lessons of) Genoa 2001

–       strategies of resistance

–       populism

–       the law, the state of exception and legitimacy

We welcome both academic and practice-oriented contributions in English. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send abstracts (350 words) before March 15 to postautonomia@gmail.com. For further information, please contact postautonomia@gmail.com.

This conference is the first of a series within the project Precarity and Post-autonomia: the Global Heritage funded by NWO (Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research).

Organizing committee:

–       Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA)

–       Joost de Bloois, University of Amsterdam

–       Silvia Contarini, Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre La Défence

–       Monica Jansen, Utrecht University

–       Federico Luisetti, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA)

–       Frans-Willem Korsten, Leiden University/Erasmus University Rotterdam

–       Gianluca Turricchia, University of Amsterdam

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Diminishing Returns? Feminist Engagements with the Return to ‘The Commons’

Feminism

DIMINISHING RETURNS? FEMINIST ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE RETURN TO ‘THE COMMONS’

_____________________

An international workshop hosted by the Kent Centre for Law, Gender, and Sexuality and Kent Law School

Wednesday 23 March 2011
Kent Law School
Canterbury, UK*
12-6pm

With presentations by:

Rosemary Coombe (York University, Canada)
Radhika Desai (University of Manitoba, Canada)
Denise Ferreira da Silva (Queen Mary, UK)
Nina Power (Roehampton, UK)

Discussed by:

Donatella Alessandrini (Kent, UK)
Brenna Bhandar (Kent, UK)

The day will consist of two sessions, broken up with a light lunch (provided) and followed by dinner (not provided). Please join us for part or all of the day. More information about the theme of the workshop can be found below.

The event is free but spaces are limited. To book a spot please register by emailing Stacy Douglas at: S.M.Douglas@kent.ac.uk before 1 March 2011.

*There are some funds available for postgraduate students who wish to travel to Kent for the workshop. If you are interested please email Stacy Douglas at S.M.Douglas@kent.ac.uk with a brief case for support as well as an estimated cost for your train travel. Information about traveling to Kent can be found here.

_____________________

Background:

Garrett Hardin’s now infamous essay “Tragedy of the Commons” (1968) stands as a Hobbesian analogy for what he claims are the inherent destructive capacities of human beings that perpetually stand in the way of realizing a free community of individuals with shared resources. Hardin’s essay suggests that, when faced with the responsibility of sharing the commons, individual human self-interest – or fear of it – will win out over practices of collectivity, sharing, and mutual aid.

More recently, there has been a resurgence in political theory and political philosophy in addressing the concept of “the commons”. Some of the most popularly cited references to the idea can be found in the work of Slavoj Žižek (2009) and Hardt and Negri (2009). This work has further been expounded upon in international conferences devoted to the “Idea of Communism” in London (2009) and Berlin (2010).  Steeped in the philosophy of Spinoza, Hardt and Negri use a notion of the common that “…does not position humanity separate from nature, as either its exploiter or its custodian, but focuses rather on the practices of interaction, care, and cohabitation in a common world, promoting the beneficial and limiting and detrimental forms of the common” (2009). For Žižek, the commons is comprised of culture (“primarily language, our means of communication and education, but also shared infrastructure such as public transport, electricity, post, etc…”), external nature (“from oil to forests and the natural habitat itself”), and internal nature (“the biogenetic inheritance of humanity”), and are all increasingly enclosed by the forces of global capital. It is the process of our exclusion from these commons (“our own substance”) that Žižek argues should effectively proletarianize us into fighting for something more than capitalist liberal democracy – a system whose laissez-faire violence is justified through the empty gesture of “universal inclusion” without any material bite. Žižek’s answer to this political conundrum is a call for communism.

And yet, the past century has seen vast and varied critical feminist engagements with historically changing concepts of communism and “the commons”. Struggles for universal suffrage, critiques of universality, denouncements of the hollowing out of the welfare state as a result of neoliberalisation, and challenges to the concept of the human, are all examples of a rich and diverse feminist tradition of engagement with the concept of “the commons”. Given the popular return to the idea of the commons, what more does feminist analysis have to give to this conversation? Does the concept still have potential for future feminist projects? If so, what is this potential and what do these projects look like? How do they resonate – or not – with those of the past? Further, given the broader theme of the workshop series, what role – if any – does the “the state” play in these imaginings?

The Kent Centre for Law, Gender, and Sexuality (KCLGS) and Kent Law School invite you to participate in a workshop exploring the contemporary feminist work of Rosemary Coombe, Radhika Desai, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Nina Power as it resonates or clashes with these questions. For more information or to register, email S.M.Douglas@kent.ac.uk or visit www.kent.ac.uk/law/kentclgs/. 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

New Commoner and Call for Contributions

The Incident

NEW COMMONER AND CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Dear friends

This is to announce that a new issue of the commoner is out consisting essentially of a long essay by J. Martin Pedersen on Property, Commoning and the Politics of Free Software and a call for contributions on real-case commoning projects. 

The Commoner: http://www.commoner.org.uk/

Happy New Year

Massimo De Angelis

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Common

Jacob

COMMON | RESISTANCE | INDEPENDENCE | EXODUS

Common is a political inquiry journal that is born during the crisis, during the global tsunami. We have set this journal as a dispositive to investigate the present time in the framework of the economic crisis that we are experiencing, looking for some directions of political action, measuring a new temporality and discovering the mutations of behaviour and imagery.

The journal forces us or, as you prefer, facilitate us to think collectively about the phase; identifying the common feature of the time we are living in, looking for a sense that enables us to understand the contingency, using it as a effective compass for the political action.

The field of education, the process of impoverishment in terms of perspective and future for the young generation, are the research fields for the debut of Common. In the epoch of cognitive capitalism, in an apparent paradox, it seems that the governance of the productive forces passes through a sort of war on knowledge. Starting from inquiring the biggest student movement in Italy and Europe since 1968, this issue is an attempt to analyze the new political anthropology within the temporality of the movement, its discontinuity and challenges.

“In the background”, “In figura” and “Lines of flight” are the three main sections that compose Common. The methodology of inquiry, the themes treated in this issue, such as institutions, self-education and common, are dispositive to strengthen our resistance, to organize our independence, to defend our exodus.

Common |Resistance |Independence |Exodus

Editorial Collective:

Marco Bascetta / Claudia Bernardi / Francesco Brancaccio / Antonio Conti/ Alberto De Nicola / Paolo Do / Serena Fredda / Fabio Gianfrancesco / Augusto Illuminati / Federico Marini / Antonio Negri / Isabella Pinto / Francesco Raparelli / Judith Revel / Tania Rispoli / Benedetto Vecchi / Giuliana Visco

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Table of contents Zero issue

Editorial:  making inquiry within the crisis

// In the background

Toni Negri: Corruption, new accumulation, refeudalization
Antonio Conti: The crisis and the general intellect
Marco Bascetta: Reactionary philosophy
Alberto De Nicola: The triumph of the brain
Carlo Vercellone: Models of welfare and social services in the systemic crisis of the cognitive capitalism

// In figura

Isabella Pinto, Tania Rispoli: Who values whom? Merit and cooperative innovation
Ugo Mattei (interviewed by Francesco Brancaccio): The university beyond public and private
Marco Baravalle: The Wave in the factory of the culture
Bartleby: Experiments of self-education
Francesco Brancaccio: Self-education as prefiguration of an institution to come
Chiara Bastianoni, Vanessa Bilancetti, Serena Fredda, Tiziano Trobia (edited by): Medium waves
Luca Cafagna, Fabio Gianfrancesco, Giuliana Visco (edited by): The shape of water
Morgan Adamson: The financialization of student life
Claudia Bernardi, Paolo Do: Europe sauvage
Alberto De Nicola, Francesco Raparelli: After the backwash

// lines of flight

Serena Fredda, Viola Mordenti: Lexicon – difference
Girolamo De Michele: Festina lente
Infosex: becoming whore

Augusto Illuminati: About tyrant, corruption and more

Common: http://www.commonrivista.org

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Money Menace

World Communal Heritage Manifesto

Utopia

WORLD COMMUNAL HERITAGE MANIFESTO

Since the so called victory of western neo-liberal capitalism, communal services and public space are being predatory privatized. It’s our task to stop the destructive appropriation of communal heritage by the tycoons! Before the words public and communal fade away from our vocabulary we want to remind of one great achievement of the 20^th century: equally accessible public space. Here we are not referring to the public space as the place of representation for the state and its elites, such as public squares or state cultural institutions.
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We think of the non-proprietary communal space created around the Modernist apartment-blocks often – though not always – built at the periphery of urban centers.
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From France to the Soviet Union, Modernist town planning and public housing was driven by the idea of securing equal access to urban infrastructure, to light, air and green space. The solution were high-rise apartment-blocks that left a lot of open space for communal facilities such as schools, kindergartens, community houses with playgrounds, sports fields, pathways, and meadows in between the developments. These park-like spaces, immediately outside the dwelling, are available to all in equal measure and open for everybody’s use.

Let us constitute those open spaces as political space! There are no safeguards or fences that could slow down your pace! You can gather together without paying a fortune for the gentrified lifestyle in the inner-city! The openness, porosity and communicability of Modernist social architecture and landscaping that takes shape in a wealth of free space, pedestrian pathways, bridges, passages, niches, little woods and bushes is giving possibility of direct action, so let’s take it:
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Between the blocks, social movements are born! Obviously some part of society perceives this potential as a security risk that is hard to control. In former welfare-states, Modernist multi-storey apartment-blocks are being violently condemned and – like the Heygate Estate in London – are being torn down to make room for new buildings for wealthier clients. According to the same profit-driven logics, the city authorities in former socialist states sell open communal spaces to private investors that use them for the purposes of individual exploitation.
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The World Communal Heritage campaign supports communities and individuals that want to organize and take action to prevent the destruction of communal space in their neighbourhoods.
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We affirm the idea of common goods that are managed by the community and we acknowledge the communal as heritage that must be further developed by the community – and not by individualistic interests.
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Therefore we call to organize and to take over the future of the communal spaces in our hands!

Join in the World Communal Heritage Campaign!
Any communal, open space can be nominated by citizens, individuals, groups or communities as World Communal Heritage.

We initially present several spaces that bear the attributes of World Communal Heritage. These are communal spaces in the following micro-raions, housing estates or satellite towns: Botanica, Rîºcani and Buiucani in Chiºinãu (Moldavia), Heygate Estate in London (United Kingdom), Block 70 and Block 63 in New Belgrade (Serbia), Gropiusstadt in Berlin and Langwasser in Nürnberg (Germany).

We invite everyone interested to nominate and affirm their additional suggestions!

You can use the stickers, the logo and material for the initiation of a new campaign anywhere in the world.

You are invited to self-organize and to install a panel indicating that a space is acknowledged as World Communal Heritage Site as shown on the pictures from New Belgrade and Chiºinãu.

World Communal Heritage is an initiative by Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremiæ to affirm the open spaces of Modernist urbanism as non-proprietary communal heritage.

WCH: http://communalheritage.wordpress.com/

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The Common and the Forms of the Commune – Rethinking Marxism

Hilton Reading Postone

THE COMMON AND THE FORMS OF THE COMMUNE – RETHINKING MARXISM

Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society Volume 
22 Issue 3
http://www.informaworld/rm

Special Issue: THE COMMON AND THE FORMS OF THE COMMUNE

In Memoriam
JULIE GRAHAM (1945–2010)

Editors’ Introduction

The Common and the Forms of the Commune
Guest Editors’ Introduction: The Common and the Forms of the Commune
Anna Curcio and Ceren Özselçuk

On the Common, Universality, and Communism: A Conversation between 
Étienne Balibar and Antonio Negri

Subjectivity, Class, and Marx’s “Forms of the Commune”
Jack Amariglio

The Common and Its Production
The Common in Communism
Michael Hardt

Five Theses on the Common
Gigi Roggero

A Common Word
Aras Özgün

Free Association/Means in Common
16beaver group

Commodity Fetishism and the Common
Rethinking Socialism: Community, Democracy, and Social Agency
Antonio Callari; David F. Ruccio

The Common without Copies, the International without Cosmopolitanism: 
Marx against the Romanticism of Likeness
Deborah Jenson

The Nature of the Common
Federico Luisetti

“Modes” of Community
Engendering Feudalism: Modes of Production Revisited
S. Charusheela

On Producing (the Concept of) Solidarity
Kenneth Surin

Pedagogies of the Common
Kathi Weeks

Difference in Common
Translating Difference and the Common
Anna Curcio

Jouissance and Antagonism in the Forms of the Commune: A Critique of Biopolitical Subjectivity
Yahya M. Madra; Ceren Özselçuk

Subjectivity and Visions of the Common
Alvaro Reyes

Rethinking Marxism: http://www.informaworld/rm

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)

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