Affects & Collective Practices of the Undercommons
For the affect inquiry / making space conference
August 8-11, 2018 Millersville University’s Ware Center, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania
http://capaciousjournal.com/conference/
Stream Organizers: Jack Z. Bratich & Stevphen Shukaitis
What affects circulate within the undercommons today (Harney & Moten 2013)?
This stream proposes to inquire into 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 the commonly understood realm of political
action. It will explore processes of affective composition through which
fleeting and ephemeral relations and performance are involved in what
George Katsiaficas describes as “engaging aesthetic rationality in the
process of political transformation, of turning politics into art,
everyday life into an aesthetically governed domain.” (2001: 310) This
is what Nick Thoburn terms a “minor politics” (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.
“Affects & Collective Practices of the Undercommons” proposes to explore
the relation of affective relations and aesthetics in the construction
and operation of formations of collective intelligence and subjectivity,
particularly when these forms are brought about in a way intended to
expand and modulate understood spaces for political action. These
relations and their affectivity embody and express the movement of the
social imaginary, or the constant process of becoming: what Raoul
Vaneigem referred to as the revolution of everyday life. Everyday life
and forms of political action residing in it, 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.
The everyday manifestations and embodiments of collective imagination
and intelligence through collective practices take part in the movement
of this transformation of subjectivities. Forms of self-determining
community and sociality, which have been understood and theorized as
creating the possibility for exodus from relations of domination and the
creation of other relations within the present, is premised upon working
through, and extending these relations, intensities, and experiences.
“Affects & Aesthetics of the Undercommons” will explore the multiple
fields and paths where these relations, intensities, and modulations of
collective subjectivities are expressed and transformed through
aesthetic expression and movement. This fleeting and ephemeral realm,
one of both improvisation and ritual that Amendant Hardiker and Miekal
And characterize as the space of the anartistic (1995) provides a unique
and valuable entrance point for understanding and theorization of the
relation of mind, culture, and collective imagination in constant movement.
Potential topics/possible intersections including but not limited to:
- Infrapolitics & creative subversion
- Black radicalism and genealogies
- Experimental education & nomadic pedagogy
- Creating spaces within and against institutions
- Autonomous spaces & protocols
- Study & Sociality, Convivial Research
- Infrastructure & Logisticality
- Performativy of/in the Commons
250-word paper abstracts can now be submitted to
[log in to unmask] The final deadline for submissions is
Thursday, March 15, 2018.
--
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://www.minorcompositions.info
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