11 September 2015, 19:30–21:30 / Casco HQ
Casco is happy to host a special roundtable with philosophers on the commons where we will rethink the political – and cultural – means to posit anew the problem of commons and collective organization in a time of “neoliberal onslaught.”
Two major questions will be addressed during this evening, namely:
1. Theories of the commons, communization, etc., are, certainly, in the autonomist/operaist tradition directed against the State. Yet in our neoliberal context (at which theories and practices of the commons are pointed), the State might exactly be what is at stake. For Wendy Brown, neoliberalism is a battle concerning the role and meaning of the State. Are we giving up too easily on the State?
2. Perhaps we could address a tension concerning the commons between, say, ontology and history. This is prominent in Roberto Esposito’s work on “communitas” and Giorgio Agamben’s work on “use.” Additionally, Antonio Negri seems to oscillate between a (socio)historical definition of the commons (historically determined practices of use and sharing as opposed to property) and the commons as a marker of ontology – as being-in-common (a kind of anthropo-ontology).
