Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Start > Masterprogramm Humanities & Social Sciences: Kulturwissenschaften - Culture, Arts and Media [ab Studienbeginn WS 13/14] (M.A.) -> Minor Kulturtheorie -> Sozialität und Kulturalität

Lehrveranstaltungen

Fugitivity of the (Under)Commons - Concepts, Genealogies, Practices (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Christoph Brunner

Termin:
wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 16:15 - 17:45 | 21.10.2021 - 03.02.2022 | C 5.310 Seminarraum

Inhalt: The notion of the commons has received much attention in cultural theory and cultural studies, human geography, and political philosophy over the last four decades. By now it is used to address historical formations of land use (Ger. “Allmende”) and processes of privatization (spatial/territorial connotation), collective practices and ways of sharing (social connotation), digital standards concerned with access and FLOSS/free libre open source software (creative commons), and the ethical as well as political question of defining values applicable to larger groups or societies (commonwealth). Overall, most of the work dealing with commons concerns the critical inquiry of the logic and mechanisms contemporary capitalism and the logic of private property as its foundation. In cultural as well as social theory, discourses on the commons have provided an immense body of work concerned with more just, post-capitalist, and environmentally aware takes on how to inhabit planet earth. The concept of commons often addresses what is common to individuals (human or more-than-human) or what kinds of shared grounds provide for “being in common” in the sense of resources (material and immaterial). Philosophically, the question of the common follows different yet interlinked routes (at least in the European tradition). While Spinoza’s “common notions” point at the creative process of affecting and being affected as a ground for existence’s belonging, Descartes’ “good sense”, and Kant’s “sensus communis” both aim at defining common norms and fixed values of taste and moral judgement. Common/s then designates a sense of collectivity and community and points at their constituent aspects. At the same time, commons are used to designate a clear difference from enclosures. Enclosures are physical, mental and political boundary-making practices inscribed in nation states, institutions but also private companies. Commons as a progressive theoretical term asks how to evade the making of enclosures and develop practices of commoning beyond private property. Such resistance to the making of enclosures attached to a concept of private property takes on a particular relevance when it comes to the history of the transatlantic slave trade. By turning humans into slaves, they are enclosed into an economic and racist system and their value becomes extractable as private property. The resistance to slavery’s enclosures carries a history of flight and fleeing the incarceration apparatus – of being on the run. This history of fugitivity of black and people of color reverberates into our present on many accounts, like migrations from the global south to the north, or the disproportionate killing of black men by US police. The question of flight and fugitivity serves as a grounding of the otherwise rather abstract theorizing of the commons. The fugitivity of the (under)commons explores more than a flight and the making of commons beyond private property and state enclosures. Fugitivity as technique to flee from the enclosure of the disciplinary and of control appears to become a more general concern in times of surveillance capitalism and hyper-individualistic conceptions of the Self, purported by social media. The seminar will explore three lines of inquiry: 1) An introduction into the concept of the common/commons and enclosure based on key works in cultural theory and philosophy. 2) A familiarization with the notion of fugitivity and its role in Black Studies and beyond. 3) The analysis of practices and techniques of fugitive commoning and their potential to address contemporary enclosures of late liberalism. For reasons of accessibility, the seminar is conceptualizd in English. In class communication in German will be an option if everyone has sufficient language proficiency to participate actively.

Politische Gewalt und moderne Gesellschaft (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Stefan Malthaner

Inhalt: Die Vorstellung, Gewalt erfolgreich kontrolliert zu haben gehört zum Selbstverständnis moderner Gesellschaften – sie verstehen sich als „zivilisiert“. Ungeachtet „moderner“ Institutionen der Gewaltkontrolle und der Ächtung von Gewalt bleibt diese jedoch Teil der sozialen Realität und politischen Herrschaft. Es entsteht eine paradoxe Konstellation, in der politische Gewalt in besonderer Weise rechtfertigungsbedürftig ist, aus der aber auch neue Formen der Gewaltlegitimation hervorgehen, und in der Gewalt zu einer machtvollen Ressource der Aufmerksamkeitserzeugung und der Herausforderung von Ordnung wird. Das Seminar befasst sich mit der Frage nach dem spezifischen Gewaltverhältnis der Moderne und dessen Auswirkungen auf das Feld der Politik. Unser Blick richtete sich dabei insbesondere auf Dynamiken politischer Gewalt, die sich aus den spezifischen Formen von Sichtbarkeit, Betrachtung und Darstellung von Gewalt in der Moderne ergeben. Politische Gewalt, so die Erkenntnis, unterliegt einer „politics of looking“, und lässt sich in ihrer Wirkungsweise und sozialen Bedeutung nur verstehen, wenn sie auch als gesehene und zur Schau gestellte Gewalt (Performance) analysiert wird.