The Undercommons
 | |
| Author | |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Minor Compositions |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Media type | Collection of essays |
| Pages | 166 |
| ISBN | 978-1-57027-267-7 |
| Dewey Decimal | 303.3 |
The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study is a 2013 collection of essays by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, published by Minor Compositions, then an imprint of Autonomedia. Drawing on the Black radical tradition, the book develops concepts including study, debt, planning, logistics, governance, the "surround", and "the shipped".[1] Although its discussion of the university has attracted particular attention, the book also addresses broader questions of racial capitalism, sociality, credit, logistics and collective forms of intellectual and political life.[2][3]
The book was released simultaneously in print and as a freely downloadable open access edition.[1] It has subsequently appeared in German, Spanish and French translations.[4][5][6]
Publication and background
[edit]Harney and Moten met while studying at Harvard University and subsequently developed a long-running intellectual collaboration.[2] Ideas that would become central to The Undercommons appeared in their essay "The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses", published in Social Text in 2004.[7] Their essay "Blackness and Governance", another text subsequently incorporated into the book, appeared in the 2011 collection Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death.[8]
The Undercommons was published in 2013 by Minor Compositions, at the time an imprint of Autonomedia. The book includes an introduction by Jack Halberstam, six essays by Harney and Moten, and "The General Antagonism", an interview with Stevphen Shukaitis.[1] Several of its chapters had previously appeared in different forms in academic journals and other publications.
The complete book was made available for free download upon publication as part of Minor Compositions' open-access publishing model.[9] Harvard Magazine later noted that PDF copies circulated extensively among graduate students, adjunct faculty and academics without tenure, comparing its circulation to samizdat.[9]
A German translation, Die Undercommons: Flüchtige Planung und schwarzes Studium, translated by Birgit Mennel and Gerald Raunig and edited by Isabell Lorey, was published by transversal texts in 2016.[4] A Spanish edition, Los abajocomunes: Planear fugitivo y estudio negro, translated by Cristina Rivera Garza, Juan Pablo Anaya and Marta Malo, was published in Mexico by La Campechana Mental and Cooperativa Cráter Invertido in 2017.[5] A French edition, Les sous-communs: Planification fugitive et étude noire, was published by Brook in 2022.[6]
Contents and themes
[edit]The book consists of an introduction by Halberstam followed by six interconnected essays—"Politics Surrounded", "The University and the Undercommons", "Blackness and Governance", "Debt and Study", "Planning and Policy", and "Fantasy in the Hold"—and concludes with the interview "The General Antagonism".[1]
Across these texts, Harney and Moten draw on the Black radical tradition to examine forms of collective social life that operate within, beneath and beyond established institutions.[3] Rather than treating the "undercommons" principally as a location or formal organization, they use the term for forms of sociality, study, cooperation and fugitivity that precede or exceed institutional recognition. A later account of their work in the Sydney Review of Books described the undercommons as a sociality not founded on the autonomous individual and as something that moves through distinctions such as public and private rather than constituting a separate physical space.[10]
"The University and the Undercommons"
[edit]One of the book's best-known sections develops arguments first presented in Harney and Moten's 2004 Social Text essay "The University and the Undercommons".[7] Their account treats the university ambivalently: it can provide resources and refuge for intellectual activity while simultaneously professionalizing knowledge and incorporating intellectual labour into systems of administration and governance.[2]
Harney and Moten contrast the figure of the professional academic with the "subversive intellectual", who makes use of institutional resources while refusing full identification with the university's professional and administrative purposes.[7] The undercommons therefore does not simply describe an alternative university. In their account, the university is one site among many in which collective practices of study can take place.[2] Their conception of "study" is correspondingly broader than formal education, encompassing forms of thinking, conversation, cooperation and intellectual life undertaken collectively.
Debt, study and planning
[edit]Other essays extend this argument beyond educational institutions. "Debt and Study" distinguishes social relations of indebtedness and mutual obligation from systems of credit that quantify and govern those relations. "Planning and Policy" contrasts collective practices of planning with policy as a form of institutional management, while "Fantasy in the Hold" uses the history and contemporary organization of logistics to connect the movement of commodities under capitalism to histories of slavery and forced transportation.
The concepts of logistics, governance and debt are therefore linked to the book's account of the undercommons as forms of social organization that cannot be completely contained by institutional mechanisms. The publisher's description identifies "study, debt, surround, planning, and the shipped" as central concepts developed across the essays.[1]
Black radical tradition
[edit]Harney and Moten place these arguments within the Black radical tradition, treating Blackness not solely as an identity category but also in relation to histories of dispossession, fugitivity, collective life and resistance.[3] Timothy Lyle described the book in CLA Journal as a project of world-making with deep connections to the Black radical tradition, emphasizing its concern with alternative forms of belonging rather than reforming already-existing institutions.[3]
Reception and influence
[edit]In the Chicago Tribune in 2015, curator Abigail Satinsky described The Undercommons as concerned with forms of intellectual life produced through being together, while artist Anthony Romero emphasized its account of everyday social life outside academic institutions as a form of intellectual practice.[11]
In 2016, writer Maggie Nelson included The Undercommons among her ten favorite books in T, highlighting its treatment of study, debt, planning and "the shipped".[12]
A 2018 profile of Moten by Jesse McCarthy in Harvard Magazine characterized The Undercommons as both an analysis of alienated academic labour and a manifesto for forms of intellectual activity exceeding the university. McCarthy noted the extensive circulation of its freely available PDF among students and precariously employed academics.[9]
Writing in The New Yorker the same year, David S. Wallace described Harney and Moten's work as challenging the professionalization of intellectual life and emphasizing informal and collective practices of study.[2]
In a 2021 review in CLA Journal, Timothy Lyle described The Undercommons as a radical reorientation toward love and belonging rooted in the Black radical tradition. He argued that Harney and Moten were concerned less with modifying existing institutions than with imagining different forms of social life.[3]
Academic applications
[edit]The concept of the undercommons has subsequently been taken up in scholarship on higher education, pedagogy and institutional life.
A 2015 article in New Zealand Sociology applied the concept to student debt and the financialization of the University of Auckland.[13] The authors argued that the hierarchical and exclusionary character of the university complicated attempts to understand it as a conventional commons, and used Harney and Moten's account of the undercommons to consider forms of student politics and knowledge production beyond institutional structures.[14]
In 2018, G. H. Greer used the concept to examine resistance and affiliation within secondary school education, proposing that an undercommons could emerge through relationships that exceeded identification with administrative policy.[15]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Richard Hall drew on Harney and Moten in Postdigital Science and Education to describe forms of mutual support, organization and "fugitive planning" developed by university staff and students in response to institutional crisis.[16]
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study". Singapore Management University. Retrieved 15 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Wallace 2018.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Lyle 2021, pp. 174–175.
- 1 2 "Die Undercommons: Flüchtige Planung und schwarzes Studium". transversal texts. January 2016. Retrieved 15 September 2026.
- 1 2 "Los abajocomunes: Planear fugitivo y estudio negro". transversal texts. 2017. Retrieved 15 September 2026.
- 1 2 "Les sous-communs – Planification fugitive et étude noire". Les presses du réel. February 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 Moten, Fred; Harney, Stefano (2004). "The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses". Social Text. 22 (2): 101–115. doi:10.1215/01642472-22-2_79-101.
- ↑ Moten, Fred; Harney, Stefano (2011). "Blackness and Governance". In Clough, Patricia Ticineto; Willse, Craig (eds.). Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death. Duke University Press. pp. 351–362. doi:10.1215/9780822394235.
- 1 2 3 McCarthy 2018.
- ↑ Brooks, Andrew (1 May 2022). "Always Incomplete: A Mixtape after Moten and Harney". Sydney Review of Books. Retrieved 15 September 2026.
- ↑ Pearson 2015.
- ↑ Nelson 2016.
- ↑ Lamusse et al. 2015, pp. 73–81.
- ↑ Lamusse et al. 2015, pp. 77–81.
- ↑ Greer 2018, pp. 5–18.
- ↑ Hall 2020, pp. 662–663.
Bibliography
[edit]- Greer, G. H. (2018-12-10). "Who Needs the Undercommons? Refuge and Resistance in Public High Schools". Brock Education Journal. 28 (1): 5–18. doi:10.26522/brocked.v28i1.778. ISSN 2371-7750. S2CID 150652710.
- Hall, Richard (October 2020). "Covid-19 and the Hopeless University at the End of the End of History". Postdigital Science and Education. 2 (3): 657–664. doi:10.1007/s42438-020-00118-3. ISSN 2524-485X. PMC 7176372.
- Lamusse, T.; Morgan, S.; Rākete, E.; Birchall, A. (2015). "Reading and rioting: Student politics beyond the university". New Zealand Sociology. Sociological Association of Aotearoa (New Zealand).
- Lyle, Timothy (2021). "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten". CLA Journal. 64 (1): 174–178. doi:10.1353/caj.2021.0012. ISSN 2766-0265. S2CID 234896709 – via Project MUSE.
- McCarthy, Jesse (January 2018). "The Low End Theory". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
- Nelson, Maggie (2016-10-07). "My 10 Favorite Books: Maggie Nelson". T. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
- Pearson, Laura (March 19, 2015). "Me, My Shelf and I: Anthony Romero and Abigail Satinsky". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
- Wallace, David S. (2018-04-30). "Fred Moten's Radical Critique of the Present". The New Yorker. Retrieved 24 November 2021.