The Communal Hypothesis
The Communal Hypothesis research group investigates the conditions of historical possibility for the communal, as a form of life and mechanism of organizing social reproduction. We do so by pursuing two inter-related strands of investigation.
1. Political forms of the present: Care, mutual aid, and commoning are the political watchwords of our time. Never before have autonomist political forms had a wider sway. But how can we give a material account of the emergence of these forms? How do contemporary forms differ from their historical counterparts? Through close reading and militant investigation of and alongside contemporary movements, we trace the complicated, materialist threads that bind past and present communally-inflected political forms and ask after their conditions of possibility, limits, and possible mechanisms of generalization.
2. Conditions of possibility of the communal: We investigate, across a variety of theoretical and political traditions, the oft unrecognized historical division between feudalism and communalism. We trace the appearance (and often sidelining) of the communal through historical archives, in an attempt to allow the communal to emerge into its own, as a mode of production, social form, or means of organizing reproduction. Our aim is to track both the directly empirical traceable forms of communal life that influence the present and the vast, subterranean, historical archive of communal social forms that compose the background of on-going fights against the imposition of waged labor, private property, and anti-communitarian economic forms.
The Communal Hypothesis research group aims to generate new perspectives on contemporary debates on political ecology, new ruralism, and militancy out of a perspective that liberates the communal, or communal mode of production, from underneath industrial capitalism and orthodox and heterodox Marxism.
Researchers in the network meet once a month for discussion, followed by a spring meeting to share work and collaborate on shared projects.
1. Political forms of the present: Care, mutual aid, and commoning are the political watchwords of our time. Never before have autonomist political forms had a wider sway. But how can we give a material account of the emergence of these forms? How do contemporary forms differ from their historical counterparts? Through close reading and militant investigation of and alongside contemporary movements, we trace the complicated, materialist threads that bind past and present communally-inflected political forms and ask after their conditions of possibility, limits, and possible mechanisms of generalization.
2. Conditions of possibility of the communal: We investigate, across a variety of theoretical and political traditions, the oft unrecognized historical division between feudalism and communalism. We trace the appearance (and often sidelining) of the communal through historical archives, in an attempt to allow the communal to emerge into its own, as a mode of production, social form, or means of organizing reproduction. Our aim is to track both the directly empirical traceable forms of communal life that influence the present and the vast, subterranean, historical archive of communal social forms that compose the background of on-going fights against the imposition of waged labor, private property, and anti-communitarian economic forms.
The Communal Hypothesis research group aims to generate new perspectives on contemporary debates on political ecology, new ruralism, and militancy out of a perspective that liberates the communal, or communal mode of production, from underneath industrial capitalism and orthodox and heterodox Marxism.
Researchers in the network meet once a month for discussion, followed by a spring meeting to share work and collaborate on shared projects.
