Prior to the start of the semester, a member of my mentor cluster recommended that I read Moten and Harney’s The Undercommons. I, unfortunately, did not have the time to, so this was my first experience with the text. I wish, however, that I had found some time to read this text, just to have the experience of rereading it. Because I think this text requires multiple readings to truly get a concrete grasp of what the authors are trying to say.

Or not.

I’m not sure.

My uncertainty arises from the profoundly abstract prose of the text. This was not my initial reaction, however. My initial reaction was hopeful, with Jack Halberstam’s introduction promising that it “ends with love, exchange, fellowship” (5). I should have, perhaps, paid closer attention to the next sentence, which suggest that the text, or rather the language of the text, moves tangentially. “It ends as it begins, in motion, in between various modes of being and belonging, and on the way to new economies of giving, taking, being with and for and it ends with a ride in a Buick Skylark on the way to another place altogether” (5). For, the text is nebulous at best and profound only in those sparse moments when it struck at something that I could attach it to some concrete ideal or issue.

The chapter, Debt and Study, for example. I found the language in that chapter spoke to the necessity of formulating debt in abject “others” in the (re)production and legitimacy of institutions and institutional power/authority. At this moment in the book, I found that Moten and Harney’s text was attempting to make a connection between globalization and (higher) education. This was profound for me, because this is something that is seldom investigated or even mentioned in the public sphere: the dependency of debt (of people, of countries, etc.) by institutions, (higher) education, for example. And while I still believe that the profoundly abstract prose of the text “problematizes” the attractiveness (for lack of a better word) of the work, in this instance, I found the profoundly abstract nature of the prose alluring and effective. I found that the language used around the words debt, insurance, and credit could mean, the “poor in debt” and/or those privileged students who receive a higher education who are now (perhaps unconsciously) (in)debted to those forced into debt. Those whose debts funded the privileged students’ education. (Even now, in explaining this I feel like I’m falling into Moten and Harney’s stylistic prose.) 

And while the text does provide some great insight of radical resistance to authority, I found that I couldn’t get over the profoundly abstract prose of the work. It was distracting and at time infuriating. Was the work a scholarly, aesthetic, or esoteric endeavor? To be clear, a book does not need to fit one set of criteria. A book can be whatever the author wants it or doesn’t want it to be. My frustration, however, is with the supposed impetus (or was it the supposed impetus?) for this book: to address the issues effecting the “undercommons.” Whether the book is concerned with, or is addressing, the forces of globalization and its effects on the ontological development of Western citizens, and Blacks in particular; or the nature of Black art and its resistance against forces of oppression tied to modernization, I couldn’t say for certain. That wasn’t clear. And I think clarity is vital and necessary, especially when dealing with issues whose politics can literally mean life or death for the people whom this book describes and revolves around.

Lastly, my issues with the book has less to do with Moten and Harney’s text and is more about my personal preference of scholarly work/text, which also revolve around the debates surrounding the approachability of scholarship to the general masses. As an educator, scholar, and writer who uses academic work as a form of social activism, I believe that if scholarship is not approachable and accessible (in every sense of these words) to the general public, the masses, etc., what is the point? What is the point of scholarship if not to influence public policy in some way? (For better or worse.)

I feel like I need another week to sit and process The Undercommons! To echo Sandra, the language and ideas were certainly difficult to grasp. At times I was confused, frustrated, and honestly a bit lost. Other times, particularly on re-reading, delighted and challenged.

The process of reading The Undercommons reminds me of when I encountered Jean Toomer’s Cane, during an undergraduate course on the Harlem Renaissance. Cane, if anyone is unfamiliar, was published in 1923 as a series of vignettes focused on the black American experience. Toomer paints a portrait of southern urban and rural life, entwining prose, poetry and play-like dialogue. Toomer’s vignettes stand alone. Yet they also work together, as characters, motifs, and stories resurface in unexpected ways, resisting finite interpretation and inviting continued redefinition and nuanced understanding on the part of the reader. Both frustrating and freeing!

I saw this similar concept of textual openness in The Undercommons, which Zoe also points to. This passage on page 107 interests me as well:

….I’m playing with something rather than that it’s finished. If I’m going along in a kind of ‘duh dum duh dum duh dum’ rhyming kind of way in the writing, it’s partly to say that we’re in rehearsal here. And since we’re rehearsing, you might as well pick up an instrument too. So, for me, it must be right there in the writing in some form. It’s not enough to signal it outside the writing, to send the piece out and to say, ‘oh, really this is still open for this or that.’ It has to be somehow in the writing itself that the thing hasn’t closed off. Part of that is that to write with another person is, in a sense, always to keep something open, because you always have the question of, “do they both think that way, who said that?” Instead of worrying about that, I think that’s nice. That means that the text is already open to more than one, in that sense. (107)

I love this idea of “playing” in writing that Harney talks about, and how its reflected in the rhythm of his prose. I particularly see this playfulness in “Debt and Study:” “They’re building something in there, something down there. Mutual debt, debt unpayable, debt unbounded, debt unconsolidated, debt to each other in a study group, to others in a nurses’ room, to others in a barber shop, to others in a squat, a dump, a woods, a bed, an embrace” (67). The repetition and escalating rhythm of this sentence, gives the term “debt” and the realm of the undercommons, a sense of vivacity, openness and flux. It resists bounded structure and singular explanation. Seeing the text as a playful “rehearsal” also helped me resist trying to arrive at a “finished” definition of terms like “debt” or “owe” or “study” after each chapter, and instead, to quote Moten, “take some of it, take something from it, and make [my] own way away from it (111).

How do we give our own writing this sense of openness or rehearsal? How do we invite others to participate in it? And make space for their own contribution?

Speaking of “playfulness” also prompted me to think about how much of The Undercommons relies on metaphors or imagery to do with children. For example, in the context of using terms in new ways, Moten gives the example of his kids using toys for alternate purposes – like a sword to hit a ball (106). How do we encourage this kind of rebellious childlike creativity in our own study? How do we resist being “called to order” so that this kind of imagination – one where a sword can hit a ball – flourishes?

Similarly, in the interview, when Moten discusses the abolition of credit or accounting (an idea I’m still trying to understand…), he encourages us to think about our attitude towards feeding a “kid on the street” versus a grown adult. With a child, we naturally feel responsible for feeding them, while it is easier to reject the idea that we are responsible for feeding an adult (156). Putting this example into conversation with the idea of “mutual debt,” if we all “owe each other everything,” as the authors give voice to in Chapter 1 (20), then we all owe each other a meal. And simultaneously, we are all that “kids on the street” asking for a meal. In this socially distanced space, how do we ask for and provide nourishment to one another?

Finally, as the authors discuss in the interview section, even the nature of intellectual work should be fun and enjoyable – like play – rather than a “naturalisation of misery, the belief that intellectual work requires alienation and immobility and that the ensuing pain and nausea is a kind of badge of honor…” (117). Very relatable! I can think of so many moments during my undergraduate career where an all-nighter at the library was revered as a “badge of honor” and where one’s weariness falsely equaled value and productivity. If we are to redefine study as a kind of child-like play, then how can we validate enjoyment and encourage it in one other? Play also tends to be communal. So how do we rally against feelings of isolation, alienation, exclusion or loneliness, as Stefanie touches on?

A few thoughts but looking forward to discussing with you all tomorrow.

This is my 2.5th time reading The Undercommons, and also my 2.5th time experiencing a kind of ambivalence about it that I’d like to understand.

For Professor Stephen Brier’s Critical University Studies Class last Spring, I ended up writing a book review of The Undercommons, Rae Connell’s The Good University, and Sara Ahmed’s What’s the Use, and I think summarizing my work here might be the clearest way I can articulate this ambivalence. The conversation I staged between these books went something like this: Moten/Harney consider the university as part of a network of institutions that need to be abolished (in the video Prof. Hintz put on the syllabus, they also define things like “The Artist” as institutions that need to be abolished). Connell’s book has almost an opposite conclusion despite (in my view) not having opposite politics; she believes that radical transformation of universities are possible and her belief in this is based on a very grounded love of the very particular sets of interactions the university produces (her discussion of “research” is particularly moving). Ahmed doesn’t enter into the conversation about the essential goodness or badness of the university per se but, in her characteristic and nuanced attention to the relationships between interpersonal and structural power, throws a kind of wrench in the conventional “administrators = bad” discourse by exploring the ways that discourse characterizes complaints about racism and sexual harassment as somehow “conservative” in its utilization of administrative roles within the university.

I have a real affinity for each of these perspectives and kind of agree with them all despite them – or, well, especially what I’m pinpointing about them? – contradicting each other. I mentioned I dropped out of NYU; both my NYU self AND my NYU drop-out self – which are selves that still exist! – are positively thrilled by Moten and Harney. As they say in the video – abolition, exodus, presence. My CUNY self, and especially the part of that self that had taught for QCC’s CUNY Start for so long, is more with Connell, and this feeling is probably intensified by all the humbling reading we did in Prof. Brier’s class about the intensity of people’s struggles for a fair CUNY. I guess all that’s to say that my feeling about CUNY is wanting to fight like hell for it to be what it’s supposed to be, which is most definitely not abolitionist (and is it delusional?). And re: maybe just one of the reasons I put Ahmed in there…I feel like I should admit that my feelings about The Undercommons are knowing some particular abusive academics who claim the “in and not of the university” idea as describing themselves despite it..not. This grudge is not fair to Moten/Harney, of course, but it’s not not impacting the way I read the text.

That all being said, I think The Undercommons is a profoundly generous text. I have some random thoughts about some of the secondary material: First, I was struck when Zach Ngin wrote: “It’s not so much an excavation of resistance or a primer for the revolution as a celebration of their inescapable, improvised fact.” I loved this point, and I think it might be what Sandra was getting at in the previous blog post as well, or what Moten/Harney talk about when they talk about the kind of misfits of the university who are also kind of in it. I’ve lately reflected on the profoundly generative, playful, intellectual production I’ve engaged in with others that has not taken place within the academy, or that has perhaps taken place within its bounds (or literally on its property) but feels genuinely “not of it.” To some extent, I think portions of The Undercommons are a way of celebrating those “inescapable, improvised” creations. And to some extent, I think the desire to centralize that impulse in my life is why I returned to school, despite knowing that “The Academy” doesn’t encourage that (I feel like being armed with an inability to either be negatively surprised by “The Academy” or by CUNY puts me in an actually decent place for this project?).

I have only watched about half of the video so far, but one person asks this great question about (my words), lonely people. The question basically asks about people who want to leave but aren’t secure they’ve found their people who will leave with and support them. Harney agrees with me it’s a great question and then he gives the least satisfying answer ever! No judgment from me there; it’s an impossible question. I just want to highlight it as a question that was moving to me.

I’m really looking forward to reading and hearing other perspectives on this text! And I love Sandra’s suggestion to personalize it.

Hi all—posting with some of my reactions to this week’s venture into The Undercommons!

I had read excerpts of the book before, so I came in to the reading already familiar with Moten and Harney’s style. I think a lot can be said about the way rhythm and repetition are marshaled in the book’s prose—I found Harney’s own observations on the idea, on pg. 107, particularly fascinating—but first I want to focus more on some of the terms and concepts that the book revolves around. 

Moten and Harney seem somehow both unfussy and very careful about language. Unfussy in that they don’t appear to feel proprietary or overly-invested in their coinage (eg.: Moten on pg. 111 saying that if a term bothers a reader, they’re free to pick a different one) but careful in that M&H are so attentive to the precise distinctions between various concepts, as well as the inherent play and flexibility of language. Insight seems to come especially when terms are placed next to each other so that their connotations can be teased out, contrasted, and better understood. Even if the book is not forthright with definitions, for example, we receive a kind of indirect illumination into what governance is via its difference from policy (pg. 123); similarly, study is juxtaposed with learning (pg. 62); strategy with logistics (pg. 88), and touch with the double meaning of hold (pg. 98). This kind of detailed orientation to and parsing of meaning made me self-conscious about the precision of my own writing (as I was typing out the previous paragraph I began wondering: is “revolve around” really the best way to describe what The Undercommons does vis-a-vis its concepts?), but I’m trying to soldier on, because I think self-consciousness is not what M&H would want for a book that so frequently emphasizes play and openness.

Many parts of The Undercommons had an immediate relevancy to me. The discussion of debt as a form of never-ending—forgotten but not forgiven—mutuality reminded me of similar arguments in Debt by the anthropologist David Graeber, whose passing last week I was really saddened by. Though there are of course important differences between the two books (Debt is more a historical/anthropological analysis of political economy), the last line of Graeber’s work is as follows: “Just as no one has the right to tell us our true value, no one has the right to tell us what we truly owe.” I think M&H would agree with this sentiment, while adding that we continue to owe each other endlessly in the undercommons. 

Secondly, this notion of the undercommons as a fugitive space (or moment?) of gathering and study had a torqued resonance for me given that the pandemic has made physical modes of being-together so difficult. I haven’t watched the Youtube video of Moten and Harney speaking yet, so I’m not sure if they touch on this, but I’m wondering how the undercommons might appear to us in the socially-distanced university, when so much gathering is virtual and disembodied.

Lastly, I found Harney’s distinction between call and demand on pg. 134 so satisfying to read. Harney distinguishes between “demanding something despite authority” and calling for something that is already in process. He describes how during the London riots of 2011, rioters “didn’t demand anything. They just started. There was a call: come out and let’s just run the city for three days.” Reading this, I thought of the uprisings happening in the U.S. and the persistent anxiety conservatives and liberals alike have been displaying over the supposed lack of coherence in rioters and protesters’ demands. News about CHAZ in Seattle or Abolition Park in NYC was always accompanied by observers complaining, “But what do these people actually want?” It appears that at least at CHAZ and Abolition Park, where people were enacting new modes of sociality and solidarity, we were seeing the function of “the call” at work. 

There’s so much more to be said. I, for one, was feeling a lot of knee-jerk discomfort regarding the book’s aversion to a certain style of politics and institutional organizing. For example: the Italian Autonomia movement, which M&H seem to feel a kind of affinity for, has been criticized for having a very diffuse concept of resistance—some perceive Autonomia as a divestment from more institutional/organizational modes of challenging oppression, such as the union or worker’s party. I think this is maybe one of the more controversial aspects of the book that I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on in Monday’s class.

Thanks, and looking forward to talking!

This is a really interesting reading of Moten/ Harney, and particularly interesting because it talks about GC alum Lavelle Porter’s book The Blackademic Life:

And here is a blog post that I found interesting; I find that there are a lot of rich reflections on Moten/ Harney in the blogosphere:

Sept 16, 5 pm EST  “Putting the Humanities PhD To Work: A Conversation with Katina Rogers,” Co-Sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa.  Register here: https://obermann.uiowa.edu/events/putting-humanities-phd-work-conversation-katina-rogers

In her new book, Putting the Humanities PhD to Work (Duke University Press, 2020), Katina Rogers invites readers to build a university that is truly worth fighting for by thinking more expansively about what constitutes scholarly success—not only to support individual career pathways, but also to work toward greater equity and inclusion in the academy. This book grounds practical career advice in a nuanced consideration of the academic workforce, diversity and inclusion, new modes of scholarly communication, and humanities education as a public good. It posits that career-related initiatives in graduate programs must engage with the pressing issues of graduate education today, such as admissions practices, scholarly reward structures, equity and inclusion, and academic labor practices—especially the increasing reliance on contingent labor. And it examines ways that current practices perpetuate systems of inequality, resulting in continued underrepresentation of women and minorities in the academy.

We are looking forward to working with you this semester!