[Minorcompositions] On Birds & Kitchen Tables: Conversations of/in the Undercommons

[Minor Compositions]

Next Wednesday we’re kicking off a series of discussion and reading 
events around Stefano Harney & Fred Moten’s /The Undercommons/.

*On Birds & Kitchen Tables: Conversations of/in the Undercommons*
https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1187
https://www.facebook.com/events/918873552654215

“The weapon of theory is a conference of the birds. The kitchen table is 
its public and its publisher.” – Stefano Harney & Fred Moten

In the ten years since it was published, one of the most striking things 
about /The Undercommons/ as a text was how it resonated, and continues 
to resonate, with different groups of people, from disenfranchised 
teaching assistants to precarious artists and political organizers. The 
patterns of circulation and engagement with it as text as an interesting 
example of undercommon sociality, or as Moten and Harney refer to it, 
black study.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the book’s publication Minor 
Compositions is planning a series of events, discussions about the book 
and how it resonates with people. Think of it as a conference of the 
birds, or maybe even literally a conversation around a kitchen table. 
Keeping in mind the ethos that informs the text these events will less 
be formal presentations, and more picking out selections from the text 
for reading and discussing together.

People will be invited to read out sections from the text that they 
found particularly compelling or interesting, and this will be used as a 
basis for a discussion. This moves the presentation of idea from a one 
to many relationship, the ‘call to order’ of traditional teaching 
methods, towards something more like a collective practice of reading 
and discussion, one that is more fitting with the concept of the 
undercommons. Keeping in mind the arguments put forward by Harney and 
Moten, it is a compilation of voices and readings, bringing together and 
building upon the text, as a form of study through circulation and 
engagement. The eventual goal of this is to produce something of an 
‘audio book’ version, one that is composed not by the voice of one 
professional voice actor, but assembled from a motley crew of voices 
assembled many kitchen tables.

*Dates / Times*
May 3rd @ Online, 2PM UK Time: 
https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/96756120100
June 29th @ May Day Rooms, London (https://maydayrooms.org)
June 30th – July 1st, London Conference in Critical Thought 
(http://londoncritical.org)

For more information email minorcompositions at gmail.com

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