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<p>Next Wednesday we’re kicking off a series of discussion and
reading events around Stefano Harney & Fred Moten’s <i>The
Undercommons</i>.<br>
<br>
<b>On Birds & Kitchen Tables: Conversations of/in the
Undercommons</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1187">https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1187</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.facebook.com/events/918873552654215">https://www.facebook.com/events/918873552654215</a><br>
<br>
“The weapon of theory is a conference of the birds. The kitchen
table is its public and its publisher.” – Stefano Harney &
Fred Moten<br>
<br>
In the ten years since it was published, one of the most striking
things about <i>The Undercommons</i> 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Dates / Times</b><br>
May 3rd @ Online, 2PM UK Time:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/96756120100">https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/96756120100</a><br>
June 29th @ May Day Rooms, London (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://maydayrooms.org">https://maydayrooms.org</a>)<br>
June 30th – July 1st, London Conference in Critical Thought
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://londoncritical.org">http://londoncritical.org</a>)<br>
<br>
For more information email <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:minorcompositions@gmail.com">minorcompositions@gmail.com</a><br>
<br>
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