Multiple Communities, between philosophy and political action
Text: "Community thinking and political action: towards the concept of multiple communities" André Duarte in Rue Descartes n°76, 2012/4, p.20-41. http://www.cairn.info/revue-rue-descartes-2012-4-page-20.htm
"What is community thinking and what can it bring to contemporary political reflection? Then, can the community be conceived of as a common space for political actions and under what theoretical conditions? Finally, what good does it do to combine the notion of community with the idea of plurality?” The Brazilian philosopher André Duarte calls on Jean-Luc Nancy, Roberto Esposito, Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault to rethink the concept of community in philosophical and political terms before mirroring it with what he calls the “new political collectives”. This text, dense but inspiring, offers a vision of the liberated politics of the representative legal and administrative systems that will come about because of collective discussion and action within the open and vibrant “multiple communities” that suddenly seem very familiar to us. It will allow us to shed some light on the notions of subjectification and the differences noted during the first workshop with Judith Revel and broaden our reflection on the “tactics of commoning” begun in the 5 March session.

To sign up, access the bibliography or read the transcripts of previous sessions, contact v.bobin@leslaboratoires.org

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“Commons?!” A reading and discussion workshop open to all!
“There is no common world”, wrote philosopher Bruno Latour, “we must compose it.” Yet our media, politics and intellectual environments are overrun with words like “common” “commune” “commons” or “community”, from calls for participative democracy to ecological debates, from critiques of neo-liberalism to social networks. A great many artistic practices and cultural discourses lay claim to it, often with the added urgency that the widespread crisis context creates, a crisis of resources, the environment, the economy, social relations, and on and on. Beyond the populist and instrumentalised rhetoric that would make art the source of an ability to “live together” with its soothing, therapeutic properties, or worse, a consolation for the failure of social policies – artists, intellectuals, and activists question the “tactics” that allow us to mobilise the power of what is “common”, something to be constantly (re)composed by the hands of dynamic and shifting communities.
Before le Printemps des Laboratoires (18-19 May 2013) dedicated to these questions, les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers invites you to join in a bi-monthly reading workshop that will take a selection of texts and together question the definitions and social practices related to the terms “commune”, “common”, “commons”, and “community”. How have their meanings changed through political and intellectual history and what tools can they constitute for “us” today?
 
+ dates + tuesdays 19/02, 5/03, 19/03, 2/04, 16/04, 30/04, 7/05
+ horaires + 7pm to 9pm