Deadline: 01/10/2023
Contact: Scott Volz, Panel Co-Chair, University of California, Irvine
Email: srvolz@uci.edu
The interstitial, according to Erik Olin Wright, constitutes a set of marginal practices within a dominant power structure that remain relatively autonomous from the governing logic of that system. From this location, “new forms of social relations that embody emancipatory ideals and that are created primarily through direct action of one sort or another rather than through the state” can take shape, prefiguring a society liberated from the law of value’s unequal calculus (Wright 2010, 324). This panel examines interstitial forms and relations that open up spaces of community and solidarity in opposition to what has been called the gravitational field of colonial-capitalist enclosure and exploitation. Situating the interstitial as one mode of reclaiming the commons, as a liminal zone where cooperative assemblages are built, the panel shines a light on current politico-aesthetic practices that seek to transition from a society of privatized wealth accumulation to one of common ownership, common care, and the common good.
In particular, the presentations composing this panel consider interstitial formations regarding land, cultivation, and survival–the quintessential motifs of the historical (i.e., precapitalist) commons. They ask: In what ways can interstitial activities—mutual aid networks, food and land sovereignty struggles, decolonial actions, critical space-making—enter into a larger strategic vision for structural transformation based on a renewed concept of the commons? Rooted in lived perspectives of scholar-activism, and united around the fact that the commons must be reclaimed from the forces of neoliberal extraction and rising fascism if life on earth is to continue, the presentations explore disparate yet interconnected lineages of anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-sexist, and anti-racist world-building–practices that imagine and enact modes of socialist and abolitionist creation. In this way, the panel rethinks matters of land and dwelling in relation to the intimacies and specificities of place. As social and physical infrastructures continue to fail, mirrored by swelling profits for the colonial-capitalist ruling class, focusing on strategic interstitial practices offers critical tools for the necessary work of reclaiming the commons.
Panel Organizers:
Marianna Davison, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
Erin Stout, Ph.D., California State University, Long Beach
Scott Volz, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
We currently have 4 presentations lined up for this panel and are seeking one or two more. Please contact me prior to the proposal submission deadline (Jan 10) if you are interested.
Posted on January 7, 2023
