Fred Moten

Stefano Harney

In this series of essays Fred Moten and Stefano Harney draw on the theory and practice of the black radical tradition as it supports, inspires and extends contemporary social and political thought and aesthetic critique. Today the general wealth of social life finds itself confronted by mutations in the mechanisms of control, from the proliferation of capitalist logistics through governance by credit and management of pedagogy. Working from and within the social poesis of life in the undercommons Moten and Harney develop and expand an array of concepts.

Fugitive Planning & Black Study

The Undercommons

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the critical investigation of logistics, individuation and sovereignty. It reflects their chances to travel, listen and deepen their commitment to and claim upon partiality. All Incomplete studies the history of a preference for the force and ground and underground of social existence. Engaging a vibrant constellation of thought that includes the work of Amilcar Cabral, Erica Edwards, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Cedric Robinson, Walter Rodney, Hortense Spillers and many others, Harney and Moten seek to share and understand that preference. In so doing, Moten and Harney hope to have forged what Manolo Callahan, echoing Ivan Illich, calls a convivial tool that - despite the temptation to improve and demand, develop and govern, separate and grasp - helps us renew our habits of assembly. All Incomplete features the work of award winning photographer Zun Lee, exploring and celebrating the everyday spaces of Black sociality, intimacy, belonging, and insurgency, and a preface by Denise Ferreira da Silva.

All Incomplete

An innovative contribution to political theory, State Work examines the labor of government workers in North America. Arguing that this work needs to be theorized precisely because it is vital to the creation and persistence of the state, Stefano Harney draws on thinking from public administration and organizational sociology, as well as poststructuralist theory and performance studies, to launch a cultural studies of the state. Countering conceptions of the government and its employees as remote and inflexible, Harney uses the theory of mass intellectuality developed by Italian worker-theorists to illuminate the potential for genuine political progress inherent within state work. State Work begins with an ethnographic account of Harney’s work as a midlevel manager within an Ontario government initiative charged with leading the province’s efforts to combat racism. Through readings of material such as The X-Files and Law & Order, Harney then reviews how popular images of the state and government labor are formed within American culture and how these ideas shape everyday life. He highlights the mutually dependent roles played in state work by the citizenry and civil servants. Using as case studies Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government and a community-policing project in New York City, Harney also critiques public management literature and performance measurement theories. He concludes his study with a look at the motivations of state workers.

Public Administration and Mass Intellectuality

State Work

The nation-state of Trinidad and Tobago offers a unique nation-space, as Homi K Bhabha would say, for the study of the forces and ideologies of nationalism. This book reveals how this ethnically diverse nation, independent for less than forty years, has provided fertile ground for the creative tension between the imagination of the writer and the official discourse on nationalism. Harney argues that this discourse has in turn been embedded in a struggle that propelled the nation's story. He explores the influences on the sense of national identity caused by migration and the ethnicization of migrant communities in the cities. Adding to the comparative tone of much of this book, models of nationalism and ethnicity, often based on other societies, are tested against the imaginings of Trinidad by such essayists as VS Naipaul, CLR James, Willi Chen, Valerie Belgrave and Earl Lovelace. Using the wealth of imaginative literature produced by Trinidadians at home and abroad over the last forty years, together with European-based scholarship on theories of nationalism, this book provides a fascinating understanding of the forging of a national identity.

Culture and the Imagination in a Caribbean Diaspora

Nationalism and Identity

Flüchtige Planung und schwarzes Studium

Die Undercommons

In this series of essays Fred Moten and Stefano Harney draw on the theory and practice of the black radical tradition as it supports, inspires, and extends contemporary social and political thought and aesthetic critique. Today the general wealth of social life finds itself confronted by mutations in the mechanisms of control, from the proliferation of capitalist logistics through governance by credit and management of pedagogy. Working from and within the social poesis of life in the undercommons Moten and Harney develop and expand an array of concepts: study, debt, surround, planning, and the shipped. On the fugitive path of an historical and global blackness, the essays in this volume unsettle and invite the reader to the self-organised ensembles of social life that are launched every day and every night amid the general antagonism of the undercommons.

Howard Thomas

Advocates for integrating liberal arts with management in a new undergraduate curriculum blending technical and analytic acumen with creativity, critical thinking, and ethical intelligence.

Stefano Harney

Books

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