Group A: Moten & Harney (1-43) by Fatima Espinal https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz en-us 2020-09-11 15:58:58 UTC 2025-11-09 22:31:01 UTC hello@padlet.com “THERE IS NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONALIZATION” (30) espif376 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/739785303 Moten & Harney emphasize an alternative approach to education and expand on how current forms of education are used to assimilate people into current structures of society. From their analysis it illustrates how education is seen/used as a direct feeder to what the market needs. They redefine study as a mode of thinking with others separate from the thinking that the institution requires of you. 

Questions:
How does professionalism maintain the individual capitalist?

Education/teaching is a circle of the state. How are ideas reproduced in education?

How does professionalization participate in class?

]]> 2020-09-11 17:44:10 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/739785303 "The false image and its critique threaten the common with democracy, which is only ever to come, so that one day, which is only never to come, we will be more than what we are now," (19). bergi545 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/740103815 Critique is the tool that fortifies the illusion of the enemy by seeking solutions within the logic of the enemy. Therefore, refusing critique is practicing self preservation. It is a refusal that practices the "first right" in a way. With the logic of critique we hold onto the hope of "getting there", yet Harney & Moten continually claim that we are already "there" and there is actually "elsewhere."

Things to note:
-Critique as the language of politics or politics as the language of critique?--> circular argument confirms their coexistence, their codependency.

-In the logic of academia, "critique" seems to be synonymous with "dismantle."

Questions:
-Can we connect this to Lorde's quote "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"?

-What does it look like to refuse critique and politics? How can we practice this refusal and come up with material results (in a non results oriented view--> evolving results)?]]> 2020-09-11 18:57:41 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/740103815 "One does not speak truth to power, one has to inhabit the crazy, nonsensical, ranting language of the other, the other who has been rendered a nonentity by colonialism" (8.) esheh684 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/740494226 The analysis of Where the Wild Things Are, emphasizes the physical and metaphysical structure of our society. The social construction that exists in Max’s world and in our world is similar in its power dynamic—who has the power and who does not? In Max’s world, there is always a ruler (his mom and himself), in our ‘post’ colonial times, there is the constant struggle in combatting the rule of white supremacy that has been deeply integrated into all aspects of life. 

Thoughts: Sometimes it feels impossible to continue to live in a world that was not created for us (bipoc.) I have found that finding or creating a community has been most helpful. 


]]> 2020-09-11 22:20:13 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/740494226 "Politics proposes to make us better, but we were good already in the mutual debt that can never be made good." (20) munrt196 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/740829948 Politics spreads as a pathogen, a regulating force which seeks to reproduce and expand itself, feeding on the wealth of anoriginary social life. Politics wants us to want it, requires mature, reasonable, self-possessed individuals capable of speech to participate in its endless meetings, its absurd games of "representation". As Moten says, we are "more and less than one," (Preface, Stolen Life). We are, like study, always immature, and this in the best way possible. Debt is our deep, inescapable entanglement with one another. Politics wants to get bloated on the regulation and procedural disappearing of this entanglement, wants us to surrender to it with promises of independence and improvement. When we get into black study with one another, when we get in debt to one another with no intentions of paying it back, we instead surrender to the fact that we're all alright, that in black study, we can figure it out.

How do walk away from the present? How do we practice our presence?

What would study look like unshackled from that thing (the university) which curtails its radical nature?]]> 2020-09-12 08:04:18 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/740829948 "(...) so that colonialism is made to look like self defense." (24) longlive713 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/741982445 Though, the University appears as a natural institution (no institution is natural by definition) it is a one of the many pillars in the fortress of the state. Moten and Harney argue later in the The Undercommons and the University that is necessary to take from the University what is needed -- from refuge to resources. It is impossible to take more from it than it has taken from you, from us. 
The University as an institution is a sound example for a contemporary arbiter of colonialism as natural and as self-defense. It erects costly housing compounds in low-income communities displacing previous residents and the defense is that it is done in the name of future professionals so that they can find their way out of poverty while racking up real/false debt. It provides a homogenous curriculum so that dissent is less and public safety (singularity) is ensured.

What are the key distinctions between being in / of the University?]]> 2020-09-13 16:42:11 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/741982445 Terminology of the Undercommons stann430 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/742412438 Within Moten and Harney's worldly analysis I noticed they often employed theoretical terminologies to represent greater ideas throughout their writing. Here are some that felt astutely notable to me as well as thematically relevant that I think would be beneficial to discuss, reiterate, and draw personal connections to in class. 

- "The University" 

- "Debt" and "Credit"

- The ever evading spaces of "Refuge"

- The "Real"

- and finally "The Undercommons" in and of itself]]> 2020-09-14 00:42:24 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/742412438 Studying munrt196 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/746366402 In the text, Moten and Harney discuss study as something that goes on almost in spite of the university. it is something that really occurs in the walks between classes, during hurried lunches, in late night, drunken conversations. 

I was thinking about my own experience of study, trying to somehow pin down where most of my study occurs and what it's like. Mostly I ended up thinking about late night conversations with one or two other people. I think what's key is the mutual trust and respect for one another's ideas in these situations. Also key is probably the freedom that comes with being tired, kind of past any care and anxiety the day might have held. It comes out of those dynamics where you can really say anything, even if you take it back or contradict yourself a little bit later. When I really think through stuff, it's not when I'm in class receiving information (although sometimes it is). Mostly that's just me getting a lot of the material I might think through later. When I really engage in study, my thought is not my own-- instead I'm in conversation with others.Thought in these moments is shared, collective, collaborative. Study is something that kind of happens at random all the time, but I also think it's something we can tend to and elaborate on.]]> 2020-09-15 02:04:17 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/746366402 https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/755510575 2020-09-17 14:50:10 UTC https://padlet.com/espif376/iwic9eurmgtv3jyz/wish/755510575