On Birds & Kitchen Tables: Conversations of/in the Undercommons
“The weapon of theory is a conference of the birds. The kitchen table is its public and its publisher.” – Stefano Harney & Fred Moten
In the ten years since it was published, one of the most striking things about The Undercommons 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 a text provide an interesting example of undercommon sociality, or as Moten and Harney refer to it, black study.
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.
