{"id":14,"date":"2018-08-08T19:10:30","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T23:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?page_id=14"},"modified":"2019-03-11T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T14:37:07","slug":"5-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/5-13\/","title":{"rendered":"5\/13 | The Common &#8211; December 5, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0 <iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uOo2yt7N658\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Etienne Balibar of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/french.columbia.edu\/content\/etienne-r-balibar\">Columbia University<\/a>,\u00a0Camille Robcis of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/french.columbia.edu\/content\/camille-robcis\">Columbia University<\/a>, and Mikha\u00efl Xifaras of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/ecole-de-droit\/en\/profile\/xifaras-mikhail\">Sciences Po, Paris<\/a>,\u00a0in conversation with\u00a0Katharina Pistor (<a href=\"https:\/\/beta.global.columbia.edu\/people\/katharina-pistor\">Columbia University<\/a>),\u00a0Camila Vergara (<a href=\"https:\/\/polisci.columbia.edu\/content\/camila-vergara\">Columbia Political Science<\/a>),\u00a0Daniele Lorenzini (<a href=\"https:\/\/cccct.law.columbia.edu\/people\/daniele-lorenzini\">CCCCT<\/a>), and\u00a0Bernard E. Harcourt (<a href=\"https:\/\/cgt.columbia.edu\/about\/people\/committee-faculty\/bernard-e-harcourt\/\">Columbia University)<\/a><\/h3>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">read and discuss<\/h3>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/commonwealth\/\"><em>Commonwealth<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and <em><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/hardt-negri-chapter-6-and-notes\/\">Assembly<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri<\/h3>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">with special emphasis on\u00a0<em>Preface<\/em> and Chapter 1.1: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/commonwealth\/\">The Republic of Property<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0, 6.2 &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/hardt-and-negri-commonwealth-6-2\/\">Insurrectional Intersections<\/a>&#8221; and 6.3 &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/hardt-and-negri-commonwealth-6-3\/\">Governing the Revolution<\/a>&#8221; of\u00a0<em>Commonwealth<br \/>\n<\/em>Chapter 6\u00a0&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/hardt-negri-chapter-6-and-notes\/\">How to Open Property to the Common<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0of\u00a0<em><em>Assembly<\/em><\/em><\/h4>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/5-13\/5-13-block\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4652\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-4652\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2019\/03\/5.13-block.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"478\" height=\"158\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2019\/03\/5.13-block.png 581w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2019\/03\/5.13-block-300x99.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 478px) 100vw, 478px\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cThe Common\u201d takes us back to the <em>material\u00a0<\/em>roots of praxis\u2014to Marx, to capital, to private property, to the idea of the common. It does so, though, by once more flipping the master on his head. The return to political economy here places the <em>law\u00a0<\/em>of private property at the very heart of the analysis. Law, rather than being merely superstructural and epiphenomenal, moves center stage\u2014and not any kind of law, not the usual public or constitutional law, but <em>private\u00a0<\/em>law, the law of <em>private <\/em>property and of <em>commercial <\/em>transactions.<\/p>\n<p>In turning to the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/5-13\/\">Praxis 5\/13<\/a>, we thus make a double move: first, one might say, from Giorgio Agamben back to Marx, but second and more importantly, from Marx forward to Critical Legal Studies and beyond. In effect, in this seminar, we turn to the praxis of <em>legal\u00a0<\/em>transformation or revolution.<\/p>\n<p>In Praxis 5\/13, we will be jumping into what is really the fourth iteration in a complex debate that has been going on now for several decades between, on the one hand, advocates of \u201cthe common,\u201d such as Hardt &amp; Negri or Dardot &amp; Laval, who come to the question of the common from a communalist or communist political theoretic background, and, on the other hand, leftist critical legal scholars who, from the American Legal Realism of the 1920s to the Critical Legal Studies movement of the 1970s and beyond, have sought to reconstruct property relations from within law along more egalitarian dimensions.<\/p>\n<p>For our purposes, the first salvo in the debate was Hardt &amp; Negri\u2019s 2009 book, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/commonwealth\/\"><em>Commonwealth<\/em><\/a>, where they spell out a notion of &#8220;the common&#8221; drawing predominantly on early modern conceptions of the law of private property\u2014from Grotius and Locke. They argue there for a notion of the common that differs from both private property and public property in that it, by contrast to those other two forms, does not figure predominantly within the realm of the legal tradition. \u201cThe common is that which is not property,\u201d Hardt <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/7VlcZtU1q9U\">states<\/a>; in other words, the common is the negative of property as \u201cmonopoly over use,\u201d implying equal access; and the negative of property as \u201cmonopoly over decision-making,\u201d implying democratic decision-making, democratic management.\u00a0(Let me emphasize the singular use of &#8220;the common&#8221; here, we are discussing the concept of the shared use of goods under democratic decision-making, not the metaphor of the public commons).<\/p>\n<p>After the publication of their book, Hardt &amp; Negri were confronted by critical legal scholars, especially Duncan Kennedy, for having failed to engage more contemporary understandings of the law of property\u2014property not as a substantive thing, but as a bundle of rights, as Hohfeld and the realists and critical legal scholars established in their tradition of leftist internal critique of law. Kennedy accused Hardt of both a conceptual error, not to think of property as a substance or single thing, but as a bundle of rights that pertains to many or allows for different non-exclusivity rules; and also of a political error:\u00a0 progressive legal theory and action must work from within property law to advance certain rights over others. The struggle <em>against<\/em> property, Kennedy argued, is na\u00efve and counter-productive. Instead, we need to reform from within.<\/p>\n<p>And so, in their more recent book, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/hardt-negri-chapter-6-and-notes\/\"><em>Assembly<\/em><\/a>, from 2017, Hardt &amp; Negri respond to critical legal scholars and reformulate somewhat their proposal for the common\u2014which may not differ that much from the original version except to address specifically the question of the internal and the external of the law. The fastest way to bring you up to speed on all this is to listen to Hardt\u2019s lecture <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/7VlcZtU1q9U\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As Hardt &amp; Negri make clear in <em>Assembly<\/em>, and as Hardt explains, their conception of the common remains beyond property, \u201conly one step further of the bundle of rights theory\u201d; but they emphasize that any notion of the common must propose ways of managing the common goods: there must be democratic mechanisms for determining its use\u2014which would be a form of regulation. So the common remains fully regulated, but regulated through democratic forms\u2014democratic management, rather than in a monopolistic manner. Open and equal access, and democratic decision making\u2014as we saw at Zuccotti Park. Examples of the common include the sharing of music, and creative production; resistance to patents and copyrights; the metropolis as a common space, thus neither private property, nor public property.<\/p>\n<p>It is about here that we are in the debate, including the important <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/hardt-and-negri-commonwealth-6-2\/\">passages<\/a> in <em>Commonwealth\u00a0<\/em>on institutions and institutional design that <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/camille-robcis-radical-psychiatry-institutional-analysis-and-the-commons\/\">Camille Robcis<\/a>\u00a0discusses in her essay.<\/p>\n<p>To help us address these questions, we are delighted to receive a remarkable panel of brilliant critical theorists at Praxis 5\/13: \u00c9tienne Balibar of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/french.columbia.edu\/content\/etienne-r-balibar\">Columbia University<\/a>, Camille Robcis of <a href=\"https:\/\/french.columbia.edu\/content\/camille-robcis\">Columbia University<\/a>, and Mikha\u00efl Xifaras of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/ecole-de-droit\/en\/profile\/xifaras-mikhail\">Sciences Po, Paris<\/a>, in conversation with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.columbia.edu\/faculty\/katharina-pistor\">Katharina Pistor<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/polisci.columbia.edu\/content\/camila-vergara\">Camila Vergara<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cccct.law.columbia.edu\/people\/daniele-lorenzini\">Daniele Lorenzini<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s turn now first to <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/mikhail-xifaras-the-role-of-the-law-in-critical-theory-the-role-of-property-in-the-commons\/\">Mikha\u00efl Xifaras<\/a>, second to <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/etienne-balibar-law-property-politics\/\">Etienne Balibar<\/a>, and then to <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/camille-robcis-radical-psychiatry-institutional-analysis-and-the-commons\/\">Camille Robcis!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Praxis 5\/13!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/5-13\/img_0267\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4308\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-4308\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2018\/12\/IMG_0267-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"467\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2018\/12\/IMG_0267-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2018\/12\/IMG_0267-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/files\/2018\/12\/IMG_0267-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 467px) 100vw, 467px\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<p>[Read the full introduction <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-the-commons\/\">here<\/a>;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \ufeff Etienne Balibar of\u00a0Columbia University,\u00a0Camille Robcis of\u00a0Columbia University, and Mikha\u00efl Xifaras of\u00a0Sciences Po, Paris,\u00a0in conversation with\u00a0Katharina Pistor (Columbia University),\u00a0Camila Vergara (Columbia Political Science),\u00a0Daniele Lorenzini (CCCCT), and\u00a0Bernard E. Harcourt (Columbia University) read and discuss Commonwealth\u00a0and Assembly\u00a0by Michael Hardt and Antonio&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/5-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}