This will be the first of two sessions focusing on influential American cultural theorist and queer/feminist scholar Lauren Berlant’s ‘The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times’. The essay explores how, in moments of crisis, the idea of ‘the commons’ –understood not just as a metaphor but as an infrastructure – becomes a conceptual and practical tool for imagining new forms of social life. Berlant recognises that brokenness is not just negative; it’s also a condition for possibility.

You are welcome to read the text in advance but do feel very welcome to come unprepared. Berlant is not an easy read and the text is long, but we will take it very slow and spend the October and November sessions of Close Readings (hopefully) making sense of this dense and important piece of writing.

You can find the text here: https://collective-n.com/fff/beyond/images/ak/berlant%20-%20infrastructures.pdf