Stefano Harney, Fred MotenLes Sous-Communs

A radical political and aesthetic critique of racial capitalism and modes of social experimentation in the form of resistance to the colonial common, by Stefano Harney (political economy theorist) and Fred Moten (poet and black studies theorist).
The Subcommons is a series of essays published in 2013 by two friends, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten. In it, the authors offer a critique of racial capitalism and its tools, as well as modes of social experimentation in resistance to the colonial. The research is done through study and takes place well beyond the university, at work, during a cigarette break, with family, over a meal, on the edge of struggle and escape, within a movement of shaking the imperialist foundations, a movement of refusing the terms of the struggle as it is imposed, towards the construction of a social and political space in perpetual displacement. The sub-common place and being are about the uncertainty of collective creation, of habitation through exchange, of improvisation as critique.
Subcommons is written in the wake of the black radical tradition in both theoretical and poetic ways, with authors such as Cedric Robinson, Saidiya Hartman, Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon. This edition, with a preface by Jack Halberstam, is the result of a collective translation workshop that lasted just over two years.