Home
history
architecture
political science
social science
The Commonist Horizon

The Commonist Horizon

Futures Beyond Capitalist Urbanization

Edited by Mary N. Taylor and Noah Brehmer

Published by: Common Notions

Imprint: Common Notions

192 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 x 0.30 in

Paperback
9781942173717
Published: January 2023

$20.00

Other Retailers:

Bookshop
Barnes & Noble
Edelweiss

Description
Contents
Authors

How do we move from defensive tactics that respond to the latest stages of capitalist urbanization, to transformative, strategic revolts, attacking the root causes and putting into practice alternative forms of urban life? One proposal for such a revolutionary alternative to capital’s organization of our lived environment has been the commons, wherein inhabitants communally control the multi-faceted conditions that make up their daily reproduction.

As a district behind the train station in the post-socialist city of Vilnius Lithuania faces gentrification, an autonomous community center there has sought to use commoning to resist. Taken up in the former state-socialist Eastern Block, commoning practices are embraced as a method for criticizing the vicious wave of enclosures that began after the fall of state-socialism while at the same time not relying on the heavily stigmatized politics of state-socialism.

Emerging from a process of thinking together, The Commonist Horizon features five interventions by movement thinkers. Beginning in the post-Soviet city of Vilnius, the dialogical process stretches outward to two other formerly state-socialist countries, and then beyond. Speaking from their experiences in social movement formations, the authors take up the lived experience of building what might be called urban commons, offering insights on the conceptual and political potentials and limitations of this terminology and associated practices.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

As If this World No Longer Existed: Reflections on Divestment and Commoning in the Post-Socialist Regenerate City
From the Neoliberal City to Disaster Capitalism—From Commons to Unenclosure byAnthony Iles
3. Cities and Solidarity Economy in Eastern Europe—Agnes Gagyi and Zsuzsanna Posfai in dialogue with Mary N. Taylor
Reclaiming Care in Urban Commons—Carenotes Collective
Anti-eviction Commons in Serbia —From Dispossession of Yugoslav Housing Commons to Commoning as a Temporary Social Infrastructure in Serbia—Ana Vilenica

Mary N. Taylor is a militant researcher whose praxis is grounded in anthropology, urbanism and dialogical art. She works with the internationalist East European platform LeftEast, and the affiliated roving summer school hosted by different social movement formations in the ‘post-socialist’ region; Brooklyn Laundry Social Club, and KnowWastelands Community Garden.

Noah Brehmer is a political theorist, cultural organizer and founding member of Luna6. He cofounded the Lithuanian critical media platform Life is Too Expensive. He’s published in Blind Field Journal, LeftEast, Mute Magazine, Metropolis M and OpenDemocracy.