Fred Moten y Stefano Harney. 3rd International Seminar of Contemporary Art (english)

[Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome everyone hello good morning this is the third version of the international seminar uh practices uh contemporary practices and imagination political imagination that is radical i am monica munoz and i am very glad to be here with fernanda carvajar she's a researcher and a professor fred martin and stefano harney so today we will be talking about the a new uh core of discussions that is focused on the new ways of thinking and organizing what is common from the artistic practices enabling new ways of living so to take advantage of time i will just give you a brief uh introduction fred and stephanie are uh authors or all incomplete published in this year in 2001 and the undercommons this was published in 2013 and it was um published as the estudio in 2017. they have written chapters of books and articles of magazines fred teaches in the performance department of the university of new york and stephanie and the academia of new means of colonia they study the tradition of the black and i want to remind you that the seminar is being transmitted through the youtube channel of the centro nacional contemporano and facebook facebook live and in the channel of the center there are two links where you will have the possibility of listening to us just in english or just in spanish so you can choose whatever is better for you i also wanted to tell you that after this conversation we'll open the floor for questions from the public and i would like to i would like for you to consider this as a space for reflection that can be open in this sense uh we will invite you to leave your reflections and your questions in the chat knowing that probably not all of them are going to be answered today they're going to be available as to retake this conversation at some other point so without further ado fernanda fred stefano thank you very much for being here with us today [Music] i would like to thank you first of all for inviting me to this seminar along with angelica fred and stefano i wanted to thank everybody who is listening to us in their houses and everybody who has made all of this possible uh people behind the scenes too uh thank you isabella neda soledad and i wanted to briefly tell you about how we thought about this conversation that it has as the starting point the undercommons book that was translated into the into spanish as the los comunes de este habajo which is a book that is it was talked about as i helica said from the radical tradition of the black and the black studies and this postcolonial studies and this is also related to the thinkers the italian thinking thinkers the it the versions are on the internet the two versions in english and spanish are available on the internet if you want to uh read it so the work of fred and stefano allow us to rethink about the common aspects from the uh from their writing styles and the interlinked writing style that they practice and this perspective of the what is uh the common underground things is what we are going to be talking about so i want to talk about the epistemological changes and contextual differences that could be between the writing styles of stefano and also frederick and the things that have going have been going on in chile in the last year so we think that there is a a common vibration in what they capture in their writing and also the process that started in chile with the social unrest of 2018 so in 2018 so we hope that this is a moment to start asking questions things that do not have to just be answered now and closed what we want to do as angelica said was to have the space for conversation to be able to uh talk together to be able to start studying together okay so we have a small road map for all of this and we're going to see how everything starts changing as we go along but i wanted to start with um an image of the manifestations the image that started all of this in 2019 that was started by the high school um students that started calling out to not pay for the metro fare so that evasion call was accompanied by an institution to other ways to use our bodies so skipping a barrier instead of paying for affair and that had an effect that was uh unexpected many people started uh saying evading not paying another way of fighting which was the most emblematic uh part of all of this the beginning of this so you owe us uh a life or until life is worth it or you took so many things away from us that you took fear away from us so these all of these phrases are at the heart of the social manifestations and these are all things that show the new liberal system that we have in chile education health the consumption of goods and also retirements so i wanted to show you this image of this body changing their uh shapes to skip a barrier uh this also this lack of obedience we wanted to start with this uh slogans that talk about a huge debt and the evasion the massive evasion as the force that started all of this so the first question would be related to how you think about your uh your underground comments and the debt well thank you very much fernanda and lika for for being in conversation with us and and i think we'd like to start just by welcoming and thanking everyone who's uh joined us today um uh i i promise we will come specifically to your question on that but just before we do i i i wanted also to to tell you how grateful uh we've been for your correspondence in this last few weeks since we've built up to this and especially grateful for the moments when you've said that you or your comrades your students have felt connected to the work uh we're doing in the under commons and in our partnership um and and to say to you that if if it feels connected to you it's probably because as fred was saying before we came on air uh we've always been connected to you in chile in many many ways but not least because uh fred and i uh came of age as as they say uh when when we went to college it was the it was the in the 80s the beginning of our own experience in the united states of neoliberalism but of course we were already aware that the experiment being carried out on us had already been carried out somewhere else and largely by us somewhere else my father's best friend when i was growing up was a man named michael harrington who became a us congressman and in the early 70s shortly after the coup michael harrington illegally leaked all the documents from congress in the united states proving the involvement of the us government of of kissinger uh of nixon of everyone who was uh uh ford et cetera everyone who was involved in the uh uh the the execution of that of that coup uh so we grew up with that uh in fact my my uncle just made a trip to chile two years ago to see some of these sites more lives now um and and and when we were at college together you know the dictatorship was very much on our mind so if if some of the things now that have entered our writings echo uh with with what's happening in chile i think that's because for a very long time we've been we've been with you uh however we could be um and uh so in a way it almost feels like this is a a reunion uh rather than um a first meeting um and um and that's certainly how that's certainly the emotion that i have uh as i talked to um as we talked to you today um but maybe i'll pause and just let uh fred speak again yeah just to echo stephanos thanks to you uh fernanda and nico we we were very honored and and and happy to as stefano says to be reunited um there maybe it's maybe there's a more general sense in which no meeting is ever really the first meeting um but that what you know what study makes possible is the you know the increasing realization of the depth of the of the relationship and the the increasing realization of the the the long history of of of an encounter that that on the one hand you know history has has imposed upon us you know insofar as we are all embedded in a long 500 year history of a war of conquest um and as our friend manolo callahan puts it by way of yvonne ilitch a war against subsistence these are the conditions of our meeting and yet there are other conditions that predate that condition and the reunion is is one that they that can be traced back to those you know more fundamental um you know conditions which are um at one point in the correspondence you referred to an ontological condition and maybe this is even a a pre-ontological condition um that and in a way that pre-ontological condition is i guess what we what it is we are trying to approach you know with the term under commons and also what we're trying to approach with the term debt um and and uh you know another word that we could use would be sharing um but but then the question has to be you know or or not we could even use the word you know that again had it that has i know come up very powerfully in in the work of of indigenous activists and thinkers there in chile we the other word that we might use is is reciprocity and you know we have to think about these terms and really grapple with them um and grapple with the ways that maybe none of these terms are fully adequate to what it is that we to what it is that we do um and and at the same time none of these terms are fully adequate to to what it is that has been done to us but um but yeah we we maybe maybe we'll maybe we can and and and maybe we can keep running through this thread that kind of allows us to talk about uh debt and undercommons and what we mean by that and also what we want to mean by that and also the as you as you all beautifully put it the the change of shape and the loss of contour of individual bodies that that is manifest in in the practice of jumping the turnstile um so well maybe we can we can go there um i'll kick it back to you steph knowing that we can um i just want to go on too long at any any one time yeah um i i also uh uh uh want to make sure fernando that you feel like we're addressing uh what was so much of what you've set up and just a piece of it seems to me to be um that one of the things we've been able to from a distance to observe uh and and we're we're observing it today for instance in in sudan uh with regard to the resistance committees that are set up there as part of um the attempt to to rid themselves of the rule they're under is is this this battle over gathering this battle over assembly um and um [Music] when manolo callahan talks about renewing our habits of assembly i think one of the things and that's a phrase that we've picked up and it's been so resonant for us and um we felt it strongly through the struggles uh observing the struggles of the last two years in chile on the streets especially not just in the high-profile protests but as you've pointed out in all the small acts of resistance that's trying to do something differently and and really what we're faced with is maybe one way to say it would be to say that you know we tend to think of the state in certain ways they're handed down to us from the european tradition and they've never really worked in in the new in the so-called new world in the colonized world um it's it's never really made any sense that you know the the state was a monopoly on violence if you if you've if you've lived to colonize life it's never really made any sense that the state secures the difference between public and private property as as a marxist analysis in europe might have it but what has always made sense is the state maintains an utter monopoly on gathering it the only way you're allowed to come together is under state sanctioned conditions any other way to get together is immediately criminal and dangerous and subject to the most intense violent reaction so so it's so inspiring to see people insist on renewing their habit of assembly on on trying to create an autonomous form of gathering that is not either sponsored by capitalism in the in the malls or or sponsored by the the state in the public square uh but it's something that is generated by our own needs and by a recognition that we we have to get together we need to get together you know um just just as it says just as it says again and again in popular music you know we need to get together and that's because it hurts to be a part because as fred said we are shared we are shared and we are shared out which means we have to be together and we have to find ways to be together unfortunately those ways are almost always under the reduced impoverished and uh and discouraging forms of state sponsorship of gathering of getting together of being together um and and so i i just felt so much in these last years reading and watching things coming out of chile now also out of sudan periodically in many places where i can feel these habits being renewed in the face of the most uh extraordinary duress and it's like our collective memory of debt at that moment is at its strongest the the video that that y'all sent us of the the young women in school who were practicing jumping the turnstiles was was really you know illustrative and indicative of those general conditions of and also practices and habits of of assembly um that that that stefano is just talking about and of course it gives us a chance i mean you know the thing about the undercommons is like it was uh know books are are or overrated you know in a lot of ways and they in many ways books can be understood as an attempt to privatize you know study um and and when i say privatize i mean not only place study under the under regimes of ownership but also um place study under under a kind of regime of scarcity um and if there's anything the only thing that's worth the what what the book is for is is for is the process of exploding so to speak out of its own limits out of its own binding literally you know um and and and that happens in a couple of different ways one is you know when it circulates when it when it literally is published when it can came from that when that sort of gesture towards public mission towards publishing becomes a real practice um and that was one of the reasons why we were so happy um to be able to to make the undercommons you know more generally accessible just by putting it online it's not because we thought that everything we had to say was so important that everybody in the world needed to read it it was just that we just wanted to what again we wanted to reunite we wanted to to make a gesture of connection and in that gesture of connection what we also realize is that our study deepens it it is refined so that none of the terms and none of the so-called concepts and and under commons are are fixed in stone they they are already they were already they've been in the midst of a revision that that occurs as a function of this depth of study and of this deepening of studies so so even just in this few weeks of corresponding together we're beginning to understand this relationship i think between debt and gathering um a little bit more and and also beginning to understand that the relation between debt and gathering is one that we could talk about in terms of practice and and and and it it reinitializes maybe some of the ways that we were thinking about you know well the term and you have to forgive my my my well i i was in again in the midst of trying to translate claudio's piece yesterday i was thinking about the you have to forgive me i can't even know i don't know if i can even remember the term but uh that there's a there's a term that that he used to talk about the press the hop the hapticality the touch of of uh it's at the very i was translating it as tacticality or touch or press or handing or fingering uh a caress even um but but it's a general caress that is not only a practice but it then becomes the atmosphere of the of other practices right and um and and ultimately it both constitutes a condition for the myth of the pleura national and at the same time it constitutes the the condition for the busting and the breaking of that myth you know again in in in more extended and more radical practice um and but that's what we were trying to and all we were trying to do is to try to see if we could understand something about that and and and work on it with other with other people um and so um so so what's amazing is to see these moments of of well we could call them reciprocity we could call them touch and we could call them you know moments of i don't want to say the word recognition but but i kind of want to say moments of kinship i i you know where you know you hear it in in the music and you see it in the way people move and in the way that people move you know joyously one one last thing i'll say um [Music] that the practice of jumping the turnstile seems to me deter it turns it's a it's an international practice you know um so many um man the the the the violent new york city police department crackdown on youth jumping the turnstile over the last few years has been brutal and and vicious what's interesting is to consider what the relationship is between that long insurgent practice that youth and and i would say you know primarily bro black and brown youth in new york city have been engaging in and the explicit um political announcement so to speak that that the youth in in chile have been making by way of that same practice it their understanding of what they're doing gives us a better way of understanding what the kids that we see every day have been have long been doing um and um and so again it's it's so crucial and so beautiful to to be able to to reunite like this um in order to understand the way in which we are involved in this common practice which is an already existing gathering and which is an already existing manifestation of our of our sharing together and of our you know indebtedness together would you like to add something to that fed yes for everyone listening i would like to tell you that the text that fred was referring to is a text that was published by claudio alvarado in sipir at the beginning no during the first months of the revolt and he was using the term sovagio which is sort of uh touching one another and it goes back to to this idea of the so again or the touching each other and it relates to what happens when you are in a demonstration when you are out in the street and it is a very interesting notion or concept and that was just to give you a little bit of context if you were listening and you were not aware of that piece that they were referring to so i wanted to go back a little bit to this idea of the ways of engaging with each other the ways of engaging in a connection and the ways of sharing that you mentioned fred and going back to the dead and how you understand that and to see what are the points of encounter with reciprocity as you've said it and the core of the discussion yesterday in the seminar was called participation and reciprocity and different groups of artists as well as other people other thinkers talked about that as well and back to your work debt is in a structural condition for the chilean society and you are proposing to understand sort of a state of debt that cannot be paid off it cannot be forgiven we understand that there is this concept of a damage historical damage that cannot be repaid and you also talk about credit at something as something different to debt and abolishing the calculation that credit requires and to turn debt into something different you're thinking about bad debt as a principle and as a space that generates our ability to be a society so we were wondering what may come up when we think about doubt as a way of participating in a society in relation to the principles of reciprocity for instance the indigenous reciprocity or the reciprocity that the andes indigenous peoples practice when given goes beyond just the exchange of goods or it tries to leave aside the calculation of benefit because it happens in the context of effective production to generate friendship at the end of the day it is a relationship of correspondence that produces value and it allows us to acknowledge one another as people and as marta gonzalez said and i will quote her she also describes that moment of correspondence as to look at oneself in the mirror of the soul and i will include the quote which is the i knee which is this exchange is to give and to receive to reproduce if you don't reproduce the ine you lose the soul or you lose the mirror in which you look at yourself and this reminds me of your idea of sharing not as an interpersonal relationship and i believe i'm quoting fred in this case and first i will say it in english one is being accessed because we are already in each other but in english it would be one is shared we are accessed to because we are already in each other and i wanted to know if this idea of looking at each other in the mirror of the soul and this idea of sharing and being as accessed is something that you see here in relation to the situation and also could you elaborate more on your understanding of what debt is um fred maybe i'll start and jump in if you want um [Music] well [Music] let's take uh let's take the original condition of debt in our hemisphere and and that's haiti um as you know there are 200 000 haitians in chile they give you a sense of how big that is in the diaspora there are only 800 000 in the united states it's a massive uh diaspora and we we have no exact count of how many haitians are in in brazil but it could be almost that number as well now haiti is a as you know its history is a history of uh perpetual debt it will never be allowed to quote-unquote payoff for its crime of revolution for its crime of defeating the colonial powers but what if in a way um oh well right yeah i i'll try to if you can there's a we often quote uh one of the great novelists in the african-american tradition um who we think you know is in some ways i mean i would say at least is written the you know the greatest novel published in the united states at least in the 20th century zora neale hurston she wrote a great novel called their eyes were watching god and early on in that novel um the two main characters janie and um phoebe are sitting on a porch talking and at one point janie who's the narrator of the knob of the the story says something to the on the order of my friend my tongue is in my friend's mouth and and we have we've often you know appealed to that formulation um as we work together and think together and try to understand even just the nature you know we could even say the biological nature and the physical nature of our own um of our own partnership um recognizing that partnership is not really quite the right word um and um so so when when stefano cuts out like that because of technical difficulties that's when we appeal to the to the formulation that uh you know his tongue is is in my mouth at that moment um but since he's back i'll let him finish pick up where he where he left off and then we'll come back okay thanks sorry about that i'll be uh i'll just continue along these lines uh what if the reason that haitian debt has only got worse and worse is precisely the reason and hanukkah that you were suggesting that there's a relationship between access and debt that that the more that you live a life of access of a kind of uh openness to the to the sharedness that already exists uh the more debt you accumulate um it just seems to me to be as much of a reason well let me put it differently you often hear people in what has become an unintentionally i guess almost uh [Music] okay well let me let me imagine that i can uh there's a there's an old uh it's another old um sort of practice in in the in the tradition of american music of of african american music jazz um in which two supposed soloists um go back and forth in a kind of rapid-fire conversation that is referred to as trading force and maybe that's what we're doing a little bit now too is sort of trading force um each each musician plays four bars and at a certain moment what appeared at a certain point to have been the expression of an individual soloist is in fact um you know is in fact a co-production of entities which at a certain moment it seems to becomes impossible to just think of them as separable entities okay so i i'm gonna kick it back to stefano again but but my sense of it is that from different directions we've always been trying to move towards this common formulation that constitutes a fundamental distrust in the way that sociality is actually described right that the that the language that we have for social existence is inadequate to the practice of social existence first of all that social existence is a practice but second of all that it is not that insofar as it is a practice it is not an endless series or collection of individual acts right um and some of what i think we were trying to get at by that comes from that realization but you go again man i'm really sorry about that yeah thank you um well i i just think that you know i was saying sometimes you you get this very routine acknowledgement of haiti in which haiti is acknowledged for being the first revolutionary society the first successful slave revolt against the colonizers and the slavers uh and then a regret as to how how much haiti was uh piled with debt and and invasion subsequently which doesn't leave the haitian people with much in the way of their own strategies for what they have been doing for the last several hundred years and one of the strategies that seems evident is that they have been teaching us how to practice uh a life that is open to access and they've paid the terrible price that anybody pays who attempts to lead a collective life of access and in a way maybe that's the even greater importance of haiti to these continents then the revolution itself is the insistence to continue to live without the closing down of sociality into individuation this is another way to think of so just to imagine that i'm gonna go in a direction that's similar to where stefano was going if you what does it mean to what is it what is the implicit what what does the invocation of of of haiti and his revolution uh mean for for political for normative political theory um there's a there's a great political theorist named susan buck morse who has tried to write about the the sort of veiled hidden suppressed importance of the haitian revolution for hegel for instance and and one way to think about the work that she was doing in that book is she was beginning to excavate what it is about haiti that remains incommensurable to political thought to fold haiti into the history of liberal revolution to try to fold his haiti into the history of the revolutions that emerge as a function of political individuation right is is a betrayal okay of what was actually happening in haiti which was that at least in our view not about a political revolution for individuation at all but it's also to deny the brutal historical constraints on the very possibility of individuation that were already that were the fundamental conditions of haitian social existence before the revolution right so so the question is how do we better understand right he the the the and again what's crucial for us about the haitian example what's crucial for us as we endure the long event of conquest is to try to get a much clearer understanding of what that revolution was and how it works so as to hold it off from being to protect it as it were from being folded into right the ongoing history of normative political theory but i i was imagining what you were going to say i heard a lot of that and i was going to say most of that just a little less just a little less well uh i think another reason to think about haiti outside of that liberal revolutionary tradition is also to think about it's also to think about the the post-colonial moment differently um you know uh fred and i often ask sort of rhetorically what's the what's the longest-running anti-colonial revolt anti-colonial insurgency anti-colonial movement you know in the history of the modern world and our answer is uh that that anti-colonial movement persists to this day in the united states and most specifically among african-americans indigenous people uh latinx people who have been fighting a 500-year anti-colonial battle against a colonial state called the united states as it emerges and they and there's no way that that can be considered a postcolonial condition unless and until we're willing to say well there is no postcolonial condition because what chile seems to point out more than anything else from the outside is just how similar it is to to the ongoing anti-colonial movement in the united states in the sense that there is there's no way to think in terms of a independent postcolonial state as something that's going to be a vehicle for for anything like a way to live differently and this seems also uh to be you know an aspect of our reunion and it's like the vicious emergence of neocolonialism and and that would be and that's the other thing how how would you periodize neo-colonialism man like you know we think about it maybe like in the 70s and and obviously you know the coup in chile could be seen as like but is that is that the moment of neo-colonialism's invention or is that the moment of neo-colonialism's announcement of itself right it's it's brazen announcement of itself and but and the point would be what's the but what if it turns out that in a certain weird way neo-colonialism predates the the supposed moment of advent of the postcolonial right that in a weird way what neocolonialism does is it prepares the way for the illusion of the post colon and and one way to think about it and and the way that you would test this out would be to think about the various modes of the imposition of credit okay not which and one way to think about it is is it credit is the corruption or degradation of an already existing condition of indebtedness or another way to put it is credit is the violent individuation of indebtedness and that individuation manifests itself not only with regard to impositions that are placed on the so-called individual subject but also impositions that are placed on the emergent nascent developing state okay um and and and my sense of it is that this is something which is obviously being that this is a that this is a brutal hemispheric experiment that is being carried out as violent vicious american imperialism begins to mature and it probably goes back to the late 19th century and it certainly and there's a military component to it um it it it's and and more importantly and and at the level of how people actually live there's a paramilitary component to it and in some ways the experiment could be traced really all the way back to u.s policy in the united states in internal to the united states after the civil war in other words what we're talking about is just as stefano was saying this long war against gathering the long imposition of policing and militarism against gathering against indebtedness and it plays itself out as an individual waiting force which is a carceral force and an individuating force is not the same as a differentiating force right one of the pits of this imposition of credit is that it individuates through the imposition of a regime of sameness and that sameness manifests itself with regard to statistics with ratings right with with the development of a of a universal measure right that that that that that an algorithmic measure that applies to every so-called individual that allows them to be so you know so that the distinction between having good credit and bad credit signifies on some level but the basic formulation is that it always means that you are subject to a rating subject that you have been folded into an algorithmic structure right that that places you within an already given hierarchical framework what what all of this goes back to the naturalization of individuation as as part of as as as as a fundamental element of the human plot of the human trajectory so to fold haiti into that story right is in a weird way already a kind of well it's a liberal imposition okay okay we what one wants to resist is folding haiti into the history of liberalism what one wants to resist is is is and what i'm sure that you all are working hard to resist now in chile is folding the current eruption folding the current insurgency into a history of liberalism to resist that because to resist that folding into liberalism is also to resist that unfolding into neoliberalism and into what we might call you know the ruses of post-coloniality right so so so when we talk about indebtedness one way to think about it is is that it is just this continual ongoing social and ecological struggle okay against coloniality against settlement and look i mean it feels like sometimes everything turn into a philosophy class when it shouldn't be that way but but some of this could have to do with [Music] i i spent a lot of time last night not being able to sleep because i was obsessing over the distinction between constituent destituent and and i guess what you would call institute power you know and sort of obsessing over a gambin which one should never probably admit to having done but but but these terms are part of what the the problem is part of what we're trying to work through you know um it's just this fundamental interplay between credit individuation and the regime of neo slash liberalism right and um i i think it's a set of empirical problems right that anyway i won't keep going maybe maybe connected to this is that there's a there's another word uh that we might say no it's a mystery what what was that word we'll never know um but that's look i mean well this is look you know what all we're ever trying to do is cobble something together in the face of you know conditions which are not always of our making and not always in our control um [Music] and and so i can't i can't i don't know what that word would be um he'll be back in a minute and i'm sure he'll he'll tell us but maybe the lesson here um and maybe it's like an old-fashioned you know deridian lesson is that there is no unique word right that that that there's this kind of the part of the work of study is something like this continual process of proposing terms that then we also depose [Music] um so this this this interplay of proposition and deposition um as a mode as a modality of and and what's at stake is not the justness or the unjustness of any given term but this continual practice we engage in of proposition and deposition um i you could call it a mode of cultivation but i think that we maybe would want to resist that term just because of the historic and etymological connections of cultivation and coloniality cultivation and settling um the the term that stefano and and and his partner tanika seeley thompson have begun to use and that i totally am um in love with i suppose is is ground provision um uh i was i was saying that uh that maybe the practice stefano is not is there's this continual practice we have of proposing and then deposing terms um but that it's not a about a kind of cultivation of of a unique word um or settling on the unique word but but ground provision right in the way that you and tanika use that that that term you know just that kind of this continual process of finding you know um and and also in its own way a process of gathering but but with all that said we definitely want to know what the one word was that you were going to say um i i just wanted to say i think this is a problem of of first world over abundance because they put a second computer in here on my desk and i think the two of them are interfering with each other so i've i've disconnected it and i hope i'll be able to stay with you longer i really do apologize uh well the word i was thinking of which is one that fred and i have been studying a lot in recent times another word to think of with regard to credit is betrayal and particularly with regard to the post-colonial condition the the the the notion that individuation is always the kind of betrayal and that um when one steps forward emerges and takes credit as a leader as someone who's educated as somebody who [Music] has a vision for the future of the country well that's the moment of betrayal uh this is a lesson that we've been trying to learn uh by studying the work of the great guyanese activist intellectual feminist endaya and andaya has a great essay and the title of the essay is mr slime and mr slime stands for that person who makes the who who accepts the moment of credit steps out from the village sells the land of the village from out from underneath the people of the village but what andaya is trying to teach us in this essay mr slime is that this was not a personal failing this is not a moral failing on the part of mr slime and in fact she's talking about the work of george lammon and later george lambing goes so far as to say actually i'm mr slime as a way to emphasize that this is not uh the problem of a moral failing of leadership or or somebody who has personally betrayed a country or a people or a movement but rather a condition of individuation a condition in which credit can suddenly adhere to the individual who gets credit for uh leading the movement speaking for people um having the education to make the policy decisions etc etc etc and this is you know of course as fred was saying with regard to the neocolonial if the neocolonial starts before independence then partly what it is doing during this period is developing a system of credit that will allow for betrayal at the moment of independence so psychiatry spivak says the day after negotiated independence is the day decolonization begins unfortunately neocolonialism has already got a 20 30 year jump start on you by that point by the time nations become independent and realize through negotiated independence that they've been betrayed or they will shortly be betrayed neocolonialism is already well established as it has been through the colonial period picks up steam precisely in the way that it increases its individuation at the level of class and at the level of the representatives of class and and that becomes a force that cannot be met by by a counter force a better state or or or a better politician it can only be met by an insistence on a practice of gathering in our indebtedness of of allowing a kind of access in the face of the most brutal abuse of access that is that is precisely at the heart of betrayal precisely at the heart of credit and that is just that's to think the longest i've been on with you since we started so i feel very pleased i was thinking about this last intervention of yours how there's something that in one of the slangs of the manifestations that we shared with you as well that it wasn't 30 pesos it was 30 200 500 years so that uh that slang was carrying an intuition already of what you are saying about this moment of pacts and credits because this slogan marks certain historical uh moments that are the ones that you just signaled these are dates that talk about the post-dictatorship act the creation of the nation colonization so i was thinking about how this is amongst us in the intuition itself that can be condensed in such a precise way in a slang that is used by everyone in a motor that is used by everyone so this is something that is very much condensed in there and i think that in there there's a lot to think about in those slogans in those motors we don't have much time we have we are already in time um i don't know i think we had several possibilities to be able to to face all of this one of them is was it was that maybe there were two big topics that we've got at least [Music] same name one thing there was things that need to be touched on and there were related to antagonism and violence and antagonism so this is related to general antagonism and uh this is related to a question that is very related to the constituent process and many of this social process that have been added to this constitutional moment and they have done it under the premise of not leaving the streets and many of the strengths that have been added in this political space but we have also seen how we have seen the distinction between the legitimate ways and the illegitimate ways of doing policies and how the space of the street and the space of street violence starts to turn into something more and more antagonist to the uh common ways of political participation and we thought that this was one of the first things that appeared here so how to uh to see this how it's presented and the second thing is related to something that is more effective to taking a phrase that is very very nice that you gave you talked about the revueltas [Music] in spanish so we wanted to talk about this about what it means to sustain this manifestation when it's so painful because there people still are getting murdered there is criminalization and we have seen in a very painful way in a very sustained way the uh the eye mutilation and the manifestations on the streets um and up to today how people still be are being killed so how to sustain the protests in the middle of of all of this of the grief as well so we know that these are complicated topics or topics that are hard to talk about and it was it is very difficult there are things that we want those things we want to talk to you about well so the you know there's a idiom in [Music] you know american english you know that and it says something like well that's easy for you to say um you know uh because the consequences uh of saying so um or the consequences of what one says are not equally distributed um they're visited upon different people in different ways and um and and i recognize that a lot of what i want to say that i have been saying that i did i guess that i could say um is easy for me to say um you know from the the the comforts of the particular existence that i um that i that i have been nurtured and sacrificed into so to speak to to quote uh andaya quoting um the great nigerian novelist nevertheless even though it's easy for me to say i gotta say it anyway um and and and this has to do with this unsus what that however unbearable it is for us to sustain struggle the alternative to the sustaining of our struggle is an absolute unsustainability right like this is how we live um there's a young scholar who i knew many years ago when he was a graduate student named nicholas brady and against my own inclinations and against the grain of my own predilections he insisted at a meeting that we had one day that uh that debt and death could not be separated that there is at least an english not only an etymological connection between debt and death but that there is a an existential connection um and one way to think about it is that the indebtedness that we share that we practice isn't is a sharing and a practice that occurs within mourning that that that the practice of indebtedness that we share is a practice of mourning to always and it is a practice of grief the grief and the joy are absolutely entangled with one another they cannot be separated from one another um the dream that they ever could be separated from one another is um is an individualist metaphysical political dream that emerges from brutality and produces brutality this radical entanglement of grief and joy or of life and death if you will is is the the real question is is can we in our gathering can we in our own existential practice refine what it what we do such that we can live as it were such that we can accept those terms right which and the basic term that we would accept would be precisely this unpayability this unresolvability you know i mean to me some of what we're talking about some of the brutality of specifically of united states culture a whole lot of the brutality of the culture can be seen in its normative practices of grievance right um there's another idiom in american english that is relevant here um get over it right like that's the that that what the the normative practice of grief in the united states can be can be condensed into that phrase get over it okay and and and i think you know our struggle is that you know is is is encapsulated we refuse to get over it we're not gonna get over it okay we're not gonna forget our those are dead okay we will remember them we will celebrate them okay we will solemnify their life in our refusal to forget them and we will solemnify their life in our refusal to get to forget them as our own practice of sharing and gathering like that's what we do and and these are basic practices that that all we all know you know we get together to remember people we refuse to forget them right and and jumping to turn styles is a refusal to forget right within the context of a brutal form of of of imperial neo-colonial imposition that is constantly requiring forgetfulness we won't forget we will not forget um we we and we can't forget we we to what remembering implies on a physiological level is that they are with us that that's the entanglement and that entanglement manifests itself as a kind of violence not only in the sense of the violence of of of of imperial attempts to dismember right but the violence that is already given in the fact that we can't be separated from so when we say one is shared that's a violent formulation right that's a that's a if you will that's a philosophical formulation which is designed to do violence to the very idea of the one right um and and and it is also a description of our non-ontological or pre-ontological condition we aren't we are not one we never were none of us were that that that whole mathematics is is is insufficient so when we say that we remember it's an imprecise term for saying that that the ones that we lost remain with us okay and even and and to and to say that the ones that we lost remains remain with us that too is an imprecise formulation right we in a weird way our sacraments of remembering are nothing other than the continual intoning of these imprecise formulations right which we share with one another at the limit of the words that we have which is why so much of mourning so much of gathering moves in the direction of wordlessness and and movement that can't be captured in in words it can't be held in words sounds that exceed words it explode words right movements that that disrupt words that that that can be encapsulated in words so again it's it's easy for me to say all that you know um but it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be said and it doesn't mean that on a sudden fundamental level as easy as it is for me to say that it's really hard too it's really hard to say [Music] stefano would you like to add something to that stefano would you like to add something to what fred was saying maybe just a small thing which is uh if you are watching politics in the united states at all and a lot of people have to even if they don't want to you'll notice that there's a big debate around the teaching in schools of critical race theory and critical race theory is a is an actual approach to study and an academic discipline but when you read the newspapers what you hear again and again is well it's really strange that there is this white supremist uh backlash against critical race theory in the schools because critical race theory is not actually being taught in the schools this is what the journalists say but this of course is completely wrong a critical race theory is being taught all the time in the united states and well beyond because it doesn't get taught in the schools it gets taught the same way that those little girls taught each other to jump over the turnstile and so there's every reason for all of these racist white supremacist parents to be scared the critical race theory is being taught because it is and they can't stop it thank you so much stefano for that we are 10 minutes away from finalizing our session and we have a question and i would like to give a four to the audience and i would like to take this question i will read it in english so our translators will help us with that it will take to abolish the common sense of the vitruvian man i can be it can be done one white mind at a time i asked myself what would hoshi mean do am i mad i'm not really sure who asked that question comment if you will would you like to refer to that somehow well i definitely don't think that the person who asked the question is mad i think the question who asked the question is reminding me i should say that every day what would you mean i'd be better off it's a really interesting question um i just i i have to say i've never thought about coaching men and vitruvian man in the same thought but somehow this question totally naturalizes it in a way that i'm thinking why haven't i done that of course they should be and it makes me think about uh you know this great great vietnamese philosopher and phenomenologist named uh who is part of that sort of generation that came up with alzheimer's you know he was you know trained in the french university system and but he was also a revolutionary and freedom fighter in vietnam and i'm wondering it makes me i don't know this the the the the answer to the question is far i it just well i i guess the best way to put it is that question makes me think i gotta dig up uh my trend looked out and start trying to really read that work in a way that that i've only ever tried to only ever gesture towards in the past so um so i appreciate the question um and hopefully uh someday in the not too distant future when we're actually able to come visit chile whoever asked that question can come up and say oh it was me and then we could go out and drink some beer together and really and really chop that up because i think it's a deep question and we'll be ready then um well then in order to take or to use the 10 minutes that we have left i wanted to ask both of you regarding your understanding of friendship friendship and love in relation to this idea of incompleteness in different interviews and talks you have pointed out the importance of not stopping or continuing to do what we enjoy with others what it feels so vital as if it were a very evident way of destroying inner heart the logic of the system in your most recent book you talked about friendship as something prior right and you talk about love which is comprised by joy and sadness or grief from a place which is not individualized but it is a way of engaging and being in common that make us incomplete or incomplete us as you said it in english that incomplete each other that put at stake the idea of the possessive individual owner of themself so to conclude would you like to tell us more about these reflections in your last book and how the practice of love as that which incompletes us allow us to look again at that improvised noisy fugitive way of being among the undercommons [Music] well um it it just feels like a a pretty you know kind of connected to what stefano was saying about critical race theory uh it's not only that critical race theory is constantly being taught in the under commons but it's also in a complicated set of ways constantly being caught taught even within the normative structure of the school system itself against the grain of the administration of the system it's there's a ubiquity to it that i think has you know sort of racist reactionaries freaking out so much and and here's so here's what i mean by that um and how this connects to love which is the formulations that we were making about love and friendship just seemed to us to be totally commonplace formulations and that anybody who would appeal to let's say what we might call the very highly organized fiction of their own experience would know that love messes you up okay it does not leave you intact that i just don't know that there has ever been a person who has ever been in love who would say that it didn't completely tear them apart okay um it's just a simple that's and it's not just me saying it it's that you know pop music says it you know romantic comedies say it you know there's this is a commonplace formulation about love it's we didn't invent this and again it's something that we learn in in what one might call under common spaces but it's but it's there within the framework of the mainstream culture too it's just a it's just the truth now the question is you know how much of the rest of normative society is also is structured by this strange combination of the constant you know assertion of that truth along with the constant brutal denial of that truth right by way of the continual production of a bunch of stupid romantic myths about love as if love completes you okay so so this is we were just what we were doing was just noting that that this commonplace formulation about love that it disrupts that it tears up that it breaks you down that that's part of the atmospheric condition in which we live um and the only question is how do we develop sufficient strength and sufficient you know sort of suppleness to be able to accept that condition rather than to be always operating in an absolute refusal of that condition okay one one possible way to define capitalism would be is that it is the organized economic refusal of that condition yeah there's very little for me to add that's exactly how we think about it except to say that or in addition to say that it's it's it's obvious that that that's what love and friendship are uh especially you know if you listen to music or you know or you live your life but at the same time [Music] that it's totally antithetical to to to the rest of the way it's that we are regulated so you know we are regulated towards productivity towards efficiency uh towards uh development uh and and if love or friendship uh you know cause you to to to be less capable of those things because you are able to uh um experience your incompleteness your your your sharedness your um your interanimation your your entangledness with others that makes you um a less a less useful individual um to capital and to the state because it's the individual who who is the the motor of development of efficiency of productivity um and a certain type of individual who's in control of herself or himself who um who works on himself or herself uh and who um measures himself for herself uh or their self uh and and and and that that that productive individual is undermined by an idea of love or practice of love or friendship that um that that that is anti-productive or um that develops values other than efficiency or that you know questions the very idea of development um and and that and that's the that's what we practice with each other but it's what we practice all around ourselves as much as we can too and what we've learned from those who've practiced it with us sadly we are going to have to start saying goodbye there are many things that we wanted to share with you that we will not have time to but i don't know if you want to say something you want to add anything only only these uh great thanks and gratitude and um and uh resolve um that we will pick up the conversation uh again soon um and in person and uh and um yeah just thank you thank you so much thank you i am going to say that uh being able to read your work has been a shelter thank you for your generosity of sharing with us today and i really hope that we can have another conversation together fernanda please do you want to say something yes i also want to thank you all and i also hope that this conversation it's a possibility for the people who have not read the book for them to start reading it and learn about some of the conversations that can be started from their work i think that they're very valuable and yeah that that's it thank you thank you very much thank you in spite of all of the technical problems that we had and the improvisations that we had i think that is part of all of this of the conversation and thank you for your space and generosity thank you fernando thank you angelica gracias thank you very much viviana nancy and lauda who has been who have been the interpreters today and i want to invite you to the next conference is going to be with us and this is going to be available on the youtube channel in the and on the page of the of the center as well if you want to check this and well thank you very much a hug to all of you thank you thank you bye bye [Music] uh [Music] you