Poetic Commoning in European Cities – Or on the Alchemy of Concrete

Abstract

This piece presents an exploration into how to write-do-think ineffable affective experiences that might cultivate more than human ethical relations in concrete environments. Learning from two urban commoning projects, I take guidance from Édouard Glissant’s aesthetic of the earth to recognize poetic practices that might seem anachronistic or naïve, awkward or intrusive, and in apparent contradiction to rational thought and critical politics. I adopt what Joan Retallack calls a “poethical attitude” to offer (reasoned) compositions with concrete as material and metaphor … mixed with a shimmer of alchemy.

这篇文章探讨了如何描写、实践和思考不可言喻的情感体验，这些体验可能在现实环境中培养出超人类的伦理关系。通过两个城市公共项目，根据Édouard Glissant的地球美学，我认识到，诗意行为可能不恰当或者轻率、笨拙或者具有侵扰性，明显地与理性思想和批判政治相矛盾。我采用Joan Retallack所说的“诗学伦理态度”，提供了拥有切实材料的、隐喻的、伴随着神秘色彩的（合理化）作品。。

Este escrito presenta una exploración sobre las inefables experiencias afectivas de cómo escribir-hacer-pensar que podrían cultivar relaciones éticas más-que-humanas en entornos de hormigón. Aprendiendo de dos proyectos comuneros urbanos, me inspiro en la estética de la tierra de Édouard Glissant para identificar prácticas poéticas que podrían parecer anacrónicas o ingenuas, torpes o entrometidas, y en aparente contradicción con el pensamiento racional y la política crítica. Yo adopto lo que Joan Retallack llama una “actitud poética” para ofrecer (razonadas) composiciones, con el hormigón como material y metáfora… mezcladas con un centelleo de alquimia.

Key Words:

• attending
• commoning
• concrete
• poetic
• sensing
• 关注
• 共有
• 具体
• 诗意
• 感知。
• comunero
• percibiendo
• poético
• tratante

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Aya Nassar, Julian Brigstocke and Günter Gassner for generous and encouraging comments on an earlier version of this piece, and eternal gratitude to all those I have been learning with in Les Grands Voisins and The Common House.

Notes

1. I take inspiration in my work from Haraway’s (2016) call to “stay with the trouble” of the current conjecture variously called Anthropocene, Chtulucene, Plantationocene, Capitalocene.

2. For instance, Bennett’s (2010, 2001) vibrant materialism or Braidotti’s (2006) philosophical “brand of ‘enchanted materialism’” (97) that requires “a spiritual bond to our eco-sphere” (270).

3. Translates to “aesthetic of the earth.” I leave the original French, see “a note on aesthetics.”

4. Glissant is writing in the context of questions around “who can claim” Martinique, the very idea of claiming territory and the implications for local expressions of ecological relations, and how these connect to political economies (e.g., of sugar and banana plantations).

5. Note that “esthétique” in French is more commonly used than “aesthetics” in English, the latter retaining a closer tie with the reintroduction of the term in German philosophy in the 19^th century.

6. The word “rhizome” here is in verbal form, which would translate as “rhizoming in/within the knowledge of our cultures.” In the English version, Wing (Glissant 1997) translates: “to rhizome…throughout our cultures’ understanding.” Yet Glissant is not writing about “understanding” (he actually argues against it in the later part of the book); “rhizomant dans” in the French text gives a sense of propagating “throughout” as well as being nurtured by or growing from within.

7. My use of notes in this piece is an elsewhere of compositional practice, thanks to Aya and Julian for bringing this to my attention.

8. “Construction site life.”

9. Forty (2013, 117).

10. Forty (2013, 164).

11. Numbers collated during a campaign against evicting residents in emergency social housing led by a group in Les Grands Voisins.

12. See Thoburn (2018) and Wiles (2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elona Marjory Hoover

ELONA MARJORY HOOVER has recently completed her doctorate at the University of Brighton, Brighton, BN2 3GJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include urban commoning, affective practices, relational ethics, and the feminist political ecologies of extractivism, with a commitment to transdisciplinary collaborations that weave together art, activism, and critical scholarship.