In this lecture, Hardt defines the common and articulates its characteristics in distinction from both the private and the public. He will also discuss how the right to the common is becoming a central demand of many contemporary social struggles and explore the ways in which different social movements, including Occupy, are oriented toward the common.
This talk is part of our year-long series “On Affirmation and Criticality.” It is the first event in the series’ first segment: “Love, Love Will Tear Us Apart?: On Critical Theory and The Urge to Repair.” This series will look at the relation of the critical to the affirmative by way of idioms of love, sex, and care. Its speakers will address and reflectively perform in relation to genres of critical theory and politicized ideas of attachment. Other speakers include Ghassan Hage (on domestication as the dominant mode of being in Modernity); Melissa Gregg (on criticality and care); and Lee Edelman and Lauren Berlant (on love, theory, and negativity).