Capacitating the Deep Commons: Considering Capital and Commoning Practices from an Affective-Rhetorical Systems Perspective — Rhetoric & Composition

Rhetoric Society Quarterly Mar 2023

Capacitating the Deep Commons: Considering Capital and Commoning Practices from an Affective-Rhetorical Systems Perspective

Matthew Bost ; Joshua S. Hanan

Abstract

This essay develops a rhetorical theory of the commons that accounts for both its ontological and political dimensions and contributes to conversations between new materialist rhetorical scholarship and critical rhetorical theories of human power relations. We develop such a theory by considering how the dimension of ontological entanglement that Ralph Cintron describes as the “deep commons” materializes through systemic organizations of affect that foster some relational capacities at the expense of others. This framing allows us to study capitalism and commoning as affective-rhetorical systems that capacitate the deep commons through distinct practices of boundary-making. Whereas capitalism produces boundaries that treat the deep commons as a source of tendentially limitless growth and enact a split between nonhuman nature and human society, commoning practices draw boundaries aimed at plural and interdependent relation between commons systems and their constitutive outsides, enabling more robust expressions of the deep commons to emerge.

Journal: Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published: 2023-03-15
DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2022.2129751
Open Access: Closed
Topics: affect and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

Bost et al. (2023)

Intimacies of the Common: Enclosure, Solidarity, and the Possibilities of Criti…

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