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© 2016 Miriam Tola ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2016 Miriam Tola ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ECOLOGIES OF THE COMMON: FEMINISM AND THE POLITICS OF NATURE by MIRIAM TOLA A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies Written under the direction of Ed Cohen and Elizabeth Grosz ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- New Brunswick, New Jersey OCTOBER 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ECOLOGIES OF THE COMMON: FEMINISM AND THE POLITICS OF NATURE By MIRIAM TOLA Dissertation Directors: Ed Cohen, Elizabeth Grosz This dissertation proposes a theory of the common beyond the modern figure of Man as primary agent of historical transformation. Through close reading of Medieval debates on poverty and common use, contemporary political theory and political speeches, legal documents, and protests in public spaces, it complicates current debates on the common in three ways. First, this work contends that the enclosures of pre-modern landholdings, a process the unfolded in connected and yet distinct ways in Europe and the colonies, was entangled with the affirmation of the European white man as proper figure of the human entitled to appropriate the labor of women and slaves, and the material world as resources. Second, it engages contemporary theorists of the common such as Paolo Virno, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Although these authors depart from the prevalent assumptions of modern liberalism (in that they do not take the individual right to appropriate nature as the foundation of political community), their formulation of common is still grounded in Marx’s view of labor as the primary force making the world. As a counterpoint to this position, this dissertation draws on feminist and science studies to bring into relief the entanglements of human and other-than-human entities (including water, soil, and technological infrastructures) that constitute the common. Finally, it examines connections and divergences between Western notions of the common-as-resources and contemporary ii indigenous communal politics in Latin America that unsettle the divide between nature and politics. Ecologies of the Common mobilizes the pre-modern past and indigenous forms of life obliterated by Western narratives of development as living forces that might generate the future of the common as mode of living together in the ruins of capitalism. iii Acknowledgments This project was made possible by many encounters, friendships and experiments in collective thinking. I am indebted to many activists and social centers in Italy. In Rome, Rachele Serino, Andrea Tiddi, Daniele Vazsquez and many other friends from the Nodo di Sociologia, and the Luther Blissett Project taught me about parties and networks, psychogeography and molecular revolutions, precarity and the refusal of work. Through the collectives Orma Nomade and A/matrix I have learned the pleasures of feminism as affirmative project. Thanks to Laura Ronchetti, Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz, Barbara Romagnoli, Sara Massaccesi, Beatrice Busi, Marina Turi and Ornella Serpa, a beautiful warrior who is no longer in this world. In New York, 16 Beaver and Not An Alternative nourished collective political imagination for many years. I am grateful to the many friends who animated these spaces, shared time and made worlds. Jack Bratich has been a beloved friend and mentor, Malav Kanuga a partner in conversations about the common, social reproduction and love. Carolina Alonso and Stina Soderling have been sharing feminist and queer modes of living. Lize Mogel, Heather Rogers, Lindsay Caplan, Keeno Amhed, Daniela Kostova and Jen Kaminski were there when it was most needed. Each in their own way, my committee members embody modes of thinking and living otherwise. Ed Cohen and Elizabeth Grosz have been changing the way I think since the first graduate seminars on the politics of life and sexual difference. Working with them has enriched my intellectual and personal life tremendously. At critical times Ethel Brooks helped me to clarify the stakes of this project. I am grateful to Michael Hardt for being a generous interlocutor even when he was still unaware of being one. iv I am deeply indebted to those who read various parts of this project, gave feedback, pushed me to keep writing and rewriting. The bio.cultures writing group –Stina Soderling, Kim Cunningham, Kate Jenkins, Alison Cool, Grzegorz Sokol, Carolina Alonso, Aaron Weeks, Jasmin Young, Bryce Renninger, Sasha Rodriguez, and Paul Edwards–has been an exceptional support network whose feedback and incisive questioning were instrumental for getting this dissertation written. Giuseppina Mecchia and Timothy Murphy have encouraged me in the early stages of writing. Bruce Braun and Sara Nelson provided invaluable feedback on chapter 2. Thanks to Arun Saldanha for sharing his writings on Deleuze and the earth and much more. To Federico Luisetti and Joost de Blois for conversations about the Anthropocene and Gaia. In the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers I was inspired by many wonderful feminist, queer and anti-racist colleagues. Among them I want to acknowledge Carolina Alonso, Stina Soderling, Max Hantel, Stephen Seely, Sara Perryman, Rachel Zaslow, Jillian Hernandez, Ashley Falzetti, Stephanie Clare, Laura Lovin and Andy Mazzaschi. Suzy Kiefer, Monique Gregory and Joanne Givand guided me in the labyrinth of university rules and procedures. The Seminar Objects and Environments at the Center for Cultural Analysis provided important material and intellectual resources. Jorge Marcone offered insights on Latin America and buen vivir. Laura Weigert encouraged me to explore Medieval materiality. Darryl Wilkinson’s shared his brilliant work on non-human politics in the Inka Empire. Sean Tanner, Eric Sarmiento, and Max Hantel stimulated my thinking on the Anthropocene. At Northeastern University, Suzanna Walters invited me to join a lively community of scholars of gender, race and sexuality. In the Media and Screen Studies Program, Joanne v Morreale, Craig Robertson, Murray Forman, Alessandra Renzi, and Nathan Blake offered guidance and advice. Jessa Linger, Alessandra Renzi, Lucas Freeman, Sam and Kai Binkley, Hope Hamilton Schumacher, Amos and Ryan Schumacher, Joanne Morreale, Richard Lewis, and Brian Bowman made Boston a brighter place to live. I bow to Alana Brennan for guiding me through asanas and breathing. Marco Deseriis, my favorite sparring partner, has been challenging this project with rigor and humor since day one. Together we have been exploring the many forms the I and the We can take. Tito made reproductive labor palpable. His uncontainable energy surprises me everyday. Finally, thanks to my Mediterranean family: Massimo, Roberto, Alessandro, Alba, Monica and my charming nieces Anna and Lucia. I am forever indebted to my mother Franca for her unconditional love. This dissertation is dedicated to her and zia Minnia. vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents vii Introduction: The Cosmopolitical Common Drowned Worlds 1 Three Narratives of the Common 7 Aporias of the Common 14 The Common As Improper Object of Feminist Theory 20 Unruly Methods 29 The Flow of Chapters 32 Chapter 1: Genealogies of the Common Memory of Combats 36 Omnia Sunt Communia: Community and Property in Early Christian Thought 40 Franciscan Poverty: Use Without Rights 47 Peasant Commoning 56 Women, Magic and Medieval Materiality 63 Conclusion 76 Chapter 2: Life, Labor, and Language: Reading Virno and Simondon Post-Fordist Anthropogenesis 78 Life, Labor and Language 80 The Political Economy of Species, Race and Sex 84 States of Nature 89 Making the Common in the Ruins of the Anthropocene 100 Chapter 3: Ecologies of the Common The Art of Composition 104 Biopolitical Production 106 Social Reproduction and the Care of the Earth 116 This Common Which is Not One 121 For the Love of Zoé 125 The Political Ecology of the Common 127 Chapter 4: Political Ontologies Frictions: The Common and Indigeneity 134 The Land and the Dead in Zapatista Politics 139 Earth Beings in the Bolivian Water War 150 The Paradoxes of the Rights of Nature 156 Pachamama, Sovereignty, Gender 172 Conclusion 178 Coda 181 Bibliography 187 vii 1 Introduction: The Cosmopolitical Common Drowned Worlds For a while the existence of the lake was a secret whispered in the ears of activists and residents of the Prenestino neighborhood, a densely populated labyrinth of cars, cement and steel in Rome, Italy. During moonlit nights, the urban lake could be reached through a narrow, slightly impervious path from the Ex-SNIA Viscosa, a former textile factory that activists had turned into a self-managed social center. At the end of the path, half-hidden by brambles, there was a drowned world: a skeleton of cement submerged by glimmering water, taken over by vegetation, birds and insects1. The spill erupted from underground in the early 1990s when builders working at the construction site of a shopping center struck a source of Rome’s famous acqua bullicante, mineral water that flows through a geological layer storing the ruins of the Roman Empire now mixed with plastic debris,
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