Reading List: School of Common Knowledge. UP/ROOTING | DES/ARRAIGO

Study Session I:
rooting & uprooting

This first study session tackles the question of up/rooting in its relation to key dimensions such as political community, nationality, rights and language. Lyndsey Stonebridge’s book is a literary history of modern statelessness that raises vital questions about sovereignty, humanism, and the future of human rights by drawing on the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka or Samuel Beckett. We focus on Chapter 4’s exploration of Simone Weil’s notion of up/rootedness. Seyla Benhabib’s The Rights of Others examines the boundaries of political community by exploring the boundaries that define some as political members and others as aliens and strangers. “Beyond language” is a polyphone conversation constellating the experiences of the Mesopotamia Solidarity School, the Open School for Migrants in Pireaus and Museo Reina Sofía’s Escuela de Mediación Situada.

Lyndsey Stonebridge, ‘Chapter 4: Simone Weil’s Uprooted’, Placeless People. Writing, Rights and Refugees, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 96-118.

Seyla Benhabib, ‘Chapter 2: “The right to have rights.” Hannah Arendt on the contradictions of the nation-state.’, The Rights of Others, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 49-70.

Buraya, Sara et al. (eds), Beyond Language. School of Commoning Practices., Museo Reina Sofía and L’Internationale, 2025 (in press).

Study Session 2:
exile & the popular minoritarian

Study session II draws on Museo Reina Sofía’s exhibition of painter Maruja Mallo, Mask and Compass, to delve into topics of exile and the popular vis-a-vis artistic and intellectual production. Spanish philosopher characterised by her civic commitment and poetic thought Maria Zambrano writes on the long exile experienced by many Spanish intellectuals and artists – such as Mallo – after the civil war. The text assemblage reuniting excerpts by Italian anthropologist Ernesto di Martino, curator Patricia Molins and artist and curator Pedro G. Romero questions what is the popular, what is its emancipatory practice and what is the relation between intellectuals and popular culture.

María Zambrano, ‘Letter on exile’ Paris: Congress Notebooks for the Freedom of Culture, no. 49, June, 1961, pp. 65-70.

Ernesto di Martino, Patricia Molins, Pedro G. Romero, The Popular: text assemblage, sources: Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona / Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2008; Valencia: IVAM Centre Julio González, 2023; Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía / Fundación Botín / This Side Up, 2025, various pages.

Study Session 3:
communal luxury

Through the work and practice of Paisanaje, an exploration and action group tackling the ecosocial crisis through art, and La Cuina del MACBA, the museum’s communal kitchen, we will engage with notions such as Kristin Ross’ “communal luxury” and the land dimension of up/rooting under contemporary conditions.

Study Session 4:
project a black planet

This study session takes as a starting point MACBA’s exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica. It prompts us to question the relationship between cultural roots and colonial routes through a reading workshop. Sara Ahmed’s paper suggests we can approach whiteness as a phenomenology that orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they take up space and what they can do. Achille Mbembe offers a genealogy of the category of blackness as a technology of subjectivation – from the Atlantic slave trade to the present. Souleymane Bachir ’s essay further contributes to the discussion on the existentialist v. essentialist approaches to (black) identity.

Sara Ahmed, ‘A Phenomenology of Whiteness’, Feminist Theory, vol. 8, Issue 2, August 2007, pp. 149-168.

Achille Mbembe, ‘Six. The Clinic of the Subject.’, Critique of Black Reason, New York: Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 151-178.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, ‘Négritude as Existence’, Nka. Journal of Contemporary African Art, vol. 42-43, November 2018, pp. 10-19.

Past in the Present Assembly

Past in the Present is one of the three strands composing Museum of the Commons, L’Internationale’s current 4-year project. It focuses on the crucial roles our local and shared (colonial) histories hold in constituting contemporary identities and politics. Fred Moten’s talk examines colonization schemes and Palestine’s struggle for the right to exist.

Fred Moten, ‘A Dam Against the Motion of History’, Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Live!, ep. 25 October 2023.

L’Internationale Online Resources
(extended reading & listening)

“Collective Study in Times of Emergency” is a publication strand by L’Internationale Online, L’Internationale’s editorial platform. It takes the form of essays, selections of poetry, listening sessions, and more. It poses the question of what does a practice of collective study look like under conditions of public spheres’ closedness and censorship.

Nick Aikens et al. (eds), Collective Study in Times of Emergency, L’Internationale Online, 2024.

Jokkoo with Miramizu, Rasheed Jalloul & Sabine Salamé, ‘Opening Performance: Song for Many Movements, live on Radio Alhara (live performance 23 Feb 2024)’, L’Internationale Online, 2024.

Precolumbian, ‘Live set: A Love Letter to the Global Intifada (live performance, 13 Jun 2024)’, L’Internationale Online, 2024.

Rana Issa (ed), ‘We Have Been Here Forever. Palestinian Poets Write Back’, L’Internationale Online, 2024.