BEYOND PROPERTY
OVER THE LEVEE, UNDER THE PLOW
an experiential curriculum
BEYOND PROPERTY
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INTRODUCTION
Property subtends the Anthropocene. Modern European property theory rests on colonization and chattel slavery—inseparable institutions that bound far-flung continents, ecologies, and people in brutally unequal relations. Property-thought and an ideology of improvement suffuse Western subjectivity. The imagined political community of liberal democracies is still marked by a tradition limiting full citizenship to property-owning, self-possessive individuals. This same ideology can be traced across such disparate phenomena as HGTV reality shows, middle-class health and wellness fads, the “stand your ground” laws that cost Trayvon Martin his life, and opposition to regulations that might stave off climate catastrophe. In the Anthropocene, what Black Panther Huey P. Newton called “survival pending revolution” demands moving beyond the stranglehold of property-thought to embody more porous and accountable ways of relating to land, people, more-than-human beings, and ourselves.
Owning property (rather than being owned as property) has long constituted both “full” citizenship and humanity in liberal democracies, especially those of North America. It is therefore challenging to design prompts that speak both to and across the very race, gender, dis/ability, and species categories violently reinforced by property logics. Can practices of sensing help to grasp and redirect the differential operation of
property across different spaces and bodies?
- Sarah Kanouse