Current Call For Papers
The road to wisdom: manifesting the sacred towards justice
The Living Commons Collective Magazine, N.3
“It took her seven years of skeptical fits and starts to feel the power of that early revelation which was given in that place called London; and it would take her even longer to come to have faith in it, to know that her answers needed to come from a source different than the ones she had mastered in books; to begin to feel the difference between knowledge and wisdom—one could save you in the kingdom of the dead, the other gave you only temporary status in the kingdom of the living… To know that with careful focused attention and contemplative service, the Divine would be made manifest. The answer to many things lay in her hands, in her very own hands.” — Kitsimba in Pedagogies of Crossing, by M. Jacqui Alexander
The sacred is at once ours-mine. It refuses to differentiate, to separate, to distinguish. It encourages us to learn to listen so that we can follow our own path, our journey, our dharma. To express that which we have come to, we have chosen to, we have set out to, manifest. This issue of the Living Commons Magazine wishes to explore the role wisdom and the sacred have had and continue to have for individuals, collectives, and peoples across the globe. From the teachings of Thich Nhat Han and Sister Chan Khong, Kitsimba, Kehinde, and David Kopenawa, Queen Nanny of the Maroons and Ram Dass, among countless others, this issue asks and invites the following (but not limiting) questions: How can wisdom influence knowledge so that the latter becomes in tune with the human and more-than-human worlds? What is the role of the sacred in the struggle for justice? How are remembering, honoring, memory, and collective works interrelated? What does the sacred allow for the self in terms of healing, recovering, and re-establishing one’s inner fortitude?
Academic essays should be between 4,000 and 7,000 words. Poetry and other artistic expressions are highly encouraged.
Languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish
Please, send submissions to: livingcommonscollective@gmail.com
Black Radical Explorations of T/Senses of Future
The Living Commons Collective Magazine, N.4
What if what is to come, what is next, is not a point in the definite straight line of time? What if the future is but that indefinite, uncountable and unnamed, undescribable and measurable possibilities gifted by every larger and minor practice of auto-defense and fugitivity that account for how black persons and populations still exist in this world after centuries under the threat and experience of total violence? Towards bringing this aspect of the black experience in the Americas and the Caribbean, this special issue invites artists, scholars, curators, and art educators to contribute to this special issue to consider and experiment with the following questions: What if we took seriously the possibility that this world, as we know it, may (be coming) to an end? What if we considered that this may well result from both ecological and social devastations as well as radical propositions and programs for another world, a better world, whatever that may look like? We dread the loss of this world, but have we begun to imagine the one to come? How to imagine it collaboratively?
There is a verb tense in the Portuguese language, the more-than-perfect past (pretérito mais que perfeito), which nicely captures the place of enunciation consistent with such global-historical trajectory. This tense refers to an action happened in the far away past before something else that also happened in the past, that is, the more-than-perfect refers to anything and everything that preceded anything and everything that happened later that then precedes something that happens after, and so on, it appropriately describes a mode of thinking (of sensing + imagining + grasping) that does not assume an efficacy and permanency (in time), that is, a thinking and knowing that does not rest on something like a subject or an efficient cause that will remain the same at the beginning and end of the action or experience. Taken as a hypothesis, this special issue wishes to reflect about black art and thought and their contributions for designing intellectual tools and practices to counter this authoritarian turn at the level of thinking. By foregrounding the imagination instead of the understanding, which is the usual site of considerations of black subjugation and political interventions, we hope this special issue creates opportunities for exploring questions that reconsider the relationship between criticality, creativity, and sensibility.
Academic essays should be between 4,000 and 7,000 words. Poetry and other artistic expressions are highly encouraged.
Languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish
Please, send submissions to: livingcommonscollective@gmail.com
Anti-colonial Future T/Senses for the Americas
Call for Papers: The Living Commons Collective Magazine, N.5
In many ways, whether one looks at social or environmental conditions, the world we have come to know over the past five centuries is coming to an end. Kicking and screaming, trying to hold on to its structures (namely, capital, colonial, and racial violence) as it dies out. For the indigenous and black populations of the Americas, many worlds have been ended and, in the face of constant total violence, they’ve articulated (and continue to) larger and minor practices of auto-defense and collective self-determination. There is a verb tense in the Portuguese language, the more-than-perfect past (pretérito mais que perfeito), which captures the place of enunciation consistent with such global-historical trajectory. This tense refers to an action happened in the far away past before something else that also happened in the past, that is, the more-than-perfect refers to anything and everything that preceded anything and everything that happened later that then precedes something that happens after, and so on, it appropriately describes a mode of thinking (of sensing + imagining + grasping) that does not assume an efficacy and permanency (in time), that is, a thinking and knowing that does not rest on something like a subject or an efficient cause that will remain the same at the beginning and end of the action or experience. By foregrounding the imagination instead of the understanding, which is the usual site of considerations of subjugation and political interventions of marginalized populations, this special issue wishes to create opportunities for exploring questions that reconsider the relationship between criticality, creativity, and sensibility. Questions that challenge the presumption of disinterestedness in considerations of the aesthetic. Instead, by acknowledging its centrality in the constitution of the liberal political subject in the 19th century, they also signal that the imagination — considered here in terms of the capacity to create — must be both object of critical engagement and also as holding force to be mobilized in any project for an other, better, that is a just world.
Some possible guiding questions for our collaborators are: What if what is to come, what is next, is not a point in the definite straight line of time? What if the future is but that indefinite, uncountable and unnamed, undescribable and measurable possibilities of daily life-giving practices? What if we took seriously the possibility that this world, as we know it, may (be coming) to an end? What if we considered that this may well result from both ecological and social devastations as well as radical propositions and programs for another world, a better world, whatever that may look like? We dread the loss of this world, but have we begun to imagine the one to come? How to imagine it collaboratively?
Academic essays should be between 4,000 and 7,000 words. Poetry and other artistic expressions are highly encouraged.
Languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish
Please, send submissions to: livingcommonscollective@gmail.com
