Metodologías del común desde “la barriga del monstruo”

Abstract

The commons are nowadays conceptualised as relational, unfinished, inappropriable entities that constitute an antagonistic space against capitalist appropiation, valorisation and acumulation. Such processes are nowadays present in the knowledge production practices that take place in universities. Here, we stand as researchers who inhabit this ambivalent place that Donna Haraway calls ‘the belly of the beast’ (Haraway, 1995) to inquire into the possible epistemological, methodological and political elements that may question cognitive capitalism enclosing logics in our research practice. To do so we draw on two cases: firstly, the Community Social Center Luis Buñuel, in Zaragoza, Spain, a “participation school” originated during the indignados movement; and secondly, the Cartografía de la Solidaridad project, a research developed in Barcelona, Spain, dealing with migrant solidarity initiatives in the face of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, in 2015. Throughout the article, we foreground examples of research practices of these two cases that contribute to an alternative rationale behind knowledge production. Such practices promote alternative uses of knowledge that go beyond its inclusion in capitalist valorisation, and seek to question epistemic hierarchies to which we contribute in our academic praxis. Moreover, we review two forms in which this methodological approach can support already existing commoning processes by contributing to the articulation of differences within and between social groups. Commoning methodologies, we argue, may contrbute in a modest way to change the conditions of possibility for social change and trigger processes of social transformation in the context in which they are deployed.