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Stefano Harney

Scholar who, with Fred Moten, developed the concept of the undercommons as a site of fugitive study and collective life within and against institutional structures.

Stefano Harney is a scholar whose work, developed primarily in collaboration with Fred Moten, examines the possibilities for collective intellectual life that persist within and against the university and other institutions.

Core ideas

  • The undercommons: developed with Moten in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013), the undercommons names the spaces of study, care, and collective life that exist in refusal of institutional legibility — not a place but a condition, inhabited through fugitive relation.
  • Logistics and governance: Harney’s work examines how logistical thinking — the management of populations and flows — has become a dominant mode of governance, and how the undercommons operates as its refusal.

Notable works

  • The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013, with Fred Moten)
  • All Incomplete (2021, with Fred Moten)

Relations

Date created

Cite

@misc{emsenn2026-stefano-harney,
  author    = {emsenn},
  title     = {Stefano Harney},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Scholar who, with Fred Moten, developed the concept of the undercommons as a site of fugitive study and collective life within and against institutional structures.},
  url       = {https://emsenn.net/library/general/domains/people/stefano-harney/},
  publisher = {emsenn.net},
  license   = {CC BY-SA 4.0}
}