ABSTRACT
A discussion of the concept of “the common”, starting from Elinor Ostrom’s work, leads to a radical critique of the “mediaeval” approach of Dardot and Laval’s Common, by conceptually opposing the futuristic Italian Comune, as significant for a contemporary political use, to the disappeared English commoners.
Current debates about “the common” confront the monopolisation of natural and social richness either by capitalist property or by supposed competent authority. They are primarily around the problems of the nation-state. See Stefano Rodotà in Italy and Benjamin Coriat in France. On this basis, I propose a metastructural reconstruction of the “common”, distinguishing between Elinor Ostrom’s immediate common – that of immediate cooperation – and the national common, which tends to take over and subvert the market and organisational “mediations”.
The ultimate “common” is to be conceived as the “World-Nation”, standing in opposition to both the World-State and the World-System. In this regard, I consider the worldwide experience of the COVID-19. New utopias come to the aid of theory by illustrating new affects, those of the construction of the ecological World-Nation. Not a possessive, but a protective nation. I explore these limits that are also the limits of law and morality by suggesting a new “ontological turn” via a critique of Philippe Escola.
