Property. Colonial Histories and Messages to the Future

Abstract

To possess something is to lose something: Start­ing from this seemingly contradictory claim this essay invokes various registers to defamiliarize the ways in which property structures subjec­tivity, world relations and affects. Intertwined with colonialism, racism and sexism, concepts of property have found an echo in piracy and “postcolonial copyright.” At the level of theory, a crossing out and a reversal of time are required to undo property-related violence and its mind­sets. At the level of artistic practice new modes of appropriation become imaginable. And while the commons will not be restored, multiple modes of having and commoning are possible.