Prompt 06: Intimacy vs Property

Prompt #6 has been contributed by Andrea Francke who proposes to revisit the “infectious concept” of property and sovereignty. She writes, “I’m annoyed by radical structures that reify the idea of property as THE way to think about our relations to each other and the world.” Rather, she calls for the courage to pay attention to the actual ways we exist with each other, what she calls “the intimacy of interdependency”.

Andrea selected five texts that contribute to this shift from property to intimacy from different entry points. For the ones who don't want to spend too much time with the selected texts Andrea sent short introductions to their main ideas.

Intimacy vs. Property 1 I’m annoyed by radical structures that reify the idea of property as THE way to think about our relations to each other and the world. Property is such an infectious concept. In my practice, from looking at motherhood to book piracy to how we evaluate social art practice, it seems that the first thing I encounter is always a taken-forgranted, a postulate: that the path to change and thence liberation is just a matter of redistributing property rights to the RIGHT people and the enabling of “our" sovereignty.