From Blake to Bataille: Romanticism, Communism, and the Commons with Joseph Albernaz

What does Romanticism have to do with communism, enclosure, and
the commons today? In this episode we speak with Joseph Albernaz,
author of Common Measures: Romanticism and the Groundlessness of
Community, about the radical lineage running from Blake and
Hölderlin to Marx and Bataille. We explore how Romantic
literature conceived “groundless community”—a poetic and
ecological alternative to enclosure and collective identity—and
how those ideas reverberate through scene-shaping thinkers like
Bataille, Derrida, Nancy, and Moten. Along the way we trace the
Commons not as a nostalgic relic but as an ethics of excess and
openness that surges beneath modern property and identity
structures.


Common Measures: Romanticism and the Groundlessness of Community:
https://www.sup.org/books/literary-studies-and-literature/common-measures


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