In defense of conviviality and the collective subject

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This essay takes up the question of a "new" social paradigm by firstexamining the recent emergence of the U.S. Occupied Movement (OM) as a provocativeand inspiring moment of political re-composition, but one that also narrates a morecomplex unraveling of what W.E.B Du Bois called "democratic despotism." The mostrecent political tensions and economic "crisis" of the global north point to the disruptionof a white "middle class" hegemony alongside inspiring moments of reconstructedconviviality. I suggest that the tension within spaces of occupation and convergence areanimated by conviviality that should be read "politically" by noting the emergence oftools in service of community regeneration. Towards that end, I introduce Universidadde la Tierra Califas, a local project somewhere in-between network and collectivepedagogies that is also a project of strategic conviviality and a Zapatismo beyond Chiapas.I argue that UT Califas engages a collective subject as part of an epistemological struggleinspired by Indigenous autonomy currently underway throughout Latin America.