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Contribution short abstract

This paper theorizes gleaning as a 'minor tactic' of un/commoning in the Racial Capitalocene, positioning it not as a Eurocentric pre-capitalist 'custom' but as a practice (re)forming with (neo)liberal markets that offers distinct, if limited agency in everyday postcolonial life.

Contribution long abstract

This paper outlines and problematizes gleaning as a form of un/commoning in the Racial Capitalocene. Gleaning is an age-old practice grounded in the right of the subaltern to the remainder, and the obligation of the dominant to produce and/or grant access to this remainder under conditions of marginality. Drawing on the history of gleaning and its Eurocentric framing vis-à-vis contemporary empirical examples from the larger Global South and especially Senegal and Ghana, this paper aims to move beyond the portrayal of gleaning as a pre-capitalist 'custom' of commoning and shows how it is a vital, if often overlooked practice of everyday postcololonial life. Contemporary gleaning arrangements call upon moral registers of benevolence, neediness and marginality that see (re)formation in the advance of (neo)liberal markets. Thereby, gleaning transgresses common notions of moral economies: it does not necessarily stand in opposition to profit, yet introduces different assumption to capitalist principles such as accumulation, property or standardisation under the prerogative of the 'limit'. As such, gleaning, I trace, can be a key, if fragile livelihood practice especially for women that also allows to eschew labour relations or can figure as an integral part of and a means of reshaping labour relations. Adding to notions such as black commons, latent commons, peri-capitalist sites, undercommons or infrapolitics, gleaning as what I have termed a 'minor tactic' thus creates distinct, if entwined minor niches within hierarchical socio-economic relations and their dynamics of marginalisation, dispossession and ruination. Gleaning is thereby permeated by indeterminacy and limits and both affirms and decenters these relations, while breathing a sense of justice and figuring as a larger promise that questions the givenness of hierarchies, the character of work/labour and the establishment of property and value.