11 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 2 (2025)

 

The Persistence of the Positive: Reflections on Research into the Commons

by Michele Spanò

This review-essay deliberately brackets the analysis of Veronica Pecile’s book, Law, Social Movement and the Politics of the Commons in its empirical or thematic content, in order to focus instead on what might be called its ‘form of content’. The book thus becomes the occasion for a reflection on the modes of research on the commons, on the ethos of the researcher, and on the political and affective investments that this kind of research, in the current global legal and political conjuncture, inevitably involves. Pecile’s work and stance are put into dialogue with a wide range of authors who, like her, are concerned with thinking through the difficult – and not always harmonious – entanglement of affects and concepts, of mediation (through law) and immediacy (of life). ‘Life in common(s)’ appears, therefore, not merely as an object of study, but as a genuine standpoint from which to think.

DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ           ISSN 2421-2156

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