Saving Time

by Jenny Odell

Fred Moten’s articulation of “study.” In an interview at the end of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, he defines study thus: Study is what you do52 with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice …. The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present. These activities aren’t ennobled by the fact that we now say, “oh, if you did these things in a certain way, you could be said to have been studying.” To do these things is to be involved in a kind of common intellectual practice. What’s important to recognize is that that has been the case—because that recognition allows you to access a whole, varied, alternative history of thought.