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there are different ways in which the idea of the commons has worked its way into being one of the most significant memes of the last few years - Pete Linebaugh is not Silvia Federici is not Toni Negri is not Lessig, and so on. Federici, for her part, signals a timely warning in Caliban and the Witch against assuming that ‘the commons’ was without divisions of labour, particularly a gendered division of labour.

Yet, as the idea of ‘the commons’ became resolutely attached to discussions over IP and various other forms of knowledge production it - much like the precarity meme - was often put to service as a way of reimposing a certain claim to ownership and division of labour, namely: the implicit assertion that knowledge-production only involved those who are marked (or mark themselves) as knowledge producers in a certain division of labour.

the concept of the undercommons is disruptive of claims that the commons was an idyll, without difference and without divisions of labour.