The Urban Commons' economic analysis through New Materialism ontologies. Some empirical evidences

The paper addresses Urban Commons' economic analysis once approached through New Materialism ontologies. Mostly theorized in quantum physics and philosophy, it is along the way of New Materialism that an emergent analytical tool-kit could be extended to economic value discourse. What motivates us is the possibility of a new ecological deal in Commons Theory, whereas governance is no more grounded on binary human subject - nonhuman object relationships. New Materialism calls us to a shift from a vision of polycentric governance, whose outcome is provided in terms of efficiency through normative institutions, to a governance understood as an intra-actioning (Barad, 2003), that is, a zone of indistinction between the usual categories of community and resource. We believe that New Materialisms can guide the economic study of commons governance in two categorical innovations: considering Time, instead of land, as a 'resource' to be made non-scarce; reinventing agency, from a human community relating to a resource, to a surface of immanence (Deleuze, Guattari 1980; Bruno, 2014). An intra-active governance operates both a shifting and heterogeneous community and a land to be managed. What has to be governed by this indistinct agency is the cyclical reproduction of Time to infinity. Providing evidences from L'Asilo, an Urban Commons based in Naples, Southern Italy, we will see that the economic result of commons to be evaluated moves from a cause-effect linearity, as a project based on limited rationality, to a cyclical and performative discourse, as the infinite return of the political and economic principle of Commoning.