Ep. 1 Disclosing Enclosures — Historiographies of Enclosures / Lijuan Klassen / 03.02.2024 by Radio Robida

Disclosing Enclosures

Over five episodes, this show will explore the concept of enclosure. The enclosure movement historically refers to the gradual privatisation of common land by wealthy landowners, literally by drawing a fence or hedge around an open field. Each episode takes a different angle to unpack the social, material and philosophical meaning of enclosure practices on varying scales, from medieval England to present-day Topolò.
We begin with introductory remarks on the history of dispossession and revolts in medieval Europe, followed by the story of land privatisation in Topolò. In the second episode, we look at the body as a territory in light of women's enclosure in the private sphere of the household and the separation of social production from reproductive labour. The third episode is dedicated to the relations between enclosures and ecology, with another special guest, Antonio Frederico Lasalvia, who tells us about bubbles and spheres. For the fourth episode, we visit the twin cities Nova Gorica and Gorizia, reflecting on life at the border, material, imagined, abolished or new. The show concludes with a conversation on Of Hospitality by Jacques Derrida with Donovan Stewart, departing from the question at the core of centuries of struggle over commons and enclosures, which is how to live well and just together within the planetary boundaries.”
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Historiographies of Enclosures

Historically enclosures describe the struggles between the processual privatization of common land by law and by force and anti-enclosure resistance and commoning efforts in medieval Europe. For Karl Marx, the enclosure of common land constituted the “primitive accumulation” of capital that enabled the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. However, a classical Marxist analysis of the processes at this time often omits the crucial role played by the exclusion of women from the labour market and their enclosure in the private family home, as well as the violent expulsion of Indigenous people and the enclosure of their land, and the labour by enslaved people in the European colonies. Enclosures were never innocent but engendered a relationship to the natural environment that viewed land as private property. In the case of settler colonialism, as well, the right to declare land as one's property is grounded on and was justified by a racist rationale. This episode asks how enclosures were differently understood and justified. What were the immediate and distant, material and cultural repercussions of enclosures? And to bring it to a local context, how did enclosures affect life in Topolò?
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Author: Lijuan Klassen
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The Other Radio program is financed by Javni zavod GO! 2025 - European capital of culture, Nova Gorica.