Elizabeth Povinelli

Elizabeth A. Povinelli (1962) is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University where she has also been director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Law and Culture. Informed by settler colonial theory, pragmatism and critical theory, Povinelli's writing has focused on developing a critical theory of late liberalism that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. She is the author of books and essays as well as former editor of the academic journal Public Culture. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University in 1991.

Povinelli is one of the founding members of the Karrabing Film Collective. Karrabing films were awarded the 2015 Visible Award and the 2015 Cinema Nova Award Best Short Fiction Film, Melbourne International Film Festival and have shown internationally including in the Berlinale Forum Expanded, Sydney Biennale; MIFF, the Tate Modern, documenta-14, and the Contour Biennale.

Books

• Labor's Lot: The Power, History and Culture of Aboriginal Action, University of Chicago Press, 1994, 339 pp. Publisher.

• The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, 352 pp, EPUB, ARG. Publisher.

• The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006, 328 pp, ARG. Publisher.

• Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011, 256 pp, ARG. Publisher.

• Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016, xii+218 pp.
  • Geontologien. Ein Requiem auf den Spätliberalismus, trans. Axel Walter, Leipzig: Merve, 2020, 240 pp. (German)

• The Inheritance, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021, 336 pp. Publisher.

• Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021, 192 pp. Publisher.

• Routes/Worlds, Berlin: Sternberg, 2022, 224 pp. Publisher. [1]

Journal issues

• editor, with George Chauncey, GLQ 5(4): "Thinking Sexuality Transnationally", Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999, pp 439-629.

• editor, with Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, and Anton Vidokle, e-flux 58: "Quasi-Events", Oct 2014. A series of essays in conversation with Povinelli’s essay "Time/Bank, Effort/Embankments".

Essays

• "Do Rocks Listen? The Cultural Politics of Apprehending Australian Aboriginal Labor", American Anthropologist 97:3, Sep 1995, pp 505-518.
• "The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship", Critical Inquiry 24(2): "Intimacy", Winter 1998, pp 575-610.
• "Settler Modernity and the Quest for an Indigenous Tradition", in Alternative Modernities, ed. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001, pp 24-57.
• "Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability", Annual Review of Anthropology 30, 2001, pp 319-334.
• "Consuming Geist: Popontology and the Spirit of Capital in Indigenous Australia", in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism, eds. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Duke University Press, 2001, pp 241-270. [2]
• "A Flight from Freedom", in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, eds. Ania Loomba, et al., Duke University Press, 2005, pp 145-165. [3]
• "The Woman on the Other Side of the Wall: Archiving the Otherwise in Postcolonial Digital Archives", differences 22:1, May 2011, pp 146-171.
• "The Persistence of Hope: Critical Theory and Enduring in Late Liberalism", in Theory After 'Theory' , eds. Jane Elliot and Derek Attridge, Routledge, 2011, pp 105-119.
• "Routes/Worlds", e-flux 27, Sep 2011.
• "The Will to Be Otherwise/The Effort of Endurance", South Atlantic Quarterly 111:3, 2012, pp 453-475.
• "After the Last Man: Images and Ethics of Becoming Otherwise", e-flux 35, May 2012.
• "Geontologies of the Otherwise", Fieldsights: "Theorizing the Contemporary", 13 Jan 2014.
• "On Suicide, and Other Forms of Social Extinguishment", in Theory Aside, eds. Jason Potts and Daniel Stout, Duke University Press, 2014, 78-95. [4]
• "Holding Up the World, Part II: Time/Bank, Effort/Embankments", e-flux 58, Oct 2014.
• "Transgender Creeks and the Three Figures of Power in Late Liberalism", differences 26:1, 2015, pp 168-187.
• "Petroleum", Fieldsights: "Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen", 21 Jan 2016.
• "Windjarrameru, The Stealing C*nt$", Supercommunity: e-flux journal 56th Venice Biennale, 21 May 2016.
• "`As if in a perpetual chain…’: The Gift & the Soul in a Mexican Diamond", in Jill Magid: The Proposal, eds. Nikolaus Hirsch, Carin Kuoni, Hesse McGraw, and Markus Miessen, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016. Catalogue essay. [5]
• "The Rhetorics of Recognition in Geontopower", Philosophy and Rhetoric 48(4): "The Rhetorical Contours of Recognition", 2016, pp 428-442.
• "The World is Flat and Other Weird Speculations", in Object-Oriented Feminism, ed. Katherine Behar, University of Minnesota Press, 2016. [6]
• "Geontologies: The Figures and the Tactics", e-flux 78, Dec 2016.
• "What Do White People Want?", e-flux conversations, Jan 2017.
• "The Ends of Humans: Anthropocene, Autonomism, Antagonism and the Illusions of our Epoch", South Atlantic Quarterly 116(2): "Autonomia in the Anthropocene", eds. Bruce Braun and Sara Nelson, Apr 2017, pp 293-310.
• "Geontologies: The Concept and Its Territories", e-flux 81, Apr 2017.
• "The Three Figures of Geontology", in Anthropocene Feminism, ed. Richard Grusin, University of Minnesota Press, 2017, pp 49-64.
• "Fires, Fogs, Winds", Cultural Anthropology 32:4, 2017, pp 504-513, HTML.
• "The Kinship of Tides", in Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science, ed. Stefanie Hessler, MIT Press, 2018. [7]
• "Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats", e-flux 90, Apr 2018.
• "Mother Earth: Public Sphere, Biosphere, Colonial Sphere", e-flux 92, Jun 2018.
• "Stubborn", ills. Clara Bessijelle Johansson, e-flux 95, Nov 2018.
• with Tess Lea, "Karrabing: An Essay in Keywords", Visual Anthropology Review 34:1, pp 36-46.
• "The Urban Intensions of Geontopower", e-flux architecture: "Liquid Utility", 2019.
• "The Rise of an Indigenous Europe and the Genealogies of Indigeneities", Gropius Bau Journal, 2020.

Interviews, conversations

• with Audra Simpson and Liza Johnson, "Holding Up the World, Part IV: After a Screening of When the Dogs Talked at Columbia University", e-flux 58, Oct 2014.
• with Lauren Berlant, "Holding Up the World, Part III: In the Event of Precarity ... A Conversation", e-flux 58, Oct 2014.
• with Matthew Coleman and Kathryn Yusoff, "An Interview with Elizabeth Povinelli: Geontopower, Biopolitics and the Anthropocene", Theory, Culture & Society 34(2-3): "Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene", Mar-May 2017, pp 1-17.
• with Angela Lewis, Cecilia Lewis, Joclyn MacDonald, Linda Yarrowin, and Sandra Yarrowin, "Australian Babel: A Conversation with Karrabing", Specimen: The Babel Review of Translation, Oct 2017.

Films

• When the Dogs Talked, 2014, 33m53s. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli, co-directed Liza Johnson. Premiere: Gertrude Contemporary. Winner 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival Cinema Nova Award for Best Short Fiction Film.
• Windjarrameru, The Stealing C*nt$, 2015, 35m34s. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Premier: Melbourne Film Festival
• Wutharr, The Saltwater, 2016, 28m27s. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Premiere: Sydney Biennale. Winner 2015 European Visible Award.
• The Jealous One, 2017, 29m17s. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Premiere: 2017 Commissioned by Van Abbemuseum & Frontier Imaginaries.
• Night Time Go, 2017, 31m10s. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Premiere: 2017 Union Docs.
• The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland, 2018, 26m29s. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Premiere: 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival.
• Mermaids, Mirror Worlds, 2018. Conceived and Realized by the Karrabing Film Collective; Directed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Premiere: 2018 Van Abbemuseum & Publics.

Links

• Profile on U Columbia
• Wikipedia