Research Seminar by Professor Elizabeth A. Povinelli

UCD Humanities Institute Seminar Room
Oct 4, 1:30 pm–2:30 pm

Professor Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Columbia) will deliver the seminar: ‘Unskinning the Rights of Nature: Sacred Sites and Mining Manias in the wake of Geontopower’ as part of a seminar series ‘Methodologies concerning Extractivism’ being held by the IRC MINERALS Laureate Project. 

The seminar will be held in the UCD Humanities Institute Seminar Room (H. 204) at 1:30pm on Wednesday 4 October.

Abstract:  In 2020 in order to expand their iron ore mine, Rio Tinto blew up an Indigenous sacred site located in a cave showing continuous occupation since the last Ice Age, over 46,000 years ago. The demolition of the Juukun Gorge site is one in a series of mining atrocities in Indigenous lands. In her talk, Povinelli addresses how the public protection and legal defence struggle to extract themselves from the grip of geontopower.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University.

She is a critical theorist and filmmaker. Her critical writing has focused on developing a critical theory of late settler liberalism that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. This potential theory has unfolded across five books, numerous essays, and a thirty-five years of collaboration with her Indigenous colleagues in north Australia including, most recently, six films they have created as members of the Karrabing Film Collective. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism was the 2017 recipient of the Lionel Trilling Book Award and The Cunning of Recognition was an Art Forum Best Book of the Year.  

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