Ancestral catastrophe, toxic late liberalism, troubled subjectivities and unlikely alliances

In this talk and conversation, we’ll get into some of the core concepts and analyses of anthro-political maestra Elizabeth Povinelli, from ancestral catastrophe and what we may learn about it from aboriginal ways of relating and resisting, to critiques of late liberalism and the toxic, extractivist and ambivalent ways in which it sets us up as subjects and communities.

How do we navigate tensions between genealogy and autology, between past-present-future, and the malediction of progress and modernization, in these times of intensifying socio-ecological crisis, deepening colonial rifts and militarization? What sorts of unlikely alliances (or in the words of Maria Galindo, bastard alliances) may we need to build to get us out of liberal dead ends?

Screening: Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland (26')

Time: 17:00-18:00

Beth Povinelli will then introduce the screening of Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland (2018) by Karrabing Film Collective. This film is about a not so distant future where Europeans can no longer survive for long periods outdoors in a land and seascape poisoned by capitalism, but Indigenous people seem able to.

A young Indigenous man, Aiden, taken away when he was just a baby to be a part of a medical experiment to save the white race, is released into the world of his family. As he travels with his father and brother across the landscape he confronts two possible futures and pasts.