In Between Gaia and Ground Elizabeth A. Povinelli theorizes the climatic, environmental, viral, and social catastrophe present as an ancestral catastrophe through which that Indigenous and colonized peoples have been suffering for centuries. In this way, the violence and philosophies the West relies on now threaten the West itself. Engaging with the work of Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari, Cesaire, and Arendt, Povinelli highlights four axioms of existence-the entanglement of existence, the unequal distribution of power, the collapse of the event as essential to political thought, and the legacies of racial and colonial histories. She traces these axioms' inspiration in anticolonial struggles against the dispossession and extraction that have ruined the lived conditions for many on the planet. By examining the dynamic and unfolding forms of late liberal violence, Povinelli attends to a vital set of questions about changing environmental conditions, the legacies of violence, and the limits of inherited Western social theory. Between Gaia and Ground also includes a glossary of the keywords and concepts that Povinelli has developed throughout her work.
In Between Gaia and Ground Elizabeth A. Povinelli theorizes the climatic, environmental, viral, and social catastrophe present as an ancestral catastrophe through which that Indigenous and colonized peoples have been suffering for centuries. In this way, the violence and philosophies the West relies on now threaten the West itself. Engaging with the work of Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari, Cesaire, and Arendt, Povinelli highlights four axioms of existence-the entanglement of existence, the unequal distribution of power, the collapse of the event as essential to political thought, and the legacies of racial and colonial histories. She traces these axioms' inspiration in anticolonial struggles against the dispossession and extraction that have ruined the lived conditions for many on the planet. By examining the dynamic and unfolding forms of late liberal violence, Povinelli attends to a vital set of questions about changing environmental conditions, the legacies of violence, and the limits of inherited Western social theory. Between Gaia and Ground also includes a glossary of the keywords and concepts that Povinelli has developed throughout her work.
Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University and founding member of the Karrabing Film Collective. Her most recent book is The Inheritance, also published by Duke University Press.
“Engaging with modern philosophy’s original problem of how to
ground truth (approached in ontological terms) within the limits of
human existence (delimited in historical terms), Between Gaia and
Ground proposes a starting point for thinking about the capitalist
present that foregrounds precisely what pre- and post-Enlightenment
European thinkers have consistently foreclosed. Locating colonial
and racial power at the core of the thinking of existence,
Elizabeth A. Povinelli provides an urgently needed corrective to
contemporary critical theorizing's insistence on ignoring its
existential conditions of emergence (thought in political
terms).”
*Unpayable Debt*
“Between Gaia and Ground not only extends the trajectory of
Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s pathbreaking work, it participates in a
highly promising movement to unsettle disciplines and narrative
genres in the aftermath of global capital, militarism, and
accelerating environmental destruction. Provocative and
timely.”
*The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive
World-Making*
“Drawing on wide-ranging intellectual and political itineraries,
Between Gaia and Ground offers a provoking way to theorize
environmental violence that will be sure to attract and stir up
readers.”
*The Economization of Life*
"One of the book’s greatest contributions is that it generates
dialogue between a significant part of prevailing critical theory
and the issue of power. This is achieved through detailed attention
to the implications of the task of analysis and development of
concepts for understanding social processes and seeking
transformations to situations of violence and injustice. This could
be useful not only in academic contexts, but also in struggles in
which indigenous peoples, Afro-Americans, and other excluded groups
participate."
*Social & Cultural Geography*
"Ambitious in scope and far-reaching in its critique, Povinelli’s
Between Gaia and Ground offers invaluable insights toward a
decolonial environmental theory that can inspire more just
ecological practices. It will undoubtedly shape future discussions
across many fields."
*Contemporary Political Theory*
"Bringing a range of critical thinkers into discussion with each
other, such as Hannah Arendt, Gregory Bateson, Edouard Glissant,
and Aime Cesaire, Povinelli illuminates the implications of
political action when critical theory is differently positioned
across colonialism. . . . Between Gaia and Ground is a timely book
to shine a light on the limits of Western critical thought, and its
co-option into late liberal violence."
*Thesis Eleven*
"Sociologists, anthropologists, and decolonial thinkers across,
beyond, and against disciplinary thought will be interested in
Povinelli’s newest interrogation of what she terms the 'ancestral
catastrophe of late liberalism.' . . . For sociologists whose
discipline was formed through a western imperial gaze, with its
epistemological commitment to abstraction and the discovery of
universal social laws, Povinelli’s challenge is a vital one."
*Contemporary Sociology*
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