Podcast appearances and mentions of Elizabeth A Povinelli

This week's guest, Andrea Leiter, is one of those polymaths who brings not just breadth, but astonishing depth to the work of bridging the worlds of technology, biodiversity and international law; bringing them together in service of a new way of being built from the ruins of collapse. Andrea works at the intersection of law, digital transformation, and economic innovation. Director of Amsterdam Center for International Law, she's deeply aware of, and involved in, Transnational Law, Digital Economies & Institutional Innovation, all things crypto - as well as being a Social Justice Entrepreneur. She holds a jointly awarded PhD in Law from the University of Melbourne and the University of Vienna, where her dissertation examined the historical foundations of international investment law and the legal architectures of global capital. Her resulting manuscript titled ‘Making the World Safe for Investment: The Protection of Foreign Property 1922-1959' was published with Cambridge University Press. She is a junior faculty member at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. As legal scholar and strategist, her expertise lies in transnational law, private ordering, the governance of digital economies, and the design of new institutional forms for just and sustainable futures.  I came across her when she was a guest on the Blockchain Socialist podcast - one of my must-listens - and heard that she was co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI), a venture which aimed to 'merge nature with digital ecosystems and introduce online communities to ecological stewardship whilst developing novel funding mechanisms for vital biodiversity protection and restoration'.  you'll hear more about this in the conversation that follows, but I want to emphasise that the SNI team designed and implemented the Decentralised Ecological Economics Protocol (DEEP), which demonstrated how blockchain infrastructure can serve biodiversity goals. Over two years, SNI developed and distributed more than one million digital collectibles, activating new models of ecological value creation.Currently, Andrea leads a Dutch Research Council-funded VENI project on Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) and their potential to reshape economic governance from below. She also serves as Acting Director of Research at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, where she guides strategic research planning and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. She also co-developed and launched an Advanced LLM in Technology Governance with a public purpose orientation, an effort that included curriculum design, funding acquisition, and stakeholder engagement.One of Andrea's superpowers is the ability to take complex concepts and make them comprehensible to ordinary people: blockchain, cryptocurrency, the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum, the potential for technology to be used to heal as well as the many ways it is already being used to harm, so we spent the first half of our conversation exploring the baselines of where we are and what's happening in the world. I refer to Andrea's blog post, 'Who gets to bet on the future?' which first appeared on her Transformative Private Law Blog and is linked in the show notes. She mentioned several books and I've linked those in the show notes too, because they were new to me, and completely mind blowing.  I found ExoCapitalism as a pdf where you decide what you pay - this is the value of small presses that actually get what their books are discussing - and Protocols for Post Capitalist Expression is open source - you can read it and engage in the process with others in the Economic Space Agency. Links Sovereign Nature Initiative https://sovereignnature.com/Andrea on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-leiter/Amsterdam Centre for Intenational Law https://acil.uva.nl/VENI project https://www.nwo.nl/en/researchprogrammes/nwo-talent-programme/projects-veniTransformative Private Law Blog "Who gets to bet on the future?" https://transformativeprivatelaw.com/who-gets-to-bet-on-the-future/Andrea on Blockchain Socialist Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-blockchain-socialist/id1501607045?i=1000660699306Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism by Elizabeth A. Povinelli https://dukeupress.edu/between-gaia-and-groundExoCapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits by Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo https://goodpress.co.uk/products/exocapitalism-economies-with-absolutely-no-limits-by-marek-poliks-roberto-alonso-trilloPROTOCOLS FOR POST CAPITALIST EXPRESSION by Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen https://postcapitalist.agency/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  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, Césaire, 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. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi'i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  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, Césaire, 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. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi'i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  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, Césaire, 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. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi'i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  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, Césaire, 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. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi'i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  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, Césaire, 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. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi'i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  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, Césaire, 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. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi'i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

11 November 2021Elizabeth A. PovinelliHeritability and the Ancestral Presenthttps://hessische-theaterakademie.de/de/ringvorlesungHERITABILITY AND THE ANCESTRAL PRESENTIn diesem Vortrag wird eine Reihe von parallelen Momenten in der Gegenwart der Vorfahren zweier Clans vorgestellt, um die Beziehung zwischen Indigenität und weißem Nativismus im Kontext des Siedlerkolonialismus zu untersuchen. Sie nähert sich einer Wende in der Politik der Differenz, indem sie nachverfolgt, wie zwei Gruppen von Clans sich durch historische Formen der Gegenwart der Vorfahren bewegt haben, nämlich durch sich verändernde Vorstellungen von sozialer Form, Zeit und Vererbbarkeit, und wie diese Vorstellungen aus menschlichen Körpern und der übermenschlichen Welt hervorgehen und sich in ihnen materiell niederschlagen. Bei den Clans handelt es sich einerseits um den Simonaz-Clan, Patronym Povinelli, und den Bartolot-Clan, Patronym Ambrosi, aus Carisolo, Trentino, und andererseits um die totemistischen Clans der Karrabing, die sich entlang der Küstenregion der Anson Bay, Northern Territory, Australien, erstrecken. Beide Gruppen sind in monarchischen Imperien und liberalen Nationalismen aufgegangen; beide haben Formen des Siedlerkolonialismus und des weißen Nativismus durchlaufen. Beide lassen sich nicht auf eine nationale Form reduzieren, aber auch ihre Beziehungen zum Siedlerkolonialismus sind nicht dieselben. So setzen beide mein Interesse an der Dynamik zwischen Kolonialismus und liberalem Regieren fort - wie die europäische Eroberung des westlichen Atlantiks und des Pazifiks die Formen des liberalen Regierens noch lange nachdem die ersten Kolonialflotten ihre Armeen, Entdecker und Siedler ausgeschifft haben, verändert.https://www.uni-giessen.de/fbz/fb05/atw/aktuelles/un-settled-performance-protection-and-politics-of-insecurityElizabeth A. Povinelli ist eine kritische Theoretikerin und Filmemacherin. In ihren kritischen Schriften konzentriert sie sich auf die Entwicklung einer kritischen Theorie des späten Siedlerliberalismus, die eine Anthropologie des Anderen unterstützen würde. Diese potenzielle Theorie hat sich in fünf Büchern, zahlreichen Aufsätzen und einer fünfunddreißigjährigen Zusammenarbeit mit ihren indigenen Kollegen in Nordaustralien entfaltet, einschließlich der jüngsten sechs Filme, die sie als Mitglieder des Karrabing Film Collective geschaffen haben. Ihre jüngsten Bücher Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism wurde 2017 mit dem Lionel Trilling Book Award ausgezeichnet und The Cunning of Recognition war ein Art Forum Best Book of the Year.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli's inheritance was passed down not through blood or soil but through a framed map of Trentino, Alto Adige—the region where family's ancestral alpine village is found. Far more than a map hanging above the family television, the image featured colors and lines that held in place the memories and values fueling the Povinelli family's fraught relationships with the village and with each other. In her graphic memoir The Inheritance (Duke UP, 2020), Povinelli explores the events, traumas, and powers that divide and define our individual and collective pasts and futures. Weaving together stories of her grandparents' flight from their village in the early twentieth century to the fortunes of their knife-grinding business in Buffalo, New York, and her own Catholic childhood in a shrinking Louisiana woodlands of the 1960s and 1970s, Povinelli describes the serial patterns of violence, dislocation, racism and structural inequality that have shaped not only her life but the American story. Plumbing the messy relationships among nationality, ethnicity, kinship, religion, and belonging, The Inheritance takes us into the gulf between the facts of history and the stories we tell ourselves to survive and justify them. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Elizabeth A. Povinelli's inheritance was passed down not through blood or soil but through a framed map of Trentino, Alto Adige—the region where family's ancestral alpine village is found. Far more than a map hanging above the family television, the image featured colors and lines that held in place the memories and values fueling the Povinelli family's fraught relationships with the village and with each other. In her graphic memoir The Inheritance (Duke UP, 2020), Povinelli explores the events, traumas, and powers that divide and define our individual and collective pasts and futures. Weaving together stories of her grandparents' flight from their village in the early twentieth century to the fortunes of their knife-grinding business in Buffalo, New York, and her own Catholic childhood in a shrinking Louisiana woodlands of the 1960s and 1970s, Povinelli describes the serial patterns of violence, dislocation, racism and structural inequality that have shaped not only her life but the American story. Plumbing the messy relationships among nationality, ethnicity, kinship, religion, and belonging, The Inheritance takes us into the gulf between the facts of history and the stories we tell ourselves to survive and justify them. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Elizabeth A. Povinelli's inheritance was passed down not through blood or soil but through a framed map of Trentino, Alto Adige—the region where family's ancestral alpine village is found. Far more than a map hanging above the family television, the image featured colors and lines that held in place the memories and values fueling the Povinelli family's fraught relationships with the village and with each other. In her graphic memoir The Inheritance (Duke UP, 2020), Povinelli explores the events, traumas, and powers that divide and define our individual and collective pasts and futures. Weaving together stories of her grandparents' flight from their village in the early twentieth century to the fortunes of their knife-grinding business in Buffalo, New York, and her own Catholic childhood in a shrinking Louisiana woodlands of the 1960s and 1970s, Povinelli describes the serial patterns of violence, dislocation, racism and structural inequality that have shaped not only her life but the American story. Plumbing the messy relationships among nationality, ethnicity, kinship, religion, and belonging, The Inheritance takes us into the gulf between the facts of history and the stories we tell ourselves to survive and justify them. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Elizabeth A. Povinelli's inheritance was passed down not through blood or soil but through a framed map of Trentino, Alto Adige—the region where family's ancestral alpine village is found. Far more than a map hanging above the family television, the image featured colors and lines that held in place the memories and values fueling the Povinelli family's fraught relationships with the village and with each other. In her graphic memoir The Inheritance (Duke UP, 2020), Povinelli explores the events, traumas, and powers that divide and define our individual and collective pasts and futures. Weaving together stories of her grandparents' flight from their village in the early twentieth century to the fortunes of their knife-grinding business in Buffalo, New York, and her own Catholic childhood in a shrinking Louisiana woodlands of the 1960s and 1970s, Povinelli describes the serial patterns of violence, dislocation, racism and structural inequality that have shaped not only her life but the American story. Plumbing the messy relationships among nationality, ethnicity, kinship, religion, and belonging, The Inheritance takes us into the gulf between the facts of history and the stories we tell ourselves to survive and justify them. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL 2019 – HEREAFTER Elizabeth A. Povinelli – After the End, Stubborn Affects and Collective Practices 24 February – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands With an introduction by Mirna Belina. As many in the West look forward to a climate-induced end of times, huge areas of the human and nonhuman world have been struggling to exist in the toxic excrement of late liberal capitalism. For them, the end of the world has already happened – and it has happened multiple times: the catastrophe of colonialism and imperialism, neoliberalism and extractive capitalism, toxicity and disrepair. This talk asks what affective and collective practices look like if viewed from within worlds that have long existed after the end, using the Karrabing Film Collective as a special case. Elizabeth A. Povinelli is an anthropologist and filmmaker. She is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, New York, Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and a founding member of the Karrabing Film Collective. She is the author of five books, including the most recent, Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (2016), winner of the Lionel Trilling Book Award. Karrabing films and installations have shown at the Tate Modern, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Melbourne International Film Festival, Contour Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Van Abbemuseum, Institute for Modern Art in Brisbane, Vargas Museum and other venues. Povinelli lives and works in New York City and Darwin, Australia. The visit of Elizabeth Povinelli was made possible by Het Nieuwe Instituut with support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

David Kim and Yazan Khalili discuss Yazan's video, Hiding Our Faces Like a Dancing Wind, currently on view in the exhibition Being: New Photography 2018 at MoMA through August 19, 2018. "How do we disappear in the digital age? This is a project that works with the facial recognition technologies in smart devices and its historical background in the colonial practices." A segment of the video can be watched on Yazan's website. You can find an additional conversation on the impossible legality of an artwork between David Kim, Yazan Khalili, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Jonathan Beller, and Vivian Ziherl in e-flux journal #90. David Kim is a graduate of Yale Law School, at which he was the curator of JUNCTURE: Explorations in Art and Human Rights, an initiative sponsored by the Schell Center for International Human Rights. Kim is currently a principal at the management consultancy Incandescent. He also collaborates with curators and artists on projects in connection with property, contracts, finance, and human rights. Yazan Khalili lives and works in and out of Palestine. He is an architect, visual artist, and a cultural activist. Khalili has woven together parallel stories over the years, forming both questions and paradoxes concerning scenery and the act of gazing, all of which are refracted through the prism of intimate politics and alienating poetics. He is the director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli discusses four axioms of critical theory in response to her presentation, "Toxic Assets the the Extimacy of Existence," from Frontier Imaginaries Ed.No3 at e-flux. In conversation with journal editor Stephen Squibb. Read Elizabeth A. Povinelli in e-flux journal: "Geontologies: The Concept and Its Territories" from issue 81, April 2017 "Geontologies: The Figures and the Tactics" from issue 78, December 2016