Comments on: Persistent Point of First Contact – Povinelli & EASA2014

By: Tessa

Tessa — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 18:13:52 +0000

Just saw Povinelli’s her lecture in Finland, Orivesi, Nordic Summer School – it all had to do with geontopower – a concept she never managed to define, never managed to argue for through any example, instead providing only an incoherent nonsensical ramble about “late liberalism” and the way it relates to geontopower, something that can be boiled down to the life – non-life dichotomy (omg some things have carbon and some don’t – scandal!). She suggested that in this sense the Aboriginal population is being perceived by the people in power as non-life, i.e. as rocks (duh – have there not been many more interesting and fitting social critiques of exactly this power relation before – and I am sorry, even the oppressor can see that these people have an agency…rocks, really, is it not precisely their acts, behavior, modes of enjoyment that, among other things, has been bugging the state?). No single example of this power at play in real social, political or economic encounters. It boiled all down to random name-dropping, some assemblages, and in the end she even got Kant and the sublime completely wrong. An utter disaster. The presentation style can be summed up as: “you have all read Foucault, so I do not have to explain this to you”, and so on – yes, we have read it, but it would be nice to see what exactly in Foucault is being critiqued or remedied by the concept, but alas, forget an answer amidst this verbal vomit. And in between – a little bit of stand up comedy – you know the moments where the American tries to be funny on stage, you know it should be funny, it is not, but still you feel obliged to laugh – sadly the laughing points would have been the only serious points, but alas amidst all the laughter never developed. I was shocked to see this woman being a Franz Boas professor, must be turning in grave this poor chap. – Saying this, I have never read her books, so this is based solely on what she did not manage at all to explain today – but certainly, this performance was the opposite of arousing interest. The concept seems shallow, unthought through, intellectually unexciting. As a female anthropologist I felt double shame, for the discipline and women in it. Way to make itself irrelevant in contemporary world where anthropology is most needed.

By: Hal

Hal — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 09:43:37 +0000

She gave a public lecture at Victoria U. Wellington NZ. I found it totally incomprehensible. It was a monologue in a pretentious rambling style delivered with the air of someone pretending to give a scholarly talk. People walked out in the middle, something unusual in a very civil place.

By: helen

helen — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 20:23:43 +0000

Any collaboration between anthropologist and “others” is going to be critiqued in this way. She is going to be translating for her peers – there is no way around it. Likewise, if the “natives” take the anthropologist along to some meeting of theirs, there will be the opposite situation. I am not sure what these Euro-critics propose instead. Also, it seems to me that if the Australian aborigines were complaining, but interestingly it is other Euro-anthropologists who seem to be the righteous ones here….

By: Discuss White Privilege

Discuss White Privilege — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:19:03 +0000

I just read the post above because Rex over at Savage Minds linked to it in his most recent post. Writing from the US, I am struck by the following sentence: “In addition, globalisation has blurred the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’, forcing us to think anew the methodological foundations of our discipline and to devise new forms of collaboration.” Current events in Ferguson, Missouri make clear that some ‘us’ and ‘them’ divides have most certainly not been bridged by globalization–certainly not racial divides between Black and White, especially in the US but not only in the US (i.e. this divide also exists in Europe, even if does not take the same exact forms in Europe. As such, I feel troubled by the kind of uncritical claims about globalization being made upon the ability of Elizabeth Povinelli’s White body’s ability to be summoned to speak at the Tallinn conference. I think the problematic claim made above about globalization blurring ‘us’/’them’ divides is predicated upon assumption of a normative White subject which needs to be acknowledged, not taken for granted. Please address.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 23:05:24 +0000

Thanks for this post. There are plenty of interesting issues to chew over here. I wasn’t at the talk, and don’t want to comment on your treatment of that or its content. I was however struck by your discussion of this thing you like to refer to as “our beloved discipline,” and the suggestion that in some enlightened future there should ideally exist an anthropology that transcends ongoing regional and sub-disciplinary methodological differences. Do you really think that would be a good thing? As an antipodean I was also struck by your focus in this aspect on the European/North American legacy, and wonder where the so-called “global south” (I hate that term) and more specifically real south (eg. of Povinelli’s research and talk and as discussed in the comment above) fits into that divided unit? Perhaps its hiding under the “/” that connects/separates those two entities, or is completely slashed out by it/them? I’m also a bit confused by your comment about peer review. I’m sure you are being very brave indeed in posting this blog entry, but to suggest that the peer review processes is about creating barriers to a somehow more authentic form of immediacy and truth misses the point. Even so, your argument concerning the potential importance of getting initial reactions and opinions out there into the public domain quickly I tend to agree with. I’m pretty sure Elizabeth Povinelli would too.

By: Gillian Cowlishaw

Gillian Cowlishaw — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 07:27:02 +0000

I would like to add to this discussion from outside Europe and the USA. I was not at the keynote in question, but as an Australian I am familiar with some of the conditions that gave rise to the criticisms of Povinelli’s presentation.
I suggest that the response of discomfort to the presentation in part stems from the facts of neo-colonial conditions in Australia that shape interpersonal relationships as well as collaborative projects. This film work was presented at the AAS conference in Canberra last year with the Aboriginal collaborators present and I was reminded of earlier occasions when remote, black, community artists or performers accompany their white anthropologist to the city and are displayed along with their work, to an urban audience. Such occasions commonly evoke some uneasiness that echoes elements of these criticisms.
Vocal, educated and assertive Aboriginal individuals have their voices — and their disputes — heard in Australia, but anthropologists often work with groups who are silenced because they are without mainstream cultural capital. How, or whether, their voices can be brought into the public arena is a difficult and politically fraught question as we know. The anthropologist or linguist can easily appear like the puppet master when she ushers people with different manners into the public domain and invites them to speak.
More commonly, the researcher finds a vocal Aboriginal collaborator with a convenient post-colonial vocabulary to front a collaborative project, or to avoid the visibility of now anthropologically unfashionable ‘difference’, which is often aligned with blackness.
For anthropologists working in settler colonial states there is ‘no space of innocence’, as both indigenous peoples and anthropologists find themselves entangled in all-encompassing public and political processes fraught with complex and ambiguous loyalties and priorities.
I want to add that Beth Povinelli has said that the fundamental focus of her work is the analysis of contemporary liberalism, and it is as a fresh and incisive critic of the liberal governance of Indigenous Australians that her work was eagerly taken up — or rejected — by anthropologists who live and work in Australia.