In Geontologies Elizabeth A. Povinelli continues her project of mapping the current conditions of late liberalism by offering a bold retheorization of power. Finding Foucauldian biopolitics unable to adequately reveal contemporary mechanisms of power and governance, Povinelli describes a mode of power she calls geontopower, which operates through the regulation of the distinction between Life and Nonlife and the figures of the Desert, the Animist, and the Virus. Geontologies examines this formation of power from the perspective of Indigenous Australian maneuvers against the settler state. And it probes how our contemporary critical languages-anthropogenic climate change, plasticity, new materialism, antinormativity-often unwittingly transform their struggles against geontopower into a deeper entwinement within it. A woman who became a river, a snakelike entity who spawns the fog, plesiosaurus fossils and vast networks of rock weirs: in asking how these different forms of existence refuse incorporation into the vocabularies of Western theory Povinelli provides a revelatory new way to understand a form of power long self-evident in certain regimes of settler late liberalism but now becoming visible much further beyond.
Industry Reviews
"Geontologies is a dense work that resists being described in telegraphic terms, based as it is in dazzling and far-reaching theoretical and philosophical readings. But Povinelli's key concepts of 'geontology' and 'geontopower' are an invaluable contribution to our much-needed critical lexicon, [and] the concepts and modes of engagement presented in Geontologies, though firmly rooted in the experience and particular governance of Australian settler late liberalism, demand to be taken up and translated in other contexts." -- Shela Sheikh * Avery Review *
"Geontologies may well inspire new possibilities for thinking, relating and being." -- Eve Vincent * Australian Aboriginal Studies *
"Geontologies is a challenging, exhilarating, and terrifying read. Challenging and exhilarating for all those interested in what deep ethnographic inquiry has to offer to a broad range of contemporary philosophy and social theory. And terrifying and exhilarating for those who find themselves asking whether the drama of Life's possible extinction really matters." -- Andrea Muehlebach * Anthropological Quarterly *
"Short, conceptually packed . . . a rewarding read that will keep reverberating." -- Mario Blaser * Journal of Anthropological Research *
"Geontologies contributes valuably . . . offering a sophisticated account of the Australian context as well as analytic tools and vocabulary to continue the work elsewhere." -- Zoe Power & Kirsten McIlveen * Social & Cultural Geography *
