Routes/Worlds

by Elizabeth A. Povinelli

An anthropology of the otherwise considers forms of life that run counter to dominant modes of being under late settler liberalism.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli maps the creation and dismantling of worlds formed by the twinning of historical progress and settler colonialism—as a unity in events and a contradiction in ideology. Even if corporations and nation-states now collude in the same Ponzi schemes, they still continue to transform space and time. At the receiving end of the ideological exhaust pipe, where transformation is inherited as deformation, the diagram flips to place brutality and existential exhaustion at the beginning. But the beginning of what? How about a new beginning, starting with modes of survival and persistence against, and within, a world built from deferred promises? This is a world that many in the imperial hemisphere are only starting to realize they've known for longer than they want to admit.

Routes/Worlds rearticulates large-scale systems of power and affect, even as—or precisely because—those systems stage increasingly novel forms of neglect. Today, it only becomes clearer that struggles to survive day-to-day challenges are most often struggles against sedimented raw deals whose disastrous logic needs to be traced over large expanses of space and time to become perceptible. In this constant struggle, Povinelli provides weapons as well as inspiration.

224 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2022

About the author

Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University where she has also been the Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Law and Culture.

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a collection of essays previously published on e-flux webmag from 2011-2022. if you don't mind reading on the internet, you can find them all there, usually alongside relevant contemporary art. if you are a goober like me that can't read much theory online without succumbing to the baser trappings of the internet, this book offers a helpful compilation. the essays are not so much direct parts or even prepublished versions of chapters that would come out in Povinelli's 3ish books during this decade. rather, they're kind of like transitional experiments which experiment with concepts (routes, worlds, embankments, late liberalism, geontopower) across multiple contexts to see if and how they might work to draw attention to certain assemblages of late liberal governance. there are some great extended meditations on Arendt, Bateson, James, Deleuze, Glissant, Cesaire, etc. so in that regard, the essays incredibly helpful if you are a Povinelli head (as I am) and are compelled to put some of these concepts to work in other contexts. also maybe helpful if you're just beginning to crack EP's work. there are also three interviews/conversations (with Lauren Berlant, with Audra Simpson and Liza Johnson, and with Kim Turcot DiFruscia); I didn't find these to be quite as helpful a mode, as they lack EP's singular generosity and enthusiasm which makes her conversation so engaging and compelling.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

a collection of essays, some are better than others.