Overview of E. Povinelli's introduction to their book "Geontologies"

In the introduction to Geontologies, Elizabeth Povinelli introduces geontopower, a form of power that governs distinctions between Life and Nonlife, rather than focusing only on life and death (biopolitics). She argues that under late liberalism, settler colonial states manage Indigenous claims by treating relationships to land, ancestors, and nonhuman entities as cultural beliefs instead of real, ongoing forms of existence.

Povinelli shows how this framework shapes responses to environmental crisis and climate change, privileging technical solutions while ignoring the slow violence of colonial dispossession already experienced by Indigenous communities. The introduction calls for rethinking ontology as a political field, revealing how power decides which ways of being endure and which are rendered extinct or unimaginable.

Question for our class on Thursday:

If geontopower governs by deciding which forms of life and relation are recognized as possible, where—if anywhere—does Povinelli locate hope, and how does she ask us to sit with despair without resolving it into easy optimism?

📚Assigned Reading:

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. Geontologies: A requiem to late liberalism. Duke University Press, 2016. Read the introduction