Economies of Abandonment : Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism

In Economies of Abandonment , Elizabeth A. Povinelli explores how late liberal imaginaries of tense, eventfulness, and ethical substance make the global distribution of life and death, hope and harm, and endurance and exhaustion not merely sensible but also just. She presents new ways of conceptualizing formations of power in late liberalism-the shape that liberal governmentality has taken as it has responded to a series of legitimacy crises in the wake of anticolonial and new social movements and, more recently, the 'clash of civilizations' after September 11. Based on longstanding ethnographic work in Australia and the United States, as well as critical readings of legal, academic, and activist texts, Povinelli examines how alternative social worlds and projects generate new possibilities of life in the context of ordinary and extraordinary acts of neglect and surveillance. She focuses particularly on social projects that have not yet achieved a concrete existence but persist at the threshold of possible existence. By addressing the question of the endurance, let alone the survival, of alternative forms of life, Povinelli opens new ethical and political questions. "In Economies of Abandonment, Elizabeth A. Povinelli explores how late liberal imaginaries of tense, eventfulness, and ethical substance make the global distribution of life and death, hope and harm, and endurance and exhaustion not merely sensible but also just. She presents new ways of conceptualizing formations of power in late liberalis - the shape that liberal governmentality has taken as it has responded to a series of legitimacy crises in the wake of anticolonial and new social movements and, more recently, the "clash of civilizations" after September 11. Based on longstanding ethnographic work in Australia and the United States, as well as critical readings of legal, academic, and activist texts, Povinelli examines how alternative social worlds and projects generate new possibilities of life in the context of ordinary and extraordinary acts of neglect and surveillance. She focuses particularly on social projects that have not yet achieved a concrete existence but persist at the threshold of possible existence. By addressing the question of the endurance, let alone the survival, of alternative forms of life, Povinelli opens new ethical and political questions" : sur la 4ème de couv "In Economies of Abandonment, Elizabeth A. Povinelli explores how late liberal imaginaries of tense, eventfulness, and ethical substance make the global distribution of life and death, hope and harm, and endurance and exhaustion not merely sensible but also just. She presents new ways of conceptualizing formations of power in late liberalis - the shape that liberal governmentality has taken as it has responded to a series of legitimacy crises in the wake of anticolonial and new social movements and, more recently, the "clash of civilizations" after September 11. Based on longstanding ethnographic work in Australia and the United States, as well as critical readings of legal, academic, and activist texts, Povinelli examines how alternative social worlds and projects generate new possibilities of life in the context of ordinary and extraordinary acts of neglect and surveillance. She focuses particularly on social projects that have not yet achieved a concrete existence but persist at the threshold of possible existence. By addressing the question of the endurance, let alone the survival, of alternative forms of life, Povinelli opens new ethical and political questions"--Back cover Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 14 Introduction: The Child in the Broom Closet......Page 20 One: The Part That Has No Part......Page 66 Two: The Brackets of Recognition......Page 94 Three: Road Kill: Ethical Substance, Exhaustion, Endurance......Page 120 Four: Events of Abandonment......Page 150 Five: After Good and Evil, Whither Sacrificial Love?......Page 182 Conclusion: Negative Critique, Positive Sociographies......Page 206 Notes......Page 212 Bibliography......Page 230 Index......Page 244 This volume explores how contemporary governments, particularly in settler nations such as Australia and the United States, deflect social responsibility for the crushing harms experienced by communities living at the margins