Endogeneity and Place-Based Identifications in the Age of Precarity
CERS lecture by Lorenzo Veracini (Department of History, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne).
Central control unit of the mainframe Olivetti Elea 9003 (1957). (Photo: regine debatty; cropped. CC BY-SA 2.0.)
Tuesday, February 11, 202012:00 PM - 1:30 PM
11372 Bunche Hall
This paper develops two analogies in order to conceptualise endogeneity as a category of analysis. The first analogy compares indigenous understandings of place and place-making, and territorio as defined in Italian territorialist traditions. They are both locales endowed with a specific personality and agency: one is the home of indigenous peoples facing settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination, the other is the home of endogenous collectives facing increasing modalities of exogenous control. The second analogy links the current appropriation of metadata under ‘surveillance capitalism’ with past appropriations and their justification: terra nullius. This paper’s first and third section deal each with one of these analogies; its short second section bridges between the two by focusing on an early expression of territorialist aspirations and on an early experience of electronic networks development: Adriano Olivetti’s activity as political theorist and early developer of electronic machines. Both analogies sustain the analysis of a global settler-colonial present.
Lorenzo Veracini is Associate Professor of History at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. His research focuses on the comparative history of colonial systems and settler colonialism as a mode of domination. He has authored Israel and Settler Society (2006), Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (2010), and The Settler Colonial Present (2015). Lorenzo co-edited The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism (2016), manages the settler colonial studies blog, and is Founding Editor of Settler Colonial Studies. His Displacement as Politics: A Global History is forthcoming in early 2020.
Cost : Free and open to the public. RSVP not required for admission.
Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies