Education
She received her Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology from Yale University in 1991.
She received her Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology from Yale University in 1991.
She is the author of numerous books and essays as well as a former editor of the academic journal Public Culture. Her first two books examined the governance of the otherwise in late liberal settler colonies from the perspective of the politics of recognition. In particular, they focused on impasses within liberal systems of law and value as they meet local Australian indigenous worlds, and the effect of these impasses on the development of legal and public culture in Australia.
Povinelli has also explored these questions in the short film, Karrabing, Low Tide Turning, selected for the 2012 Berlinale International Film Festival, Shorts Competition,When the Dogs Talked, and Windjarrameru, The Stealing C*nt$ which premiered at the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival.
Povinelli also appeared in the documentary film Apparition of the Eternal Church (2006), directed by Paul Festa, about the French composer Olivier Messiaen"s organ work. In Technologies of Public Persuasion, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and
Povinelli’s work has focused on developing a critical theory of late liberalism that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. Her second two books, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality and Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism, examine formations of the Late Liberal Anthropocene from the perspective of intimacy, embodiment, and narrative form. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism.
This critical task is animated by a critical engagement with the traditions of American pragmatism and continental immanent theory and grounded in the circulation of values, materialities, and socialities within settler liberalisms.
Povinelli is one of the founding members of the Karrabing Film Collective, the recipient of the 2015 Visible Award.