Dragonfly

After Elizabeth Povinelli's Geontologies

Authors

  • Wesley Brunson University of Toronto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40294

Keywords:

ife and non-life, ethnographic desire, resonance, encyclopedia

Abstract

This prose poem explores autobiography as a trace site for the affective encounters between life and non-life. Using my own memories of making a childhood bug collection, I attempt to answer a question Povinelli asks in Geontologies—What does life desire? —by merging it with a question raised in my own ethnographic fieldwork—What do I desire? The affective resonance between my childhood bug collection, my ethnographic fieldwork as part of my PhD program in anthropology, and Povinelli’s 2016 book disrupts linear notions of time and argues that desire for difference itself produces the distinction between life and non-life.

 

Original Publication
Brunson, Wesley. “Dragonfly.” Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 47, no. 1, 2022, pp. 235–239.

© 2022 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/anhu.12372.

Author Biography

Wesley Brunson, University of Toronto

Wesley Brunson is a poet and Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. His writing can be found in Anthropology & Humanism and in the anthology A Day Is a Struggle. Wes grew up in Minneapolis and lives in Toronto.

References

Macauley, David, and Neil Ardley. The Way Things Work. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Duke UP, 2016

Our Home on Native Land by Kelly King. Three women, a dog, and a cat sit on steps outside of an old house. They are coloured in sepia. Vines of s’gepn—the wild potato plant—climb the sides of the house, coloured in green with the flowers in pink. The grass in front of them women has also been coloured in green.

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Published

2022-10-18

How to Cite

Brunson, W. (2022). Dragonfly: After Elizabeth Povinelli’s Geontologies. UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, 21, 49–52. https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40294

Issue

Vol. 21 (2022): Memories and Futurities

Section

Creative

License

Copyright (c) 2022 UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies

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