On Dwelling in Fraught Places: Towards a Decolonial Abolitionist Ethics
Lisa Guenther - 2019 Elaine Stavro Visiting Distinguished Scholar
Event Details
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Thursday, November 7, 2019
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Trent University
Cost: Free
All of Turtle Island is fraught terrain. The places where we live, work, study, and play are marked by settler colonialism, genocidal logics, and carceral structures designed to lock some people up and lock others into zones of privileged security. What would it mean to dwell ethically in such fraught places? And how might this ethics of dwelling support political movements for decolonization and prison abolition? This lecture reflects on the conditions for ethical dwelling in Kingston/Katarokwi: the site of Canada’s first penitentiary, prison farm, and federal prison for women—all constructed on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. The work of Leanne Simpson, Glen Coulthard, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs offers insight for creating, reclaiming, and amplifying ethical alternatives to carceral-colonial power.
Dr. Lisa Guenther, Queen's University's National Scholar in Political Philosophy and Critical Prison Studies will deliver the annual Elaine Stavro Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Theory, Politics & Gender Studies. She is the author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives (2013) and The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction (2007), and co-editor of Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration (2015) with Geoffrey Adelsberg and Scott Zeman. Her interests include Political Philosophy, Critical Prison Studies, Continental Philosophy, Feminism, Philosophy of Race
The Elaine Stavro Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Theory, Politics & Gender Studies was created to introduce Trent students to leading speakers on sociological issues and significantly build on the University's reputation for interdisciplinary programs. The Visiting Scholar will provide students, faculty and members of the Peterborough community with exceptional access to eminent scholars and people engaged in theory, politics and gender studies.