The New Indonesian Regime & Revitalizing the Decolonial Critique

The New Indonesian Regime & Revitalizing the Decolonial Critique

A Conversation with Intan Paramaditha and Michael Vann

Today, Sunday morning, October 20, former general Prabowo Subianto is being sworn in as Indonesia’s new president. In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Intan Paramaditha and Michael Vann about the road leading up to this inauguration, beginning in the 1960s with the Suharto regime.  Prabowo is a strong-arm authoritarian figure with a bloody record of human rights violations, yet he has remade his image as a cuddly, elder populist figure.  We spend some time talking about how his regime is likely to continue, if not accelerate, aggressive and brutal economic development policies that have wrecked the environment and displaced Indigenous peoples.  We talk a lot about how both the Indonesian media and some of its art world has been enlisted to promote this regime, and how decolonial feminists and others have taken on the task to both resist and present, and embody, other ways of being through listening to and engaging with voices from outside Jakarta and the liberal elites.

On Abolition Sanctuary & Environmental Activism from Below

On Abolition Sanctuary & Environmental Activism from Below

with Naomi Paik & Ashley Dawson

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with scholar-activists Naomi Paik and Ashley Dawson about the close connection between abolition and environmental activism from below. How are the twin projects raising profound questions about borders, carcerality, enclosures, and the separation of humans from each other and all other forms of life, including supposedly “inanimate” objects?  How can we create “sanctuary for all” in a radical rethinking of notions like “the commons”? 

Environmental Justice & Politics: PRIYAMVADA GOPAL & FRANÇOISE VERGÈS discuss Elections in UK & France

Environmental Justice & Politics: PRIYAMVADA GOPAL & FRANÇOISE VERGÈS discuss Elections in UK & France

on the Recent Elections in Britain and France

I would say what we can celebrate is the incredible mobilization of the young people. They went everywhere, they knocked on the door, they mobilized. This was an incredible, incredible mobilization. So that was extraordinary because it showed real mobilization and an understanding that the National Rally was a real threat. We knew that if they came to power, the first people who would be targeted would be people of color, and that was absolutely clear.

Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic: We Learn How

Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic: We Learn How

Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic
Authors of We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones
the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed to make way for an airport

SPEAKING OUT OF PLACE: Exploring Plant Intelligence with John Burrows & Paco Calvo

SPEAKING OUT OF PLACE: Exploring Plant Intelligence with John Burrows & Paco Calvo

Anishinaabe Legal Theorist · Philosopher

How might we learn about, learn with, and learn from our plant companions on this Earth? Plants show signs of communication and of learning. They produce and respond to many of the same neurochemicals as humans, including anesthetics. They share resources with one another, and when under threat, emit signals of warning and of pain. While Barrows and Calvo both urge us to listen to the Earth, during this conversation we discover that these two thinkers are often listening for different things. The discussion reveals fascinating points of difference and commonality. And in terms of the latter, the point both John and Paco insist upon is that we maintain our separation from other beings at our peril and at a loss.

Speaking Out of Place: ANTHONY ARNOVE & HALEY PESSIN discuss Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century

Speaking Out of Place: ANTHONY ARNOVE & HALEY PESSIN discuss Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century

Co-Editors of Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century
(Arnove) Producer of the Academy Award-nominated Dirty Wars · Director of Roam Agency

We have to create alternative institutions to understand history. And to have conversations about how we can intervene because these conversations are increasingly being criminalized, and librarians are being fired and punished. Teachers are also being fired. Whole colleges are being taken over and certain courses are being labeled as not credit-worthy and being canceled. And while conversations around critical race theory and other topics are being declared illegal, there's a long history of book banning in this country. There's a long history of criminalizing dissent in this country, but I do think we all have to recognize that we're in a much more dangerous moment right now, where a new form of McCarthyism is emboldened and we have to speak out against that. - Anthony Arnove

Speaking Out of Place: SILVIA FEDERICI discusses Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons

Speaking Out of Place: SILVIA FEDERICI discusses Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons

Scholar · Educator · Feminist Activist
Author of Caliban and the Witch
Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons

When I came to America I had a shock. I never knew what it meant to be in a country that seems to have no history, being in a place where you feel like you are nowhere, you could have been dropped by a plane in a cultural, historical desert. In the United States, they're destroying historic buildings. They've paved over cemeteries of African slaves. They're changing the environment so that memory is destroyed.

Because you are placing yourself in a broader arc of time, I asked a woman from Guatemala: how can women keep fighting for so much power? And she said, "Because, for us, the dead are not dead." This gives them the courage to go on when everything seems to be lost. I think that this is the kind of struggle that we need to make against war, against the destruction of nature.