Borders of the Mountains or Rocks

Fourth session of the 2024-2025 CEFRES Francophone
Interdisciplinary Seminar The Map and the Border
Already in 2023, we  started questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory). In short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, we began inquiring into the question of the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Date: Friday 6th, December 2024, from 10am to 12pm
Language: French

Speaker: Alžbeta Kuchtová (Slovak Academy of Sciences)
Discussant:  TBC

Abstract

In her book Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism, the anthropologist Elisabeth Povinelli explains the concept of entanglement and its role in the indigenous cultures of Australia. In my intervention, I will analyse the concept of “propre” and its relationship to entanglement. The concept of “propre” is linked to the separation of identities by borders. It can refer to what is specific to humans, but also to what is specific to rocks. The concept of “propre” implies the creation of limits and borders between different identities: subjects, objects, nations, races and genders. The questions we are going to reflect on concern the possibility of creating borders between sacred rocks or mountains and how these boundaries facilitate the capitalist exploitation of (indigenous) land today. This implies that the European concept of “propre” cannot be applied to indigenous territories simply because it is not universal. The concept of “propre” is the foundation of colonialism and capitalism.

See the complete program of the 2024-2025 seminar here.