Understanding Extraction
Sandro Mezzadra (Università di Bologna)
May 4th @ 10:30am
GEM Lab (FB630.15, Concordia University)
*Registration information will be available soon
Understanding the intensification and expansion of extractive industries in contemporary capitalism requires an approach attentive not only to the literal forms of extraction prevalent in mining and agribusiness but also to new fronts of extraction emerging in activities such as data mining and biocapitalism. In this seminar, Sandro Mezzadra will discuss the recent expansion of the paradigm of extractivism, from industries to logistics, and the dispossession and exploitation that these new forms generate.
In order to prepare for this seminar, we invite participants to read:
- “Platform Capitalism”, in Nick Srnieck, Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017.
- “Logistical Worlds” and “Into the Cloud”, in Ned Rossiter, Software, Infrastructure, Labor: A Media Theory of Logistical Nightmares. London: Routledge, 2016.
- Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson. “On the multiple frontiers of extraction: excavating contemporary capitalism”. Cultural Studies, 31:2-3, 185-204, 2017
Bio:
Sandro Mezzadra teaches political theory at the University of Bologna and is adjunct fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Western Sydney. He is currently visiting research fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin (BIM – Berliner Institut für Migrations- und Integrationsforschung). In the last decade his work has centered on the relations between globalization, migration and capitalism as well as on postcolonial criticism. He is an active participant in the ‘post-workerist’ debates and one of the founders of the website www.euronomade.info. Among his books: Diritto di fuga. Migrazioni, cittadinanza, globalizzazione (“The right to escape: Migration, citizenship, globalization”, ombre corte, 2006), La condizione postcoloniale. Storia e politica nel presente globale (“The postcolonial condition: History and politics in the global present”, ombre corte, 2008) and Nei cantieri marxiani. Il soggetto e la sua produzione (“In the Marxian Workshops. The Subject and its Production”, Manifestolibri, 2014). With Brett Neilson he is the author of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013).