Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance
In conversation with Associate Professor Lorenzo Veracini and author Eda Gunaydin
Thanks for attending!
Thank you for tuning in to our book launch event for Root & Branch: Essays on inheritance on 12 July. The launch brought together Associate Professor Lorenzo Veracini in conversation with author Eda Gunaydin to celebrate the release of the debut essay collection. 49 people tuned in live on zoom from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, the US, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong and Canada. Feel free to re-watch and share the recording via the link above. Read on for key themes, as well as info on our next event on 3 August.
The conversation between Professor Veracini and Eda Gunaydin centred on the personal, political, and scholarly themes of the text. Beginning with the question of whether you can be well where you do not belong, Eda and Lorenzo discussed the notion of pessimism as a generative way of thinking about and responding to the traumatic migrant experience. Eda said, ‘I think it’s important to give up the fantasy, and possibly step into a place of pessimism if it only encourages us to actually engage with our material realities, which is for better or worse, where we are is here. For better or worse, what we are is settlers. So how can we actually materially, substantively engage with decolonial struggle, here and now?’
The discussion then moved on to talking about revolution as the practice and possibility of emplaced change, with Lorenzo asking if Eda thought revolution could travel. In response Eda answered that ‘What can travel is ideas but revolution or change needs to be emplaced. What can travel is revolutionary fervor – the only thing we can carry with us across borders is a belief that better things are possible.’
And in addressing the disciplinary nature of Eda's scholarly contribution, Lorenzo asserted that, ‘... if we want to analyse the precariousness and the anxiety we are facing, we should embrace your genre and we should embrace your ability to inhabit the spaces between scholarship and life.’ Eda responded by explaining that, ‘In turning myself into an object of analysis, my goal is to link up the personal with the political. Autoethnography has allowed me to find a way to write with a thesis in mind. I think I have a point that I'm trying to make with this book which is that being a materialist actually matters in this day and age, more than ever.’
The Q & A addressed two questions from the audience:
Do you believe that your community has a specific responsibility towards First Nations peoples that is differentiated from the colonial responsibilities of Anglo settlers/colonisers? If so, what does this look like?
What are your thoughts on first and second generations and eventual generations carrying responsibilities of the states their ancestors come from? How does one take on the struggles of the land people migrate to and those they have inherited from past generations?
To buy the book: https://unsw.press/books/root-and-branch/
Next webinar!
Counter-monuments: Challenging distorted colonial histories through contemporary art and memorial practices
Wed, 3 August, 12:00 – 1:00 PM AEST
Genevieve Grieves & Dr Amy Spiers
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Counter-monuments image credit: Julie Gough, MISSING or DEAD (2019) 185 printed posters first installed in “The Queen’s Domain” forest, Hobart, June 2019, during Dark Mofo. Ink on rag photographique paper, each 34 x 21.2 cm, designed in collaboration with Margaret Woodward
