Contributor(s): Professor Elizabeth A. Povinelli | Are all progressive politics inevitably acts of absolute extinguishment and emancipation, of the production and repression of life? If so why has a progressive imaginary been loathe to confront its own politics of extinguishment. Povinelli examines one strand of progressive political thought--the conversation among critical sexuality studies, immanent critique, and the biopolits--in order to open the problem of ethics and extinguishment beyond the safety of liberal adjudication and justification. Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies at Columbia University. She has directed the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, co-directed the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, and currently Chair of the Department of Anthropology. Povinell’s research seeks to produce a critical theory of late liberalism. She is the author of four books (Labor’s Lot, Chicago, 1994; The Cunning of Recognition, Duke, 2002; The Empire of Love, Duke 2006; Economies of Abandonment, Duke, 2011). The Cunning of Recognition receiving a Bookforum Best Book of the Year. Karrabing-Low Tide Turning, a film she co-directed with Liza Johnson, was selected for the Berlinale Shorts Competition in 2012. She was the German Transatlantic Program Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Fall 2011; a Wyse Visiting Professorship at Cambridge University Spring 2012; and a Hallsworth Visiting Professorship at Manchester, Spring 2013.