My Beloved, and the Blossom of Roses: Land Dispossession and Transnational Capital Script in Authoritarian State
ICGC Commons for Critical Inquiry (537 Heller Hall).
The presentation extends the notion of aesthetic as practice and ways of knowing, especially the relation toward land and how the state apparatus in the global south operates within the language of collective prosperity as a hermeneutics of advancement. Many have argued that the creation of national belonging is a script, but also a trajectory of accumulation that reverses the narrative of livelihood, exemplified by transnational corporations and international financial institutions involved in land acquisitions. It aims to analyze the sense of relevance and urgency around understanding invisible capital and how national narratives constitute collective wealth while precariousness is neglected. This presentation explores the relations between postcolonial states and transnational, militarized global governance and how these dynamics shape the economic and cultural realities of livelihood, including mechanisms of land dispossession driven by transnational capital flows and policies.
About the Speaker
Larasati is a Professor in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, where she teaches courses on Transnationalism, Aesthetics, and Gender Politics. Larasati is the co-editor and co-author of Bodies that Haunt: Political Economy of Racialized Death (2025); her latest writing : Train and its fugitive rhythms: rewriting empire, violence, and the politics of sound. .Cultural Studies, 18. She is the author of Dance that Makes You Vanish (2013); and the author of many writings dedicated to inquiries into arts and aesthetic politics. She is currently the guest editor of Lembaran Anthropology (2025) and the Editorial Committee of the Asian Journal Women Studies, Korea. Faculty advisor of ICGC, she is an affiliate with American Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.