Lecture presentation
Tuesday, April 25, 2023, at 8 p. m.
Filodrammatica, large hall (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka)
It’s in our food, our cosmetics, our fuel and our bodies. Palm oil, found in half of supermarket products, has shaped our world.
The lecture Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire by the Canadian researcher Max Haiven will be held in the large hall of Filodrammatica (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka) on Tuesday, April 25, starting at 8 p.m. Admission is free.
This presentation, based on the book by the same name, uncovers how the gears of capitalism are literally and metaphorically lubricated by this ubiquitous elixir. From its origins in West Africa to today’s Southeast Asian palm oil superpowers, this presentation takes us on a global journey that includes looted treasures, the American system of mass incarceration, the history of modern art and the industrialisation of war. But hidden in palm oil is a story of humanity’s profound potential to shape our world for the better.
– ‘Powerfully demonstrates how, by following the history of a key commodity, we can reconstruct the logic of imperial capitalism’
SILVIA FEDERICI
Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he co-directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).