The broom closet is a space of “ordinary, chronic, acute, and cruddy” suffering as opposed to “catastrophic, eventful, and sublime” misery (511).The metaphoric space (or, in the case of Ursula Le Guin’s story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” the literal space) where chronic lethality takes place.* Refusal of the Australian government to evacuate Australian citizens from Lebanon in 2006 * The Australian government’s detainment of asylum seekers in 2001 (“Pacific solution”) * The 2005 amendments to the Crimes Act of 1914 which permitted the Australian government to detain anyone suspected of “terrorist activity” * The withdrawal of funding for the Community Development Employment Project (CDEP) in 2005 despite the fact that it helped Indigenous communities secure employment * The inadequate medical attention given to Indigenous folks who contract staph infections-demonstrates the government’s refusal to invest in “poverty-stricken communities” (519) * The Australian government’s lackluster (at best) efforts to address or remedy health disparities in Indigenous populations-poor health is viewed as the result of individual choices Specific examples of “state killing” discussed by Provinelli.Contributes to the “unequal distribution of life and death in democratic orders” (510).

output value to determine which lives are “worth” supporting (also connected to neoliberal ideology)

Loosely defined as “the cancellation of support of life” (520).

Offers two avenues for reflecting on the “conditions of lethality in late liberal societies”: (1) We must examine violence and lethality from a perspective outside of the neoliberal ideology that a life is only as valuable as its output value (2) We must stop defining life based on a “redemptive future”-recognize that life is what it is in this moment.Late liberal governments are more concerned with/drawn to “deathscapes” with sublime or catastrophic elements that create common enemies and justify a state of exception than with “cumulative and chronic lethality” (521).Within the neoliberal state, social investment (in health care or employment programs, for example) is only as valuable as its output value.Move from the welfare state to privatization and individualization.This new “imaginary” has transformed “state killing” (discussed in more detail below) to an “amorphous agreement that people are killing themselves” (515).The intersection of the “security state” and the “neoliberal market” creates a specific “imaginary” about life and death-applies this to the Australian government’s treatment of indigenous populations and the security measures Australia has taken post-9/11.Thesis: “A specific catachresis between the security state and the neoliberal market-between sovereign state and biopolitical state-animates contemporary late liberal attitudes toward various forms of living and dying” (511-512). According to Povinelli’s faculty website, her work focuses on creating a “critical theory of late liberalism” which requires “critical engagement with the traditions of American pragmatism and continental imminence theory.” Much of Povinelli’s research, including this article, engages Aboriginal populations in Australia.

“The Child in the Broom Closet” was published in 2008 by Elizabeth Povinelli who is a Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Colombia University.