If you enter an institutional mineralogical collection you typically encounter glass cabinets
organized by classification systems according to material properties. Yet each mineral carries
with it a history of extraction destruction (dis)possession and global relations.
Transpositional Geologies localizes such collections as indices of the afterlife of colonialism
and proposes an evolving political geology reading mineral specimens as objects of "culture"
rather than of "nature." Capturing his five-year artistic engagement and cultural collaboration
in Namibia and Germany Sascha Mikloweit brings together international voices from fields
including anthropology critical theory geology history museum studies philosophy poetry
public administration-and the perspectives of boltwoodite cerussite or smithsonite. Rock by
rock this exquisitely designed volume invites us to engage with a progressively nuanced
reading of geology's history: its epistemic violence omissions and racial regimes and how
the lasting residues of its colonial legacies continue to shape our present-day extractive
realities.
