De-development is elimination: Marcelo Svirsky, ‘Review of Mandy Turner and Omar Shweiki (eds), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2017 | settler colonial studies blog

De-development is elimination: Marcelo Svirsky, ‘Review of Mandy Turner and Omar Shweiki (eds), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2017

21Apr17

Excerpt: As the late Australian historian Patrick Wolfe influentially argued, settler polities are established on, and maintained by the logic of elimination of the Native, though the means to eliminate Indigenous peoples can take different forms – from expulsion and physical extermination, to forced assimilation, and even multicultural politics. Mandy Turner and Omar Shweiki’s edited collection schools the reader on one more form of Native elimination – de-development – as it historically inhibited Palestinian economy and life opportunities since 1948. Though not settler intentions but deeds are what the understanding of settler colonialism needs mainly to focus on, policy statements are nevertheless part of the discursive assemblage of a regime, and Israeli government officials’ testimonials are indeed very informative.

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