Feminisms and the west (and settler colonialism): Krista Comer, ‘Accountabilities: Authority, Feminism, West’, Studies in the Novel, 49, 3, 2017, pp. 419-425 | settler colonial studies blog

Feminisms and the west (and settler colonialism): Krista Comer, ‘Accountabilities: Authority, Feminism, West’, Studies in the Novel, 49, 3, 2017, pp. 419-425

10Oct17

Excerpt: Moreover, the critical turn to Wests, to westness as a system and colonial world network, has brought the phenomenon of settler colonialism into the fore of the critical field. The US West is an example par excellence of not just Anglo settler logics and history (Wolfe, Veracini) but simultaneous and competing Spanish colonialities and modernities (Aranda). Settler maps, meanings, and place making has been made more textured still for US West studies by way of the enormous offerings of Indigenous studies. The recent expansion and depth of that field as a field (Allen), what it teaches about ongoing or “enduring” indigeneity (Kauanui), the fact of thoroughly different and incommensurate understandings of place and territory (Byrd) that map over and inhabit the so-called “West” toward indigenous histories and futures (Bernardin)—all of these have reoriented the political and ethical stakes, and epistemological contexts, for scholars’ work. Notwithstanding any of this activity, however, and not a surprise given the imperial origin stories at stake, “the West” of popular discourse—that place of proving and opportunity and settler sovereignty—bounces back in culture and politics with regularity and ease.

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