Is the violence of incommensurability preferable? Elizabeth Strakosch, Alissa Macoun, ‘The violence of analogy: abstraction, neoliberalism and settler colonial possession’, Postcolonial Studies, 23, 4, 2020, pp. 505-526 | settler colonial studies blog

Is the violence of incommensurability preferable? Elizabeth Strakosch, Alissa Macoun, ‘The violence of analogy: abstraction, neoliberalism and settler colonial possession’, Postcolonial Studies, 23, 4, 2020, pp. 505-526

29Nov20

Abstract: This article explores the value of theorising about colonialism that is specific rather than universal, informed by our locations in colonial struggles and driven by engagement with our continuing material colonial relationships with land, place and people. We do this by examining recent scholarly engagements with our contemporary precarious global economic and environmental conditions, particularly within settler colonial theory. We argue that using analogy to think our way out of material colonial and racial relations can obscure the authority of Indigenous peoples and reproduce colonial epistemologies. This attempt to create solidarity through political equivalence risks reifying imperial relationships and resecuring white possession. Rather than seeking to evade our positions as colonisers embedded in violent political systems, we argue it is possible for colonisers to act in solidarity from a position of complicity. Working towards justice from our own locations involves building solidarity across differences, without first needing to reduce these differences to sameness.

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