Excerpt: “Racial capitalism is all capitalism” writes Ruth Wilson Gilmore. “There was not one minute in the entire story of capitalism that it was not racial.” And so this story goes: the “explorer,” the survey, the map, the property owner, the corporation, and the shareholder stake a claim to the future that is “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” The four monographs discussed here offer powerful illumination and insight to Gilmore’s words, demonstrating the need to unravel the relations of capitalism and colonialism in order to grasp the promise of abolition and decolonization. Extending the interventions of scholars working in and across Native and Indigenous studies, Black studies, and critical ethnic studies, these authors showcase the rewards of critical reassessment and reorientation, transporting us beyond conventional distinctions between land and labor, structure and event, theft and property.
