On the subject of settlers: Joseph Pugliese, ‘(De)constituting Settler Subjects: A Retrospective Critical Race-Decolonizing Account’, in Debbie Bargallie, Nilmini Fernando (eds), Critical Racial and Decolonial Literacies: Breaking the Silence, Bristol University Press, 2024, pp. 62-76 | settler colonial studies blog

On the subject of settlers: Joseph Pugliese, ‘(De)constituting Settler Subjects: A Retrospective Critical Race-Decolonizing Account’, in Debbie Bargallie, Nilmini Fernando (eds), Critical Racial and Decolonial Literacies: Breaking the Silence, Bristol University Press, 2024, pp. 62-76

04Sep24

Abstract: What were the pedagogical forces that were operating in the construction of my racialized subject positions with the context of the Australian white settler state? In this chapter, I attempt to answer this question by deploying critical race-decolonizing theories to trace a genealogy of forces that were operative in the constitution of my subjectivity. In the first instance, I proceed to unravel a genealogy that preceded my family’s migration to the Australian colony. I work to reconstruct this genealogy to materialize the prior forces of settler colonialism and race that already inscribed me as a subject and which were instrumental as push factors in my family’s migration. I then proceed to unpack the racialized pedagogy of the white settler state that I was compelled to experience as a non-Anglo diasporic-settler child. My personal account is located in the practice of critical race theorists, who use storytelling and counter-storytelling through personal stories as a critical method to recount experiences with racism. By examining two school textbooks that were part of my miseducation, I trace how these texts pedagogically laboured to inculcate a range of hegemonic values that normalized the racialized version of the settler state.

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