« Revitalising settler colonialism from below? Harry C. Boyle, ‘Revitalizing the American Commonwealth’, National Civic Review, 114, 2, 2025, pp. 6-19
Other settlers? Magdalena Müllerova, ‘Settling the Imagined West: Victor LaValle’s Lone Women, Black Women, and the Revision of The Frontier Myth’, MELUS, 2025, #mlaf032 »

Delegitimising settler colonialism from below? Michael Elliott, ‘Délégitimer le colonialisme d’établissement’, in G. Motard, G. Nootens (eds), Souverainetés et autodéterminations autochtones: Tïayoriho’ten’, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2022, pp. 101-28

16Aug25

Abstract: Does decolonisation in the contemporary liberal settler colony depend on the delegitimation of the prevailing political order? If, politically, decolonisation requires more than Indigenous autonomy within the context of a sovereign settler state, other associated rights and statuses, recognition of historical injustice, and programmes to address continuing inequality — which is to say, if it cannot be realised through existing or improved policies of liberal democratic government but requires a more fundamental form of political transformation — then there is reason to think that it does. It is through legitimacy that political orders are able to foster popular acceptance of their institutional form, legal authority, and right to use force, and so ensure their continual reproduction on micro and macro scales. It follows, then, that in the absence of realistic possibilities of forced regime change, legitimacy represents an essential ground for decolonising struggle. But what does it really mean for a political order to be delegitimated? What is involved in such a process? And how might practical steps towards it be made in the settler colony today? These are the questions I want to explore in this chapter.


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