settler colonial studies blog

Settler autochthonicity: Tyler Eliot Stuart, Paradoxes for the Settler Soul: The Ascetical Philosophy of Tim Lilburn, MA dissertation, University of Victoria, 2023

04May23

Abstract: This thesis will explore the prose of Tim Lilburn, particularly his trilogy of essay collections: Living In The WorldAsIf It Were Home, Going Home, and The Larger Conversation. These books are a record of Lilburn’s project of autochthonicity — an attempt to live undivided from the places he lives — and the challenges ofsuch a journey as a European settler on stolen Indigenous land. Lilburn’s approach to this endeavour, which he considers a process of decolonization, resuscitates European contemplative thought to remedy the sapiential poverty of white settler culture and identity. Throughout this thesis, I examine the epistemological significance of Lilburn’s retrieval of these European traditionsinto NorthAmerican colonial modernity — attending to what they reveal about the interior dispositions of white settler subjectivity and the cultural trappings of late capitalism. By engaging with the paradoxes coursing through Lilburn’s body of work — a linguistic form famousfor defying logic — I make a case for the importance of epistemic impasse, or aporia. That is, I argue that the peculiarity of Lilburn’s paradoxical thought, or the difficulty of grasping it, can, if one lets it, alert one to one’s own epistemic allegiances. And these allegiances, I will argue, have had devastating consequences not only for Indigenous peoples, but also for European settlers themselves. Ultimately, I argue that the paradoxical shape of Lilburn’s thought gestures toward the need for an ascetical, and therefore countercultural, knowledge.

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Settler bondage? Ana Stevenson, ‘”Tearing Off the Bonds”: Suffrage Visual Culture in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, 1890–1920’, Gender & History, 2023

04May23

Abstract: This article will examine how transpacific suffrage visual culture imagined and reimagined an artistic tradition centred
around the figure of the bound woman. White suffragists and anti-suffragists in Australia, New Zealand and the United States used the iconography of bonds, chains and whips to mediate the possibility of women’s enfranchisement. Haunted by the legacies of settler colonialism, suffrage cartoons directly and obliquely evoked the spectre of chattel slavery, convict transportation and incarceration alongside the elusive ideals of humanitarian reform. While anti-suffrage cartoons lamented the prospect of women’s enfranchisement, pro-suffrage cartoons appropriated this iconography primarily for the benefit of white women.

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From settler colonialism to genocide: Jürgen Zimmerer, From Windhoek to Auschwitz: Reflections on the colonial-Nationalsocialist nexus, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024

30Apr23

Description: Forty years prior to Nazi Germany’s Holocaust and the war of annihilation in Eastern Europe, German colonial troops committed what is arguably the first genocide of the Twentieth Century in German Southwest Africa, known today as Namibia. There, German troops murdered up to 80000 Herero and 20000 Nama as well as ensuring many more thousands perished in the desert and during their tenure as slave labourers in concentrations camps. During the last decade, a fierce debate has emerged regarding the genocide and its historical meaning within German 20th century history, particularly the extent to which the Herero and Nama genocide can be seen as a precursor to Nazi crimes. “From Windhoek to Auschwitz” examines the relationship between colonialism and the Holocaust and situates Nazi crimes firmly within the global history of mass violence and racist policies. The volume collects key texts about the multi-facetted relationship between (German) colonialism and Nazi policies of conquest and annihilation. It thereby documents the development of an argument that has changed the way we view the Nazi crimes by pointing to continuities and parallels, thereby offering a fresh, postcolonial perspective on the Third Reich.

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Settler society fiction: Avery Esford, ‘”The Legend of Captain Michael Grass”: The Logic of Elimination and Loyalist Myth-making in Upper Canada, 1783-84’, Ontario History, 115, 1, 2023, pp. 1-20

30Apr23

Abstract: This article examines the founding myth for the community of Kingston, Ontario which holds that Associated Loyalist Michael Grass founded the city after he led eight companies of refugees from New York to Cataraqui (Kingston) in 1783-84. The legend is a “settler society fiction”, an invented founding narrative that privileges Loyalist history at the expense of other communities including the Indigenous Mississauga. Comparing the legend and documents from Grass’s lifetime, shows that the Indigenous presence at Cataraqui has been effectively eliminated. The legend justifies the dispossession of the local Mississauga, accounts for the sudden presence of White settlers on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and perpetuates a settler society fiction.

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Settler colonial gendered violence: Jerry Flores Andrea Román Alfaro, ‘Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in “Canada”‘, Gender & Society, 2023

30Apr23

Abstract: In this article we focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people in “Canada.” We theorize narratives that police employ to respond to this violence. Using a broad data sample of testimonies across “Canada,” this article contributes to understanding how police (in)actions make sense of, justify, and dismiss violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. We draw from 48 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Indigenous peoples in Toronto and other “Canadian” cities and 219 testimonies from the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG). The analysis finds that police repeatedly use similar frames (topics), styles (linguistic and behavioral strategies), and storylines (narratives) to respond to violence against Indigenous peoples. While framing Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people as deviants helps police make sense of and explain violence against them, the use of verbal and behavioral strategies (indifference, callousness, and lack of information) and storylines (“they were [insert pathologizing frame]” and “there’s nothing we can do”) allows police to dismiss and justify acts of violence. We argue that the frames, styles, and storylines employed by police perpetuate violence. Police (in)actions are fundamental to achieving settler colonialism’s ideological and material dimensions.

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Contrapuntal settler colonialism: Neil L. B. Kohlmann, Making Political Music: Contrapuntal Constitutionalism and Indigenous-Settler Relations, MA dissertation, University of Victoria, 2023

30Apr23

Abstract: This thesis applies Edward Said’s thought to Canadian settler colonialism. I draw upon Said’s idea of contrapuntal reading to understand settler colonialism as an interdependent and coconstitutive relationship between domination and resistance. Contrapuntal refers to counterpoint in music, where two or more distinct melodic lines occur simultaneously. Each line is independent as a musical phrase but sounds out interdependently in the composition as a whole. I use this contrapuntal approach as a method of analysis and as the foundation for a normative practice of reimagining and rebuilding political community. Using contrapuntal analysis, I examine the installation ceremony of Mary Simon as the Governor General of Canada and the installation ceremony of Kevin Hall as the President of the University of Victoria to elucidate the limits of the foundational logic that underpins these attempts to constitute political community. I then consider potential alternative constitutional perspectives, drawn from Indigenous constitutionalisms, that resist and do not rely on settler colonial domination. Contrapuntal constitutionalism, the outline of a political practice for Indigenous-settler relations, grows out of what my analysis discloses. By extending Said’s use of counterpoint, in conjunction with Indigenous, prefigurative, and music theories, I contend with what a contrapuntal approach to anti-colonial constitutional politics could look like. The goal of this thesis is threefold: to make the case for the importance of Said’s thought to understanding the present manifestations of Canadian settler colonialism; to illuminate the dominating tendencies of Canadian political community dressed in the guise of palliative narratives of multicultural harmony; and to disclose an alternative constitutional relationship that does not further entrench domination as necessary and inevitable.

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Settler colonists south of the south: Maria Luisa Palumbo, ‘Histories of the Channel of Sicily: Architecture, Colonization, and Migrations across the Mediterranean Shores (1932–43)’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 122, 2, 2023, pp. 257-279

27Apr23

Abstract: Histories of modern and Fascist Italy have usually given little space to Italian colonialism, and histories of colonialism rarely mention the Italian South. This paper considers the agrarian colonization of Libya and Sicily together, reading them as key components of Italy’s nation-building and of the Fascist population politics. After the violent reconquest of Libya (1922–32) and the appropriation of all its fertile land, the Fascist regime turned to the rich and restless social fabric of the Italian South, which became the target for a new politics of space and population control. In a complex process of multiple exchanges, the agrarian colonization of Libya (1932–39) became the model for the agrarian colonization of Sicily (1939–43). By bringing together archives that have mostly been kept separate, this paper argues for a more nuanced notion of the South and colonialism. It does so by examining the ways colonialism was theorized and practiced, first by the Italian Liberal governments (1861–22) as a response to the nation’s southern question, and second by the Fascist regime (1922–43) as part of a wider project of reclamation of land and people in Italy and abroad. In particular, the paper compares the uncanny similarities between Fascist architecture and urbanism produced at the height of Fascist rule by the Ente di Colonizzazione della Libia and the Ente di Colonizzazione del Latifondo Siciliano. The paper asks, what links the politics of land, grain, and displacement in Libya and Southern Italy?

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Travelling settler colonialism: Mary M. Burke, ‘County Cork, Mississippi: Elizabeth Bowen, Settler-Colonialism, and Welty’s “The Bride of the Innisfallen”‘, Eudora Welty Review, 15, 2023, pp. 145-150

27Apr23

Excerpt: Eudora Welty’s The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories, in which over half the narratives are set outside the author’s native Mississippi, confounded critics and fans when it was published in 1955. Welty’s 1951 title tale was inspired by her stay in the County Cork “Big House” (ancestral mansion) of writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973). As such, rather than lacking a sense of place—as was charged in 1955—the title story’s opening evocation of Ireland and America’s shared settler-colonial histories suggests that Welty could see her own Deep South in Bowen’s County Cork.

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Mounding evidence: Ana María León, ‘Big Mound: settler destruction as historic preservation’, The Journal of Architecture, 2023

27Apr23

Abstract; In 1869, the Osage burial monument known as Big Mound, located in the middle of downtown St. Louis, was destroyed. But the desecration of the site did not end there. The multiple destructions and memorialisations that this sacred site subsequently endured reveal the markers of settler colonialism, a form of occupation that replaces Indigenous populations with invasive societies. We can see this pattern take shape in the narratives constructed around the site, in the manner in which its destruction was enacted and recorded, and in the commemoration efforts made in 1929 under the sponsorship of the Colonial Dames of America. This association is dedicated to honouring the memory of settlers, the agents involved in the destruction and dispossession of Indigenous populations. The installed by the group prioritises them over the Indigenous builders it is supposed to commemorate. Aggressions to the site have not stopped. In 2014, the Missouri Department of Transportation moved the marker to make way for the construction of the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. A few efforts have been made to palliate these actions and commemorate the monument. However, these efforts have elided and erased the claims of its builders — the Osage Nation — and constructed an image of these sites as empty, abandoned ruins built by supposedly distant, disappeared groups. By disconnecting the original builders from contemporary Indigenous groups, they have followed settler colonial frameworks resulting in acts of both physical and conceptual un-making that extend to the present. Undoing these frameworks is the first step towards reconsidering the broader site, which extends beyond the monument.

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Targeted by a triple alliance of settler colonialisms: I. Liang, ‘Island Encounters’: Mapping Indigenous Taiwan in the Context of “Imperial Archipelagos”‘, Kritika Kultura, 40, 2023, pp. 486-501

27Apr23

Abstract: This essay investigates the encounters with Indigenous peoples on Taiwan (the island of Formosa) in the context of “imperial archipelagos.” By placing Taiwan vis-à-vis islandic territories such as Hawai‘i and the Philippines, I argue that the encounters with Formosan “aboriginals”² could be related to the acquisition of “imperial archipelagos” against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century US expansionism into the Pacific. My point of reference is the historical figure Charles Le Gendre (1830-1899), then US consul in Xiamen, who was appointed by President Ulysses Grant. In three parts I analyze his involvements with Formosan “aboriginals”—the Rover Incident (1867), the Southern Cape Treaty (1867), and the propaganda pamphlet, Is Aboriginal Formosa a Part of the Chinese Empire? (1874). I argue that Le Gendre’s “island encounters” with Formosan “aboriginals” not only reveal the influence of the nineteenth-century discourse of Manifest Destiny, overflowing with the tropes of “discovery,” “conquest,” and “civilization,” but also manifest the prevailing notion of terra nullius in international law toward the end of the century. By drawing on the work of Brian Russell Roberts, Lanny Thompson, Douglas L. Fix, James Anaya, and others, I contend that Le Gendre transplanted to the Pacific the dominant ideologies of terra nullius and settler colonialism, making Taiwan part of the US “imperial archipelagos” that were in a strategic relation of mediation and triangulation with Japan.

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