« Older posts
Newer posts »

Settler colonial commemorations do not reconcile: Elizabeth Nelson, Anne Godlewska, ‘Settler Ignorance and Public Memory: Kingston, Ontario’, Geographical Review, 2022

08Nov22

Abstract: Since the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, municipalities are increasingly addressing reconciliation in their practice, including new engagement with Indigenous heritage and public memory. Nevertheless, municipal perspectives of heritage are frequently colonial and result in commemorative landscapes that reinforce official national narratives of history and identity. These landscapes limit expressions of Indigenous heritage and reinforce settler ignorance. This article explores settler-colonial commemorative practice in the context of reconciliation in Canada and presents what was learned through conversations with Indigenous peoples in Kingston, a mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. It emphasizes the need for productive settler discomfort in addressing settler ignorance and considers how reimagined places of public memory might unsettle hegemonic heritage narratives in Canadian cities. Noting the limitations of settler-Canadian commemoration in the context of reconciliation, it posits how decolonizing commemorative practices might offer new pathways for building relations.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

The university as a dispossessing settler colonial landlord: Joel Barnes, ‘Australian universities and Atlantic slavery’, History Australia, 2022

05Nov22

Abstract: This article seeks to open a conversation about Australian universities and Atlantic slavery. To an extent previously unexamined, Australian universities benefited financially, administratively and intellectually from the proceeds and legacies of slavery in the Caribbean and the American South. The research follows the examples of American and British universities’ examinations of their historical links to slavery, and builds upon recent scholarship that has emphasised the significance to the growth of Australian settler colonialism of the large-scale compensation paid to slave-owners following emancipation in the British Empire in 1833. The article reports on the findings of a survey of around 1,200 benefactions to the six oldest Australian universities from 1850 to 1939; it also examines the family and financial links to slavery of educators and key administrators in Australian universities’ early histories. The Dixson family of tobacconists, donors to several universities, is considered as an extended case study. The significance of universities’ connections to slavery in the Australian context has to be understood in terms of imperial transformations and expansions of settler colonialism, and to be thought and told in relation to universities’ Indigenous histories.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

Harassing settlers: Mahdi Sabbagh, ‘Sumud: Repertoires of Resistance in Silwan’, Public Culture, 2022

05Nov22

Abstract: This essay aims to identify methods and strategies used to manipulate the Palestinian urban fabric. First, the essay will focus on Israeli settler-colonial activity through a study of the deployed tactics of de-development, destruction, and harassment. Second, it will focus on Silwan’s popular movements and their culture of resistance. Instead of viewing their resistance as reactionary or as an act of survival, the essay attempts to frame it as an active praxis. Silwan’s collective movement’s various means of manipulation—sumud, communal awareness, outreach, and the sit-in tent—form a powerful set of resistance tactics that embody possibly universal lessons in urban resilience.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

Tangled settler histories: Max Kaiser, Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

03Nov22

Description: Provides the first book-length study of Australian Jewish antifascism, utilising a transnational lens; Considers the mutually reinforcing ideologies of settler colonialism, both in Palestine and Australia; Aims to spur debate on Jewish politics, antifascism and settler colonialism internationally.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

The settler farm and its horrors: Jonathon Wills, Gothic Negotiations of the Boundaries of the New Zealand Farm in Settler Literature, MA dissertation, Vitoria University of Wellington, 2022

01Nov22

Abstract: This thesis examines the ways the Gothic, as an aesthetic mode, is used to manage the spatial and conceptual boundaries of the farm in New Zealand settler literature, predominantly from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. I argue that settler literature frequently uses the Gothic mode’s capacity to communicate instability to problematise the boundaries of the New Zealand farm in ways that challenge the ecophobic binaries that uphold New Zealand’s Arcadian myth.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

Necrophiliac settler colonialism: Chaney Hill, ‘Necro-Settler Coloniality in Texan Mythology and Identity: Forgetting the Alamo’, Western American Literature, 57, 3, 2022, pp. 255-283

01Nov22

Excerpt: Like many Americans I spent much of 2020 in quarantine reading about, watching, and in some cases participating in Black Lives Matter protests. On May 30 of that year, I monitored social media from my Houston apartment as protesters gathered in San Antonio—a city I consider home— to march against police brutality. The protesters marched from Travis Park to the San Antonio Police Department, passing by the Alamo Plaza, the Alamo, and the Alamo Cenotaph on their way. These protesters were met by an armed group of men intent on (re)defending the Alamo Cenotaph, which is settled in a prominent location near the Alamo. The defense of the Alamo was being reenacted by a group of right-wing militiamen set on protecting the Alamo Cenotaph from Black Lives Matter protesters at the Alamo Plaza. I was, at first, confused. What did the Alamo have to do with the Black Lives Matter protesters? Initially the connection between the Alamo Plaza, which has been criticized for its perpetuation of anti-Mexican sentiments and ideologies, and Black life seems tenuous. However, on further inspection the connection between the Alamo, the Alamo Cenotaph, and the mistreatment of and violence against Black and Brown people becomes painfully apparent. Following the 2017 announcement by the Texas General Land Office (GLO) regarding their plans to relocate the Alamo Cenotaph, the debate about whether the Alamo should maintain its mythologic designation as the “cradle of Texas liberty” and white herohood, or engage its sordid past, which perpetuated white supremacist and settler colonial ideologies, has gained renewed attention.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

Imperial Indigenous citizenship against settler colonialism: Jared McDonald, Khoesan and Imperial Citizenship in Nineteenth Century South Africa, Routledge, 2023

01Nov22

Abstract: This volumeexplores the formative and expressive dynamics of Khoesan identity during a crucial period of incorporation as an underclass into Cape colonial society. Khoesan and Imperial Citizenship in Nineteenth Century South Africa places special emphasis on loyalism and subjecthood – posited as imperial citizenship – as foundational aspects of Khoesan resistance to the debilitating effects of settler colonialism. The work argues that Khoesan were active in the creation of their identity as imperial citizens and that expressions of loyalty to the British Crown were reflective of a political and civic consciousness that transcended their racially defined place within Cape colonial society. Following a chronological trajectory from the mid-1790s to the late 1850s, author Jared McDonald examines the combined influences of colonial law, evangelical-humanitarianism, imperial commissions of inquiry and the abolition of slavery as conduits of the notion of imperial citizenship. As histories and legacies of colonialism come under increasing scrutiny, the history of the Khoesan during this period highlights the complex nature of power and its imposition, and the myriad, nuanced ways in which the oppressed react and engage. This book will be of interest to scholars and students working on British imperialism in Africa, as well as histories of settler colonialism, nationalism and loyalism.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

Native Zionism? Jennifer Maidrand, Tala Raheb, ‘Seeking Canaan: Native Americans, colonialism, and the support for Christian Zionism’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 2022

01Nov22

Abstract: How is it that indigenous persons can voice support for Christian Zionism and opposition to Christian nationalism simultaneously? Why is there an incongruence between their rejection of Christian nationalism and their support for Christian Zionism? This paper explores this incongruence by shedding light on the entanglement of Christian Zionism and Christian nationalism, analysing notions of land, body, and self in relation to Christian Zionism and Christian nationalism, and by examining how such notions shape Native communities’ support for Christian Zionism. This paper argues that in the American context, Christian nationalism and Christian Zionism are inherently interconnected as colonial projects, and have influenced American self-understanding and occupied the imagination of Americans, thus resulting in the colonial self. In this context, settler colonialism is normalised and shapes Native communities’ understanding of their identity in relation to Israel and their response to Christian Zionism.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

More on the music of settler colonialism: Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, Bryce Huebner, ‘Outlaw epistemologies: Resisting the viciousness of country music’s settler ignorance’, Philosophical Issues, 2022

31Oct22

Abstract: Settler colonial imaginaries are constructed through the repeated, intergenerational layering of settler ecologies onto Indigenous ecologies; they result in fortified ignorance of the land, Indigenous peoples, and the networks of relationality and responsibility that sustain co-flourishing. Kyle Whyte (2018) terms this fortification of settler ignorance vicious sedimentation. In this paper, we argue that Outlaw Country music plays important roles in sedimenting settler imaginaries. We begin by clarifying the epistemic dimensions of vicious sedimentation. We then explore specific cases where Outlaw Country songs function as epistemic scaffolding for maintaining and preserving deeply sedimented settler imaginaries. Finally, we conclude by considering ways of using country music as epistemic scaffolding for constructing resistant epistemologies, through the processes of trickster hermeneutics (Vizenor, 1999) and epistemic chronostratigraphy.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed

Singing settler colonialism: Suzanne Basson, The Power of Song: The Role of Afrikaans Patriotic Songs in the Maintenance of Apartheid, MA dissertation, University of Oregon, 2022

31Oct22

Abstract: In this thesis, I examine how the patriotic songs found in the FAK songbook helped maintain the continued imposition of apartheid. During the start of the 20th century the FAK aimed to solve the ‘poor white problem’ by uplifting the Afrikaner people both economically and culturally. They first set out to unite the Afrikaners by creating a shared heritage, including folk songs. By expanding on Patricia Hill Collins’ theory of controlling images, I argue that the FAK created a controlling sound by associating musical genres with class. The patriotic songs affiliated with the uplifted Afrikaner, in turn, narrated the created heritage with lyrics that promoted settler colonialism. I claim these songs encouraged white ignorance—the disbelief or absence of true belief about systemic white supremacy—and, more importantly, that encouraging their performance is in itself white ignorance.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed
« Older posts
Newer posts »