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‘Bad ecosex’ against settler colonialism? Astrida Neimanis, ‘Toxic Erotics and Bad Ecosex at Windermere Basin’, Environmental Humanities, 14, 3, 2022, pp. 699-717

26Nov22

Abstract: How do settler colonialism, control of women’s and differently gendered bodies, sex, industry, pollution—but also pleasure, love, care, desire, bodily autonomy, and survival—cleave together and apart in the inland wetland of Windermere Basin park? Starting with this question, this article explores my own attraction to this tiny place in postindustrial and settler colonial Hamilton, Ontario. I am curious about what it can teach us about the complex entanglements of these things, and the toxic desires that are both enabled and foreclosed by the relations that gather here. In the first section, I briefly rehearse the basin’s toxic history and, guided by Audre Lorde’s definition of erotics and Catriona Sandilands formative work on queer ecologies, my own desirous attachments to the life it nonetheless sustains. The next section reveals how, in the context of settler colonialism and climate catastrophe, these erotics are queerly tangled in questions of more-than-human gender, sex, and reproduction, too, in ways that invite a capacious and multivalent understanding of reproductive justice. The final section examines the performance art of white settler ecosexuals Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, but sets this alongside a performance by Vanessa Dion Fletcher at Windermere, in order to insist on a version of ecosexual erotics that, while joyous, remains imbricated in fraught histories, complicity, and an inalienable attention to what Michif scholar Max Liboiron parses as “differences and obligations.” Taking a cue from settler feminist artist and scholar Lindsay Kelley, I refer to this as “bad ecosex.” In its refusal of purity, bad ecosex holds the trouble of contemporary ecological relations together with the pleasurable power of erotics to build a politics of change grounded in feeling deeply.


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Honorary whiteness and honorary ignorance extend settler colonialism: Babalwa Sibango, ‘Honorary Whiteness: Delusions of Racial Hierarchy’, Filosofia Theoretica, 11, 3, 2022, pp. 51-66

26Nov22

Abstract: As a country with a history of settler-colonialism, the land question in South Africa remains one of the critical issues of redress that is highly contested. Furthermore, opinions on the land question tend to be divided along racial lines. This paper uses white ignorance as a theoretical framework to explain these polarised views on the land question in South Africa post-1994. The paper also uses the concept of honorary whiteness/brownness to explain how differences among ‘people of colour’ serve to sustain a hierarchical racial order in which whites remain the ultimate beneficiaries. While research on white ignorance mainly focuses on the socio-psychological and material benefits of white ignorance for whites, this paper argues that those classified as honorary white or ‘brown’ also benefit, albeit minimally, from endorsing willful white ignorance of past and present racial atrocities.


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Repressive authenticity at work? Michel Bouchard, Sébastien Malette, Jo-Anne Muise Lawless, ‘Academia, Twitter wars, and suffocating social justice in Canada: the case of unrecognised Indigenous peoples’, Dialectical Anthropology, 2022

26Nov22

Abstract: The “woke movement” is now under fire globally. Seeking to right social injustice and battle racism, the woke movement has laudable intentions, but its implementation can exacerbate social inequalities. In the case of Canada, a social movement seeks to ferret out “Pretendians” or those White individuals deemed to be falsely assuming, and thus appropriating, Indigenous identity. Though this movement may seem righteous, the problem arises that individuals targeted are those who are Non-Status Indians and have yet to be recognised by the state, as well as Métis (or mixed-heritage people) whose historical communities have yet to be sanctioned by governments or courts, and who are also portrayed as being “Fétis” or fake Métis. Our challenge as researchers is to do the deep ethnographic, historical, and legal research to provide a nuanced understanding of indigeneity that does not constrain it solely to colonial models as the case studies provided will demonstrate.


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The ownership of territory: Wybren Nooitgedagt, Borja Martinović, Maykel Verkuyten, Kumar Yogeeswaran, ‘Who owns the land? Territorial ownership understandings and intergroup relations in a settler society’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2022

26Nov22

Abstract: Conflicts over the ownership of territory have shaped intergroup relations between indigenous and nonindigenous groups in settler societies. Using latent profile analysis, we found four different subgroups of individuals among a sample of European New Zealanders based on their perceived ingroup (NZ European) and outgroup (Māori) ownership. Most people (75.9%) perceived shared territorial ownership, but there were also individuals predominantly recognizing ingroup ownership (8.2%), outgroup ownership (6.4%), or no territorial ownership (9.4%). These subgroups differed in meaningful ways in their support for principles of ownership, perceived rights and responsibilities, compensation for Māori, and support for strict immigration policies.


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Milk colonialism as settler colonialism: Denisa Krasna, ‘Animal Colonialismin North America: Milk colonialism, environmental racism, and Indigenous Veganism’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae Studia Territoralia, 1, 2022, pp. 61-90

26Nov22

Abstract: Combining insights from postcolonialism, ecofeminism, and critical animal studies, this article focuses on the colonial experience of nonhuman animals in North America whose exploitation has been integral to the colonial expansionist project. By tracing the history of displacement of Indigenous populations due to animal agriculture, animal colonialism is also linked to mass killing of free-living animals and to environmental degradation. Furthermore, the article delineates the entangled oppression of Indigenous women’s and nonhuman animals’ bodies that can be theorized as colonized territories, exploited for profit via the control of their reproductive cycles. To protest the violent industrial animal farming practices that involve torture, slaughter, and mass dairying and are built on racist rhetoric, some Indigenous people adopt contextual Indigenous veganism as an act of political resistance.


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The settler writes back: Kathryn Carter, ‘Transatlantic Letters and Settler Identities: Jane White Writes to Ireland, 1849–1865’, The Journal of Epistolary Studies, 3, 1, 2022, pp. 5-16

26Nov22

Abstract: This article reads one side of a transatlantic correspondence, that of Irish emigrant Jane White, who relocated to Canada in 1849, during a time of high migration from Ireland to Canada. The point of reading her one-sided correspondence is because it challenges scholars in both material and theoretical ways. Jane’s letters are a richly complicated source for such an undertaking, allowing readers to assess the impact of material circumstances and the “mechanics of colonization” as they shape and inform the epistolary platform upon which Jane White rehearses Protestant and middle-class identities. These identity affiliations—which act as connective tissue to the land of her birth, and which she reinforces in letter writing—are concretely tied to the processes of colonization and settlement, but complicated by being Irish. Despite the relative comfort of her family, Jane’s letters to Eleanor Wallace reveal a young Irish woman struggling to maintain her identity in the face of prejudice. The following examination of her letters suggests ways of situating the personal letter in settler histories by focusing on Jane White’s engagement with questions of identity, social status, and colonial relations within the epistolarium, the discursive world that is shaped by and created within the dialogic field of the letter and the material factors of its creation.


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Settler colonial famine: Alana Mann, ‘The Empty Food Bowl: Discourse Disconnection of Australian Agriculture’, Antonio Augusto Rossotto Ioris, Bernardo Mançano Fernandes (eds), Agriculture, Environment and Development, Palgrave, 2022, pp. 159-180

25Nov22

Abstract: In 1997 John Wilson wrote that “while the hunger of Aboriginal Australians continues to be both a national and international scandal, hunger experienced by many other Australians is best described as hidden or silent hunger, not readily acknowledged publicly”. Sadly, this is still the case. Against the backdrop of high rates of local food insecurity, worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic and the failure of the just-in-time logic of global supply chains, Australian farmers and other food producers are under increasing pressure to meet the needs of both distant and local markets under volatile trade and environmental conditions. Yet the nation lacks a long-term vision that balances agricultural exports with domestic food security and, for Aboriginal people dispossessed of their homelands and access to productive resources, the impacts of white settler colonialism persist.


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Exogene and Indigene: Andonis Piperoglou, Zora Simic, ‘Their Own Perceptions: Non-Anglo Migrants and Aboriginal Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, 53, 4, 2022, pp. 519-530

22Nov22

Excerpt: Such interventions variously ‘triangulate’ historical analysis in Australia, through a focus on historicising one of three configurations in particular, encounters and relationships between non-Anglo/ethnicised settlers and Indigenous peoples. Of the three dynamics of cultural relations and interactions in settler colonial societies – the other two being relationships between Anglo settlers and Indigenous peoples and between Anglo settlers and non-Anglo/ethnicised settlers – the non-Anglo migrant and Aboriginal Australia configuration has been the least examined. Yet, as this themed issue showcases, focusing on this aspect of the triangular dynamic of Australian colonial history reveals numerous connections in which histories of empire, colonialism, migration, race, labour, and identity intersect and overlap.


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Secularist settler colonialism: Leila Benhadjoudja, ‘Racial Secularism as Settler Colonial Sovereignty in Quebec’, Islamophobia Studies Journal, 2022

22Nov22

Excerpt: Secularism raises important identity issues in Quebec. As a francophone nation, Quebec defends its secularism as evidence of its distinctiveness from Anglo-Canada and an attachment to its French heritage. Quebec is the site of two distinct colonial regimes (French and British). The French conquest started in the 15th century in the name of its monarchy, and the British conquest was consolidated in 1763 by the treaty of Paris (Leroux 2011, 378). The latter constitutes a political trauma that French Canadians continue to cling to as defining the relationship between white francophones and white anglophones in Canada. This trauma, of one colonial empire losing an Indigenous territory to another colonial empire, is central to understanding contemporary racism and Islamophobia in Quebec. In this context, criticism of Quebec’s secularism and other policies targeting minorities is seen as a threat against Quebec’s francophone identity. A telling example of this dynamic, and one that has caused a media and political uproar, occurred at the Canadian leaders’ debates during the 2021 election campaign. During this live televised debate, the moderator, journalist, and analyst Shachi Kurl (a woman of color), asked Bloc Québécois party leader Yves-François Blanchet (a white francophone man) about his support for Quebec laws that have been strongly denounced by anti-racist groups in Quebec, including the law on secularism (Bill 21). Bill 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, passed in Quebec Parliament in June 2019. This controversial law prohibits public service workers who exercise authority from wearing religious symbols (e.g., police, lawyers, and teachers) and disproportionately targets Muslim women who wear the hijab. Kurl’s question created a major national controversy. The host was accused of Quebec-bashing and Premier François Legault declared that “The Quebec nation is under attack.” Blanchet, for his part, felt “a cauldron of insults in the face of Quebecers,” and the Bloc Québécois has repeatedly refused to recognize the discriminatory nature of Bill 21 and systemic racism in Quebec. Finally, the members of the Quebec National Assembly felt the need to vote unanimously to denounce Kurl’s question, and to call for an end to “Quebec bashing.” (Lévesque 2021). An interesting fact is that even the political parties that opposed Bill 21 felt that Quebec was under attack. For example, Dominique Anglade, the first Black woman to be the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, also condemned the “attack” on Quebec and wrote on Twitter that “We are an open, free, strong people…” (Lévesque 2021). What was presented as outrageous during this moment of national uproar was not that Bill 21 discriminates against Muslim women who wear the hijab and other religious minorities in Quebec; rather, it was that Quebec as francophone nation was “targeted” by Anglo-Canadians. This anecdote is part of a dominant logic of denial of racism and settler colonialism in Quebec, where anti-racism criticism of Quebec’s secularism is often silenced by the colonial narrative of two founding peoples, and their rivalry in the colonial project. 


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The Mars Rover as (predictably) a settler colonialist: Maya Cruz, Automating Discovery and the Engineering of Off-Earth Futures, PhD dissertation, University of California Davis, 2022

22Nov22

Abstract: “Automating Discovery and the Engineering of Off-Earth Futures” examines NASA’s efforts to engineer what is described as “autonomous scientific discovery” in the Mars Exploration Program and its fleet of Mars Rovers through artificial intelligence and machine learning. At the intersections of Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Science and Technology Studies, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, “Automating Discovery” asks: What are the material conditions and histories of the Mars Exploration Program rovers as increasingly autonomous scientific laboratories? And, building on the field of laboratory studies, what is the rover as laboratory when read through the fields of Feminist Science and Technology Studies, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies? In what ways is this rover a historical material product of the long histories of US settler colonialism, imperialism, and global racial capitalism? To address these questions, each chapter of “Automating Discovery” examines a different aspect of the material conditions that shape the fantasy of autonomous scientific discovery and the rovers of the Mars Exploration Program as autonomous scientific laboratories. What political stakes of life in our current inter-planetary moment does such an intervention articulate and make clear? How can such an intervention guide anti-colonial research practice? To answer these questions, “Automating Discovery” historicizes and contextualizes NASA’s efforts to engineer autonomous scientific discovery through US imperial and colonial relations in the transpacific. In so doing, “Automating Discovery” seeks to position the Mars rover as an “autonomous colonial laboratory,” and articulate critical strategies through which the expansion of such a laboratory might be resisted.


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