settler colonial studies blog

Still a settler: Frances Hancock, ‘Becoming and Being Irish-Pakeha: Crafting a Narrative of Belonging That Inspirits Indigenous–Settler Relationships’, Genealogy, 2020

29Nov20

Abstract: Irish-Pakeha (a European New Zealander of Irish descent) is a settler identity that embodies ancestral relations with forebears and homelands as well as a relationship with Maori, the Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Being of Irish descent carries multiple meanings that can nourish a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, and significant relationships. How have my Irish ancestral relations and places of belonging cultivated in me those relational qualities and ethical–political
commitments that inspirit the Indigenous–settler engagements that are part of my personal and professional life? Here I explore the complexities of becoming and being Irish-Pakeha in response to that question. Travelling across generations and two countries, I utilise a series of guiding questions to help construct an Irish-Pakeha diasporic identity through a narrative of belonging. Following Nash, I explore geographies of relatedness, doing kinship, and the effects of identity-making through kinship as a way to understand who I am/am becoming and why being Irish-Pakeha matters in my work with Indigenous Maori.

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Is the violence of incommensurability preferable? Elizabeth Strakosch, Alissa Macoun, ‘The violence of analogy: abstraction, neoliberalism and settler colonial possession’, Postcolonial Studies, 23, 4, 2020, pp. 505-526

29Nov20

Abstract: This article explores the value of theorising about colonialism that is specific rather than universal, informed by our locations in colonial struggles and driven by engagement with our continuing material colonial relationships with land, place and people. We do this by examining recent scholarly engagements with our contemporary precarious global economic and environmental conditions, particularly within settler colonial theory. We argue that using analogy to think our way out of material colonial and racial relations can obscure the authority of Indigenous peoples and reproduce colonial epistemologies. This attempt to create solidarity through political equivalence risks reifying imperial relationships and resecuring white possession. Rather than seeking to evade our positions as colonisers embedded in violent political systems, we argue it is possible for colonisers to act in solidarity from a position of complicity. Working towards justice from our own locations involves building solidarity across differences, without first needing to reduce these differences to sameness.

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Once a settler, always a settler: Nikhil Pal Singh, ‘The Pervasive Power of the Settler Mindset’, The Boston Review, 26/11/19

28Nov20

Excerpt: Logan’s speech went viral by eighteenth century standards; it was reprinted in newspapers across the country and admired for its tragic eloquence. Its popularity and resonance among white colonialists illustrate a defining aspect of settler storytelling: an acknowledgement of the injustice of Indian killing alongside an affirmation of its inevitability and salience as a guide to action. In their authenticity, Logan’s words validated a structuring precept of the white settler colony: that those who are violently displaced and eliminated are distinct from kin, whose passing should be mourned, and also opaque to posterity because they are sundered from webs of social relatedness.

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‘In this glancing touch is a preview of the whole of settler colonialism, sordid, indelible, irreversible’: Jason Farago, ‘The Myth of North America, in One Painting’, The New York Times, 25/11/20

27Nov20

Access the article here.

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Settler colonial novels: Zachary R. Hernandez, ‘Imagining the Southwest in Willa Cather’s Frontier Novels: Settler Colonialism in The Song of the Lark, The Professor’s House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop’, in Jada Ach, Gary Reger (eds), Reading Aridity in Western American Literature, Rowman & Littlefield, 2020

24Nov20

Excerpt: This chapter approaches Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark (1915), The Professor’s House (1925), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) as case studies of settler colonial discourse.

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Settler colonialism is a pandemic: Renisa Mawani, ‘A Historical Account of the Pandemic: Health, Colonialism and Racism in Canada’, RSC, 12/11/20

24Nov20

Abstract: In this paper, I situate the Covid-19 pandemic within a longer historical context in Canada. I argue that settler colonial state has produced the conditions in which certain (white) lives are valued, protected, and nourished while other lives (Indigenous/ Chinese) are left to die. I make this argument by focusing on two examples: the role of the Indian Act and the enactment of Canadian Immigration legislation. While the former has produced unliveable conditions for Indigenous peoples on and off reserves, the latter has suggested that certain migrants – particularly the Chinese – were “foreign” and diseased. The racial inequalities that have surfaced in the current pandemic, I suggest, requires us to consider the long histories of racial violence in Canada, the ways in which certain bodies have been made vulnerable to disease, while others have been blamed for its proliferation, all in the interests of white (re)settlement.

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The settler and the migrant, and the question of revolution: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Displaced: John Mulgan’s Man Alone and Guido Morselli’s The Communist’, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 38, 1, 2020, pp. 84-104

24Nov20

Excerpt: John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939) is a classic of New Zealand literature. Guido Morselli’s Il comunista (published posthumously in 1976 but written in 1964-65) was recently translated into English as The Communist and released as part of the NYRB Classics Series. Man Alone tells the story of an English World War One veteran’s migration to New Zealand, his ordeals during the Depression and in New Zealand’s wilderness, and eventually his decision, after his return to Europe, to volunteer in the international brigades supporting the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. The Communist tells the story of an Italian communist organiser and member of parliament who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, who had subsequently emigrated to the US after defeat, and had returned to Italy after the end of World War Two. The novel also narrates its protagonist’s ordeal, as his unorthodox militancy leads to a serious political crisis precipitated by dissent on a point of Marxist interpretation. Both novels focus on the politically formative experiences that a new life elsewhere has for their protagonists, even if both displacements are provisional. Even though they were written a generation apart and contributed to completely different literary traditions, the two novels can be productively read together because they both tease out the interaction between political militancy and displacement.

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The limits of settler colonial studies: Lucy Taylor, ‘Four foundations of settler colonial theory: four insights from Argentina’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2020

22Nov20

Abstract: How might analysis of Argentina, its history and social relations, complicate and enrich our understanding of settler colonialism? This is the key question that drives this article which explores four of the conceptual foundations that underpin settler colonial theory: the labour/land distinction; terra nullius; the black/slavery category; and the settler/native binary. From these, four key insights emerge around the following themes: capitalism; geopolitics; slaveability/elimination; and mestizaje. As such, the article builds on existing critiques of binary thinking in settler colonial theory by considering ‘settling’ from locations and experiences beyond the usual locus of study. By disarranging our ‘definition’ and expectations of settler colonial regimes, it aims to both enhance established theory and to foster a bridge between Latin American Studies and Settler Colonial Studies as intellectual fields.

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Indigeneity against self-determination: José Pedro Monteiro, ‘From ‘Natives’ to ‘Aborigines’: Late Colonialism, Indigenous Rights and the Global Politics of Sovereignty (1953–1962)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2020

22Nov20

Abstract: This article addresses the dynamics of political and social continuity and change in Portuguese late colonialism after 1945. By focusing on the 1961 and 1962 imperial reforms, three main arguments are put forward. First, that only by analytically incorporating international and transnational dimensions the Portuguese protracted trajectory of imperial demise can be fully grasped. Second, by engaging with international institutions, norms and idioms, namely the then emerging indigenous international law and politics, Portuguese authorities and experts advanced a distinctive and alternative project of nationhood and imperial citizenship that contested the prevalent anti-colonial norm of self-determination. Finally, it is argued that in an authoritarian context, imperial and colonial reforms re-enacted and reconfigured, instead of abolishing, a juridical order shaped by acute racial inequalities and discrimination but that, nonetheless, made prevention of daily abuses and violence more effective.

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Settler ‘total archives’: J. J. Ghaddar, ‘Total archives for land, law and sovereignty in settler Canada’, Archival Science, 2020

22Nov20

Access the article here.

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