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Introducing a special issue on settler colonialism and western American literature: Alex Trimble Young, Lorenzo Veracini, ‘”If I am native to anything”: Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature’, Western American Literature, 52, 1, 2017, pp. 1-23

17Jul17

Excerpt: The field of western American literary studies emerged in the 1960s and ’70s as a regionalist critique that imagined a western ethics of place against the Turnerian consensus that then dominated American studies. Working in tandem with historical critiques that were recasting the frontier as a site of imperial, patriarchal, and ecological violence, the critique offered by western literary regionalism hinged on an effort to decouple the frontier from the West. By imagining a regional identification that would work in opposition to the logic of Turner’s frontier, this critique has reimagined the West as a potential emancipatory place for the staging of environmentalist, feminist, queer, and antiracist challenges to American political and cultural norms.

This tradition of place-based (and often bioregional) western literary studies met a challenge from a new generation of critics beginning in the 1990s. The “postwestern” critics, informed by poststructuralist theory, followed Turner to the extent that they understand the West more as a “form of society” than as a definable geographical space. Rejecting the place-centered critique as inflected with lingering patriarchal and nationalist politics, the postwestern critics worked to extricate “westness” as a social construct from the nationalist constraints that Turner imagined. In postwestern critique, there is no “authentic” frontier or “true” West, whether critical or celebratory, to which we have recourse to explain “westness.” “Westness” is reconceived as something between (in post-western critique’s more Baudrillardean mode) the totalizing simulacrum of the “hyperreal West” or (in its more Deleuzean mode) a transnational form of potentiality.


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Saying the unsayable: Robert Mason (ed.), Legacies of Violence: Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia, Berghahn, 2016

17Jul17

Description: Whether in the form of warfare, dispossession, forced migration, or social prejudice, Australia’s sense of nationhood was born from—and continues to be defined by—experiences of violence. Legacies of Violence probes this brutal legacy through case studies that range from the colonial frontier to modern domestic spaces, exploring themes of empathy, isolation, and Australians’ imagined place in the world. Moving beyond the primacy that is typically accorded white accounts of violence, contributors place particular emphasis on the experiences of those perceived to be on the social periphery, repositioning them at the center of Australia’s relationship to global events and debate.


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Maintaing a place-based indigenous existence online: K. Mikkelsen, A. M. AL-Asadi, ‘Indigenous Techno-gogies: Blended Online & Land-Based Mahoodle in Indigenous Studies’, in J. Johnston (Ed.), Proceedings of EdMedia, AACE, 2017, pp. 329-333

17Jul17

Abstract: In this work in progress study and course redesign initiative learner perspectives on a blended online and land-based learning Indigenous Studies course at a regional college are explored. The inclusion of Indigenous pedagogies through an Indigenous resurgence paradigm and digital learning technologies inform a course design mix. The design incorporated Mahoodle and the creation of a land-based learning experience with an Indigenous land-based survival expert and knowledge keepers. The online and land-based interconnected aspects of the course were represented by learners through their ePortfolios. Our interim discoveries will focus on the relationship between Mahoodle and Indigenous land-based learning, while identifying the issues that presented challenges and solutions from the pilot course delivery. In this best practices session, we plan to show video clips of the land-based experience and ePortfolio examples so they may be seen and understood in the context of the project.


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‘Development’ is dispossession: Lena Meari, ‘Colonial dispossession, developmental discourses, and humanitarian solidarity in ‘Area C’: the case of the Palestinian Yanun Village’, Community Development Journal, 2017

12Jul17

Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Yanun village, which was categorized as part of ‘Area C’ by the Oslo accords, this article analyses the collusion of the mainstream hegemonic developmental discourse with the colonial project in colonized Palestine. It also analyses the politics of and limitations of contemporary forms of international solidarity with Palestinian communities in ‘Area C’. The article situates the devastating life conditions of Yanun community within the Zionist settler colonial project in Palestine with its ongoing structural and violent forms of dispossession, land appropriation, expulsion and displacement of Palestinians, particularly in ‘Area C’, which constitutes the current frontier for Zionist settler colonial expansionism. By examining Yanun community’s survival tactics, the article illustrates how the hegemonic developmental discourse on ‘Area C’ constitutes the masses of Palestinians as subjects of humanitarian aid. The article also shows how the humanitarian approach of solidarity with Yanun’s community constitutes the condition of Palestinian victimhood, cancels its anticolonial agency, and patronizes its forms of anticolonial resistance by employing the tactics of eye witnessing Palestinians’ life under occupation and employing the language of non-violence.


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Decolonisation is … an international matter: Irene Watson (ed.), Indigenous Peoples as Subjects of International Law, Routledge, 2017

12Jul17

Description: For more than 500 years, Indigenous laws have been disregarded. Many appeals for their recognition under international law have been made, but have thus far failed – mainly because international law was itself shaped by colonialism. How, this volume asks, might international law be reconstructed, so that it is liberated from its colonial origins?

With contributions from critical legal theory, international law, politics, philosophy and Indigenous history, this volume pursues a cross-disciplinary analysis of the international legal exclusion of Indigenous Peoples, and of its relationship to global injustice. Beyond the issue of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, however, this analysis is set within the broader context of sustainability; arguing that Indigenous laws, philosophy and knowledge are not only legally valid, but offer an essential approach to questions of ecological justice and the co-existence of all life on earth.


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Anticipatory citizenship is … not citizenship: Kate Coddington, ‘The re-emergence of wardship: Aboriginal Australians and the promise of citizenship’, Political Geography, 61, 2017, pp. 67–76

12Jul17

Abstract: In this paper, I suggest that the category of ‘ward,’ a designation used for Aboriginal Australians in the 1950s and 1960s, has re-emerged in contemporary Northern Territory (NT) life. Wardship represents an in-between status, neither citizens nor non-citizens, but rather an anticipatory citizenship formation constructed by the Australian state. The ward is a not-yet citizen, and the deeds, acts, and discourses that define the ward’s capacities to act as a political subject can maintain their anticipatory nature even as people ‘achieve’ formal citizenship. Wardship can be layered on top of citizen and non-citizen status alike. Rather than accounting for the grey areas between ‘citizen’ and ‘non-citizen,’ therefore, wards exist beyond this theoretical continuum, demanding a more nuanced accounting of political subjectivities and people’s relationships to the state.

I trace the emergence of the category ‘ward’ in the 1950s and 1960s in Australia and its re-emergence for Aboriginal Australians impacted by the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation. The promise of citizenship offered by the status of ‘ward’ is built upon expectations about family life, economic activity, and appropriate behaviour. These assumptions underscore an implicit bargain between individuals and the state, that neoliberalised self-discipline will lead to both formal citizenship rights and a sense of belonging. Built-in impediments, however, ensure that this bargain is difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil.


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A summary: Christoph Marx, ‘Settler Colonies’, EGO: European History Online, 2017

10Jul17

Abstract: Beginning in the early modern age, European settler colonies were founded first beyond the Atlantic Ocean and later in the Pacific, but not in Asia. The territories in question are huge, and settlement often proceeded frontier-style, though processes of urbanization can also be observed from an early stage. With the exception of the Cape Colony, founded in 1652, settler colonies in Africa were not established until the 19th century and led to the dominance of European minorities over the indigenous majority population. Conflicts with local populations erupted over resources claimed by both sides, above all land. The decolonization of settler colonies in Africa was mostly accompanied by armed conflict.


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The (fundamental) role of (indigenous) Irony in shaping the politics of memory: David Myer Temin, Adam Dahl, ‘Narrating Historical Injustice: Political Responsibility and the Politics of Memory’, Political research Quarterly, 2017

10Jul17

Abstract: Memory and justice are intricately linked. To adequately address historical wrongs, liberal democracies must engage the past. Historical memory provides a connective tissue between past wrongs and present injustices. Yet the question that arises with the politics of memory and its usefulness for addressing historical injustice resides precisely in the process by which we create historical memory. More than just an acknowledgment of past events, collective memory is constructed through narrative and memorial practices that impart meaning to past events. This paper amends the politics of memory by attending to the complex relationship between the narrative figuration of historical wrongs and present attributions of collective responsibility. By viewing memory of historical wrongs as narrative constructions of the past, we argue that the narrative form of historical injustice shapes contemporary notions of political responsibility. In elaborating this claim, we examine how different narrative representations of historical injustice engender different understandings of collective responsibility. Through a reading of the Native American political theorist Vine Deloria Jr.’s famous work, Custer Died for Your Sins, we then explore how irony and satire help expose the limitations of tragic, romantic, and comedic narratives in conceptualizing political responsibility for historical injustice.


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The history of settlers: Stephen Jackson, ‘British History is Their History: Britain and the British Empire in the History Curriculum of Ontario, Canada and Victoria, Australia 1930-1975’, Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, 4, 2, 2017, pp. 165-186. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/ete.161

10Jul17

Abstract: This article investigates the evolving conceptions of national identity in Canada and Australia through an analysis of officially sanctioned history textbooks in Ontario, Canada and Victoria, Australia. From the 1930s until the 1950s, Britain and the British Empire served a pivotal role in history textbooks and curricula in both territories. Textbooks generally held that British and imperial history were crucial to the Canadian and Australian national identity. Following the Second World War, textbooks in both Ontario and Victoria began to recognize Britain’s loss of power, and how this changed Australian and Canadian participation in the British Empire/Commonwealth. But rather than advocate for a complete withdrawal from engagement with Britain, authors emphasized the continuing importance of the example of the British Empire and Commonwealth to world affairs. In fact, participation in the Commonwealth was often described as of even more importance as the Dominions could take a more prominent place in imperial affairs. By the 1960s, however, textbook authors in Ontario and Victoria began to change their narratives, de-emphasizing the importance of the British Empire to the Canadian and Australian identity. Crucially, by the late 1960s the new narratives Ontarians and Victorians constructed claimed that the British Empire and national identity were no longer significantly linked. An investigation into these narratives of history will provide a unique window into officially acceptable views on imperialism before and during the era of decolonization.


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On the decolonisation and settlers (reflecting on southern Africa): Chris Saunders, ‘Decolonization in Southern Africa: Reflections on the Namibian and South African Cases’, Journal for Contemporary History, 42, 1, 2017, pp. 99-114

10Jul17

Abstract: While the term “decolonization” is now applied in many different situations, with different meanings, its original and prime usage relates to the process leading to the ending of colonial rule. Though there is a large literature on that process, we lack a detailed overview of the way it unfolded in Southern Africa. This article focuses on two countries in that region, Namibia and South Africa, and raises some of the questions that need to be addressed in relation to their “decolonization”. It also seeks to show how complex “decolonization” was in these two instances, and the importance of seeing individual cases in a regional and comparative perspective.


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