Table of Contents:
Introduction: Terror and the Postcolonial (Elleke Boehmer and Stephen Morton, University of Oxford and University of Southampton).
Part I: Theories of Colonial and Postcolonial Terror:
1. The Colony: Its Guilty Secret and Its Accursed Share (Achille Mbembe, University of Wiwatersrand).
2. Vanishing Points: Law, Violence, and Exception in the Global War Prison (Derek Gregory, University of British Columbia).
3. The White Fear Factor (Vron Ware, Open University).
4. Sacrificial Militancy and the Wars around Terror (Alex Houen, University of Sheffield).
5. Postcolonial Writing and Terror (Elleke Boehmer, University of Oxford).
Part II: Histories of Post/colonial Terror:
6. Revolutionary Terrorism in British Bengal (Peter Heehs, Independent Scholar).
7. Excavating Histories of Terror: Thugs, Sovereignty, and the Colonial Sublime (Alex Tickell, University of Portsmouth).
8. Terrorism, Literature, and Sedition in Colonial India (Stephen Morton, University of Southampton).
9. Israel in the US Empire (Bashir Abu-Manneh, Barnard College).
10. The Poetics of State Terror in Twenty-first-century Zimbabwe (Ranka Primorac, University of Southampton).
11. The Mediation of “Terror”: Authority, Journalism, and the Stockwell Shooting (Stuart Price, De Montfort University).
Part III: Genres of Terror:
12. Terror Effects (Robert J. C. Young, New York University).
13. “Gendering” Terror: Representations of the Female “Freedom Fighter” in Contemporary Sri Lankan Literature and Cultural Production (Neluka Silva, University of Colombo).
14. Terror, Spectacle, and the Secular State in Bombay Cinema (Sujala Singh, University of Southampton).
15. “The age of reason was over . . . an age of fury was dawning”: Contemporary Fiction and Terror (Robert Eaglestone. University of London).
16. Bodies of Terror: Performer and Witness (Emma Brodzinski, University of London).
Filed under: Africa, Asia, Empire, Israel/Palestine, Political developments, postcolonialism, Scholarship and insights, Southern Africa, United States | Closed
Abstract/Resumen:
This paper focuses on the anxiety of possession that underlies the anthropological inquisitiveness of the nineteenth-century Argentine explorer Francisco Pascasio Moreno. Moreno’s Viaje a la Patagonia Austral (1879) exposes a series of complex representational configurations that respond to specific national imperatives. Although Moreno negates the native peoples’ presence by depicting them as relics, his anthropological curiosity paradoxically makes evident that Patagonia was visibly populated by indigenous peoples. Significantly his portrayals of ‘Indian’ rituals make references to sex and violence, as well as allusions to female chastity. Since these elements are seldom overtly present in Europeans’ narratives of travel and exploration on Patagonia, these representations constitute a break from the writing travel tradition that precedes Moreno’s. But, more importantly, these references to uncontrolled passions and female virginity expose the ambiguities of a narrative that, while providing an account of a visibly inhabited Patagonia, also attempts to legitimize Argentina’s colonizing project in the region.
El presente trabajo centra su atención en las ansias de posesión que subyacen a la curiosidad antropológica del explorarador argentino decimonónico, Francisco Pascasio Moreno. El texto de Moreno, Viaje a la Patagonia Austral (1879), expone una serie de configuraciones representacionales complejas que responde a imperativos nacionales específicos. Si bien Moreno al representar a los pueblos originarios como reliquias niega la presencia de éstos, su curiosidad antropológica paradójicamente pone en evidencia que la Patagonia estaba poblada por indígenas. Es signficativo que sus descripciones de los rituales de los ‘indios’ hacen referencia al sexo y a la violencia así como también a la castidad femenina. Dado que estos elementos rara vez están tan explícitamente presentes en narrativas europeas de viaje y exploración a la Patagonia, estas representaciones constituyen un quiebre con la tradición que precede a Moreno. Pero, aún más importante, estas referencias a pasiones incontrolables y a la virginidad femenina exponen las ambigüedades de una narrativa que da cuenta de una Patagonia visiblemente habitada y que, al mismo tiempo, intenta legitimar el proyecto colonizador argentino en la región.
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the anxiety of possession that underlies the anthropological inquisitiveness of the nineteenth-century Argentine explorer Francisco Pascasio Moreno. Moreno’s Viaje a la Patagonia Austral (1879) exposes a series of complex representational configurations that respond to specific national imperatives. Although Moreno negates the native peoples’ presence by depicting them as relics, his anthropological curiosity paradoxically makes evident that Patagonia was visibly populated by indigenous peoples. Significantly his portrayals of ‘Indian’ rituals make references to sex and violence, as well as allusions to female chastity. Since these elements are seldom overtly present in Europeans’ narratives of travel and exploration on Patagonia, these representations constitute a break from the writing travel tradition that precedes Moreno’s. But, more importantly, these references to uncontrolled passions and female virginity expose the ambiguities of a narrative that, while providing an account of a visibly inhabited Patagonia, also attempts to legitimize Argentina’s colonizing project in the region.
Resumen:
El presente trabajo centra su atención en las ansias de posesión que subyacen a la curiosidad antropológica del explorarador argentino decimonónico, Francisco Pascasio Moreno. El texto de Moreno, Viaje a la Patagonia Austral (1879), expone una serie de configuraciones representacionales complejas que responde a imperativos nacionales específicos. Si bien Moreno al representar a los pueblos originarios como reliquias niega la presencia de éstos, su curiosidad antropológica paradójicamente pone en evidencia que la Patagonia estaba poblada por indígenas. Es signficativo que sus descripciones de los rituales de los ‘indios’ hacen referencia al sexo y a la violencia así como también a la castidad femenina. Dado que estos elementos rara vez están tan explícitamente presentes en narrativas europeas de viaje y exploración a la Patagonia, estas representaciones constituyen un quiebre con la tradición que precede a Moreno. Pero, aún más importante, estas referencias a pasiones incontrolables y a la virginidad femenina exponen las ambigüedades de una narrativa que da cuenta de una Patagonia visiblemente habitada y que, al mismo tiempo, intenta legitimar el proyecto colonizador argentino en la región.
Filed under: gender, Latin America, Scholarship and insights | Closed
nancy hagedorn on the reconceptualization of european-native relations in colonial northeast america
Evan Haefeli, Kevin Sweeney. Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield. Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History, and the Contemporary Series. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. Illustrations, maps. xv + 376 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-55849-503-6; $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-55849-419-0.
Donna Merwick. The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland. Early American Studies Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Maps. ix + 332 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-3928-7.
Paul Otto. The Dutch-Munsee Encounter: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. European Expansion & Global Interaction Series. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. Illustrations, maps. xv + 225 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57181-672-6.
As Atlantic history has emerged as a legitimate and popular alternative to older, more traditional forms of imperial and colonial history during the past twenty years, it has influenced the conceptualization, study, and interpretation of virtually all aspects of the early modern history of the regions and peoples surrounding the Atlantic basin. Alison Games has recently noted that “Atlantic perspectives deepen our understanding of transformations over a period of several centuries, cast old problems in an entirely new light, and illuminate connections hitherto obscured.” The three works under review here, considered collectively, illustrate some of the recent trends in Atlantic history and history more generally as they apply to cultural interaction in early northeastern North America. Specifically, they illustrate the benefits of the intersection of Atlantic history with the new frontier history and cultural history, and their combined approaches and perspectives signal the emergence of a new, more richly textured and realistic image of early America and its peoples.
While this review essay is not the place to trace in detail the nature and consequences of these developments, it nevertheless seems appropriate to highlight several trends that have had an obvious impact on these recent reinterpretations of the early history of intercultural relations in the colonial Northeast, the common focus of the three works under review. Although Atlantic history has attracted its share of both critics and supporters, the latter of whom rarely agree completely on its definition and contours, several tendencies in Atlantic studies have emerged as common characteristics of the field: Atlantic history demands that even seemingly local, small-scale events and developments be placed within broader transatlantic and transnational contexts; Atlantic history encourages explicitly comparative approaches and discourages uncritical notions of nationalism and exceptionalism; Atlantic history highlights the confrontations and connections between peoples who inhabited the regions bordering the Atlantic; and Atlantic history encourages consideration of any phenomenon or development from multiple perspectives–ideally with some sense of balance and impartiality.
Filed under: Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
Natalie A. Zacek, Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776 (Cambridge UP, forthcoming, 2010).
Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776 is the first study of the history of the federated colony of the Leeward Islands – Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and St Kitts – that covers all four islands in the period from their independence from Barbados in 1670 up to the outbreak of the American Revolution, which reshaped the Caribbean. Natalie A. Zacek emphasizes the extent to which the planters of these islands attempted to establish recognizably English societies in tropical islands based on plantation agriculture and African slavery. By examining conflicts relating to ethnicity and religion, controversies regarding sex and social order, and a series of virulent battles over the limits of local and imperial authority, this book depicts these West Indian colonists as skilled improvisers who adapted to an unfamiliar environment, and as individuals as committed as other American colonists to the norms and values of English society, politics, and culture.
Filed under: Empire, Scholarship and insights | Closed
Peter Limbrick, Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
In Making Settler Cinemas, Peter Limbrick argues that the United States, Australia, and New Zealand share histories of colonial encounters that have shaped their cinemas in distinctive ways. Going beyond readings of narrative and representation, this book studies the production, distribution, reception, and reexhibition of cinema across three settler societies under the sway of two empires. Investigating films both canonical and overlooked, Making Settler Cinemas not only shows how cinema has mattered to settler societies but affirms that practices of film history can themselves be instrumental in encountering and reshaping colonial pasts.
Filed under: Australia, New Zealand, Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (Yale University Press, 2010).
This book uncovers what might seem to be a dark side of the American dream: the New World from the viewpoint of those who decided not to stay. At the core of the volume are the life histories of people who left New England during the British Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1640–1660. More than a third of the ministers who had stirred up emigration from England deserted their flocks to return home. The colonists’ stories challenge our perceptions of early settlement and the religious ideal of New England as a “City on a Hill.” America was a stage in their journey, not an end in itself.
Susan Hardman Moore first explores the motives for migration to New England in the 1630s and the rhetoric that surrounded it. Then, drawing on extensive original research into the lives of hundreds of migrants, she outlines the complex reasons that spurred many to brave the Atlantic again, homeward bound. Her book ends with the fortunes of colonists back home and looks at the impact of their American experience.
Of exceptional value to studies of the connections between the Old and New Worlds, Pilgrims contributes to debates about the nature of the New England experiment and its significance for the tumults of revolutionary England.
Filed under: Empire, Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
A conversation between Tony Birch and Ross Gibson
Two figures from the early days of the Australian colony that have fresh relevance today – an English scientist at the founding of Sydney and an indigenous leader at the birth of Melbourne.
William Dawes arrived on the First Fleet as the official astronomer. After arriving, he developed a close relation with the Eora people and learned their language. In the South, Dawes experienced a kind of intellectual upheaval whereby he began to understand the world in a non-hierarchical, fluid and relational way that contradicted most of the rectitude that he’d been trained in.
William Barak was a Wurundjeri man and member of the party that met John Batman in the ‘purchase’ of the Melbourne area. During subsequent colonisation, Barak fought to protect Coranderrk, a self-sufficient Aboriginal reserve. This defence included three major walks to Parliament House.
During the early days of British settlement in Australia, the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Europeans was potentially quite open. Out of the many possible relationships explored at that time, a particular colonial paradigm emerged of squatters, missionaries and miners. Is it worthwhile delving back into the start of the colony for alternative paradigms that can inform our understanding of biculturalism today? Are there resonances with other colonial beginnings across the South?
Institute of Postcolonial Studies
78-80 Curzon Street
North Melbourne
Victoria 3051 Australia (map)
Filed under: Australia, postcolonialism, public lecture | Closed
From Waatea News:
Taitokerau MP Hone Harawira, who chaired the Waitangi hui, says many people wanted to talk about the Declaration of Independence which preceded the Treaty of Waitangi, and about the constitutional issues being raised in the Northland claims now before the Waitangi Tribunal.
“People talked in particular about the issue Ngapuhi is raising at the moment which is that they never ceded sovereignty in the treaty and they wanted him to take that back and make it a major part of his report, certainly from the Taitokerau, so that the world understood how serious Ngapuhi takes this issue,” Mr Harawira says.
Filed under: law, New Zealand, Political developments, Sovereignty | Closed
The following is a response to Neve Gordon’s paper on ‘Democracy and Colonialism’, from Theory and Event. It has been written by Lorenzo Veracini, and only appears here.
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This is a promising proposal for a paradigm shift: colonialism and democracy are not incompatible – they actually are a necessary prerequisite of each other: “Notwithstanding the widespread conception among democracy theorists that there is contradiction between the two, in this paper I contend that colonialism has served as a crucial component in the historical processes through which modern democracies were created and sustained” (p. 1). Of course, this insight, while convincing in relation to the French and British colonial empires, for example, is especially significant because it emanates from Israel, a situation where the two have been and currently are a visible function of each other:
The Israel case helps clarify theat the colonial project is not merely the other of democracy. On the one hand, Israel’s colonial project [Gordon here only refers exclusively to the occupation that begun in 1967] is deployed to limit and unify the people and in this way helps manage democracy’s precarious and unruly elements. On the other hand, Israel’s truncated racialized democracy serves to preserve its colonial project since […] democracy is incessantly utilized to extend, hide and legitimate a colonial regime based on violent domination. Democracy, we see, has deployed colonialism to circumscribe itself (i.e., by demarcating and stabilizing the people); colonialism has needed democracy to produce its legitimation (p. 2).
Crucially, however, Gordon believes that Israel is “a unique case”: “the democratic project and the colonial project coexist within a contiguous space” (p. 2).
I disagree: settler democracies routinely collapse the two “projects”; indeed one structuring difference between colonial and settler colonial formations is that the fundamental dialectic between metropole and periphery is erased in the latter.
Referring to the activities of settlers in the colonies of democratic regimes, Gordon notes that settlers routinely exploited the “freedoms and civil rights that were conferred on them as citizens of their democratic state of origin in order to subjugate and oppress the indigenous population in ways that settlers originating from authoritarian regimes could not”, and that this has been the case in Israel as well (p. 2). But he is comparing settler colonialism (a circumstance in which the settlers on the spot are in charge) and colonialism with settlers (a circumstance where the metropole is in charge of both the settlers on the spot and the indigenous people). While colonialism is only democratic in the metropole and exclusivist in the periphery, settler colonialism is by definition simultaneously democratic and exclusivist in a periphery that is no longer a periphery. Israel is not an exception in the context of democratic colonialisms; Israel is a settler democracy. Gordon understands colonialism, but does not get settler colonialism, which is a pity, considering where his insight emanates from.
Lorenzo Veracini.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine, Scholarship and insights | Closed
