POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Realpolitik, Anthropocene, White Privilege
POLSCI Week 10: Decolonization
●Decolonization - global movement in thought, activism, policy, and art
○Redress of historical injustices
■Territorial dispossession
●From conquest, resettlement to land laws in the present
■Cultural genocide
●Educational system centering of settler perspective
●From residential schools to stereotypes and cultural
appropriation
■Systemic inequality
●Criminal justice system,urban/rural poverty
○Tradition, but forward orientation
■Solidarity, ‘fourth world’
○Must be tied to land, autonomy, self-governance
●Glen Sean Coulthard: Against the politics of recognition
○Settler colonialism as daily repetition of “so-called” primitive accumulation
(karl marx, via adam smith)
○Politics of recognition: key to self-actualization is the other (hegel)
■Reform-minded politics becomes a matter of appealing to the better
nature of dominant groups
■Or, of ‘measuring oneself up’ as worthy of equality
●Threat-minimization
●Declarations of sameness
●Performances of (usually past) culture
■This ignoring the material rationale of oppressors (land labor) and
the material needs of the oppressed (liberation) --Fanon
■Centers the perspective of the already powerful
■Appeals for integration, assimilation, leaves existing social
structures in tact
■Reinforces existing rulers as arbiters of social worth
■Naturalizes unequal distribution of social costs/ benefits
■Curtails agency of the colonized
○Decolonization must draw from tradition while also creating new
solidarities
■Across urban and nonurban territories
■Across nation-state lines
■Against multiple axes of (raced, classed, gendered, spatialized)
oppression
■Direct action: waiting for permission only prolongs the same
●Why worry about colonialism today?
○Moral authority: can you build a society just on (enduring) unjust origins?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Decolonization - global movement in thought, activism, policy, and art. From conquest, resettlement to land laws in the present. From residential schools to stereotypes and cultural appropriation. Must be tied to land, autonomy, self-governance. Glen sean coulthard: against the politics of recognition. Settler colonialism as daily repetition of so-called primitive accumulation (karl marx, via adam smith) Politics of recognition: key to self-actualization is the other (hegel) Reform-minded politics becomes a matter of appealing to the better nature of dominant groups. Or, of measuring oneself up" as worthy of equality. This ignoring the material rationale of oppressors (land labor) and the material needs of the oppressed (liberation) --fanon. Centers the perspective of the already powerful. Appeals for integration, assimilation, leaves existing social structures in tact. Reinforces existing rulers as arbiters of social worth. Naturalizes unequal distribution of social costs/ benefits. Decolonization must draw from tradition while also creating new solidarities. Against multiple axes of (raced, classed, gendered, spatialized) oppression.
