Hans Skott-Myhre

Catastrophe: a transversal mapping of colonialism and settler subjectivity

This paper maps one mode of production within the overall machinery of genocide, appropriation, and subjugation which is colonialism: the settler subject. The settler colonial project is nothing short of a catastrophe, and the subjects who populate Indigenous territory without sanction have been produced through this catastrophe as subjects of colonial conquest, war, and settlement. While bloodshed and bigotry mark the foundational coordinates of North American nation building and settler subjectivities, we here approach catastrophe as a rupture or event that has contemporary potential to open and transforms existing sets of relations. Following Deleuze and Guattaris insistence that ruptures are opportunities to recreate ourselves in new ethical and aesthetic ways, we map the catastrophic elements of settler colonialism against catastrophe as an event that holds subversive potential. We focus on the settler because its coordinates map each of us within the political, social, and cultural cartography of twenty-first-century North America and ask: How can a transversal mapping of settlement probe aspects of settler subjectivity in order to constitute us as people accountable to colonialism? We therefore probe the affective, relational, and unconscious dimensions of the settler subject in order to develop, following Braidotti, an affirmative and active mode of engaging in the complexities of current relations within settler colonial states.

Fleeing Identity: Toward a Revolutionary Politics of Relationship.

This article explores relationship as foundational to multicultural praxis and theory. The question of who arrives in the encounter will be examined through the concept of identity politics. In their text Commonwealth Hardt and Negri state that “It is inevitable that identity should become the primary vehicle for struggle within and against the republic of property since identity itself is based on property and sovereignty.” This article will trace the ways in which the violence of identity might become more visible and propose the abolition of identity as a fixed aspect of an existing subject.

Building a New Common

Youth work, it seems to me, is a field of endeavour founded on care. The question of how to care, who receives care, how to deliver care, and what is care, however, is neither simple nor uncontested. For many, if not most of us, caring and care are synonymous. However, I would argue that caring about someone and caring for him or her are not necessarily directly related.

Sketching the Outlines: CYC Multiculturalism(?)

In this issue of Child and Youth Services we have gathered a diverse array of scholars and practitioners to explore the parameters, definitions, and praxis of multiculturalism as it impacts and is shaped by the field of Child and Youth Care (CYC). In the preceding pages we have engaged multiculturalism as a generative term rather than seeking to foreclose or reduce it to any single definition. Indeed, one might well wonder, here at the end, whether we can say anything definitive about the term multiculturalism that might assist us in forming a praxis of CYC that would promote better relations between diverse cultures in our programs and interactions with young people and families. The short answer is that the writings here seem to indicate that in the immediate future a seamless multiculturalism built on tolerance and best intentions will not and probably should not occur. It will not occur because the social architecture of racism, imperialism, and colonialism continue to permeate our daily habits and beliefs. It should not occur yet, because such an occurrence at this historical moment would have to be premised in what already exists as a massive repression and denial of the actualities of our current age. Our relations remain troubled and for CYC, as a field premised in relational practice, these tensions and traumas cannot simply be glossed over by well-intentioned policies, procedures, and endless cultural-awareness seminars. Instead, as we already know from our daily encounters, the work begins with ourselves. It is, after all, the only part of any given relationship in which we have any fully generative role to play.