Lorenzo Veracini

‘Settler Colonialism’: Career of a Concept

In a necessarily selective way, this paper explores the historiographical evolution of ‘settler colonialism’ as a category of analysis during the second half of the twentieth century. It identifies three main passages in its development. At first (until the 1960s), ‘settlers’, ‘settlement’ and ‘colonisation’ are understood as entirely unrelated to colonialism. The two do not occupy the same analytical field, pioneering endeavours are located in ‘empty’ settings and the presence and persistence of indigenous ‘Others’ is comprehensively disavowed. In a second stage (until the late 1970s), ‘settler colonialism’ as a compound identifies one specific type of diehard colonialism, an ongoing and uncompromising form of hyper-colonialism characterised by enhanced aggressiveness and exploitation (a form that had by then been challenged by a number of anti-colonial insurgencies). During a third phase (from the late 1970s and throughout the first half of the 1980s), settler colonialism is identified by a capacity to bring into being high standards of living and economic development. As such, settler colonialism is understood as the opposite of colonialism and associated underdevelopment and political fragmentation. It is only at the conclusion of a number of successive interpretative moments that ‘settler colonial’ phenomena could be theorised as related to, and yet distinct from, colonial ones. On the basis of this transformations, beginning from approximately the mid-1990s, ‘settler colonial studies’ as an autonomous scholarly field could then consolidate.

The settler colonial present

Acknowledgements Introduction: The Settler Colonial Present 1. Settler Colonialism is not Colonialism 2. Settlers are not Migrants 3. Settler Colonialism is not Somewhere Else 4. Settler Colonialism is not Finished Conclusion: Transcending the Settler Colonial Present Bibliography

Settler Collective, Founding Violence and Disavowal: The Settler Colonial Situation

This paper outlines a number of approaches to an analysis of settler colonial subjectivities, the exploration of a specific state of mind and the detection of a number of paranoiac dispositions in a particular set of political traditions. At the same time, this paper explores the possibility of a Lacanian (i.e. imaginary–symbolic–real) interpretation of what is here defined as the settler colonial situation. First there is an imaginary spectacle, an ordered community working hard and living peacefully Little House on the Prairie style. Then there is the symbolic and ideological background: a moral and regenerative world that supposedly epitomises settler democratic traditions (the ‘frontier’, the ‘outback’, the ‘backblocks’, etc.). Finally, there is the real: expanding capitalist orders associated with the need to resettle a growing number of people. While this paper is aware that the categories of this analysis were initially developed in order to classify individual psychic phenomena and not collective processes and while it is suggestive rather than conclusive (and while it focuses on Australias settler colonial condition), this paper is especially aimed at outlining the possibility for further research. It ultimately suggests that ‘settler society’ is in itself a fantasy emanating from a painful perception of growing contradictions and social strife, where the prospect of settler migration literally operates as a displacement of tension, and where the longing for a classless, stationary and settled body politic can find expression. This paper also suggests that an appraisal of the settler colonial situation can contribute to the interpretation of current contestations surrounding Indigenous difference in settler societies.

Historylessness: Australia as a settler colonial collective

Most cabbies would confirm that ‘Australia has little history’. This is remarkable; how can one explain this often repeated trope? While having ‘little’ history should be understood in the sense that Australia has a short chronology (as dialogically opposed to ‘Old Europe’, for example), this refrain could also be understood as a way of expressing a perception that Australia is, relatively speaking, an especially ‘historyless’ society. This article understands a recurring reference to a lack of a ‘dense’ past as one discursive feature related to a number of specific constraints typical of settler colonial ideological formations. Perceiving a lack of history, a lack of conflict, and a classless circumstance are related. As well as historyless (and despite contradicting evidence) Australia has a long tradition of being routinely represented as an exceptionally egalitarian and classless society (again, as dialogically opposed to ‘Old England’). A classless political order would be characterised by a lack of conflict that would in turn produce no history. This article interprets this claim as another discursive feature typical of settler colonial rhetorical traditions. Mythologies about egalitarian societies inhabiting ‘quiet’ continents, and the reality of underdeveloped historiographies are related to the long lasting resilience of a settler colonial consciousness. The first section of this article outlines an approach to the historical consciousness of settler colonial political traditions; the second section focuses on Australian historiographies.

Understanding Colonialism and Settler Colonialism as Distinct Formations

A growing body of literature has characterized settler colonial phenomena as ‘distinct’, and called for the establishment of dedicated interpretative tools. ‘Distinct’, however, begs the question: distinct relative to what? This essay reflects on this distinctiveness, and heuristically suggests that reference to the diverse operation of viral and bacterial phenomena can help an understanding of the distinct functioning of colonial and settler colonial systems. While both viruses and bacteria are exogenous elements that often dominate their destination locales, viruses need living cells to operate, while bacteria attach to surfaces and may or may not rely on the organisms they encounter. Similarly, while both colonizers and settler colonizers are exogenous elements that assert their dominance over their destination locales, a colonial system of relationships, unlike a settler colonial one, is premised on the presence and subjugation of exploitable ‘Others’. This essay also suggests that this metaphorical conceptualization can facilitate reflection on the decolonization of settler colonial forms.

District 9 and Avatar: Science Fiction and Settler Colonialism

District 9 and Avatar are extraordinarily alike: both released in 2009, they tell a very similar story (even if they frequently invert the value signs). One would think that the scriptwriters have collaborated in some way. The first section of this paper analyses comparatively the two movies and identifies their common interests and a multiplicity of crucial differences. This comparison registers an extraordinary thematic and narrative convergence as a premise for the argument that is presented in the second section: in spite of their different approaches both movies present inherently settler colonial stories.

Suburbia, Settler Colonialism and the World Turned Inside Out

Abstract While its primary aim is to explore possibilities for new research, this article contends that suburban and settler colonial imaginaries are related. It suggests that an awareness of the settler colonial “situation” and its dynamics can help an original approach to the interpretation of suburban forms (and vice versa). References to the suburban “frontier” have been frequent in both public discourse and scholarly debate, and suburban phenomena characterize in one way or another all settler societies. This connection, however, has not been the subject of sustained investigation. Thus, this article focuses on shared traditions of anti-urban perception and on a determination to pre-emptively secede from the metropole/metropolis in the presence of growing tensions and contradictions. Similarly, while settler colonial projects constitute separate political entities via an “outward” movement towards various “frontiers of settlement”, independent suburbs are also established via an “outward” movement and in an attempt to maintain local control over local affairs. In both instances displacement is a response/the only response to crisis.

ISOPOLITICS, DEEP COLONIZING, SETTLER COLONIALISM

Abstract This essay contributes to interdisciplinary reflection on settler colonialism and decolonization by proposing an analysis of two characteristic traits of the ‘settler colonial situation’: isopolitics and deep colonizing. The first section outlines isopolitical relations as an alternative possibility to sustained colonial domination on the one hand, and internationally recognized independence within an international system of formally independent polities on the other. The second section concentrates on deep colonizing, a notion that upsets traditional amelioristic narratives emphasizing progressive processes culminating in the acquisition of social and political rights for colonized and formerly colonized peoples. Appraising concomitantly an isopolitical imaginary that persists in the present and the dynamics of deep colonizing, and, more generally, focusing on the (im)possibility of decolonization in settler colonial settings, can help reframing received narratives of decolonization.

Telling the end of the settler colonial story

Settler colonialism has been resistant to decolonization. Some settler polities decolonized later, some tentatively, some not at all (Veracini 2007a). And yet, as underscored, for example, by the 2007 UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and by its careful assertion of an indigenous right to self-determination respectful of the sovereignty of existing states, there is a need to focus on the possibility of postcolonial futures in a not-yet postcolonial world.1 Considering the at times irresistible trajectory of decolonization processes during a number of crucial decades in the twentieth century, settler colonialism’s resilience requires explanation.

Defending Settler Colonial Studies

TIM ROWSE’S CRITIQUE OF SETTLER COLONIAL STUDIES is twofold: he alleges that a singular unbending logic characterises its interpretative approach, and that this approach is so flexible that it encompasses, for example, ‘the removal of children’, the ‘erection of a monument to the Stolen Generations’, ‘the denial of native title or the recognition of native title’ and ‘the remembrance of violence or the forgetting of violence’. Rowse’s argument is that the structure is so rigid as to be all-encompassing, and to account for, in a theological manner, for any event that might occur. Here I see a contradiction, because even if Rowse’s criticism focuses on the putative strictures of a rigid interpretative model, it is the ability to encompass ostensibly contradictory phenomena that Rowse finds most ‘unhelpful’. I would argue, in response, that Rowse cannot have it both ways. One cannot be simultaneously too rigid and too flexible. Rowse’s indictment would be more effective if he had produced one accusation and proceeded to demonstrate it. This is not only a matter of internal argumentative inconsistency, however. The problem, I believe, is that Rowse comprehensively misreads settler colonial studies’ reliance on Wolfe’s logic of elimination. My response rejects the notion that settler colonial studies is a ‘dangerous’ undertaking. Rowse summarises: ‘If there is a plot in the historiography of elimination it is that the structure of settler colonialism has always already triumphed’. This supposed ‘plot’ is an outright misrepresentation. As the rest of Rowse’s critique relies for its credibility on this fundamental misreading, this is not a minor point. Far, very far from assuming a ‘triumph’, Wolfe actually emphasises the structure’s current immanence by insisting that settler invasion cannot be considered an ‘event’ that could be relegated to ‘the past’. Rather, Wolfe’s argument is that invasion is ongoing and unfinished. If there is a plot in the ‘historiography of elimination’ and more generally in settler colonial studies it is that while the structure attempts to eliminate Indigenous peoples it fails to do so. Wolfe and those who quote him never assume the finiteness of settler colonial processes. Rowse’s version of the plot is thus flawed, and the structure cannot be reduced to its intention. Far from equating settler colonialism with elimination, Wolfe’s ‘structure’ refers to a continuing relationship of inequality between Indigenous and settler collectives. Beside ‘structure’ and ‘event’, it seems important to note that Wolfe refers to a logic of elimination, not to elimination itself. After all, were Indigenous elimination to become an accomplished and irretrievable fact, settler colonialism would lose its logic. From the earliest formulations of his approach, Wolfe has insisted that,