Simone Bignall

The collaborative struggle for excolonialism

In modern and contemporary critical politics, social transformation is conceptualised primarily in terms of struggle and opposition rather than collaboration. If collaboration is possible, it acts always in the service of an overriding political conflict that is the celebrated motor of social change. This kind of political engagement is limiting when considered from the transformative perspective of ‘excolonialism’, which I conceive as an ‘exit from colonialism’ that calls for collaboration across and between cultural differences. And yet, the idea of ‘collaborative struggle’ across social differences is obscured when oppositional conflict is naturalised and privileged with a causal transformative force. Indeed, the tendency to view conflict as an ontologically given condition is dominant across diverse traditions of Western thought. Thinkers as varied as Hobbes, Hegel, Freud and Foucault each prioritise ideas of conflict or struggle in their political philosophies and in their conceptualisations of selfhood and community. Resistance movements have frequently been shaped intellectually by a Marxist framework, in which opposition is formal and driving, and collaboration is aligned with an ideal and final unity that is eventually realised (only) through struggle. In this paper, I argue for a conceptual shift away from critical theories of social transformation that emphasise conflict, to those that emphasise positive forces of interaction in constructing and transforming communities. I do not deny the reality of conflict or the significance of dissent in political life, but I strive to conceive of collaboration as immediately causal and constructive: this paper conceptualises a directive form of collaboration immanent to transformative processes. Thinking about the transformative nature of collaboration permits new understanding about the political importance of constructed affinities that are forged in conditions of diversity and resist powerful and exclusive forms of common identification. Finally, in light of this conceptualisation of collaborative engagement, I ask: how can a practical emphasis on the motive force of constructed affinity maintain a connection with critical contestation and create new ways of struggling?

Deleuze and foucault on desire and power

[T]he analysis of desire, is immediately practical and political … for politics precedes being.1 Critiques of colonialism and of associated forms of imperialism–territorial, cultural, epistemologic...

Negotiating Indigenous modernity: Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan—Listen to Ngarrindjeri speak

The objective of this article is to compare Indigenous and Western modernities by examining how contemporary Indigenous polities are finding inventive ways to assert their sovereignty. Our discussion presents an innovation in Indigenous governance introduced recently by the Ngarrindjeri people in Southern Australia. We explain the conditions in which Ngarrindjeri initiated their process of political reformation; we link our analysis to critiques of Western modernism and imperialism; and we then outline some key political technologies created by the Ngarrindjeri Nation to enable its successful influence in matters affecting their Country and community. We find that these resources remain firmly grounded in Ngarrindjeri ways of knowing, being and doing, yet they are expressed in a contemporary hybrid form that is accessible to non-Indigenous negotiation partners. As a consequence, they have established a modern Indigenous framework for intercultural negotiation of interests previously controlled by the South Australian state and other non-Indigenous organizations.

Black Swan, Cracked Porcelain and Becoming-Animal

The film Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, provides a fruitful context for thinking about Deleuzes conceptualisation of structural transformation as a ‘presubjective’ process involving a critical and creative politics of engagement. Nina is a young dancer who has just secured the lead role in the New York Ballets new production of Swan Lake. This role not only requires her to dance the pure and innocent character of the White Swan – a role that mirrors Ninas character in real life, and for which she is well suited – but also as the seductive and darkly erotic character of the Black Swan, a role quite alien to Nina. The film traces Ninas desperate efforts to meet the demands of this doubled characterisation. Through new forms of engagement with her peers, she enters into a ‘becoming-swan’ that frees her from the restraints and constraints imposed by her existing self. While this transformative process enables her to realise aesthetic perfection in her art, this comes at a heavy price: Nina not only is creatively destabilised, but ultimately is destroyed by the transformation she endures. By considering this work of cinema in light of Deleuzes writings on cinema, on ‘becoming-animal’, and on ‘Porcelain and Volcano’, this essay reflects upon a crucial question underlying much of Deleuzes political thought: how is it possible to privilege radical subjective and social transformation, without these structures of necessary coherence also ‘cracking up’ and being destroyed in the process?

The Postcolonial Time That Remains

Sovereign authority to establish the colony of South Australia was given by Letters Patent (1836), signed by King William IV. The Letters Patent made explicit provision for the recognition and protection of Indigenous rights and interests in traditional lands and waters, establishing the basis for a peaceable and respectful interaction between Indigenous and settler societies. However, the preexisting sovereignty of Indigenous peoples was not respected and these written orders were ignored by the South Australian Company in its executive action to establish the Province of South Australia. Accordingly, the potential for development of positive forms of intercultural social relationship remained unrealized in this region, as was also the case throughout the Australian colonies. This essay reflects upon the transformative force of this unrealized potential, which remains immanent within the trajectory of Australian history. It makes use of Agambens conceptualization of time and exigency in The Time That Remains (2005) to theorize directed processes of historical discontinuity. We analyse colonial sources of contemporary Australian society, with a renewed attention to those aspects of political recognition and positively shared social life that were always possible but never came to pass into history. We argue that the experience of time and temporality in the ‘messianic mode’ enables new understanding of the problematic ‘time of the now’ and recreates possibilities for the communal invention of postcolonial futures that respond properly to ongoing and contemporary Indigenous practices of sovereignty and nationhood.

Iqbal’s Becoming-Woman in The Rape of Sita

Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic philosophy unearths a power of delirium to liberate a life. Their method is pragmatic, problematizing and political because it locates paths of release from entrenched and powerful structures, which constrain possibilities for diversifying existence and limit the creative potential for innovation. Literature is a natural ally of schizoanalysis, in so far as both are involved in the diagnosis of social malaise and the creative labor of the invention of alternative worlds. Literature often imagines characters involved in finding lines of flight from the problematic situations that confine them, and so can open up for the reader new ways of understanding worldly situations as assemblages of desire and power, and new ways of experiencing their own being in time as a moment of actual capture and a set of virtual escape strategies.