"In the epitome of his arroganceand the peak of his media campaign in which he boasts of 'enduring freedom,' Bushmust not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestineand Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing.
media + images of the dead as political tools (images of Michael Brown laying on the ground on the front page of The Times)
uring an exchange of re between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators
elides asymmetries in power
e image of a boy shot dead in his helpless father's arms during an Israeliconfrontation with Palestinians has become the Pietà of the Arab world.
estine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of theArab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation
key diction - homeland vs. nation-state?
we call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israelto return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, withfull and equal citizenship and due representation in its bodies and institutions.
claim for equal citizenship - 1 state (containing both Israeli and Arab citizens with no discriminatory treatment of the latter)
. (Hereagain we arrive at a paradox of damage: to refute it, we need to say it aloud.)
YES!
Considering the excerpt from Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (2005), desire-based frameworks defy the lure to serve as “advertisements for power” by doc-umenting not only the painful elements of social realities but also the wis-dom and hope. Such an axiology is intent on depathologizing the experiencesof dispossessed and disenfranchised communities so that people are seen asmore than broken and conquered. This is to say that even when communitiesare broken and conquered, they are so much more than that—so much morethat this incomplete story is an act of aggression
in parallel to the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and August Wilson - who took care not only to document past and present wrongs, but the fullness, richness, beauty, and humanity of African American life in the United States. Tuck is pushing us to think more expansively about the way we tell stories
Though it is no longer in fashion toframe research as “the problem with (insert tribe or urban community here)”as it was in past generations, the legacy of this approach is alive and well. (Seealso Harvey [1999] on “civilized oppression.”)
lineage tracing back to the sociological idea of the problem, as articulated in works like Robert Parks' race relation - locating marginalized people as the cause of social disharmony
This policy and others, such as mayoralcontrol in New York City that has systematically closed down all avenues forcommunity participation in school decision making (YRNES, 2008), colludein the production of damage-driven data and, indeed, in the production ofdamage. (See also Gilborn [2005] for an analysis of white supremacy and edu-cation policy.
damage-centric data can inspire policies that exacerbate that damage
Rather, here I am concerned with research that happensmuch more surreptitiously, research that invites oppressed peoples to speakbut to “only speak from that space in the margin that is a sign of deprivation, awound, an unfulfilled longing. Only speak your pain”
Tuck nuances the varied ways that violence takes place - separating the need to unearth buried histories of oppression from framing the stories of Indigenous people as singular
ndians were simply not con-nected to the organs of propaganda so that they could respond to the manner inwhich whites described them.
connects to Nigerian author Wole Soyinka's quote - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter
Further, because so many outsiders benefit fromdepicting communities as damaged, it will have to be these same communi-ties that hold researchers accountable for the frameworks and attitudes theyemploy. It is too tempting to proceed as usual
the violence of the episteme - Wolfe speaks to logic of elimination and Povinelli speaks to the burying and distortion of Indigeneity to fit the social and political agenda of the settler state
The lives of city youth—already under thewatchful eyes of police and school security officers, already tracked by videocameras in their schools, on the streets, and in subways—are pursued by (well-intentioned) researchers whose work functions as yet another layer of surveil-lance. What will be the outcomes and effects of this research in and on ourcommunities? Are we certain that the benefits will outweigh the costs? Whatquestions might we ask ourselves before we allow researcher entry
connects back to role of anthropology as part of a colonial apparatus and the ways that knowing a population allows for the inscription of power
limate activism focus increasingly on ‘do-it-yourself’forms of action such as developing grassroots solutions and taking direct action againstthe fossil fuel industry, we note that FFF and XR represent a ‘return to the state.’ XR’sthree central claims demand that governments ‘tell the truth’, ‘act now’, and ‘createcitizens’ assemblies.’ FFF explicitly demands that politicians ‘listen to the science,’ and‘follow the Paris agreement
structural over individual change -> shows the importance of writing and academia in shifting the conversation; magnitude and depth of climate crisis goes far beyond an individual reducing, reusing, and recycling
the Israeli biomedical engineers have done it again.” Skunk is classified as a malodorant, nonlethal weapon, and it has been used by the Israel Defense Forces since 2008. While there is no proof that Skunk was used at Standing Rock, it is available in the United States and was purchased by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department after the Ferguson protests. With substances like these, the atmosphere becomes not only a medium for violence and control, but also one through which affects to demean are engineered.
settler colonial techniques of violence travel to different contexts - stressing why resistance to that colonialism must also be transnational
The U.S. Supreme Court decisions known as the Marshall Trilogy nest indigenous nations in a “cramped space” (Povinelli 2016, 6) through their designation of “domestic, dependent nations,” rendering the use of tear gas and pepper spray on unarmed protectors at Standing Rock permissible
parallel to Puar's characterization of chokepoints that suffocate Palestinians living under occupation
Joseph Masco (2017, S73) argues that the very notion of crisis is in crisis and that crisis has become a counterrevolutionary idiom in the twenty-first century: “Crisis talk today seeks to stabilize an institution, practice, or reality rather than interrogate the historical conditions of possibility for that endangerment to occur.
state weaponizing the language of security and terror as a way to manage population that threaten its power
Kristen Simmons reminds us that conspire translates from latin to mean “to breathe together” and the type of relationships we imagine might take the shape of co-conspirators.
conspire - breathing : resisting the state's attempt to kill Black and Indigenous people and dispose of our lives
However, entangled within white supremacist settler states, there are many times – times like now – when it is increasingly clear that our interests and our survival tie us together.
linked fates - overcoming anti-blackness as a tool weaponized by white supremacy to divide and conquer
Community calls to justice for these murders have been met with militaristic responses, including police forces firing rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators. Given that COVID-19 seriously compromises our respiration system, it is very likely that the use of tear gas is tantamount to severe injury and death
Since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in early March, American and Canadian responses to the highly infectious illness have made it plain whose lives matter. As feel-good phrases circulated, claiming “we’re all in this together” and “the virus does not discriminate”, Black and Indigenous peoples stressed that our communities would be among the most affected.
the unequal distribution of death and disease is a marker of whose lives are valued. The increased susceptibility of POC to Covid = evidence of how racism determines who must live and who is allowed to die
thenhow do you deal with the fact that the women who clean yourhouses and tend your children while you attend conferences onfeminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and womenof Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?
white feminism = exploitative; history of white women who were slaveowners and complicit in the project of supremacy
Without community there isno liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary ar-mistice between an individual and her oppression. But com-munity must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor thepathetic pretense that these differences do not exis
again, transforming what difference means - thinking of it beyond threat and inferiority but founding a community that acknowledges shared experiences without fear from difference
And what does itmean in personal and political terms when even the two Blackwomen who did present here were literally found at the lasthour?
tokenism as opposed to valuing Black women's contributions to theorizing and understanding multifaceted experiences of womanhood
. This effect occurs because the speaker is positioned asauthoritative and empowered, as the knowledgeable subject, whilthe group in the Third World is reduced, merely because of thestructure of the speaking practice, to an object and victim thamust be championed from afar, thus disempo
need to critically engage with who is understood as an expert on an issue, who can "know" a population reflects arrangement of power
If I am only speak-ing for myself I have no responsibility for being true to yourexperience or need
speaking for an individual self alone = retreat from dealing with complexity and multiplicity
. Even a complete retreat from speech is of course not neutral since it allows the continued dominance of current discoursesand acts by omission to reinforce their domin
principle of Ubuntu - "I am because you are" - relationality and interdependence unlike how white identity is constructed on the fictive existence of an inferior Other
One is still interpreting the other's situation and wishes (unlessperhaps one simply reads a written text they have supplied), andso one is still creating for them a self in the presence of others.
are there equitable ways to translate others experiences?
The point is that akind of representation occurs in all cases of speaking for, whetherI am speaking for myself or for others, that this representation isnever a simple act of discovery, and that it will most likely have animpact on the individual so represented.
self doesn't exist a priori - but is interpellated both by individuals and the social and political landscapes they exist in
men. Thus, the work ofileged authors who speak on behalf of the oppressed is commore and more under criticism from members of those opprgroups themsel
case for passing the microphone as oppose to agreeing with Marx's assertion that the oppressed cannot represent themselves - they must be represented
, President Bush of the United States declares in apublic address that Noriega's actions constitute an "outrageousfraud" and that "the voice of the Panamanian people has spoken.""The Panamanian people," he tells us, "want democracy and notyranny, and want Noriega out." He proceeds to plan the invasionof Panama
interesting how the voice of the people can be invoked to serve imperialist and colonial aims
The question is not of female participation in insurgency, or the ground rules of the sexual division of labor, forboth of which there is ‘evidence.’ It is, rather, that, both as object ofcolonialist historiography and as subject of insurgency, the ideologicalconstruction of gender keeps the male dominant. If, in the context ofcolonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, thesubaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow. . . .2 8
gendered and raced dynamics that dictate who is represented and who is not - the question is not about whether or not women took part in anticolonial activism or were the subjects of colonialist discourses, but their place as footnotes in, rather than protagonists of, history
The terms ‘people’ and ‘subaltern classes’ [are] used as synonymous throughout [Guha’s definition]. The social groups andelements included in this category represent the demographicdifference between the total Indian population and all thosewhom we have described as the ‘elite
who gets to define the people ? who can mobilize / manufacture popular consent in service of their own aims?
in the nationalist and neo-nationalistwritings - to Indian elite personalities, institutions, activities and ideas.
demonstrates the limits of narratives of anti-colonial national liberation - focusing on the leadership of elites also effaces the perspectives of the masses
In the face of thepossibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution ofOther as the Self’s shadow, a possibility of political practice for the intellectual would be to put the economic ‘under erasure,’ to see the economicfactor as irreducible as it reinscribes the social text
like Said's Orientalism - academia and the work of intellectuals as part of a broader colonial apparatus that constructs the Other as the inferior opposite of the West
Men and gender-nonconforming people, and brave youth (who deserve particular recognition) also help caretake our peoples, make relations, and add to our collective strength. But nevertheless, the women-led condition of these movements is striking (see Wilson 2015).
much research suggest the critical role that women play in protest movements - possessing an ability to reach people across multiple cross-sections of society and lead effectively - Nobel Peace Prize recipient Leymah Gbowee - who unified Liberian women across religion and was a catalyst in the peace process that concluded Liberia's devastating civil war in 2003 - women in Iran today
ollective expression—many people communicating onsocial media on the same subject—regarding actual col-lective action, such as protests, as well as those aboutevents that seem likely to generate collective actionbut have not yet done so, are likely to be censored.
the effectiveness of censoring collective expression about collective action would depend on the extent to which protests are organized online vis-a-vis offline ; if protests have strong interpersonal and community networks offline, censorship may not foreclose the possibility of people gathering to articulate their dissent
f the goals are simpleand well understood (e.g., the single-issue movement organizations Gamson1975 favorably discussed), then authorities will have a better idea of what theyneed to prevent, and trust will be reduced when the organization is not able toachieve these goals. In contrast, less clear goals do not provide a clear target forgovernment preemption, thus favoring dissidents.
failure is less black and white with ambiguous goals - mitigating burnout members of an SMO might experience during the struggle
Challengers outside of the polity and lacking connections to polity membersare more likely to be treated coercively and perhaps viciously to communicatea lesson to those generally under the coercive arm of the law.1
interesting when you put this into conversation with Manekin's work on racial difference as a factor in intensified, and socially acceptable repression and demonization of protestors and the causes that they represent
This leaves the state with the advantage regarding the impact on reap-praisal, for the state is able to employ a larger amount of coercive behavior.
the benefit of respectability politics and moderate politics - gives the state less ammunition to fire at you and less grounds to delegitimize the cause
, but bottom-up organizations (e.g., free-standing terroristcells) are better at small and more complex activities that require on-the-spotadaptation. If challengers stay with one approach, then government can getaway with a hierarchical institution and will likely have an advantage. This isespecially true if the authorities attempt to overwhelm the challengers. If thechallengers shift tactics frequently, however, and the government adopts anoutwitting strategy, then government would be better off with a more bottom-up orientatio
having visible leaders can be dangerous for a movement because of vulnerability to assassination, exile, and incarceration - MLK, Robert F. Williams, Alexei Navalny
This perception of relative democratic passivityalso increases the possibility that reappraisal will be improperly specified andthat the government need only deviate from expected patterns a little to bringabout the desired result of ending the targeted SMO.
perception of a "weaker" state because the protestors actually have legal and political grounds to resist the government
I maintain that it is the suspicion of their existence within a movementorganization that is believed to function as the disruption that reduces trust.Now, governments can let it be known through false letters or newspaper arti-cles that a particular group has been infiltrated, but (herein lies the crucialpoint) the challenging group itself needs to acknowledge that such a thing ispossible for the impact really to be felt. In a sense, infiltration is only real if itis believed to be real by challengers. Only then will trust be influence
interesting, perception informing reality
movement, prompting burnout, lost commitment, factionalization, and depar-ture or exit
censorship as a way to sicken an organization - preventing collective strategizing -> exit of members lacking direction from protest organizers
For example, I would argue that anorganization’s ability to progress toward the stated objectives would go a longway toward building and sustaining trust. This said, it is essential for chal-lengers – especially those of a radical nature – to keep their organization afloatby appropriately dealing with state repressive behavior
goes to the argument that censorship alone is not enough to prevent protests from happening - if there is a capable institutional and leadership structure that can quickly go underground / mobilize / pivot to deal with the state's repressive behavior, that would sustain the trust of the members of the SMO
Unprepared SMOs, however, might behave as existing lit-erature seems to suggest. These organizations would simply be reacting withlittle understanding of what is going on and what they are doing
but surely that degree of preparation is related to a given SMO's level of access to resources and information
Evidence for this would be found when, prior to repressive action, work-shops and conferences on repression would be held or when pamphlets, articles,and magazines on the topic were distributed to the membership and the broaderpopulatio
internet censorship might foreclose / limit the possibility of SMOs cushioning the blow of state repression via reappraisal
In contrast, if members are not well integrated into the SMO, norms arelimited, and there are no group sanctions for nonparticipation, then repressivebehavior would send individuals away.
repression as a litmus test - showing the degree to which an individual is committed to the objectives of an organization
This is reinforced by the work of Davenport and Sullivan (2014), whofind that those directly subject to repression stay involved in dissident activity,those who did not directly experience repression flee, and a new cohort ofactivists is brought in to replace those who leave, which is in part drawn bythe news coverage of the previous repressive behavior as well as by resistanceto it.
this could be interacting with the free rider problem - people who were part of an SMO in name but not active contributors flee when the heat gets hot
members of an SMO with deeper commitments to the cause would ostensibly be more resilient when faced with obstacles from the state
For example, a faction may form around the issue of resourcedeprivation and what should be done about it, or a faction may simply beworsened by the resource problem as the different sides of the division weighin, adding yet another dimension to the internal strife
shows how external pressure produces internal problems
We believe in collective process and a nonhier-archical distribution of power within our own group and in ourvision o f a revolutionary society. We are committed t o ä con-tinual examination o f our politics as they develop through criti-cism and self-criticism as an essential aspect o f our practice
don't just think about what you want to dismantle, but what you want to build too
h e y realize that they might n o t onlylose valuable and hardworking allies in their struggles but thatthey might also be forced to change their habitually sexist waysof interacting with and oppressing Black women. Accusationsthat Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful de-terrents t o the growth o f an autonomous Black women'smovement
problems posed by strategic essentialism - 1 POV: we are all colonized/black and highlighting intersectionality distracts us from the bigger objective
oppression can persist even when national liberation is achieved - sexism as a way to patch up the wounded ego that racist/colonialist emasculation has caused
We might use our position atthe b o t t o m , however, t o make a clear leap into revolutionaryaction. /lf_Black women were free, it would mean that everyoneelse would have t o be free since our freedom would necessitatethe destruction o f all the systems o f oppression
bottom up approach to achieving freedom
o one before has ever ex-amined the multilayered texture o f Black women's live
shows the limits of what academia can do and how Black women fill in the elisions that it leaves behind
Our politics evolve from a healthy/love for ourselves, our sis-ters and our community which allows us t o continue our strug-gle and work
Black women often doing hidden and uncredited labor
Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the sharedbelief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our libera-tion is a necessity n o t as an adjunct t o somebody else's butbecause o f our need as human persons for autonomy
combatting the tendency within antiracist and anticolonialist movements to think of women's freedom and struggles as secondary/peripheral, rather than primary/central
. F o r example, we were told in the samebreath t o be quiet both for the sake o f being " l a d y l i k e " and t omake us less objectionable in the eyes o f white people. As wegrew older we became aware o f the threat of physical and sexu-al abuse by men. However, we had no way o f conceptualizingwhat was so apparent t o us, what we knew was really happening
theory informed by lived experience - producing knowledge that is outside the academy
t was our ex-perience and disillusionment within these liberation movements,as well as experience on t h e periphery o f t h e white male left,that led t o the need t o develop a politics that was anti-racist,unlike those o f white w o m e n , and anti-sexist, unlike those o fBlack and white m e n
Black women always at the intellectual frontier
B l a c k w o m e n ' s e x t r e m e l ynegative relationship t o t h e American political system (a systemof white male rule) has always been determined by our member-ship in two oppressed racial and sexual castes.
Black women often left behind by race and gender essentialism which dictates that all the women are white and all the black people are men. And in spite of this, Black women are brave. Long history - from Sojourner Truth's provocative question of Aint I a Woman? to Kim Crenshaw's theory that maps the intersections of racial and gender oppression of Black women's intellectual contributions to progress and the fight for a more liberatory world
As Blask-satomen we see B l a c k feminismas t h e logical political m o v e m e n t t o c o m b a t t h e manifold andsimultaneous oppressions t h a t alLwomen o f c o l o r f a c e
the logic behind this being - helping the most oppressed group liberates all
deed, the earlier RNA position of allowinginfiltration because of the difficulties in identifying and eliminating it whiletrying to establish a consensual, open environment for citizens essentially ateaway at the core of the RNA as it could later not tell friend from foe (trustedfrom untrusted)
shows how killing from outside and death from inside can intersect to eviscerate social movements
RNA was subject to a wide variety of domestic spying, includingphysical surveillance and informant
similar to the experience of the Black Panther Party
As a result, there have been noefforts to systematically examine resource allocation from the perspective ofthose actors directly trying to control social movement organizations, and fewattempts have been made to identify the specific circumstances under whichSMOs acquire resources
example of influence of donors influence on dissident organizations - Ford Foundation pressuring the NAACP to turn away from police brutality and towards education as the centerpiece of their policy and activism
When resources can be found, SMOs willflourish.4 With them, dissidents can pay rent; travel; offer decent salaries,training, seminars, and workshops; obtain equipment, food, and medicine;and engage in a wide range of dissident activities, such as strikes, demonstra-tions, petitions, sit-ins, teach-outs, terrorism, guerilla warfare, and insurgency.When resources are difficult to come by, however, then SMOs are more likelyto demobilize.
how might mutual aid factor into this? how do we explain mobilization in communities where resources and opportunities are scarce?
At that spot,the Seine was red. I'm sure. Even though the visibility waspoor and it was dark and rainy.
symbolism woven throughout the text
I never worked with the "blue caps."It seems those guys are the worst; they're fierce.
irony - violence from within the community hits harder than French violence
Meanwhile, thePalais des Sports was evacuated, and cleaned up for the RayCharles concert scheduled for October 20, 1961. The concerttook place
erasure of colonial violence and its evidence at the Palais des Sports to preserve image of France as racial utopia - welcoming in Ray Charles, an African American singer
e'll know tomorrow.It will be in the papers. But I saw bodies around the fountain, the wounded, and lost children cryin
mainstream newspapers failed to do this - and instead repeated the company line of only 2 dead : violence manifests not only as physical but epistemological
6 . . . Ifanyone had listened to me, there wouldn't be many moreFLN left. .. Yeah, we'll see. We could have won Indochina,and we lost. We're not going to lose Algeria . . ."
memory of humiliation at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was still fresh
u know what I think? Louis's film is going to be a flop . . . Who wants to listen to the story aboutthat day, October 17,1961? Who? Neither the French nor theAlgerians, neither immigrants nor native-born nationals .
complex layers of silencing - at the political level (official accounts of the massacre) and the personal level (familial)
Everything was calm inParis. It was as if nothing had happened. They were announcing Ray Charles's concert scheduled for October 20 at the Palais des Sports, in Paris
contrast highlighted in Drowning in Bullets documentary between cosmopolitan nightlife and the police brutality inflicted on Algerian protestors
Elie Kagan, went across Paris on his Vespa scooterto Nanterre where he knew Algerians had been killed. I sawvery few photos of that tragic day. On the whole, journalistsdidn't do their job
epistemological violence - journalists didn't adequately photograph the event; silencing as violence
y goodness . . . I never heard about this. In any case, it's past history.You can't cry about it now .. . Hey, let me offer you whateveryou'd like. What would you like?
reflects an understanding of past and present as discrete entities, rather than continuities in history of colonial violence
In 1961?" The café owner burstsout laughing: "Well. . . I was far, far away at that time, andI didn't think I'd have a bistro some day. We don't always dowant we want to in life, you know . . . Me, I believe in fate.I came to France, to Marseille. I had nothing. In 1962, youmust know, the Algerians chased us out. They sent us packing, taking everything, the villa, the business . . . we receivedcompensation in tiny doses.
anticolonialism - disempowering settlers, sense of lost entitlements
I believe I put her indanger without thinking. I waited. No one spoke of a womandrowned in the Seine, disappeared . . . Not at that time. Perhaps there were some, I don't know
collective complicity of the erasure of the events of the night of October 17th and the following days - occluded memory
I witnessed scenes of violenceagainst Algerians. I will testify. It was raining. It was night
breaking the official silence
e reads red inkedletters:ON THIS SPOT ALGERIANS WERE SAVAGELY BEATENBY PREFECT PAPON'S POLICE ON OCTOBER 17 196 1
Algerians writing themselves into the historical record that silences them, parallel endeavor to the work of writers like Toni Morrison and Saidiya Hartman who do the work of looking back at power and lifting the voices of marginalized peoples
e camera zooms in on "forgotten," one letter in each littlesquare, p o w e r , in disarray, l a w , d e f e n d . "Place de la Concorderenovated, humanist, turn of the century . . ." says Louis'svoice.
tension between French modernity and barbarity
I don'tknow Algeria. I'll never go there. My life is here.
complex relationships to home
It's the firsttime I saw or heard anything about October 17,1961. Louis'sfilm is the day my grandmother spoke about, 'when the timeis right.'
Louis film as democratizing and decentralizing the telling of history
They get up and walk to the foot of the statue, a giantsized woman in a toga with the laurels of victory and the tablets of Republican law, the Rights of Man
juxtaposition between French democratic tradition and its history as a colonial power - friction that Cesaire alludes to in Discourse on Colonialism
I don't know if thedoctor believed me. I would like to have him testify, if someday . . .I was dressed up that day. I wore a tie and everything
shows how respectability politics failed to protect Algerians from violence - nonviolent protests allows protestors to occupy a moral high ground relative tote state
urely,the Seine was red that day; at night you couldn't tell
blood - evidence of the atrocities and violence committed the night of October 17th despite state efforts to repress memory of the event and euphemize the death as a result of the Algerians being drowned by bullets
Hittiste."
These young, apolitical, unemployed people are not unique to Syria, as you can see, but are also equally common to Algeria. Some spend their time hanging out; others are involved in the arts or in Web activities. The latter are the new breed of Hittistes.
The hittiste are generally defined as urban poor, with no chance of employment, dependent on their families for shelter and food into their mid-20s. They are the disenfranchised, much as the African American youth in large urban areas of the United States
vilians.
blank pages evoke silences
Working with women of the shantytown, she hid politicaltracts in fabric, in wedding dresses; the women distributedthem. Women musicians would spread the news from wedding to wedding, from one celebration to another. I
women playing a critical role in anticolonial resistance
Amel hears her mother's voice.
repetition
o. My father says we'll be going there soon. I have a map of Algeria in my room. I stick inred pins to mark the massacres . . ." "Why?" "To know aboutthem." "And what else do you learn from the pins
alternate mapping and counternarrative
I came into the room, the bedroom,up until the day when . . . But I didn't understand it all thatday . . .
silence built into the syntax of the text - stream of consciousness and ellipses allude to the silences and elisions within collective memory of the war of independence and the protests on the night of October 17th
f we understand the Bush regime not as theerosion of U.S. democracy but as its fulfillment? If we understan
bleak - but fair critique; similar to Cesaire's assertion that fascism is central rather than tangential to the idea of Europe
capacity inWestern law to simultaneously incorporate and eliminate, recogniseand except racialised and primitive difference was learned in settlerprojects of Indigenous elimination that established Western law onlands beyond ‘the West
YES
heritage as subject racialised populations barred them from anydifference that could trouble settler rule.
de las Casas - not as benevolent humanitarian, but enacting the pacification of Indigenous peoples' resistance through inclusion into the category of the human
connects with Trask - Indigenous Hawaiian culture mobilized in depoliticized ways
women between 1876 and 1985 having had status rescinded,estimates range that from one to two million descendants of thesewomen are incapable of asserting legally-recognised Indigenousidentity in Canada, and remain removed from relationship with oreven awareness of their peoples or lands
killing in another form - epistemological and ontological
omen who inherited status from their fathers found thatit was rescinded for them and their children if they married a personwithout status. This broadly-applied rule first facilitated marriages ofwhite men with Indigenous women, which absorbed their childrenthrough the patriline into the settler nation and its citizenship
intermarriage as manner of disappearance - bloodline continues, but indigeneity is erased in the process (logic of obliteration as in post-colonial Brazil)
there is not a single Indian inCanada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there isno Indian question’.
living with a cost of self-destruction
hile this procedure may appear topreserve life, in its definition of over six hundred ‘First Nations’whose members received ‘Indian status’ by state decree, the Act alsoseparated myriad communities of common nationality, radicallyreduced land bases (if any remained), and enabled the state todetermine the fact or erasure of their existence.
the price of living at the mercy of the settler colonial state
white settler societies that attempt toeliminate Indigenous nations by amalgamating Indigenous people aspotentially protected children whose racialisation leaves theirconsanguinity open to excision
tension between killing the Indian and saving the man - Morgensen and Puar limn what dying actually means , beyond a discrete temporal end to a person's life
Las Casas, by contrast, sought toprotect Indigenous people as subjects acceptable to God’s law, butonly to the extent that they conformed to the Church and sovereignas paternal educators, whom they must not resist lest in violating theterms of their protection they be returned to the ever-presentpossibility of death
conditional humanity - undermining the facade of Enlightenment era humanism
perform indigeneity as a history they at once incorporate andtranscend, inhabit and defer.
Povinelli - appropriation of Indigenous symbolism and culture to root settler presence in antiquity
Any seeming ‘preservation’ of Blackness in whitesettler societies thus was coterminous with the perpetual subjectionof Black peoples to spaces of death, while eliding the formation ofBlack communities precisely through mixture with Indigenous andEuropean peoples.
reality of transatlantic slave trade and slavery writ large also complicates Foucault's binary of make live / let die - in that slavery relied on the reproduction of enslaved African peoples, but in unraveling kinship relationships and instituted horrible labor and living conditions, made them socially dead
at thecolonial era never ended because settler colonialism remains thenaturalised activity projecting Western law and its exception alongglobal scales today. Theories of the biopolitical state, regimes ofglobal governance, and the war on terror will be insufficient unlessthey critically theorise settler colonialism as a historical and presentcondition and method of all such power
disrupting telos of history; establishing continuities between past and present
Salamanca quotes Israelipolitician Dov Wiesglass, who states ‘Israel’s policy would be “like anappointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, butwon’t die”’ (Salamanca, 2011, p. 30).
body as site of the inscription of power - complicating the binary of make live / let die , and turning that into a triad of make live / let die / let survive
As a form of what Sari Hanafi terms ‘spacio-cide’, the terrain is dependent on the withdrawn colonizer’sinfrastructural support, which modulates calories, megawatts, water,telecommunication networks, and spectrum and bandwidth allocationto provide the bare minimum for survival but minimal enough toattempt to deplete or strip resistance
forced dependency as a locus of control, parallel to forcing of Indigenous people into the cash economy and onto reservations (diminished autonomy -> greater dependency on the settler state -> diminished capacity for resistance)
Omar Jabary Salamanca extensively details the Israeli government’sresignification of Gaza’s infrastructural networks as ‘terroristinfrastructures’, noting that this rationale is used to justify Israel’spolicy of what he calls ‘infrastructural violence’
securitization language (i.e. terrorism) used to legitimize state violence association between Water Protectors and jihadists, framing of Gazan infrastructure as terrorist infrastructure
The Israeli government’s disregardfor international human rights laws in Gaza and the West Bank, overtime, have led to the ‘large-scale destruction of the developing healthsystem, the inability of local and international healthcare providers toperform their duties, and a deterioration of the health conditions ofPalestinians’
slow, gradual killing, applying Patrick Wolfe's analysis that the killing of a people is multipronged (not just in the form of taking lives)
as a ‘let live’ praxis, understoodin liberal terms as less violent than killing (and thus, less sensationaland more under the radar), shoot to cripple appears on the surface tobe a humanitarian approach to warfare.
must there be a mass slaughter for an atrocity to have been committed?
Gaza being ‘under siege’, acommonly used refrain meant to obscure much of this detail; I haveresorted here to a somewhat polemical deployment of empiricalinformation in part to counter this tendency to obscure the specifics ofthe occupation.
failing of the precise summing up and pinning down of the experience of residents of Gaza , two to three word phrases like 'under siege' and 'open air prison' fail to capture the violence
violent, and seen as requiring more police action thannon-group-based protests about layoffs. In otherwords, both minority identity and minority issues areperceived as more violent and requiring more policing
this has implications for the agenda that social movements set - in the case of the Civil Rights Movement, pressure from the Ford Foundation forced the NAACP to turn away from police brutality and towards education as the centerpiece issue.
Yet while in-group tiescan facilitate violent mobilization, nonviolent mobiliza-tion is more likely to be sustained and succeed throughmass, cross-cutting support, creating challenges foractivists seeking to address ethnic grievances
perception of out groups as threatening and violent can undermine movements' efforts to build coalitions with multiple cross-sections of a society
It further finds that emphasizing protester com-mitment to nonviolence has a positive influence onpublic perceptions, but this effect applies mostly tomajority groups. Taken together, these findings under-score how the mobilizing power of nonviolence variesconsiderably by group identity
up hill climb for protestors from minority groups - regardless of what form of protest they decide on
Moreover,thcwere to be kept empty of people, except for perambulatory tourists (no religionceremonies or pilgrimages, so far as possible). Museumized this way, they weirepositioned as regalia for a secular colonial state.
depoliticized culture - parallel to the neutralization of hula in Hawaii
In other cases, as in Burma, what was imagined wassecular decadence, such that contemporary natives were no longer capabletheir putative ancestors' achievements. Seen in this light, the reconstructed mouments, juxtaposed with the surrounding rural poverty, said to the natives: Oivery presence shows that you have always been, or have long become, incapabof either greatness or self-rule
different tactic from the suppression of the achievements of Indigenous civilizations - weaponization of history of intellectual and architectural feats as evidence of inferiority
Thereafter, with increasing speed, the grandeurs of the Borobudur. of Angkor, ofPagan, and of other ancient sites were successively disinterred, unjungled, mea-sured, photographed, reconstructed, fenced off, analysed, and displayed
dismemberment of Indigenous cultures
But, especially after 1950, Dutch missionaries and Dutchofficials for the first time made serious efforts to "unify" them by taking cen-suses, expanding communications networks, establishing schools, and erectingsupra-"tribal" governmental structures. This effort was launched by a colonialstate which, as we noted earlier, was unique in that it had governed the Indies,not primarily via a European language, but through "administrative Malay.
unification for the purposes of rule and colonial control
In London's imperial maps, British colonies were usually pink-red.French purple-blue, Dutch yellow-brown, and so on. Dyed this way, each colonyappeared like a detachable piece of a jigsaw puzzle. As this "jigsaw" effectbecame normal, each "piece" could be wholly detached from its geographiccontext.
author Viet Thanh Nguyen describes Vietnam as a Frankenstein; creation of colonies that served as the basis for nation-states as evidence of the severing and destruction of indigenous geographies
In the history I have described, this relationship was reversed.A map anticipated spatial reality, not vice versa. In other words, a map was a modelfor, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent.... It had become a realinstrument to concretize projections on the earth's surface. A map was now nec-essary for the new administrative mesbanisms and for the troops to back up theirclaims .... The discourse of mapping was the paradigm which both administrativeand military operations worked within and served
YES!
The task of,as it were, "filling in" the boxes was to be accomplished by explorers, surveyors,and military forces. In Southeast Asia, the second half of the nineteenth centurywas the golden age of military surveyors—colonial and, a little later, Thai. Theywere on the march to put space under the same surveillance which the census-makers were trying to impose on persons. Triangulation by triangulation, war bywar, treaty by treaty, the alignment of map and power proceeded.
mapping of power - link between knowledge acquisition about spaces and colonial control of those spaces
Only in the 1870s did Thai leaders beginthinking of boundaries as segments of a continuous map-line corresponding tonothing visible on the ground, but demarcating an exclusive sovereignty wedgedbetween other sovereignties.
maps not corresponding to physical reality but articulating a social reality
f the mutual incompre-hensibility of many of their spoken languages; and of the peculiar social andgeographic origins of their diaspora across coastal Southeast Asia, the Companyimagined, with its trans-oceanic eye, an endless series of Chinezen, as the con-quistadors had seen an endless series of hidalgos. And on the basis of this inven-tive census it began to insist that those under its control whom it categorized asChinezen dress, reside, marry, be buried, and bequeath property according to thatcensus
classification + taxonomy as basis for social control and subjugation by the state
herefore it is hard for him to see that the"class structure" of the precolonial period is a "census" imagining created fromthe poops of Spanish galleons. Wherever they went, hidalgos and esclavos loomedup, who could only be aggregated as such, that is "structurally," by an incipientcolonial state
challenging the objectivity of Spanish analysis of class structure in what became the Philippines - as Trask describes, the West was telling a story about itself in the way that it narrates the stories of others
For the fact is that wherever in the islands the earliest clerics and con-quistadors ventured they espied, on shore, principales, hidalgos, pecheros, andesclavos (princes,noblemen, commoners and slaves)—quasi-estates adapted fromthe social classifications of late medieval Iberia. The documents they left behindoffer plenty of incidental evidence that the "hidalgos" were mostly unaware ofone another's existence in the huge, scattered, and sparsely populated archipelago,and, were aware, usually saw one another not as hidalgos, but as enemies orpotential slaves
sense of national identity is not fait accompli - it's constructed
is second conclusion is that, on the whole, the largeracial categories were retained and even concentrated after independence, but nowredesignated and reranked as "Malaysian," "Chinese," "Indian," and "Other."Yet anomalies continued up into the 1980s
inheritances from the colonial era
uring thewar. the United States seemed through some of its lawsand social practices to embrace the same racism it wasfighting. Both fronts of the war exposed profound inconsis-tencies between U.S. naturalization law and broader so-cial ideals. These considerations. among others. led Con-gress to begin a process of piecemeal reform in the lawsgoverning citizenship
critique advanced by the Double V Campaign - African Americans pointing to the friction between fighting for freedom and democracy in Europe and the absence of those two values at home
n 1935. Hit-ler's Germany limited citizenship to members of the Aryanrace. making Germany the only country other than theUnited States with a racial restriction on naturalization. 3
speaks to the fascism in a facially democratic society - can apply Cesaire's critique of Europe to the American context
Mter 1870. Blacks as well as Whites couldnaturalize. but not others
shows us that inclusion does not promise liberation
Virginia in 1779. SouthCarolina in 1784. and Georgia in 1785.28 Though therewould be many subsequent changes in the requirementsfor federal naturalization. racial identity endured as a bed-rock requirement for the next 162 years. In every natural-ization act from 1790 until 1952, Congress included the"white person" prerequisite
forces us to deal with the reality that nativist sentiment and racialized understandings of who belongs in America is not an aberration, but the norm. It is the rule and not the exception.
All persons born in theUnited States ... of mothers who are citizens or legalresidents of the United States ... are citizens of theUnited States."
echoes of Patricia Hill Collins - using women to subjugate a population
Andrea Smith - rape as conquest, conquering women to challenge matrilineal Indigenous societies and force dependence on the settler state partus sequitur ventrum - premising the status of children on the status of their mother ; enslaved mother <br /> -> enslaved children vilification of Black women as source of the deficiency of the Black family; eliding the structural forces that rend familial relationships
Thispattern was repeated in the 1950s, when Attorney GeneralHerbert Brownwell launched a program to expel Mexi-cans. This effort, dubbed "Operation Wetback," indiscrim-inately deported more than one million citizens and noncit-izens in 1954 alone
racialized citizenship; law and policy as part of the social realm to police the racial and cultural borders of the nation
With the onset of theDepression, attention shifted to Mexican immigrants. Al-though no law explicitly targeted this group, federal immi-gration officials began a series of round-ups and massdeportations of people of Mexican descent under the gen-eral rubric of a "repatriation campaign
diction - repatriation - patria (fatherland);
In 1917, Congresscreated "an Asiatic barred zone," excluding all personsfrom Asia. 4 During this same period, the Senate passed abill to exclude "all members of the Mrican or black race."This effort was defeated in the House only after intensivelobbying by the NAACP.s
regulating who enters to create a ethnic home base and produce the white settler state
The history of thisdiscrimination can briefly be traced. Nativist sentimentagainst Irish and German Catholics on the East Coast andagainst Chinese and Mexicans on the West Coast, whichhad been doused by the Civil War, reignited during theeconomic slump of the 1870s.
economic conditions shape whose presence is desired (Bracero Program vs. Operation Wetback)
So-called positiveeugenic-efforts to increasereproductionamong the better groupswho alleg-edly carried the outstanding qualities of their group in their genes-andnegative eugenic-efforts to prevent the propagation by less desirablegroups-also have affectedU.S. public polic
positive eugenics - encouraging white women to have many children to populate the idealized nation state (Volksmoeder of Afrikanerdom, restrictions on contraception
negative eugenics - state sanctioned sterilization of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Indigenous women, etc.
AsQuadagnopoints out, the rightof unions to select their own memberswasseenas a "propertyright of the workingclass.This was a most compellingargumentfor nepotism-the tradition of passing on the craft from fathers to sons"(Quadagno 1994, 65).
connects with whiteness as property idea proposed by Cheryl Harris ; equality in resources and access to opportunity threatens the proprietary benefits of whiteness
or example, Whitewomen play a special role in keeping family bloodlines pure. Historically,creatingWhite familiesrequiredcontrollingWhite women'ssexuality,largelythroughsocial normsthat advocatedpre-maritalvirginity.By marryingWhitemen and engagingin sexualrelationsonly with their husbands,White womenensuredthe racial purity of White families.Thus, throughsocial taboos thateschewed pre-maritalsexuality and interracialmarriagefor White women,White familiescould thereby avoid racialdegeneratio
white women's bodies as sites for the nation to reproduce itself; if there is interference / impurity that threatens the nation
to itssignificancewithin familyas a privilegedexemplarof intersectionality.In theUnited States, the traditional family ideal's ideas about place, space, andterritorysuggest that families, racial groups,and nation-states requiretheirown uniqueplacesor "homes."Because"homes"providespacesof privacyandsecurity for families, races, and nation-states, they serve as sanctuariesforgroupmembers.Surroundedby individualswho seeminglysharesimilarobjec-tives, these homes representidealized,privatizedspaces where memberscanfeel at ease
but that privacy is premised on exclusion - privatization of space requires separation from the Other physically and psychically (connects to the function of cultural borders and physical, militarized borders)
.In general,whether itis familyas household, familyas a foundationfor conceptualizingrace, or thenational familydefined throughU.S. citizenship,familyrhetoricthat natural-izes hierarchy inside and outside the home obscures the force needed tomaintain these relationships
YES!
Maintainingracialsolidarityatall costs often requiresreplicatinghierarchiesof gender,social class, sexuality,and nation in Black civil society. Consider,for example, typical understand-ings of the phrase"Blackon Blackviolence." Stressingviolence among Blackmen permitspatternsof Black male violence targetedtowardBlackwomen-domestic abuse and sexual harassmentin the workplace-to remain hiddenand condoned. In the face of sexual harassment,especially at the hands ofBlackmen, African-Americanwomen are cautionednot to "airdirtylaundry"aboutinternalfamilyproblem
tension between desire to combat stereotypes of Black men as threatening and violence and combat violence that they commit against Black women
Within the frameof race as family,women of subordinatedracial groupsdefer to men of theirgroups,often to supportmen'sstrugglesin dealing with racism
erasure of BW's experiences / oppressions in antiracist + anticolonial / anti-apartheid liberation in struggle
For example,racialideologies that portraypeople of color as intellectuallyunderdeveloped,uncivilizedchildren requireparallelideas that constructWhites as intellectu-ally mature,civilized adults.When appliedto race, familyrhetoricthat deemsadultsmore developed than children, and thus entitled to greaterpower,usesnaturalizedideas about age and authorityto legitimateracialhierarch
explains the racism of seemingly benevolent paternalism - the language of family used to articulate racial hierarchy
,the allegedunity and solidar-ity attributed to family is often invoked to symbolize the aspirations ofoppressedgroups.For example, the conservativeright and Black nationalistsalike both rely on family languageto advance their political agenda
think about Balibar - family as site where nation is sustained and reproduced
We need to understand theorganization of the social so as to make visible our collaboration with systematic racializedgender violence, so as to come to an inevitable recognition of it in our maps of reality
YES
The following description of slave women and of slave work in the U.S.South makes clear that African slave females were not considered fragile or weak
tension between ungendering that allows for expropriation of black women's labor and the exploitation of their reproductive labor to maintain and extend the slave trade - partus sequitur ventrum
. "That which is born follows the womb"; also partus) was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that all children would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery.[1
hey wereunderstood as animals in the deep sense of "without gender," sexually marked as female, butwithout the characteristics of femininity. Women racialized as inferior were turned fromanimals into various modified versions of “women” as it fit the processes of Eurocenteredglobal capitalism
ungendering - Spillers
how narrow Quijano’s conception of genderis in terms of the organization of the economy, and the organization of collective authority,she also enables us to see that the production of knowledge is gendered, the very conceptionof reality at every level
YES!
The Women’s Councilwas politically and spiritually powerful (36-37). Cherokee women lost all these powers andrights, as the Cherokee were removed and patriarchal arrangements were introduced. TheIroquois shifted from a Mother-centered, Mother-right people organized politically underthe authority of the Matrons, to a patriarchal society when the Iroquois became a subjectpeople. The feat was accomplished with the collaboration of Handsome Lake and hisfollowers. (33)
patriarchy entraps the very people who benefit from it - Iroquois men dominate Iroquois women, but ALL are subject to the power of the settler state
he Cherokee in the early 1800s under theleadership of men such as Elias Boudinot, Major Ridge, and John Ross, and others,drafted a constitution that disenfranchised women and blacks. Modeled after theConstitution of the United States, whose favor they were attempting to curry, and inconjunction with Christian sympathizers to the Cherokee cause, the new Cherokeeconstitution relegated women to the position of chattel. (37
Cherokee held up as an emblem of civilization - read: domination
model of freedom premised on the subjugation of others, but how can we all be free?
f Indian females is thoroughly tied to thedomination and transformation of tribal life. The destruction of the gynocracies is crucial tothe “decimation of populations through starvation, disease, and disruption of all social,spiritual, and economic structures...” (42) T
controlling women as prereq for colonial domination; therefore liberation must begin with woc - as Dorothy Roberts and other scholars suggest
Replacing this gynecratic spiritual plurality with one supreme male being asChristianity did, was crucial in subduing the tribes. Allen proposes that transforming Indiantribes from egalitarian and gynecratic to hierarchical and patriarchal “requires meeting fourobjective
connects with Smith's idea of conquest and colonial domination staged on women's bodies
. Women are defined inrelation to men, the norm. Women are those who do not have a penis; those who do nothave power; those who cannot participate in the public arena. (34) None of this was true ofYoruba anafemales prior to colonization
interesting!!!
The cosmetic and substantivecorrections to biology make very clear that “gender” is antecedent to the “biological” traitsand gives them meaning. The naturalizing of sexual differences is another product of themodern use of science that Quijano points out in the case of “race.
pushing back against coupling of science and fact, instead proposing an alternate coupling of science and narrative - society does not merely read reproductive biology, but instead produces that biology in service of unequal social arrangements (creating the category of woman in what became Nigeria to undermine their public and political power - women chiefs in Yorubaland, existence of courts ran by women in Igboland)
sexual dimorphism
distinct difference in size or appearance between the sexes of an animal in addition to difference between the sexual organs themselves.
ere the counterpart of the continueddisintegration of the parent-children units in the “non-white” “races”, which couldbe held and distributed as property not just as merchandise but as “animals.”
unraveling of kinship relationships and ungendering as described by Hortense Spillers in Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe
black” women in Africa,
aderonke oyewumi - looking to how the category of woman as biological as conceived in European culture did not exist in Yoruba culture
Crenshaw and other women of color feminists have argued that the categories havebeen understood as homogenous and as picking out the dominant in the group as the norm,thus “women” picks out white bourgeois women, “men” picks out white bourgeois men,“black” picks out black heterosexual men, and so on.
all the women are white and all the blacks are men logic
The move to intersect thecategories has been motivated by the difficulties in making visible those who are dominatedand victimized in terms of both categories.
important to tease this out as politics producing an identity, rather than the other way around
The cognitive needs of capitalism include“measurement, quantification, externalization (or objectification) of what is knowable withrespect to the knower so as to control the relations among people and nature and amongthem with respect to it, in particular the property in means of production.” This way ofknowing was imposed on the whole of the capitalist world as the only valid rationality and asemblematic of modernit
Foucault - knowing to control and to manage; science conscripted to uphold a capitalist and white supremacist world order
In characterizing modernity, Quijanofocuses on the production of a way of knowing, labeled rational, arising from within thissubjective universe since the XVII century in the main hegemonic centers of this world systemof power (Holland and England). This way of knowing is Eurocentered .By “Eurocentrism”Quijano understands the cognitive perspective not of Europeans only, but of theEurocentered world, of those educated under the hegemony of world capitalism.“Eurocentrism naturalizes the experience of people within this model of power.
naturalizing hierarchical and human relations centered on domination - which is why as Freire, Fanon, and Memmi illustrate, the mind is a critical battleground
n constituting this social classification, coloniality permeates all aspects of socialexistence and gives rise to new social and geocultural identities. (Quijano, 2000b, 342)“America” and “Europe” are among the new geocultural identities. “European,” “Indian,”“African” are among the “racial” identities. This classification is "the deepest and mostenduring expression of colonial domination." (Quijano, 2001-2, p. 1) With the expansion ofEuropean colonialism, the classification was imposed on the population of the planet.
speaking to geographical determinism - the ways that knowing was weaponized as a means of control ; classification translated to racial hierarchy
But that has not seemed sufficient to arouse in those menwho have themselves been targets of violent domination and exploitation, any recognition oftheir complicity or collaboration with the violent domination of women of color.
patriarchy as a site of buy-in for men of color into systems of oppression
Mandela's negotiations with the apartheid regime understood as a negotiation between patriarchs
Recall Harper and Trudeau advertising the futureof Canada through pipelines and energy infrastructures while minimizing the threats to Indig-enous sovereignty and the environment required to complete these state-building projects.The effects are dramatic abandonments and exclusions from the social benefits promised bymodernity’s infrastructures in order to secure resource extraction. As Tess Lea and Paul Phole-ros (2010) point out in the settler state of Australia, outward appearance of infrastructure canbe deceiving. In their discussion of state provision of housing for Aboriginal people in Australia,they document the systematic disrepair, incompleteness, and poor design of Aboriginal hous-ing. Houses provided for Aboriginal families may look like houses, but they are not. Their pipeslead to nowhere and are constructed with cheap and crumbling materials. These “not-houses”draw attention to the way in which infrastructure can, through its pull to the literal, mask thematerial conditions lurking just underneath the surface
infrastructure as site on which the nation is produced - poor quality of Aboriginal housing ; reflects their exclusion from the broader Australian national community raced as white
ere, Larkin’s note that infrastructures “literally provid[e] the undergirding ofmodern societies” (2013: 328) raises a crucial question. If those modern societies have settled,colonized, and attempted to eliminate existing Indigenous nations and political orders, does theword infrastructure itself denote an apparatus of domination?
discursive landscape of terra nullius - empty space for infrastructure of modern society to be built
nstead, resistance to invasive infrastructures requiresstanding in place, in our territories, and insisting on our prior and continuing relationships tothe lands, kin, and other-than-human relations that those infrastructures threaten.
interrupting the project of elimination - getting between settlers and their money ; stopping settlers from coming to stay
nfrastructure is by definition future oriented; it is assembled in the service of worlds to come.Infrastructure demands a focus on what underpins and enables formations of power and thematerial organization of everyday life in time and space.
infrastructure as part of the architecture of settler futurity
il and gas extraction, in par-ticular, creates spaces of unchecked white masculinity in which incidents of violent abduction,abuse, and rape of Indigenous women and girls have skyrocketed (Gibson et al. 2017; Jensen2017; WEA and NYSHN 2016)
oil and gas industry facilitating the rape of the land and of indigenous women and girls
then transportation infrastructures are themselves settler colonial technologiesof invasion
HEAT
olonial dispossession travels through infrastructures, asthey are used to extend settlements’ reach into Indigenous territories that remain unceded,unsurrendered to the Canadian state, or protected under treaty agreements with Indigenousnations. The settler state is built through a network of infrastructures, which must be normal-ized and maintained to assert settler jurisdiction toward nation-building projects
critical infrastructures as material/ physical landings for the settler colonial project to expand
Trudeau gave the keynote speech to ameeting of oil and gas executives in Houston, Texas, noting, “No country would find 173 billionbarrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there” (Berke 2017). His speech was met witha standing ovation. The naturalization of oil and gas extraction and the securitization of pipe-lines as “critical infrastructures” serve to link industry profits to national security, criminalizingIndigenous dissent and recasting destructive infrastructure projects as natural outgrowths ofthe settler state.
YES - Lockean logic at work here
hile the veneer of coop-eration and negotiation has thickened under Trudeau, the underlying approach to the oil andgas industry has remained consistent with past governments. In the Speech from the Thronepresented by Stephen Harper’s government in 2013, the Government of Canada highlightedthe role of resource extraction in Canada’s future: “Canada’s energy reserves are vast—sufficientto fuel our growing economy and supply international customers for generations to come. . .
contrast between rhetoric and material reality - of what use is improved rhetoric and tears if the oil and gas industry is still allowed to encroach on indigenous sovereignty?
ut ending with the facile suggestion that reconciliation can bepracticed by Canadians reading more books by Indigenous authors: “I invite you to join the#IndigenousReads campaign to help raise awareness and understanding through shared cultureand stories and encourage steps toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples” (PMO 2016).
confrontation with settler colonial history that doesn't disturb the inequitable social, political, and economic arrangements that it produced
“No relationship is more important to our government and to Canadathan the one with Indigenous peoples. Today, we reaffirm our government’s commitment to arenewed nation-to-nation relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples, one based onthe recognition of rights, respect, trust, co-operation, and partnership” (PMO 2016). Despitethese statements of “recognition,” Indigenous peoples remain in a deeply subordinated rela-tionship to Canada, and political claims to land and self-governance are repeatedly squashed infavor of cultural exchange
words + sentimentality > material recompense
An unmarked binary operates throughout the report: privatized oil and gas technol-ogies and pipelines are “critical infrastructures” in need of increased securitization and protec-tion, while protection of Indigenous lands and ecologies is extremist ideology
discursive violence
Because thediscourse of critical infrastructure is tightly linked to one of “national security,” as well as “eco-nomic well-being,” there is discursive and legal space open for an understanding of oil and gaspipelines as critical infrastructure because of the economic reliance of both the United Statesand Canada on revenue from fossil fuels. Threats to pipeline projects, then, can be cast as threatsto national (economic) security, and these definitions of critical infrastructure make it possibleto place resistance to fossil fuels in the same category as domestic terrorism.
state's discursive power to delegitimize anticolonial resistance through the "terrorism" label
nfrastructure, then, attempts but fails to capture the agentive and social network throughwhich Indigenous life is produced.1 These assemblages exist whether or not they are framed orcaptured by anthropological theory
settler colonial perspective - anthropocentric
ycontrasting these two meanings under one term, she brings attention to the underlying drivingforce of industrial infrastructure, exposing the lie that these projects are creative/productive andinstead insisting that they are regressive/destructive and embedded in a capitalist system thatis fundamentally at odds with the cycles and systems that make Indigenous survival possible
POWERFUL
n Unist’ot’en territory in northern British Columbia, Canada, clan members of the Wet’suwet’enpeople have built a permanent encampment in the pathway of numerous potential and pro-posed pipelines. In response to the characterization of these pipeline projects as “critical infra-structure,” the camp’s spokesperson, Freda Huson, notes that the pipelines were proposed torun through the clan’s best berry patches. By resisting pipeline construction, she explains, “whatwe’re doing here is protecting our critical infrastructure.
harp’s analysis of nonviolent struggle could be notably uninching.He recognized that if the target of a campaign is a tyrannical regime, re-pression can be severe. “ ere must be no illusions,” he wrote. “In somecases nonviolent people have not only been beaten and cruelly treatedbut killed . . . in deliberate massacres.” Nor did Sharp promise success:“ e simple choice of nonviolent action as the technique of struggle,”he explained, “does not and cannot guarantee victory, especially on ashort-term basis
images of repression can be weaponized against the state - Soweto in 1976 + Children's Crusad
The Navajo Nation, still grappling withenvironmental and human health disasters from its fi rst three decades ofexperience with the uranium industry, responded by passing the DinéNatural Resources Protection Act (DNRPA) in 2005, which placed a mora-torium on new mines in Navajo country. Companies seeking permits tomine in the uranium-rich eastern borderlands of the reservation have de-nied that the land in question can be considered “Indian Country” despitebeing overwhelmingly populated by Navajos and being formally repre-sented in the Navajo Nation government.
erasure of indigenous presence to serve colonial wants ; contradiction between wanting labor of Navajo miners and then later denying the existing of Navajo people on said land
Expensivewater pipelines have yet to be built to serve the estimated 30 percent ofDiné people who live near and use unregulated water sources, many ofwhich are contaminated with uranium or arsenic.17 Homes have been builtout of debris from mines, including chunks of rock blasted into neatlysquared- off blocks, often at the encouragement of mine operators. These“hot homes” were occupied by multiple generations of families before some-one thought to test them for radiation. 1
different dimension of biopolitics - inattention to providing adequate water supply as a way to let die; ongoing violence of colonialism
Belgian Congo and Canad
global extractivist paradigm (hard labor done by Congolese people)
Before the 1880s it was virtuallyempty except for Indians
logic of elimination that Patrick Wolfe raises
The resources the authors consider are, among other things,income and education. These are “discretionary” resources (McCarthy and Zald1977: 1224). The hypothesis thus reads: “More affluent and better-educated indi-viduals are, in general, more likely to form groups.” Thus, in order to form groupsresources must be available to those individuals who are willing to engage in activ-ities against drunk driving. In other words, only if the same individuals who have astrong interest in doing something against drunk driving also dispose of “discre-tionary” resources, then groups are formed.
class dynamics within protests movements - educated South Africans - leading anti-apartheid movement, for instance
Participantsin popular disturbances and activists in opposition organizations will be recruitedprimarily from previously active and relatively well-integrated individuals withinthe collectivity, whereas socially isolated, atomized, and uprooted individuals willbe underrepresented, at least until the movement has become substantial
what role does civic engagement play in the formation of social movements ? in Cochabamba, there were existing networks of people who managed water use and distribution
order for a SMO to thrive it is not only important to recruit supporters withmoney but also with discretionary time. According to hypothesis 11, if SMOs con-sist of many workers with discretionary time at their disposal, it is likely that tran-sitory teams develop.
what impact does the need for supporters with money and discretionary time have on the goals and orientation of a social movement? - for instance, in the context of the CRM, NAACP shifted its main focus towards education, rather than police brutality, because of financial pressure from the Ford Foundation
nstead, “grievances anddiscontent may be defined, created and manipulated by issue entrepreneurs andorganizations” (1215)
speaks to the example of Cochabamba - framing the issue around water and its centrality to regional culture and identity effectively channeled grievances and discontent
It is what Indians, blacks, and Mexicanshave in common and where their differences lie which shouldbe carefully studied
in line with Audre Lorde's call for us to reconsider how to manage difference - not as a marker of inferiority but of strength
The black needs time to develop his roots, to create his sacredplaces, to understand the mystery of himself and his history, tounderstand his own purpos
relates to indigenous Indigenous Hawaiian idea of walking backwards into the future?
legal equality and cultural conformity were identical.We refused to participate in the Washington March. In ourhearts and minds we could not believe that blacks wanted to bethe same as whites
MLK went on to lament the confusion of equality and sameness, and not too long before he was assassinated, he commented, "I don't want to integrate my people into a burning house"
The white man must learn to stop viewing historyas a plot against himself
powerful line!!!
gold medals for the United States every four years while equalityremains as distant as it ever was?
dangers of diversity/inclusion/ tokenism being substituted for actual racial equality/ changes in the material conditions for Black and Indigenous people + other POC
There was never a time when the white man saidhe was trying to help the Indian get into the mainstream ofAmerican life that he did not also demand that the Indian giveup land, water, minerals, timber, and other resources whichwould enrich the white men
incorporation into the body politic - not in service of equality -but to disenfranchise and steal from Indigenous people
sheds light on limits of rights-based frameworks in activism by minoritized groups in America. inclusion into what? incorporation at what costs? what are the limits of thinking of freedom and liberation through the lens of a desire for full-fledged citizenship / membership in American society?
Yet the white man demanded thatthe black conform to white standards and insisted that the Indian don feathers and beads periodically to perform for him
tension between the suppression and erasure of indigenous cultures and their commodification and fetishization to entertain the white gaze (e.g. Hawaii)
Indians were thereforesubjected to the most intense pressure to become white. Lawspassed by Congress had but one goal-the Anglo-Saxonizationof the Indian. The antelope had to become a white ma
distinction from black people - Indigenous peoples had potential to be assimilated into mainstream white society; incorporating black people into white society would make whiteness unintelligible (i.e. one-drop rule, anti-miscegenation rules, etc.)
They have not wanted toshow their ignorance about Indians. Instead, they prefer to placeall people with darker skin in the same category of basic goals,then develop their programs to fit these preconceived ideas
important to understand that marginalized peoples are not a monolith - diversity of experiences exist even within a group
Consequently they have suffered from the attitudes of peoplewho have only a superficial knowledge of minority groups andhave attached a certain stigma to them
complicated history of Indigenous peoples and antiblackness - some members of Five Civilized Tribes were slaveowners
how do different minority groups function as part of the apparatus of white supremacy? what role do they lay in the securing of popular consent?
Indians as goodguys who have too much dignity to demonstrate, hoping to keepthe Indian people separate from the ongoing Civil Rights movement.
divide and conquer tactics to discourage solidarity and joint organizing
Indians were classified aswhite by laws passed to exclude blacks.
other races folded into whiteness in service of anti-blackness
By defining the problem as one of race and makingrace refer solely to black, Indians were systematically excludedfrom consideration.
black/white binary not productive - leaves out nuance, similar to the argument that Professor Maggie Blackhawk makes in her article on Federal Indian Law
Civil rights are, by defi nition, fundamentally aboutequality under the law: equal protection, equal access, and equal oppor-tunity.” 7 Methodologically, then, sovereignty serves as the means to ren-der indigenous peoples visible within and against the discourses ofracial inclusion and the adjudication of liberal multiculturalism.
incorporation into the body politic doesn't necessarily promise liberation
rom Robert Warrior’s field- defi ning articulation of intel-lectual sovereignty as a means to resituate academic knowledge produc-tion by and for indigenous communities
reorienting the academy beyond the violence that it can be complicit in (Said, Simpson, Deloria - use of anthropology to create government programs that harm and further marginalize indigenous peoples)
“The ultimate expres-sion of sovereignty resides, to a large degree,” Achille Mbembe writes,“in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who mustdie
intersection of sovereignty and biopolitics