It is important to acknowledge Wolfe's recognition of the fundamental role of race so as to avoid the impulse to pit a racialization framework against a settler colonial one, or to treat white supremacy and anti-Blackness as transhistorical structures that overdetermine myriad processes of racialization. Wolfe sets out to interrogate the operations of race making in specific historical processes, in particular, in the always contingent struggles over land, labor, culture, and power. The logic of elimination is also consistent with forced assimilation as well as state policies that define and protect limited rights for indigenous people through the politics of recognition: cultural protections and individual rights in lieu of indigenous sovereignty, land and water rights, and the means of livelihood-a critical point made recently by Glen Coulthard. Traces of History expands Wolfe's argument that settler colonialism operates through a "logic of elimination." The destruction or expulsion of indigenous peoples is a continuous feature of settler societies, primarily because they want the land. My essay is a modest attempt to wrestle with specific claims in Traces of History, with Robinson's insights into race, racial capitalism, and colonialism, as well as traces of South African and European history, informing my critique. Unfortunately, Robinson's absence in the discourse on settler colonialism has, in my view, impoverished much of the work-including Wolfe's outstanding new book. When I first read Wolfe's Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race, I found myself returning to Robinson's work, to places where their ideas converge and, especially, where they diverge. Robinson, whose work challenged liberal and Marxist theories of political change, exposed the racial character of capitalism, unearthed a Black Radical Tradition and examined its social, political, cultural, and intellectual bases, and advanced a concept of racial regimes that deepens our understanding of the historically contingent character of racism. We also lost another intellectual giant in 2016: Cedric J. More than any other scholar, he has emerged as the leading figure in the burgeoning field of settler colonial studies and has done so much to advance its generative theoretical paradigm. In Patrick Wolfe we lost an intellectual giant.
0 kommentar(er)
