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Britons, Settlers, and Aborigines: Civil Society and its Colonized ‘Other’ in Colonial, Post-colonial, and Present-day Australia

TIM ROWSE

in Civil Society in British History: Ideas, Identities, Institutions

The many meanings of ‘civil society’ seem to include, paradoxically, two very different societal logistics: a logic of dichotomy, bifurcation, separation, and contrast; and a logic of integration, of ... More

The many meanings of ‘civil society’ seem to include, paradoxically, two very different societal logistics: a logic of dichotomy, bifurcation, separation, and contrast; and a logic of integration, of inclusion of that which is potentially heterogeneous and different. That double logic in civil society is mirrored in Australia's settler-colonial liberalism. The characteristic challenge for settler-colonial liberalism has been to reconcile two very different statuses that the colonist cannot help but attribute to those whom they have colonized: the colonized are different from us, but they are also the same as us, because they co-habit in the same territorial space. This chapter argues that the resolution of this paradox has been sought in the tutelary relationship. That is, civil society can be defined in terms of its exclusions while being simultaneously praised for its inclusiveness, only so long as we are able to imagine a process of tuition or rehabilitation by which the excluded become included.Less

Introduction: Insanity, identity and empire

Catharine Coleborne

in Insanity, Identity and Empire: Immigrants and institutional confinement in Australia and New Zealand, 1873-1910

The Introduction sets out the relevant arguments of the book, situates these within relevant historiography, and describes each chapter of the book. It argues that the stories of the insane found in ... More

The Introduction sets out the relevant arguments of the book, situates these within relevant historiography, and describes each chapter of the book. It argues that the stories of the insane found in the voluminous case records of the institutions for the insane in the colonies, although fragmentary, provide historians with evidence of the formation of a set of ‘social identities’ for the colonial insane drawn from the wider colonial worlds of which these institutions were part. It shows that the book engages with two important scholarly projects, and the connections between them: the examination of gendered and ‘raced’ bodies in the imperial world of the nineteenth century on the one hand, and on the other, a consideration of the imperial discourses of insanity and the formation of colonial institutional knowledge and practice.Less

Colonial Emigration, Public Policy, and Tory Romanticism, 1783–1830

Karen O’Brien

in Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought

This chapter focuses on white colonial emigration and the settlement of the British and Irish following the loss of the first British Empire. In particular, it examines the British imaginative ... More

This chapter focuses on white colonial emigration and the settlement of the British and Irish following the loss of the first British Empire. In particular, it examines the British imaginative engagement with the figure of the colonial settler as a casualty of war, industrialization, and poverty, as well as an economic migrant who nevertheless appeared to signify the potential for the recuperation of British society in the future. The chapter is also concerned with the role of the Romantic writers and literature in the new national imaginative investment in colonial settlement. It furthermore discusses Tory arguments and policy making, which encouraged state involvement and planning of the colonization of the white-settler territories in New South Wales, Canada, the Cape, and New Zealand. This Tory strain of British imperialism was issued out from the Romantic critique of classical political economy and the Romantic assault on Malthus’s non-interventionist stance on poverty. In contrast to the liberal economists, proponents of the Tory arguments advocated the active involvement of the state in managing poverty, and the export of the excess of the population to the overseas colonies. By focusing on the Tory outlook and its implications for the settler colonies, including the imaginative dimension of the literary writers, the chapter gives a profound understanding on the strand of imperialism that evolved together with the nineteenth-century imperial liberalism, yet substantially differed from it.Less

Making and Staking Sacred Terrain: Rajneeshee and Diasporic Hindu Settlers and Unsettlers

Corinne G. Dempsey

in Bringing the Sacred Down to Earth: Adventures in Comparative Religion

Chapter 3 explores traditions that confer sacred meaning and power onto landscapes; the communities compared—one largely Euroamerican and the other South Asian—both strove to transplant their South ... More

Chapter 3 explores traditions that confer sacred meaning and power onto landscapes; the communities compared—one largely Euroamerican and the other South Asian—both strove to transplant their South Asian traditions onto North American terrain during the late twentieth century. Here, the increasingly utopian Rajneesh community that briefly settled in eastern Oregon in the 1980s is contrasted with diasporic Hindu communities whose ongoing religiously informed settlements are labeled as heterotopian. This chapter argues that whereas the Rajneesh community's abstracted utopian vision enabled settler dynamics reminiscent of colonial times, Hindu diaspora communities’ sense of sacred terrain that is historically and religiously—and therefore more realistically—layered creates settlements that tend to steer clear of colonizing impositions. Despite these differences that ultimately distinguish failed and successful settlements, a shared challenge faced by these communities has been an ironic “indigenous” nationalism that likewise expresses itself in religiously laden, utopian claims on the land.Less

Migrating with the Movies: Japanese Settler Film Culture

Dong Hoon Kim

in Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea

To adequately analyse Joseon cinema’s dual nature as a colonial and pseudo-national cinema against the colonial backdrop, it is indispensable to not only examine Korean elements but also consider the ... More

To adequately analyse Joseon cinema’s dual nature as a colonial and pseudo-national cinema against the colonial backdrop, it is indispensable to not only examine Korean elements but also consider the Japanese elements embedded in Joseon cinema. This chapter, therefore, brings to light the film culture of the Japanese settlers, a completely marginalized history in both Korean and Japanese film histories. As the author endeavours to integrate Japanese setters into my account of Joseon cinema, he makes a conscious effort to unearth some key figures from historical obscurity and narrate their stories in order to describe their seminal role in the advancement of Joseon film practices. As the chapter progresses, the discussion gradually expands to probe the overall settler film culture, including movie theatres, film programs, film criticism, and spectators, and its interactions with both Japanese film culture and the film practices of the local Koreans.Less

Emily Carr and the legacy of Commonwealth modernism

Leah Modigliani

in Engendering an avant-garde: The unsettled lansdcapes of Vancouver photo-conceptualism

This chapter discusses the importance of landscape painting in the formation of early twentieth-century Canadian national identity, in particular the Theosophical aspirations and quest for the genius ... More

This chapter discusses the importance of landscape painting in the formation of early twentieth-century Canadian national identity, in particular the Theosophical aspirations and quest for the genius loci of the Group of Seven painters in Ontario, and Emily Carr in British Columbia. Jeff Wall’s published texts that describe the influence of Carr on his peers’ work, and their desire to work outside of the problematic of colonialism, necessitates this examination. Historian Lorenzo Veracini’s discussions of the many narratives utilized by settler colonial societies to authenticate and rationalize their rights to indigenous land are introduced in relationship to the discursive framing of texts that supported and documented Lawren Harris and Carr’s paintings. The national and regional legacy of spiritually-infused landscape painting was antithetical to young artists and intellectuals like Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace, who came to maturity in the late 1960s, and who were committed to revealing man’s alienation from his industrial environment through Marxist-informed critiques of capitalism.Less

An American Kipling: Colonial Discourse, Settler Culture and the Hollywood Studio System in George Stevens’ Gunga Din

Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield

in Framing Empire: Postcolonial Adaptations of Victorian Literature in Hollywood

Serious scholarly attention to Gunga Din(1939) has largely been neglected as allegations of condescending and one-dimensional depictions of its Indian characters have disrupted its reputation as one ... More

Serious scholarly attention to Gunga Din(1939) has largely been neglected as allegations of condescending and one-dimensional depictions of its Indian characters have disrupted its reputation as one of the greatest epics of the studio era.However, George Stevens’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem extends its source text’s colonial ambivalence to American anxieties stemming from the death rattle of Manifest Destiny and the traumas of the Great Depression. Seizing upon the popularity of late Victorian Empire narratives, Hollywood integrated its own ideology into a final product that was a hybrid of imperial narrative and American western. This chapter argues that the film’s loose resemblance to its source material demonstrates a fissure in the American valorization of British culture. Gunga Din completely dismantles Kipling’s poem, recreating it as an example of a uniquely American form: the seamless studio system product that led to Hollywood’s international dominance in cultural production. While the politics of the adaptation resemble textual strategies of resistance common in postcolonial texts, the film’s retention of colonial literature’s representations of its native characters addresses an America beginning to assert a distinct national culture while positioning itself as a future imperial power in the tradition of the faltering British Empire.Less

‘He Is Not Here by Accident’: Transit, Sin and the Model Settler in Patrick Lussier’s Dracula 2000

Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield

in Framing Empire: Postcolonial Adaptations of Victorian Literature in Hollywood

This chapter examines Dracula 2000 as both a resistant text of settler colonial identity and an example of Hollywood’s influence on the Canadian film industry. Seen by Miramax cofounder Bob Weinstein ... More

This chapter examines Dracula 2000 as both a resistant text of settler colonial identity and an example of Hollywood’s influence on the Canadian film industry. Seen by Miramax cofounder Bob Weinstein as a potential franchise successor to the recently completed Scream trilogy, the film reunited much of that earlier franchise’s creative team with horror legend Wes Craven assuming the role of producer and passing directorial reigns to longtime Dimension editor and Canadian filmmaker Patrick Lussier. Focusing on a Dracula who is revealed to be an undead Judas Iscariot and a Van Helsing sustained through the 20th Century by injections of Dracula’s blood, the film engages with a poststructuralist cycle of the settler/subject/colonial dynamic. Likewise, the film’s relocation from the imperial centre of London to New Orleans not only positions America as a contemporary imperial power but also harkens back to the port city’s legacy as a hub for slavery and global trade during Stoker’s time. Shot primarily on Canadian sound stages that doubled for London and New Orleans, Dracula 2000 also embodies contemporary production politics in which Hollywood’s relationship to settler nations such as Canada provides economic support for national cinemas while still dominating domestic box office.Less

Conclusion: We Won When We Started

Natsu Taylor Saito

in Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists

Settler colonial theory provides a conceptual framework for understanding the origins of racial disparities and injustices in the United States. International law supports Indigenous rights, and the ... More

Settler colonial theory provides a conceptual framework for understanding the origins of racial disparities and injustices in the United States. International law supports Indigenous rights, and the rights of all peoples to self-determination. Self-determination can be exercised in an infinite variety of ways, and any action that empowers people can contribute to their decolonization.Less

Indigenous women and settler colonial crime control

Chris Cunneen and Juan Tauri

in Indigenous Criminology

The focus of this chapter is Indigenous women’s experiences of settler colonial crime control, and the response of settler colonial criminal justice systems to the needs of Indigenous women. The ... More

The focus of this chapter is Indigenous women’s experiences of settler colonial crime control, and the response of settler colonial criminal justice systems to the needs of Indigenous women. The chapter discusses in detail significant issues relating to Indigenous women’s engagement with settler colonial crime control, including ongoing increases in police contact and imprisonment. Employing critical Indigenous analysis of the Northern Territory Emergency Response implemented by the Australian Federal Government in 2007, this chapter demonstrates the intersectional foundations behind the significant rise in Indigenous women’s engagement with the criminal justice system, and the role played by the settler colonial state in their continued criminalisation.Less

Those Other Victorians: Cosmopolitanism and Empire in Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady

Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield

in Framing Empire: Postcolonial Adaptations of Victorian Literature in Hollywood

Jane Campion’s adaptation of Henry James’ 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady met with mixed reception upon its release in 1996. While scholars continue to view the film in a postcolonial context, ... More

Jane Campion’s adaptation of Henry James’ 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady met with mixed reception upon its release in 1996. While scholars continue to view the film in a postcolonial context, little attention has been paid to its examinations of settler colonial identity in the wake of the 1992 Mabo decision that served as the first official acknowledgement of Indigenous land rights in Australia. Hailing from New Zealand, but working in Sydney, Campion has often meditated on her own transnational settler status in films such as The Piano(1993) and Holy Smoke!(1999). As the first film Campion made afterMabo, The Portrait of a Lady engages in the process of “backtracking” through Australian history via comparative analysis of its settler colonial characters as they inherit fortunes and form family alliances throughout England and Italy. In addition, it serves as a unique example of a postcolonial adaptation of an American Victorian novel, opening a space for Campion to address the Americanization of Australia’s film industry as Hollywood productions increasingly shoot on location in the nation and Australian talent such as Nicole Kidman continue to transition to Hollywood.Less

On Liberation

Somdeep Sen

in Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial

This chapter takes the discussion of the long moment of liberation beyond Palestine. Using examples from India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania, Cuba, and Turkish Kurdistan, it demonstrates that, ... More

This chapter takes the discussion of the long moment of liberation beyond Palestine. Using examples from India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania, Cuba, and Turkish Kurdistan, it demonstrates that, just as the postcolonial exists in the era of colonial rule, so does the struggle for liberation continue long after the withdrawal of the colonizer. This urge to keep fighting is partly driven by an effort to combat the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural remnants of colonization that often endure despite the “official” end of colonial rule. But far more critically, this urge persists because the nature (and experience) of the colonial enterprise is such that despite the (formerly) colonized's enthusiastic search for a decolonized, postcolonial sense of self, they lack any significant memory of a past unadulterated by colonization. This dilemma is further acute for those under settler colonial rule, since the very endeavor of settler colonialism is often to erase the signature of indigenous presence. The result is that liberation cannot be achieved following the single moment when the colonizer withdraws. Instead, the postcolonial and the anticolonial coexist irrespective of the presence or absence of the colonizer, as the (formerly) colonized are compelled to perpetually search for their decolonized sense of self, thereby generating a long and often protracted moment of liberation.Less

Critical issues in the development of an Indigenous criminology

Chris Cunneen and Juan Tauri

in Indigenous Criminology

Chapter eight provides a summary of the key issues and arguments contained in the previous chapters. In particular, the chapter seeks to demonstrate the added value that can be had from the ... More

Chapter eight provides a summary of the key issues and arguments contained in the previous chapters. In particular, the chapter seeks to demonstrate the added value that can be had from the development of an explicitly Indigenous Criminology, including a critical focus on the process of colonisation as an explanatory framework for understanding the current status of Indigenous peoples in settler colonial criminal justice; that any attempts to understand the ‘Indigenous problem’ must take into account Indigenous perspectives, explanations and responses to social harm; and the development of Indigenous Criminology is an important component of the continued strive by Indigenous peoples for self-determination in all facets of their lives, including criminal justice.Less

Nostalgia in the Tropics

Thomas Dodman

in What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion

The French army was hardly through with clinical nostalgia and throughout the nineteenth century the disease continued to hamper its political leaders’ ambitions of imperial expansion. Starting in ... More

The French army was hardly through with clinical nostalgia and throughout the nineteenth century the disease continued to hamper its political leaders’ ambitions of imperial expansion. Starting in 1830 it undermined attempts at establishing a viable colony in North Africa, wreaking havoc among French forces and forcing soldiers to be speedily repatriated across the Mediterranean. Increasingly, the condition was diagnosed among civilian settlers as well and, in 1848, lethal outbreaks turned an ambitious plan to resettle tens of thousands of Parisian artisans to Algeria into an embarrassing fiasco. For some, nostalgia had become a “French malady” and found a new lease of life within the budding specialization of tropical medicine. For others, it was simultaneously being superseded by new theories of climatic seasoning. This chapter follows nostalgia to “the tropics” and in the age of Empire, to uncover the surprising story of how it became central to the fraught making of French Algeria, a century before nostalgeria would come to dominate the two countries’ post-colonial aftermath.Less

Containing and Mobilizing Colonial Violence

Adrian Muckle

in Specters of Violence in a Colonial Context: New Caledonia, 1917

This chapter examines the violence of the colonial repressions, particularly the assumption underpinning these containment measures: the threat to order was not just Kanak “rebel” violence but the ... More

This chapter examines the violence of the colonial repressions, particularly the assumption underpinning these containment measures: the threat to order was not just Kanak “rebel” violence but the violence of colonial settlers in their daily interactions with Kanak. After the war, this idea would be encapsulated in Governor Jules Repiquet's assertion that Kanak had revolted against settlers, but not against the colonial administration. The administration insisted that settlers who had treated Kanak well had nothing to fear, implying that Kanak violence was vengeance directed against bad colonists. Claims to local knowledge or to exclusive familiarity with Kanak emerge as central to these tensions, pointing to the complexity of relations among different categories of settlers as well as between Kanak and settlers.Less

Anticolonial Violence and the Palestinian Struggle to Exist

Somdeep Sen

in Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial

This chapter focuses on Hamas's anticolonial resistance, not least as a means of emphasizing the colonized's existence and cultivating their liberated peoplehood. Drawing on interviews with members ... More

This chapter focuses on Hamas's anticolonial resistance, not least as a means of emphasizing the colonized's existence and cultivating their liberated peoplehood. Drawing on interviews with members of the organization and Palestinians who have participated in, been witness to, or suffered the human and material consequences of Palestinian armed resistance, it argues that anticolonial violence finds relevance in light of its ability to both unmake and make. Hamas's armed resistance is assumed, by the colonized, to be capable of dismantling or unmaking the colonial condition. The chapter contends that its violence unmakes by nominally challenging Israel's settler colonial rule over the Palestinian territories and, in doing so, rendering it a difficult venture to maintain. The potential of violence to be a creative force, to make, emerges as a retort by the colonized to the colonial project's attempt to deny their inner being by imposing its own values on their identity. Hamas's armed resistance makes by allowing each act of resistance to be called an act of Palestinian resistance, thus enabling the subsequent suffering to be labeled instances of Palestinian suffering.Less

Terrains of Settler Nationhood

in Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

Discrete material-cultural artifacts, ornamentations, and styles of architecture were interpreted as exemplars of Jewish artistic forms and achievements. They were invoked as emblems of continuity, ... More

Discrete material-cultural artifacts, ornamentations, and styles of architecture were interpreted as exemplars of Jewish artistic forms and achievements. They were invoked as emblems of continuity, signifiers of the lasting presence of Jewish communities, after the fall of the Second Temple, the final episode in what was considered to have been ancient Jewish national existence and sovereignty in their homeland. This effort of (arti)fact collecting configured a distinctive form of settler-colonial space. This chapter analyzes this work of Jewish archaeology by considering the relationship between the collection of “discrete particulars”—material-cultural and linguistic facts dispersed across the terrain—and the instantiation of a “spatial biography,” through which a cohesive, historical narrative for the land was given empirical and factual form. Fact collecting was essential to “colonizing the land at the level of meaning,” which prepared the ground for the enactment of colonial practices of a very particular sort.Less

Introduction

Leah Modigliani

in Engendering an avant-garde: The unsettled lansdcapes of Vancouver photo-conceptualism

The central argument of the book is introduced; that the counter-tradition Jeff Wall helped develop with other artists in Vancouver has included a gendered bifurcation of space since its earliest ... More

The central argument of the book is introduced; that the counter-tradition Jeff Wall helped develop with other artists in Vancouver has included a gendered bifurcation of space since its earliest incarnation in 1970 as the "defeatured landscape." The introduction contains brief descriptions of Wall and his peers’ early work in relation to Wall’s international position as leader of the Vancouver School of Photo-Conceptualism; a brief discussion of existing theory about the development of avant-garde movements; and the necessity of understanding the avant-garde in the context of wider social contests of power, in particular settler colonial control over land and male control over women’s bodies and representations of them. The introduction also summarizes the need to intervene in current histories of avant-garde practice, dominant narratives that continue to frame male artists achievements in formal terms divested of the power dynamics that engender them or result from them.Less