Image for Red skin, white masks  : rejecting the colonial politics of recognition

Red skin, white masks : rejecting the colonial politics of recognition

Part of the Indigenous Americas series
See all formats and editions

WINNER OF:Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book from the Caribbean Philosophical AssociationCanadian Political Science Association’s C.B.

MacPherson PrizeStudies in Political Economy Book Prize Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America.

The term “recognition” shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples’ right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment.

Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics—one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a “place-based” modification of Karl Marx’s theory of “primitive accumulation” throws light on Indigenous–state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon’s critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time.

This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization.

Read More
Available
£17.59 Save 20.00%
RRP £21.99
Add Line Customisation
Usually dispatched within 2 weeks
Add to List
Product Details
0816679657 / 9780816679652
Paperback / softback
07/09/2014
United States
English
xiv, 229 pages
22 cm