Settler Colonialism 3B week 3

What is the relationship between Racial

Capitalism and Settler Colonialism?

• Capital didn’t begin with money.

• It began with the seizing of natural resources ( land,
water, fuel, etc)
• The importance of cheap labour to the process
• The role of violent of indigenous people
• The construction of private property as a concept.
• The requirement for resources
• Colonization, dispossession, slavery, and environmental
destruction and white supremacy are the five processes
involved in the creation of the modern capitalist system
(Horne 2018; Kelley 2017; Robinson [1983] 2000).

Robin D.G. Kelley. (2017). ‘What is Racial Capitalism and why does it matter’?
What is settler colonialism?

Settler colonialism is a
distinct type of colonialism-
How does settler colonialism
differ from other types of
colonialism?
What do you think?
Settler Colonialism
Theory (SCT)
‘The specific formation of colonialism in which
people come to a land inhabited by (Indigenous)
people and declare that land to be their new
home. Settler colonialism is about the pursuit
of land, not just labor or resources. Settler
colonialism is a persistent societal structure,
not just an historical event or origin story
for a nation state. Settler colonialism has
meant genocide of Indigenous peoples, the
reconfiguring of Indigenous land into settler
property. In the United States and other slave
estates, it has also meant the theft of people
from their homelands (in Africa) to become
property of settlers to labor on stolen land’
Rowe & Tuck 2017:4).
‘permanent migrants’

‘The settlers who came arrived as

permanent migrants. For Indigenous
people in these places this meant a
different kind of experience with
colonialism and different
possibilities for decolonization’
(Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing
Methodologies 2012:74)
Settler Colonialism VS Classical colonialism

-the settlers come to stay

-the colonist sojourner comes to extract the
natural resources and the labour of the
colonized
-classical colonialism mainly about
exploitation of the natural resources and
labour
-Settler colonialism functions through violent
replacement of indigenous populations with an
invasive settler society.
-attempts to erase Indigenous peoples from the
territory’s history.
-Seeks always to replace the native as native.
(Wolfe 2016;2006;1999).
 Settler colonialism’s ‘logic of
elimination’.

• Settler colonialism is an ongoing structure

of domination that relies on or operates
through the ‘logic of elimination of the
native’ and the acquisition of land (Wolfe
2006):
• the violent removal of native people from
land
• through expropriations, dispossessions,
forced removals etc. -including genocidal
killings;
• the destruction of economic institutions of
Indigenous people.
Violence as everyday
praxis

‘This means, in the first place, that it

becomes its own idea in the form of racism-in
other words, that the colonists constantly
actualize the practices of extermination,
robbery and exploitation which have been
established by previous generations, and
transcend them towards a system of values,
entirely governed by alterity’.
(Jean Paul Sartre, 1976).

What do you think this means for our world

today?
‘Destroys in
order to replace’
• The dissolved native society is replaced with a new
settler colonial society on the expropriated land
(Wolfe 1999; 2006; Veracini 2017;2015).
• thus,‘settler colonialism destroys to replace’ (Wolfe
2006).
-Settler colonialism is about land rather than labour
(Wolfe 1999:1)
-seeks to replace, dispossess and expunge indigenous
people’s claims to land.
Settler colonialism as
a land centred project.

• Land is expropriated and accumulated for

settlers.
• erasure of indigenous people creates the
illusion that the land was free for the
taking ds (terra nullius; vacant land myth).
• settlers develop distinctive identities and
sovereignty.
• settler colonialism as a land centred project
(wolfe 2006; Veracini 2017).
- Australia and North America, white settlers
hold power with a demographic majority.
Land and
labour (Kelley
2017).
• What about Africa, where white settlers hold
power ‘without a demographic majority’ ?
• logic of elimination, not only about land but
also about proletarianization (Cavanagh 2017;
Kelley 2016; Magubane 1979).
• settler colonialism could not completely
eliminate the natives,
• wanted ‘the land “and” the labour but not the
people’
Kelley’s argument (2017)

• Wolfe’s (2016) view of settler

colonialism, excludes much of settler
colonial Africa from this framework (of
settler colonialism).
• Wolfe’s conception elides the ‘toppling’
of formal settler rule with permanent
settlement’.
• if apartheid were still in place, Wolfe
might have included South Africa and other
similar African social formations within
his definition of settler colonialism.
Settler colonialism a structure
and a process not an event

-In South Africa settler colonialism both a structure

and a process not an event (e.g. the toppling of
settler rule).
-complete elimination of the native not an objective.
- expropriation of native land was the objective,
like elsewhere, but so too was proletarianization.
- Settler colonialism wanted ‘the land “and” the
labour but not the people’ (Kelley 2017: 269).
- To eliminate stable communities and their cultures
of resistance (dispossessions, expropriations,
forced removals).
Can you think of any examples of the above that you
know of?
 ‘Destroying to replace’
(Wolfe 2006)
Kelley extends Wolfe settler colonialism’s ‘logic of
elimination’ to include:
more than the ‘summary liquidation’ of indigenous people
(2017: 269).
- What settler colonialism destroys or attempts to destroy
(eliminates) includes:
- Metaphysical and material relations of people to land;
- Culture, spirit and each other (ibid).
- In this sense, Kelley argues, Wolfe’s idea that settler
colonialism rests fundamentally on the ‘logic of
elimination’ is true for settler societies in Africa ‘from
South Africa to Algeria’.

What are some of the fundamental differences between settler

colonialism in Africa and elsewhere?
 prospects for
decolonization?
‘The settlers who came arrived as
permanent migrants. For Indigenous
people in these places this meant a
different kind of experience with
colonialism and different
possibilities for decolonization’
(Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing
Methodologies 2012:74).

What do you think this means?

On the national bourgeoisie-
Neville Alexander (2002).
‘We have seen that the national bourgeoisie have
failed to complete the democratic revolution.
The middle classes cannot be consistent since
their interests are, generally speaking and in
their own consciousness, tied to the capitalist
system. Hence only the black working class can
take the task of completing the democratization
of the country on its shoulders. It alone can
unite all the oppressed and exploited
classes’( cited in Peter James Hudson 2018)

What do you think this means for settler

colonialism and racial capitalism?
 Black feminists have long
argued against the centring of
man:
What about gender? ‘If the universal subject of
working- class history is a
white man, that of black
working-class history is
always a black man’ (cited in
Hudson 2018).
Walter Johnson (ibid) offers a
corrective by centring the
role of black women in the
global history of accumulation
and reproduction founded on
the Atlantic slave trade and
racial capitalism [and settler
colonialism]:
‘the entire pyramid was
founded upon the capacity of
enslaved and [colonized]
women’s bodies: upon their
ability to reproduce capital’
(also Du Bois 1935; Hartman
2016; hooks 2000; Ntantala
1958).
on the pitfalls of national
consciousness- Fanon(2001 [1961])
‘The national bourgeoisie of under-developed
countries is not engaged in production, nor in
invention, nor building, nor labour; it is
completely canalized into activities of the
intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems
to be to keep in the running and to be part of
the racket. The psychology of the national
bourgeoisie is that of the businessman, not
that of a captain of industry; and it is only
too true that the greed of the settlers and the
system of embargoes set up by colonialism has
hardly left them any other choice’.

What do you think Fanon means here? What does

it mean for settler colonialism and racial
capitalism?
On ‘nationalization’

’…the national middle class constantly demands the nationalization

of the economy and of the trading sectors. This is because, from
their point of view, nationalization does not mean placing the
whole economy at the service of the nation and deciding to satisfy
the needs of the nation. For them, nationalization does not mean
governing the state with regard to the new social relations whose
growth it has been decided to encourage. To them, nationalization
quite simply means the transfer into native hands of those unfair
advantages which are a legacy of the colonial period’ (ibid.).

What do you think this means for settler colonialism and

racial capitalism?
 On the national middle class
‘Since the middle class has neither sufficient material
nor intellectual resources (by intellectual resources
we mean engineers and technicians) it limits its claims
to the taking over of business offices and commercial
houses formerly occupied by the settlers. The national
bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European
settlement: doctors, barristers, traders, commercial
travellers, general agents and transport agents. It
considers that the dignity of the country and its own
welfare require that it should occupy all these posts.
From now on it will insist that all the big foreign
companies should pass through its hands, whether these
companies wish to keep on their connexions with the
country, or to open it up. The national middle class
discovers its historic mission: that of
intermediary’(ibid.).

who is the middle class today?

On the national bourgeoisie-Fanon
‘The national bourgeoisie will be greatly helped on its way towards decadence by
the Western bourgeoisies, who come to it as tourists avid for the exotic, for big-
game hunting and for casinos. The national bourgeoisie organizes centres of rest
and relaxation and pleasure resorts to meet the wishes of the Western bourgeoisie.
Such activity is given the name of tourism, and for the occasion will be built up
as a national industry. If proof is needed of the eventual transformation of
certain elements of the ex-native bourgeoisie into the organizers of parties for
their Western opposite numbers, it is worthwhile having a look at what has
happened in Latin America. The casinos of Havana and of Mexico, the beaches of
Rio, the little Brazilian and Mexican girls, the half-breed thirteen-year-olds,
the ports of Acapulco and Copacabana — all these are the stigma of this
depravation of the national middle class. Because it is bereft of ideas, because
it lives to itself and cuts itself off from the people, undermined by its
hereditary incapacity to think in terms of all the problems of the nation as seen
from the point of view of the whole of that nation, the national middle class will
have nothing better to do than to take on the role of manager for Western
enterprise, and it will in practice set up its country as the brothel of
Europe’(ibid.).

What do you think Fanon is talking about here? Can you find examples of this in
Africa today?
Decolonization is not a metaphor

‘Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life;

it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies
and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational
advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to
“decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize
student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as
their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches
that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may being
commensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon
an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires
of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can
similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation
that actually further settler colonialism’ (Tuck and Wang 2012).

What do you think decolonization means?