Call for Papers: What is Settler Colonialism?

SAVAGE EUROPEANS!
Ye doubted at first whether the inhabitants
of the regions you had just discovered
were not animals which you might slay without remorse,
because they were black,
and you were white.
[…]
In order to repeople one part of the globe,
which you have laid waste,
you corrupt and depopulate another.

Presumably Diderot, ‘On the history of settlements and trade’
(from Abbe Raynal’s Philosophical and Political History, 1770).

Settler colonialism is a global and transnational phenomenon, and as much a thing of the past as a thing of the present. There is no such thing as neo-settler colonialism or post-settler colonialism because settler colonialism is a resilient formation that rarely ends. Not all migrants are settlers: they are founders of political orders who carry with them a distinct sovereign capacity. And settler colonialism is not colonialism: settlers want Indigenous people to vanish (but can make use of their labour before they are made to disappear). Sometimes settler colonial forms operate within colonial ones, sometimes they subvert them, sometimes they replace them. But even if colonialism and settler colonialism interpenetrate and overlap, they remain separate as they co-define each other.

settler colonial studies accepts articles that align with this theme (‘What is Settler Colonialism?’), but will consider articles that do not. Submissions for this theme must be received by October 30 2010. For further information on submission details, click here.