Indigenous peoples are, in the current historical conjuncture, leading the opposition to the capitalist state in Canada. The specific features of Indigenous cultures, history and struggles demand of historical materialism a regional theory that deploys existing concepts and categories in reinvigorated and sometimes different ways. Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks makes a critically important contribution to this project by offering a creative, materialist-leaning reading of Frantz Fanon as a lever to criticise those prominent liberal arguments of Indigenous conflict that are based on notions of recognition. While Coulthard’s argument and project would be significantly advanced by raising Marx’s concept of ‘mode of production’ from the secondary status it enjoys in the work to a more foundational role, in part because this moves the problem of totalisation to the core of strategies of resistance, he nevertheless in his affirmative project rightly centres returning to aboriginal cultural forms as a critical feature of decolonisation.
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Asch Michael Leacock Eleanor & Lee Richard ‘Dene Self-Determination and the Study of Hunter-Gatherers in the Modern World’ Politics and History in Band Societies 1982 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Coulthard Glen Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition 2014 Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
Cruikshank Julie Life Lived Like a Story 1991 Vancouver University of British Columbia Press
Fanon Frantz Black Skin, White Masks 1967 New York Grove Press
Harvey David The New Imperialism 2003 New York Oxford University Press
Jameson Fredric The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially Symbolic Act 1981 Ithaca Cornell University Press
Knight Rolf Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Labour in British Columbia, 1858–1930 1978 Vancouver New Star Books
Kulchyski Peter ‘Primitive Subversions: Totalization and Resistance in Native Canadian Politics’ Cultural Critique 1992 21 171 195
Kulchyski Peter Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut 2005 Winnipeg, MB University of Manitoba Press
Leacock Eleanor Burke Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women Cross-Culturally 2008 [1981] Chicago Haymarket Books
Povinelli Elizabeth Labor’s Lot: The Power, History, and Culture of Aboriginal Action 1994 Chicago University of Chicago Press
Sartre Jean-Paul Sheridan-Smith Alan Rée Jonathan Critique of Dialectical Reason I: Theory of Practical Ensembles 1978 [1960] London NLB
Wachowich Nancy Saqiyuq: Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women 2001 Montreal McGill-Queen’s University Press
Coulthard 2014, p. 12.
Coulthard 2014, pp. 51–2.
See among a few other sources, Knight 1978.
Coulthard 2014, p. 7 (emphasis in original); although the idea that primitive accumulation is a continuing process is often associated with Harvey 2003 I feel obliged to note that I was already arguing for its use in understanding Indigenous politics in Canada a decade earlier (Kulchyski 1992).
Coulthard 2014, p. 8.
Coulthard 2014, pp. 11–12.
Coulthard 2014, pp. 12–14.
Coulthard 2014, p. 15.
Coulthard 2014, pp. 16–17.
Coulthard 2014, pp. 23–4.
See Jameson 1981, pp. 75–102.
Coulthard 2014, p. 65. He acknowledges myself, Kulchyski 2005, and Asch 1982 as ‘particular’ sources of his understanding.
Leacock 2008, p. 32.
See Cruikshank 1991, Wachowich 2001, and Povinelli 1994; while these texts do not specifically subscribe to a gender-egalitarianism thesis, their detailed discussions of women’s social position, work-roles and narratives provide much evidence to support the argument.
Coulthard 2014, p. 144.
Coulthard 2014, p. 7.
Coulthard 2014, p. 14.
Coulthard 2014, pp. 42–3.
Coulthard 2014, p. 8.
See Sartre 1978, especially pp. 45–7. Jameson consistently deploys and defends the concept; see for example Jameson 1981, pp. 52–4.
Coulthard 2014, p. 179.
Coulthard 2014, p. 171, a term I intend to deploy myself in future in preference to the more awkward ‘gatherer and hunter mode of production’ or even ‘hunting mode’.
Coulthard 2014, p. 173.
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Indigenous peoples are, in the current historical conjuncture, leading the opposition to the capitalist state in Canada. The specific features of Indigenous cultures, history and struggles demand of historical materialism a regional theory that deploys existing concepts and categories in reinvigorated and sometimes different ways. Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks makes a critically important contribution to this project by offering a creative, materialist-leaning reading of Frantz Fanon as a lever to criticise those prominent liberal arguments of Indigenous conflict that are based on notions of recognition. While Coulthard’s argument and project would be significantly advanced by raising Marx’s concept of ‘mode of production’ from the secondary status it enjoys in the work to a more foundational role, in part because this moves the problem of totalisation to the core of strategies of resistance, he nevertheless in his affirmative project rightly centres returning to aboriginal cultural forms as a critical feature of decolonisation.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 800 | 138 | 11 |
Full Text Views | 512 | 28 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 586 | 63 | 2 |