Idle No More
An Introduction to the Symposium on Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Jeffery R. Webber in
Current site
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This article introduces the symposium on Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks. It begins by situating the book’s publication in the wake of the extensive mobilisations of the Idle No More movement in Canada in 2012–13. Coulthard’s strategic hypotheses on the horizons of Indigenous liberation in the book are intimately linked to his participation in these recent struggles. The article then locates Red Skin, White Masks within a wider renaissance of Indigenous Studies in the North American context in recent years, highlighting Coulthard’s unique and sympathetic extension of Marx’s critique of capitalism, particularly through his use of the concept of ‘primitive accumulation’. Next, the article outlines the long arc of the argument in Red Skin, White Masks and the organisation of the book’s constituent parts, providing a backdrop to the critical engagements that follow from Peter Kulchyski, Geoff Mann, George Ciccariello-Maher, and Roxanne Dunbar-Oritz. The article closes with reflections on Coulthard’s engagement with Fanon, who, besides Marx, is the most important polestar in Red Skin, White Masks.
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2
Coulthard 2014, p. 160. See also, The Kino-nda-niimi Collective (ed.) 2014.
-
3
Coulthard 2014, p. 161.
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4
See Hale 2002, 2004, 2006. Hale’s notion of the indio permitido, or ‘authorised Indian’, refers to the way in which neoliberal states in Latin America in the 1990s adopted a language of cultural recognition of Indigenous people and even enacted modest reforms in the area of Indigenous rights. At the same time, these states set strict limits on the extent of reform. Neoliberal multiculturalism, in this way, played the role of dividing and domesticating Indigenous movements through selective co-optation. The ‘unauthorised’ Indigenous movements that refused to accept the parameters of neoliberal multiculturalism were frequently targeted and repressed by these ‘multicultural’ states. In particular, the era of the indio permitido has meant that cultural rights are to be enjoyed on the implicit condition that Indigenous movements will not challenge foundational neoliberal economic policies and their accompanying forms of capitalist class power. Indigenous movements that have submitted more or less to the framework of neoliberal multiculturalism fall into Hale’s socio-political category indio permitido, or ‘authorised Indian’.
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5
Coulthard 2014, p. 164.
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6
Coulthard 2014, p. 165.
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7
Bensaïd 2006.
-
8
Coulthard 2014, p. 166.
-
9
Coulthard 2014, p. 167.
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10
Coulthard 2014, p. 166.
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11
Marx 1845.
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13
Fanon 2008.
-
14
Coulthard 2014, p. 169.
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15
Coulthard 2014, p. 173.
-
16
Coulthard 2014, p. 170.
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19
Coulthard 2014, p. 170.
-
20
Coulthard 2014, p. 171.
-
21
Coulthard 2014, p. 173.
-
22
See Lawrence 2004.
-
23
Coulthard 2014, p. 174.
-
24
Coulthard 2014, p. 176. See, especially, Smith 1996.
-
25
Coulthard 2014, p. 175.
-
26
Coulthard 2014, p. 176.
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27
Coulthard 2014, p. 177. The extraordinary numbers of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada in the last three decades has led the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to call on the Canadian government to establish a national inquiry. See The Canadian Press 2015; Guardian 2015.
-
28
Coulthard 2014, p. 178.
-
29
Benhabib 2002.
-
30
Coulthard 2014, p. 80.
-
32
Coulthard 2014, p. 179.
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33
Holloway 2010a, 2010b.
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34
Coulthard 2014, p. 179.
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41
Above all, Taylor 1994. But for the wider politics of the politics of recognition within the tradition of liberal pluralism, see also Kymlicka 1995, 1998, 2001.
-
42
Coulthard 2014, p. 3.
-
43
Coulthard 2014, p. 6.
-
44
Coulthard 2014, p. 3.
-
45
Coulthard 2014, p. 8.
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47
Marx 1976, p. 915.
-
48
Coulthard 2014, p. 7.
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50
Harvey 2003.
-
51
Coulthard 2014, p. 8.
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53
Couthard 2014, p. 9. See Anderson 2010; Shanin 1983.
-
54
Coulthard 2014, p. 15.
-
55
Coulthard 2014, p. 10.
-
56
Coulthard 2014, p. 11.
-
57
Coulthard 2014, p. 12. For a seminal study on Indigenous labour, see Knight 1978.
-
58
Coulthard 2014, p. 13.
-
60
Coulthard 2014, p. 14.
-
61
Coulthard 2014, pp. 14–15.
-
63
Coulthard 2014, p. 60.
-
64
Here he follows Wacquant 2002.
-
65
Cabral 1973.
-
66
Dunbar-Ortiz 2007.
-
67
Coulthard 2014, pp. 25–6.
-
68
Coulthard 2014, p. 32.
-
69
Coulthard 2014, p. 38.
-
70
Coulthard 2014, p. 39.
-
71
Coulthard 2014, p. 114.
-
72
Mansbridge 2001, pp. 4–5.
-
73
Mansbridge 2001, p. 5.
-
74
Coulthard 2014, p. 115.
-
75
Coulthard 2014, pp. 132–3.
-
76
Coulthard 2014, p. 157.
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Idle No More
An Introduction to the Symposium on Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Jeffery R. Webber in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This article introduces the symposium on Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks. It begins by situating the book’s publication in the wake of the extensive mobilisations of the Idle No More movement in Canada in 2012–13. Coulthard’s strategic hypotheses on the horizons of Indigenous liberation in the book are intimately linked to his participation in these recent struggles. The article then locates Red Skin, White Masks within a wider renaissance of Indigenous Studies in the North American context in recent years, highlighting Coulthard’s unique and sympathetic extension of Marx’s critique of capitalism, particularly through his use of the concept of ‘primitive accumulation’. Next, the article outlines the long arc of the argument in Red Skin, White Masks and the organisation of the book’s constituent parts, providing a backdrop to the critical engagements that follow from Peter Kulchyski, Geoff Mann, George Ciccariello-Maher, and Roxanne Dunbar-Oritz. The article closes with reflections on Coulthard’s engagement with Fanon, who, besides Marx, is the most important polestar in Red Skin, White Masks.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1038 | 162 | 12 |
| Full Text Views | 1132 | 113 | 20 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 1246 | 216 | 31 |