This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to test for nationality bias among members of the Brazilian philosophical community. Faculty members and postgraduate students from philosophy departments at seven Brazilian universities evaluated texts attributed to authors of European and Latin American nationalities. Results showed a clear preference for French nationality over Brazilian. They were inconclusive, however, when contrasting other Latin American nationalities with European nationalities, which likely relates to the academic background of the participants. These overall results support (...) the claim that Brazilian academic philosophers are highly critical of Brazilians who produce theories of their own. The paper calls on philosophers to carefully consider the ways in which Eurocentrism impacts their very ability to reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.4 (2000) 102-122 [Access article in PDF] How To Tell a Mestizo from an Enchirito® Colonialism and National Culture in the Borderlands Michael Hames-garcia I began to think, "Yes, I'm a chicana but that's not all I am. Yes, I'm a woman but that's not all I am. Yes, I'm a dyke but that doesn't define all of me. Yes, I come from working class origins, (...) but I'm no longer working class. Yes, I come from a mestizaje, but which parts of that mestizaje get privileged? Only the Spanish, not the Indian or black." I started to think in terms of mestiza consciousness. What happens to people like me who are in between all of these different categories? What does that do to one's concept of nationalism, of race, ethnicity, and even gender? I was trying to articulate and create a theory of a Borderlands existence.... I had to, for myself, figure out some other term that would describe a more porous nationalism, opened up to other categories of identity. —Gloria E. Anzaldúa, InterviewsOne of the most crucial questions facing leftist activists and intellectuals today is the question of nationalism and its relation to liberation struggles. 1 A century ago, the period [End Page 102] of nation-state consolidation in Europe seemed to come to an end with the unification of Germany and Italy. European leftists of the era tended to address "the national question" primarily with regard to those European nations that were shut out or suppressed by nation-state formation. Debates about national culture resurfaced in a revolutionary context when independence movements swept Africa and Asia during and after World War II, and a substantial body of literature attempting to integrate anticolonial struggle, national liberation, and socialism arose from the capitalist "periphery." Much of this literature, and the wars for independence out of which it grew, adapted the language of nationalism to its own purposes. These movements gave new hope that national liberation struggles would prove compatible with greater human freedom and equality. Despite that hope, the destructive effects of nationalism are today visible everywhere: for example, the devastating wars in the Balkans, the repression of indigenous peoples by national bourgeoisie throughout the Americas, religious-national strife between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka, the vertiginous intensification of national chauvinism in the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. Simultaneously, and in the context of feminist criticisms of nationalism [see, for example, Chatterjee, Nation; Lutz et al.; Mosse], attempts to unite the struggle to liberate "the nation" from colonial or neocolonial domination with progressive struggles against capitalist exploitation and against sexual- and gender-based domination continue [see, for example, Trask]. In Latin America, anticapitalist struggles lauded by Western socialists regularly take the form of national liberation struggles, such as the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional [Zapatist National Liberation Army]) in Mexico and the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional [Sandinist National Liberation Front]) in Nicaragua. Additionally, lesbian and gay activists and theorists in the United States have frequently sought to appropriate nationalist rhetoric even as black and Chicano nationalist movements have been on the decline [see, for example, Berlant and Freeman; Moraga 145-74].Debates about anticolonial struggle and "Third World" nationalism may seem at first to be an odd context into which to introduce the work of Gloria Anzaldúa. Critical writing on Anzaldúa's work has tended not to consider its relevance to debates on the relations among capitalism, colonialism, and national culture. 2 Instead, her major work, Borderlands/La Frontera, is usually discussed (or, more often than not, simply cited) as a contribution to feminist and antiracist discussions about the construction of the self within multiple contexts of domination and about that self's resistance to oppression and struggle for recognition. 3 While acknowledging the importance of Anzaldúa's contributions to these discussions, this essay examines Borderlands as offering a forward-looking alternative to nationalism, specifically, to Chicano cultural nationalist positions articulated during the... (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to the themed section ‘Anarchism and the national question—historical, theoretical and contemporary perspectives.’ We discuss first the long and often overlooked engagement of anarchists with the colonial and national liberation question, particularly—but not exclusively—in the heyday of the movement (from the second half of the 19th to the first decades of the 20th century). We discuss in particular the overlaps and tensions between anarchists and republicans (those who favoured republics as opposed to monarchies) (...) and anti-colonial nationalists (anti-colonialists who defended the right of national self-determination). Then we proceed to discuss the potential for a dialogue between anarchist and nationalism studies based on three interventions. First, to problematise the narrative that conflates nations with state-building processes. Second, to better grasp the emergence of alternatives to the nation–state as a historical construct. Third, to complicate narratives that associate in an unproblematic fashion internationalism and classless society. Finally, the introduction highlights the four questions which lie at the core of the themed section and discuss briefly how the papers relate to these. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between African American internal colonialism and democracy, highlighting the complexities of democracy that make it both susceptible to oppressive violence at home and abroad, as well as a potential resource for emancipation and equality. I understand “internal colonialism” here to encompass various terms used by African Americans beginning in the 1830s, including semi-colonialism, domestic colonialism, and a nation within a nation. Much political philosophy assumes that society is “nearly just” or “generally (...) just,” or that oppression and injustice are found in societies that we nonetheless deem legitimate. Centering the complexities and possibilities of democracy instead shifts the focus to how democracy is compatible with violence and injustice, as well as their overcoming. Such a focus leads to a consideration of abolition democracy and the question of what the process of overcoming internal colonialism demands. (shrink)

Strategies for combating climate change which advocate for human population limitation have recently been understandably criticised on the grounds that they embody a form of 'climate colonialism': a moral wrong that involves disproportionally shifting the burdens of climate change onto developing, historically exploited nations (which have low per capita emissions but high fertility rates) in order to offset burdens in affluent nations (which have high per capita emissions but low fertility rates). This article argues that once the relevance of (...) population growth to climate change has been correctly understood as working in tandem with consumption levels, this objection fails as a general criticism. Moreover, even if population could be ignored as a variable, the climate colonialism charge would re-emerge in a different form, since, at present population sizes, it would be environmentally catastrophic for developing nations to reach production ambitions which see their per capita emissions massively increase. Even if emission reductions in affluent nations are (rightly) prioritised, there are good reasons to prevent enormous growth of emissions in developing nations. Those environmental risks become much greater given those nations' projected population increases in the coming century. The article then explores how the necessary radical environmental policies pertaining to fertility rates might be enacted in non-coercive ways, reducing the sting of the ‘climate colonialism’ charge. The article ends by considering some reasons to be moderately sceptical about such policies. (shrink)

This essay contends that postcolonial migrants have a right to enter their former colonizing nations, and that these should accept them. Our novel argument challenges well-established justifications for restrictions in immigration-policies advanced in liberal nationalism, which links immigration controls to the nation’s self-determination and the legitimate preservation of national identity. To do so, we draw on postcolonial analyses of colonialism, in particular on Edward Said’s notion of “intertwined histories,” and we offer a more sophisticated account of national (...) identity than that of liberal nationalists. In our view, the national identity of former colonizing nations cannot be understood in isolation from their ex-colonies. This entails that liberal nationalists cannot justify the restriction on the entrance of members of the nation’s former colonies by resorting to an argument about the preservation of national identity: the former colonized constitute an inseparable element of that national identity, because they are already historically part of it. (shrink)

The relation between Australia’s First Nations peoples and settler-colonial Australians may be characterised as having “miscarried” to the extent that colonial difference is unacknowledged,...

This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of "tribalism," regarding the language and laws of U. S. colonialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U. S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper (...) proceeds to compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as "indigenous kinship" in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called "tribal nations" in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision which labeled them "domestic dependent nations." This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as "patriarchal colonialism" and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a "trickle down patriarchy" that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for "Native Womanism" in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism. (shrink)

: This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of "tribalism," regarding the language and laws of U. S. colonialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U.S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper (...) proceeds to compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as "indigenous kinship" in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called "tribal nations" in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision (The Cherokee Cases, 1831-1882) which labeled them "domestic dependent nations." This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as "patriarchal colonialism"and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a "trickle down patriarchy" that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for "Native Womanism" in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reconquest Colonialism and Andalusī Narrative Practice in the Conde LucanorDavid A Wacks (bio)In the tenth century, when Cordova was the richest and most populous city in Europe, and the Umayyad Caliphate was setting the standard for cultural florescence in the Islamic world, a group of Christian nobles in the rocky precincts of northernmost Spain sought to expand their territorial holdings southward, into al-Andalus. Their aim was to unseat (...) Islamic political power on the Iberian Peninsula, and they sought to authorize this project by discrediting Muslim leaders as the usurpers of lands to which the Christians were rightful heirs. In their view, Christian conquests of al-Andalus were the recuperation of lands that, in the eyes of God himself, belonged to them.Spanish culture as we know it today is the product of this medieval frontier society, in which Christians and Muslims—during a span of some 700 years—continuously negotiated a political border that was culturally quite porous. By the middle of the thirteenth century, Christian rulers had gained control of the large majority of the Iberian Peninsula, including the populous and important cities of Cordova and Seville in the south. The Christians who populated these newly conquered lands found themselves in close contact with a sizeable population of Andalusī Muslims (and Jews and Christians) who had remained. The conquering Christians were great consumers of Andalusī culture in general, especially arts and sciences, and even literature. At the same time, they viewed Islam, the dominant religion of al-Andalus, as a purely illegitimate basis for political power and social organization. If the official narrative of Reconquest argues for tidy cultural purity and conformity, the reality on the ground is, in contrast, a messy and emergent pluralism, one that resonates with early modern and modern colonial experiences.1While medievalists have been slower to embrace postcolonial theoretical approaches than their colleagues working on modern and contemporary texts, they have begun to adapt the ideas of thinkers such as Fanon, Memmi, Bhabha, Spivak, and others to medieval European perceptions of and experience in the East.2 However, it is curious [End Page 87] that Hispanists (with what may be the sole exception of David Hanlon) have completely avoided reading the Christian conquest of al-Andalus as a colonial project. Despite the substantial differences between medieval and modern colonialisms as regards political reality, public discourse, and the construction of subjectivity, one may safely argue that the Christian conquests of al-Andalus were a colonial endeavor, one of several studied by historians of medieval Europe.3 The case of medieval Christian Iberian colonialism was distinct from other medieval colonialisms (such as French and English crusading in the Middle East) in that it contributed fundamentally to the formation of a Spanish national identity, and served as a domestic proving ground for the conquest of Spanish territories in the Americas.Don Juan Manuel, author of the Conde Lucanor (1340) [CL],4 was the most powerful nobleman of his time. He held extensive lands in Murcia, which retained a far higher proportion of its preconquest Muslim population than did neighboring Castile and Leon [O’Callaghan, History 459]. While his military and political career depended on eradicating Islam from the Iberian Peninsula, he earned his literary renown—in part—by imitating and incorporating Andalusī narrative tradition and history into his own writings. In Juan Manuel’s adaptation of the frametale genre, the CL, this dissonance between the religious and political agendas of the Reconquest manifests in narrative. If the CL shows us the ideology of the Reconquest, it also offers the reader a reflection of the more complicated and nuanced reality of daily life and human behavior characteristic of Reconquest-era Castile-Leon [Linehan, “At the Spanish Frontier” 53]. In it, Juan Manuel distills the political realities, religious discourse, and cultural interaction of the time into the first original frametale in any European vernacular.5Juan Manuel’s religious agenda and frontier political philosophy come across quite clearly in the 50 exemplos of the CL. The idea of the Christian nobleman’s duty to wage war against Islam permeates the work, most starkly in these words of the Count’s advisor Patronio: “... Dios vos poblo... (shrink)

In the course of his groundbreaking work, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon has employed a splendid array of metaphors to reflect on the essential fabric of a colonized society. However, the Manichean metaphor is the best of them, which he has used to forge a comparison between colonialism and Manichaeism, a dualistic religious movement founded in ancient Persia sometime during the third century CE. This metaphor is singular in the sense that both colonialism and Manichaeism have (...) in common a dichotomic vision to look at the world, a stupendous effort to exert their influences on the better part of the world and a messianic zeal to preach their enlightenment values at every opportunity. In this article, I am going to elucidate the way Fanon has made use of the metaphor to designate the identity formation of both the colonizer and the colonized in addition to critically analysing their similitude in vision, will and enthusiasm. In so doing, I will bring into play the recent accretions of Manichean religious and postcolonial studies in order to situate Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth in the framework of post-colonial praxis. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#71-72; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2022 P 153-177. (shrink)

In these original readings of Albert Camus' novels, short stories, and political essays, David Carroll concentrates on Camus' conflicted relationship with his Algerian background and finds important critical insights into questions of justice, the effects of colonial oppression, and the deadly cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism that characterized the Algerian War and continues to surface in the devastation of postcolonial wars today. During France's "dirty war" in Algeria, Camus called for an end to the violence perpetrated against civilians by both (...) France and the Algerian National Liberation Front and supported the creation of a postcolonial, multicultural, and democratic Algeria. His position was rejected by most of his contemporaries on the Left and has, ironically, earned him the title of colonialist sympathizer as well as the scorn of important postcolonial critics. Carroll rescues Camus' work from such criticism by emphasizing the Algerian dimensions of his literary and philosophical texts and by highlighting in his novels and short stories his understanding of both the injustice of colonialism and the tragic nature of Algeria's struggle for independence. By refusing to accept that the sacrifice of innocent human lives can ever be justified, even in the pursuit of noble political goals, and by rejecting simple, ideological binaries, Camus' work offers an alternative to the stark choices that characterized his troubled times and continue to define our own. "What they didn't like, was the Algerian, in him," Camus wrote of his fictional double in _The First Man_. Not only should "the Algerian" in Camus be "liked," Carroll argues, but the Algerian dimensions of his literary and political texts constitute a crucial part of their continuing interest. Carroll's reading also shows why Camus' critical perspective has much to contribute to contemporary debates stemming from the global "war on terror.". (shrink)

Ambedkar denounced caste system for violating the respect and dignity of the individual; yet his critique of caste-ridden society also foregrounds the limits of the theory and practice of citizenship and liberal politics in India. Since membership of a caste group was not a voluntary choice, but determined by birth and hence a coercive association, the liberal view of the self as a totally unencumbered and radically free subject seemed plagued with difficulties. Though the nation state envisages a political community (...) co-extensive with one cultural community, it need not, Ambedkar argued, necessarily lead to abolition of discriminatory caste practices in civil society. To restore the cultural rights of stigmatised populations, unredeemed by the nation state, propelled Ambedkar to seek solution in B. (shrink)

Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India || and Michael S. Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture: India 1770–1880.

This article argues that criminal justice and health institutions under settler colonialism collude to create and sustain “truths” about First Nations lives that often render them as “bare life,” to use the term of Giorgio Agamben. First Nations peoples’ existence is stripped to its sheer biological fact of life and their humanity denied rights and dignity. First Nations people remain in a “state of exception” to the legal order and its standards of care. Zones of exception place First Nations (...) people in a separate and diminished legal order. Medical and health agencies have been instrumental in shaping colonial “biopower,” both in and beyond carceral settings to ensure that First Nations lives are managed in accordance with the colonial settler state project. This project is able both to threaten First Nations rights to live and to maintain settler self-perceptions of decency and care. We illustrate this discussion with reference to the tragic and unnecessary deaths in custody of twenty-two-year-old Yamatji woman Ms Dhu in 2014 in South Hedland Police Station, Western Australia, and twenty-six-year-old Dunghutti man David Dungay Jnr in Long Bay jail in Sydney, NSW, in 2015. Health professionals and police demonstrated callous disregard to Ms Dhu and Mr Dungay—treating them as “bare life.”. (shrink)

The electrification of East Africa followed an exceptionally uneven path. After about 50 years of relative neglect under colonial rule, the construction of hydroelectric dams moved electricity generation into the focus of late colonial development policy and became the major field of intervention for foreign donors after independence. The metrics of electricity attained a role as indicator and driver for economic growth, and therefore as a target figure in economic policy, one that was arguably not justified by their actual significance (...) in the energy landscape of East Africa. This paper analyses both the global preconditions of this shift and its local repercussions. Rather than the physical visibility of electricity in the form of large dams and high-tension lines, the paper focuses on the processes that rendered electricity ontologically visible. It traces attempts by engineers, expert advisors, or development consultants to translate the complex information associated with the generation and consumption of electricity into calculable and comparable metrics. The paper scrutinises these commensuration processes in terms of the resources and knowledge they required, the frameworks of agency they opened, and the way they fed into wider discourses of development. It asks how the metrics of electricity themselves became part of the colonial and postcolonial politics of calculation, as they increasingly came to be seen as a medium for conceiving national economies. This trend was reinforced by the ascent of development economics in the 1950s and its influence on the ontological foundations of international development cooperation and post-independence nation-building. Because of the calculability and capital-intensity of its production, electricity lent itself perfectly to an economic policy based on macroeconomic aggregates and abstract growth models. Conversely, the electricity bias of international development agencies and the national government rendered rural, non-commercial, and non-productive energy use largely invisible. (shrink)

A murder of an Afro-American detainee by a policeman at the end of May 2020 caused a public outrage in the United States, which led to a campaign against the monuments to historical figures whose reputation, according to the protesters, was marred by racism. Some German publicists, impressed by the campaign, initiated an analogous search for racists among the national thinkers and politicians of the past. Suddenly Kant emerged as a ‘scapegoat’. This statement is an attempt to assess such (...) reactions from the perspective of Russia’s experience. (shrink)

Takamure Itsue has many faces following different phases of her life: poet, activist-writer, anarchist, ethnologist and historian. Throughout these transformations, Takamure maintained her feminist position. This article concentrates on her politics of love, sex and marriage, formulated and presented in the pre-war period during the time of Japanese colonial empire. A specific focus is placed on her positionality in the act of writing within the discursive field of women whose nation was colonizing others, notably Koreans. The combination of positivistic craving (...) for ‘scientific’ history to substantiate the uxorilocal tradition of Japanese matrimony and uncritical acceptance of ‘motherhood’ as a superior virtue led her to consequently embrace Japan's colonialism. (shrink)

State borders allocate access to basic goods, opportunities, rights, and protections along lines of nationality, race, and gender. However, the discriminatory effects of state borders rarely appear as an issue in the self-understanding of liberal-democratic societies and their political theorizing. In this paper, I explore how the category of nationality has been and continues to be used to exclude people who have been negatively racialized by European colonialism. I draw on a number of studies that reconstruct the colonial history (...) of states' claims to authority over people's movements and over the composition of their populations. The idea of territorial nationalities allowed nation-states, in particular those emerging from the settler colonies and metropoles of European empires, to continue practices of racial ordering without using explicit racial categories. With the help of these studies, I criticize liberal nationalists such as David Miller for appealing to the value of national identities to support a right of states to exclude would-be immigrants. I suggest that using genealogical and phenomenological methods allows us to undermine the default authority that is often accorded to the category of nationality. (shrink)

Abstract:In their Anthology, Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, Hatch and Stout argue that Edwards' strand of Christianity is more critical to the American experience than many modern thinkers may realize. They claim that this is because his "stern Calvinism is central" (5) to this country's historic identity and that his philosophy was not only "compatible with the theological needs of the new nation but the social and political needs as well." (7) In this paper I would like to extend (...) this argument. Not only was Edwards' philosophy necessary for the shaping of this country, it provided some of the moral justification necessary for a distinct kind of colonization that gave rise to settler colonialism in British America. To make this claim, this paper will be broken down into three parts. The first section will explore the historical elements of Jonathan Edwards' life in a settler colonial context. The second will be to explain and explore the framework of settler colonialism. Finally, this paper will argue that Edwards' life and philosophy meet all four proposed criteria of settler-colonialism and should therefore be understood as extending a legacy of violence here in the Americas. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the decolonization of Ukrainian culture as an important factor of nation-building in the European perspective. At the same time, decolonization is a current trend in Western academic thought, which is embodied in social activism, in particular, in the wok movement and the culture of abolition. Postcolonial studies has become an intellectual battleground. These studies draw a new front line in the culture wars. Rethinking Western culture in light of its imperial expansionist past defines the goal (...) of decolonization. However, the tendency towards the politicization of vouk and the culture of cancellation. carries the risks of undermining the basic values of Western culture - freedom of thought and the rule of law, while the decolonization of Ukrainian culture has a different purpose. Unlike cultural decolonization in Western countries, cultural decolonization in Ukraine is aimed at legitimizing modern European values (Lisbon Agreement, 2007) by overcoming the «Russian-oriented» (Eurasian) tradition of thinking.Identifying the authentic contents of Ukrainian culture and refuting its imperial-Soviet interpretations is one of the main tasks of the decolonization of Ukrainian culture. The article offers a comparative analysis of Ukrainian and Western versions of cultural decolonization in order to avoid uncritical borrowings and ignoring the peculiarities of the Ukrainian context. The successful decolonization of Ukrainian culture requires the development of its 1) concept, 2) methods of theoretical substantiation, and 3) methods of practical implementation. The article states that the decolonization of Ukrainian culture becomes possible if its research strategies are deprived of colonial influences, which reveal indications of the imperial and Soviet scientific paradigm of social and humanitarian knowledge. The key concepts of the research are referring to the works of Nigel Giggar (2023), Douglas Murray (2022), Linda Martín Alcoff (2023), Jonh Darwin (2009), Kwasi Kwarteng (2013), Yaroslav Hrytsak (2022), Serhii Plokhii (2021, 2023), Timothy D. Snyder (2017, 2918) and others. (shrink)

This study problematizes English language teaching departments in Turkey that have ignored the importance of radical pedagogy, the history of British colonialism and neoliberalism in the curriculum because Orientalist, Occidentalist and neoliberal discourses have led to the exclusion of critical discourses in ELT in Turkey. Therefore, the possible reasons for the absence of some curricular topics present a complicated structural problem. Exclusionary practices of ELT departments can be ascribed to Turkey’s political regimes that have reinforced both nation-state ideology and (...) Anglo-American neoliberal policies. The English language has also been reified as a gateway to westernization and globalization under the feeling of urgency and fear of falling behind. Therefore, the spread of English has been allowed in almost all spheres of life even if neglecting local, national and international languages has violated linguistic human rights. This paper proposes that the dominance of English can be deconstructed by including radical pedagogy and the history of British colonialism and neoliberalism into the curriculum and by prioritizing linguistic human rights to allow more space for the survival of other languages. (shrink)

Self-determination is a central concept for political philosophers. For example, many have appealed to this concept to defend a right of states to restrict immigration. Because it is deeply embedded in our political structures, the principle possesses a kind of default authority and does not usually call for an elaborate defense. In this paper, I will argue that genealogical studies by Adom Getachew, Radhika Mongia, Nandita Sharma, and others help to challenge this default authority. Their counter-histories show that the principle (...) was used to justify, strengthen, and adapt imperial rule in the twentieth century. In particular, the idea that controlling a population's composition through regulating immigration is an essential aspect of self-determination emerged as a response to White anxieties about the migration of negatively racialized groups. Genealogies have not been adequately appreciated as a critical tool within the mainstream of political philosophy. I show that these genealogies have a critical role to play because they unsettle our uncritical attachment to the structures of the nation-state system and raise serious questions about the meaning and emancipatory force of the principle of self-determination. (shrink)

The claim that we are entering a “postsecular” age supposedly marks a new openness toward public religion, which was expected to wither as societies modernized. Similarly, postcolonial theory has attempted to think through the public resurgence of indigenous culture after the collapse of “Western” political regimes, which also predicted and prescribed its privatization. Drawing on the work of Partha Chatterjee, this paper argues that the “postsecular,” particularly as it is deployed by Jürgen Habermas and Alasdair MacIntyre, seeks to seduce religious (...) believers and practitioners into just this same logic of self-colonization so that they might be recognized as defenders of an increasingly insecure, liberal nation-state against those who might seek to take advantage of its vulnerability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 58-83 [Access article in PDF] Imagi-Nation: The Imagined Community and the Aesthetics of Mourning Marc Redfield Of the many relics of the Romantic era that continue to shape our (post)modernity, the nation-state surely ranks among the most significant. Two decades ago Benedict Anderson commented that "'the end of the era of nationalism,' so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight" [IC 3], and the intervening years (...) have made it increasingly clear that the developments and processes we summarize as "globalization" operate in mingled synchrony and tension with the political form of the nation-state. 1 That the nation-state should remain the premier vehicle of political and economic legitimation in an era dominated by American imperialism and international capital--forces that, of course, regularly and flagrantly violate the sovereignty of disadvantaged nations--is unsurprising if one accepts the continuing pertinency and power of a Western master-narrative of modernity, according to which the nation represents the emergence of a people into history and prefigures the global achievement of universal human concord. As the proper subject of history, the nation-state can prefigure history's end because, as David Lloyd writes, "the particularism of [nationalism's] contents, potentially in contradiction with the universalism of modernity, is subsumed in the formal congruence between its own narratives of identity, directed at one people, and the narrative of identity that universal history represents for humanity in general" ["Nationalisms" 178]. Lloyd goes on to note that the nation's intermediate status in this narrative--halfway between primitive tribalism and modernity's ever-deferred perpetual peace--accounts for nationalism's irreducibly double association with modernization and atavism. In consequence, the modernist paradigm continues to rule many skeptical or hostile accounts of nationalism, for so long as the nation-state is taken to supersede other political or social formations, the cosmopolitan critique fails to challenge "the fundamental philosophy of universal history that underwrites nationalism's inscription in modernity" ["Nationalisms" 177]. Indeed, both in the corporate media and in mainstream Western political discourse generally, nations and nationalisms are commonly treated as atavistic or progressive depending on the degree to which their behavior harmonizes with globalizing imperatives. That these imperatives emanate quite blatantly from Wall Street in no way seriously troubles the effectiveness of modernity as a narrative paradigm. 2Seeking to discredit universalizing narrative, much cultural criticism in recent years has exchanged cosmopolitanism and the abstract question of "nationalism" for an emphasis [End Page 58] on the contextual construction of national movements or identities. 3 This valuable body of work has sought to recover the particularity of cultural and socioeconomic circumstance, stressed the fundamental role of racism in colonialist contexts, and noted ways in which nationalist movements draw on or unleash forms of resistance that challenge representationalist politics. The pages that follow, however, remain focused on the nationalist fantasy proper to the discourse of modernity. Cultural critique can only profit from knowing as much as possible about the favored turns of the universal-historicist model, particularly since, as Lloyd and others have emphasized, this model is an aesthetic one that grants a world-historical role to "culture." The state, in a tradition that in its main lines runs from Schiller through Hegel and Matthew Arnold and is still very much alive today, represents the community to itself, thereby giving the community form and in a certain sense giving it an ethical imperative and a future: the state represents "our best self" [Arnold 99, passim], "the archetype of a human being" [Schiller 17], because it signifies the formal unification both of the citizen with the community and of the community with universal humanity. Because this unification is ideal rather than actual, it can be projected as the ethical terminus of history (that is, as the ideal of an accomplished modernity). The state's core mission thus becomes pedagogical: its job is to acculturate its subjects into citizens. The production of a docile citizenry thereby obtains an ethical aura and an aesthetic character, insofar as the artwork and the domain of aesthetic or "cultural" experience generally become... (shrink)

The National Football League, the premier professional organization for American football, developed a policy concerning the protocol in cases where players contract COVID-19. This policy includes elements such as collective punishment that appear, at first glance, to be morally problematic. To the contrary, the policy is indeed morally acceptable as we should not think of organizations such as the NFL in the same way we think of governments in stable nations, but rather in the same way that we think (...) of hybrid justice systems in countries where because of histories of colonialism, the identity of citizens is divided, with tribal identities being more important than national citizenship. (shrink)

How does one begin to define the global identity? How does globalization offers a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, to an individual, in particular a non-westerner? Has globalization given a new identity to the erstwhile-colonized subject, who had been holding on tightly to the idea of nationalism that offered him an identity—passport into the world? My paper explores the contestation of identity—culturally—in the globalized world. It argues that cultural identity remains in a flux, whatever may the context be. (...) From the period of colonialism to that when nation was regarded as the foremost structure of collective identity, which then defined the self, and finally in the era that we call as the modern or the postmodern period, or even globalization, identity is pushed toward liminality. (shrink)

The presence of Indians fundamentally altered the political, social and economic landscape of sugar producing nations. In most cases, race, which was used as an important signifier of difference by the colonising power, left these states with a colonial legacy of division and derision which they continue to endure and navigate in such diverse locations as the Caribbean, the West Indies, Fiji, Mauritius and parts of Africa. In the quest for recognition, equality and political status that allows the girmitiyas to (...) celebrate their past, embrace their present and imagine a future where they are enmeshed in the fabric of a new Fiji entail understanding why the declaration of girmit day on May 15th is such a powerful symbolic gesture on the part of the new coalition government. (shrink)

In the aftermath of WW2, nationalism was regarded by many political philosophers as an afront to civilized values. Yet at the same time nationalism has been an important means by which former colonies have attained and protected their independence. Once this distinction is made, it is clear that there are different types of nationalism, used in different circumstances, and for different purposes, and many political theorists have attempted to distinguish acceptable and unacceptable forms of nationalism. In this paper, I contribute (...) to this debate by distinguishing four functions of nationalism: purification, privilege, pride, and protection. These functions can be mixed together in different ways, and I claim that purification and privilege are both highly problematic, while pride, and especially protection, are far more defensible. (shrink)

Early modern natural law and the law of nations has been criticised for the Eurocentric character of its conception of law and justice, which has been in turn linked to its role in providing an ideological justification for European imperialism and colonialism. In questioning this account, the present chapter begins by noting that this historical critique presumes that a non-Eurocentric conception of law and justice was in principle available to the early moderns, which they culpably ignored for ideological reasons. (...) If such a non-Eurocentric conception was not available, though, then we will have to acknowledge that the early modern law of nature and nations was actually far more profoundly Eurocentric than even its most strident postcolonial critics have grasped. If the early modern law of nature and nations turns out to be wholly within the horizon of European cultures and designed to address fundamentally European political and religious problems, then its colonial uses might turn out to be both less central and less culpable than is presumed by postcolonial critique. These are the revisionist questions that the chapter explores. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] This paper tackles Kant’s juridical arguments for criticizing European colonialist practices, taking into account some recent accounts of this issue given by Kant scholars as Ripstein, Cavallar, Flikschuh, Stilz and Vanhaute. First, I focus on Kant’s grounding of cosmopolitan union as a juridical requirement stemming of the systematic character of the rational doctrine of right. Second, I pay attention to Kant’s remarks about how the European nations ought to establish commercial relations (...) with other nations in the world and how they should approach non-state people. I draw the conclusion that Kant’s juridical-political writings should be consider as a forerunning corpus for furthering an anti-colonialist mind in the European philosophy of Enlightenment. (shrink)

In 2001, Rie Fujii, a 23-year-old Japanese national living without legal status in Calgary, Alberta, Canada left her two infant children alone in her apartment for 10 days while visiting her out-of-town boyfriend. The children, Domenic and Gemini, died of dehydration and starvation. Charged with two counts of second-degree homicide, Fujii plead guilty to manslaughter and received an 8-year sentence. Through an analysis of the publicly available judicial documents relating to the crimes of Rie Fujii, this paper explores how (...) the law’s individualization and medicalization of crime and violence may obscure the multiple forms of everyday and structural violence that racialized women in white settler states such as Canada experience and may perpetrate. Drawing on Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois’ concept of the violence continuum, I argue that the law’s conceptualization of crime and violence conceals and thus advances the violence endemic to white settler colonialism. (shrink)

While empires and civic-liberal nations have been seen as opposite and even contradictory political forms, this essay argues that they are similar. Both create and depend upon hierarchical differentiation accompanied by exclusion and subjugation. Furthermore, they are logically related. The hierarchies typically attributed to empires are inscribed into the very theoretical and institutional core of civic-liberal nationhood. Using the American ‘liberal empire-state’ as the example, the essay uncovers these hierarchies and discusses two logics of imperial differentiation: the subjugation of bodies (...) and of territory. It suggests that exploring the shifting lines and principles of hierarchization offers the most fruitful analytic strategy for examining the history of nations and empires. (shrink)

Republics of Knowledge tells the story of how the circulation of knowledge shaped the formation of nation-states in Latin America, and particularly in Argentina, Peru and Chile, during the century after Iberian rule was defeated in the 1820s. Most immediately, the author has sought to provide a cross-disciplinary approach to the history of knowledge, combining the methods of global intellectual history with a new way of thinking about nations as experienced and enacted as well as how they are imagined, and (...) in so doing offer a new interpretation of the history of independent Latin America to illustrate its wider significance in the making of the modern world. By bringing these lines of inquiry together within a transnational framework, Nicola Miller shows how evidence from the pioneering nations of Latin America can invite historians to rethink many of their general theories about how knowledge travels and how a sense of nationhood is created. The book is designed to stimulate debate about the significance of knowledge not only in Latin America but in all modern societies. As Miller explains, Latin America is usually regarded as an exception to general theories, notably of colonialism, nationalism and liberalism; and yet it was in that part of the world, not in Europe, that the Age of Revolution brought the founding of a second wave of modern republics, and it was in Latin America that pioneering attempts were made to apply liberal principles in societies with inherited caste divisions and corporate institutions. It was there that some of the richest debates about the vexed relationship between collective identities and individualism took place. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 567-568 [Access article in PDF] Georgios Varouxakis. Mill on Nationality. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. ix + 169. Cloth $80.00. Georgios Varouxakis is a leader in the new generation of Mill scholars, and his work is exciting and provocative. Well-versed in recent debates over nationalism, colonialism, orientalism, and racism, he aims to address rather than avoid questions about Mill's supposed (...) imperialistic and racist leanings.Although slim and rather costly, Mill on Nationality marks an important statement of Varouxakis's extensive research on Mill. It "offers a study of Mill's attitudes and pronouncements on nationality, patriotism, national character, national self-determination, and related issues, based on a great range of writings, from his major works through his innumerable journalistic articles to his voluminous correspondence. Writings that prove particularly useful and illuminating are those related to France and his constant Franco-British or Franco-English comparisons, as well as his writings on Ireland and the Irish question, the Celtic peoples more generally, India, and, last but far from least, his pronouncements on Englishness, the "English national character," and his recipes and subtle strategies aimed at its education and "improvement" (5).The book delivers. If the prose at times suggests a lightly reworked dissertation, Varouxakis does nonetheless cheerfully maul scores of commentators on Mill whose works betray a less-than-intimate familiarity with the Mill corpus—e.g., everyone from Will Kymlicka to Bhiku Parekh. Varouxakis's criticisms reflect his methodology; he aims to trounce "misinterpretation due to lack of adequate contextualization and to insufficient conversance with Mill's overall thought" (8). But as with so many champions of this approach, he plainly adores the subject of his hermeneutical efforts, who emerges as a very bright light amid the dimness of later commentary on him. Referring to a passage from Mill's Inaugural Address to the University of St. Andrews, he writes that this "is impressive indeed: the thinker who is associated (wrongly) with so-called elitism, asserts that as complex an area of policy as foreign and international policy should be under the close scrutiny of the citizens and that it is a gross dereliction of duty if citizens fail to scrutinize their country's foreign policy and international comportment using as an excuse that international law is too complicated to understand. This is a very demanding conception of citizenship and a very lofty and high-minded perception of what constitutes a good citizen and a good patriot" (125-6). That it remains a relevant one is clear—indeed, "Mill's conception of the relationship between obligations to country and obligations to mankind was close to that of [Martha] Nussbaum" (118). For both, patriotism is commendable only when it conduces "to the interests of the whole of humanity" (116).As for racism, one of the most explosive issues in Mill studies, Varouxakis helpfully urges that discussions "about national and... cultural characteristics were, in Victorian Britain, inextricably associated with discussions about 'race,' and the term, 'race,' was often substituted for nation, nationhood, or national character" (39). Mill often used the term "race" in a loose way, discussing national characteristics "without reference as to whether they were biologically inherited or simply cultural traits occurring in these groups" (41). Moreover, "while accepting vaguely that racial origin is one of the factors influencing the formation of national character, Mill went further to establish that racial predisposition in itself could prove nothing and was liable to be modified out of any recognition through the agency of circumstances such as institutions, historical accidents and human effort" (43). In fact, for all his criticisms of the historical naiveté of the Enlightenment, Mill, in such mature works as The Subjection of Women, offered "not only a theoretical rejection of biological determinism, but also... an unequivocal belief in the malleability of human nature and therefore in the improvability of the character of various nations" (47).To be sure, disturbing questions remain. Although Mill "made strenuous efforts during the last three decades of his life to depreciate the importance of physical factors in the formation... (shrink)

This special issue of the _ Revue d’études benthamiennes _, entitled the 'International and Colonial Thought of the British Empire', aims to broaden recent debates on global intellectual history and imperial history. While this subject has been extensively studied in current scholarship, the issue attempts to approach several relatively under-examined figures, including Adam Ferguson, Josiah Tucker, and Frederic Rogers, as well as classical thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and Adam Smith, from new perspectives. In this Introduction, we describe a pan-European (...) intellectual setting wherein these thinkers’ international and imperial thought should partly be situated, with a focus on the idea of international law, cosmopolitanism, and colonialism. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, colonial powers sought to destroy the Mthwakazi or Ndebele state in what is now Matabeleland in the south west region of Zimbabwe, to subdue and dominate its people. The people of Matabeleland suffered heavy losses of cattle and land. Paradoxically, these injustices did not end with the collapse of colonialism. Since independence in 1980, the people of Matabeleland have been victims of political violence, which has left thousands dead and many without a livelihood. Nothing (...) came of the promised reconciliation, justice, peace, national cohesion, progress and prosperity in the post-colonial Zimbabwe. To date the region of Matabeleland still suffers from political, cultural and socio-economic disadvantages that call for a prophetic practical pastoral ministry of care. A critical exploration of the way in which the history of the region was documented exposes it as a victim of the legacy of injustice and political violence. This has had the effect of undermining progress and peace not only in Matabeleland, but also in the entire country. There is a lack of national cohesion, and the consequence is the absence of a common national vision. Notwithstanding the general prevalence of political and socio-economic dire straits affecting the whole country, Matabeleland presents a unique case study. The Roman Catholic Church which has been present in the country since colonial times has been actively engaged in the political and socio-economic realities of the country. In view of this, this article investigates the role the Church can play in the healing of a broken nation, with a preferential focus on Matabeleland. It proposes a prophetic practical pastoral ministry of care in order not only to heal the afflicted but also that they may find solidarity and fellowship as citizens. Such a role should further encompass reconciliation, rebuilding the people’s confidence and advocacy for their political, cultural and socio-economic development and progress. (shrink)

Introduction changing climates of colonialism -- Every Navajo has an anthro -- Extractive legacies: histories of Diné power -- The rise of energy activism -- Solar power in Klagetoh -- Sovereignty's interdependencies -- Contesting expertise: Public hearings on Desert Rock -- Artifacts of energy futures -- Off-grid in the Chuskas -- Conversions -- Vitalities.

This doctoral thesis examines the phenomenon of Filipinization, specifically understood as the ideological construction of a “Filipino identity” or ‘Filipino subject-consciousness” within the highly determinate context provided by the Filipino ilustrado nationalists such as José Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar and their fellow propagandists inasmuch as it leads to the nineteenth (19th) century construction of the modern Philippine nation. Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, this study undertakes a genealogical critique engaged on the concrete historical examination of what is meant by (...) the term “Filipino” across a select historical timeline (1864-1898) and the various notions of Filipino identity implied by the different contexts within which the term “Filipino” has been employed. More specifically, it undertakes a selective philosophical excavation of three seminal texts in the history of Filipinization, viz.: 1) the Manifiesto of Padre Jose Burgos; 2) the writings of the Filipino ilustrados in La Solidaridad; and 3) Jose Rizal’s Annotations on Dr. Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. -/- The philosophical claim of this work is the idea that Filipinization, taken as the differential construction of Filipino identity, is the effective translation of the colonial epistemic violence of Eurocentric racism and its consequent “horror of absolutism” into the homo-hegemony of Filipino nationalisms. By fetishizing the notion of a carefully constructed and essential “Filipino-identity,” Filipinization and the current nationalist discourses that utilize them, unwittingly, stands complicit with the same colonial violence and hegemony that they wish to combat. This happens precisely when the very structures of colonial oppression, on the ideological and practical levels, are transmogrified into nationalist ideals that assume legal and political power unto themselves in a self-referential and self-legitimating fashion. -/- Three processes will demonstrate the above thesis: first, by examining historical texts and setting itself against established nationalist historiographies, a genealogical analysis of the term “Filipino” reveals it as a pliable signifier whose semantics have evolved through time. From its originary referent in the Spanish criollo (creole), it has come to refer to people who would have been otherwise entirely alien to this class, viz., the mestizos (both Spanish and Chinese), the principalia (native elite), and eventually, the lowland Catholicized natives themselves. The historical hermeneutic of this identity-discourse in Padre José Burgos’ Manifiesto yields the fact that what gives the term “Filipino” its semantic consistency as a class concept is its essential constitution as a Hispanic and Catholic identity. -/- Second, from this semantic identification of the term “Filipino” as a Hispano-Catholic identity, we proceed to clarify the meaning of Filipinization in terms of the nationalist propaganda carried out by the Filipino ilustrados in the fortnightly periodical La Solidaridad. Here, the specific ilustrado construction of Filipino identity as a Spanish citizen (ciudadano Español) is revealed precisely as a political and legal construct that served as the basis for their own politics of social inclusion/exclusion. Filipinization can only be applied to those who have been hispanized and Christianized and never to those tribes who have resisted and remained outside Spanish colonial authority. Filipinization is thus revealed as a process of Hispanization and Christianization whereby the recipients of Spanish colonial hegemony are transformed into the religiously docile bodies of the Spanish Empire. -/- From this highly determinate context, the study proceeds to examine Rizal’s ontological grounding of collective Filipino-ness in the mythological construction of the pre-hispanic past as the source of a unique Filipino ancestrality. In his work on de Morga’s Sucesos, what is revealed is a mythologization that grounds a native, essential Filipino identity within a past unscathed by the Spanish colonial experience. Such mythologization, however, can only be possible through an anachronistic nationalist interpretation of historical data. Here, Filipinization is revealed as an exclusive prerogative, a nationalist program by which Rizal and the ilustrado class can combat the evils and excesses of the Spanish colonial enterprise. Ironically, though, this same struggle for emancipation also became an instrument by which the ilustrado class can retain their unjustified position of power over those who belonged to the colonial underside, thus, securing the possibility of perpetuating their own ilustrado bourgeois class interests. -/- Such discursive complicity is the essence of the myth of Filipinization: it presents nationalist identity discourse as an anti-colonial enterprise while being underlined by an economy of motives designed to cater primarily to the exclusive interests of the elite and ilustrado class. Thus, instead of securing the genuine, inclusive emancipation of all colonial subjects and a more humane existence for the poor and suffering majority, ilustrado nationalism has, ironically, merely reinforced those operative structures of colonial discrimination and oppression when the ilustrados: 1) grounded their racial theory upon the very same discourse of Eurocentric superiority that they are precisely supposed to question and 2) claimed a patrimony over Filipinas as their exclusive sovereign inheritance. These two factors illustrate how the manifest transfer of power from the Spanish Empire to the Philippine sovereign nation (and later as a nation-state) illustrate how Filipinization merely has transmogrified the face of Spanish colonialism into its new, subtle, and worse form in Filipino nationalism. -/- In this vein, the existence of the 19th century modern Philippine nation merely masked and deferred the crisis that was supposed to transfer power from the Spanish Empire to the multitude of the poor and suffering native indio majority. This crisis became all the more difficult to address be-cause of the duplicitous character of the discourse of Filipinization itself. It has not only effectively transferred power into the hands of the nationalist elite but also captured authentic emancipatory discourse within the identity-trap against which it can only hope to get out. This study concludes with the claim about the impossibility of ever escaping and overcoming the epistemic and practical violence necessarily contained within the historical discourse of colonialism. Or simply, we have no language or discourse that would enable us to overcome the complicity of Filipinization with the very (epistemic) violence against which it has set itself. (shrink)

Recent studies on colonial discourse have demonstrated that the speeches of freedom activists in colonial Africa served as sites of resistance. One key text type that has, however, been neglected in the critical literature on the discourse of emancipation is the national anthem of colonised states. To fill this gap, the present study examines the discursive enactment of resistance in the anthems of former British colonies in Africa, focusing on the transitivity framework in systemic functional linguistics. Semantic and structural (...) parallelisms across the anthems are identified as evidence of a collective memory, a cultural trauma reconfigured and reconstituted to reclaim a positive identity and project a desirable postcolonial future. They also foreground the motif of freedom and legitimise the African as the owner of the reclaimed territory. These procedures articulate an anti-imperialist and anti-establishment stance that provides hope, strength and encouragement to an oppressed group. This paper extends the scholarship on the discursive enactment of resistance by focusing attention on a context underexplored in the literature. It also illustrates the (re)construction of relevant ideologies in national anthems to stimulate desirable, progressive attitudes among citizenry in African states. The paper is furthermore significant to decolonial research and highlights the role of language in political decolonisation processes. (shrink)

South Africa, like many other countries that have suffered through the brutality of colonisation and later apartheid, continues to grapple with ways of healing the scars that remain visible in its citizens’ bodies and psyches. These scars are both literal and figurative, and the impact thereof is felt daily, as people try to find ways of navigating the now-‘democratised’ and ‘liberated’ country. There is a persistent restlessness, as structural violence continues to affect members of society – especially those on the (...) margins, struggling for survival each day. In her book, Reweaving the Soul of the Nation, Mmatshilo Motsei offers insights into ways of imagining the possibilities of reweaving people’s broken souls. Using Motsei’s reflections as a compass, this article offers insights into the challenges of colonialism and spirituality, and interrogates the complexities of what education means. The article concludes by proposing ways of moving towards the possibility of healing our wounded souls. Contribution: This contribution forms part of the ‘VukaniBantuTsohangBatho collection on the Spirituality of Black Liberation’ and aims at honoring and celebrating the life and scholarly contributions of Vuyani Vellem. This article responds to the call by highlighting the role of spirituality in the reimagining of African lives and experiences. (shrink)

The United Nations' (UN) adoption of a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is intended to mark a fundamental ethical turn in the relationships between indigenous peoples and the community of sovereign states. This moment is the result of decades of discussion and negotiation, largely revolving around states' discomfort with notion of indigenous self-determination. Member states of the UN have feared that an ethic of indigenous self-determination would undermine the principles of state sovereignty on which the UN is itself (...) grounded. However, such fears are the result of very poor understandings of the ethical principles under which the relations between indigenous peoples and nation-states already have been formed under centuries of European colonialism. The principle of self-determination embraced in this Declaration does not diverge from colonial norms; it entrenches these norms as international policy. Without doubt, indigenous peoples are more likely to benefit than suffer from states' observance of the Articles within this Declaration. Reducing the challenge of indigenous peoples' rights to the notion of self-determination set out in this document, though, misses an extraordinarily important opportunity to critically investigate the ethic of rights that has produced an opposition between nation-states and indigenous peoples to begin with. A true turn in the ethics of this relationship would see not simply the institution of a right to self-determination but, rather, indigenous peoples' right to first determine the nature of self for themselves. (shrink)

This article is about the contestation of two different forms of nationalism in Singapore during and after two elections in 2011. Manufactured nationalism is top-down, state-defined and economically driven, concerned mainly about accumulation of national wealth through globalization that would eventually to the masses. This view is promoted by the ruling People's Action Party. The PAP projects Singapore as a state born out of the party's triumph over colonialism, racial violence, and communist insurgency. Popular nationalism, on the other (...) hand, is bottom-up and people driven, concerned about local issues concerning national identity, social cohesion, and an appreciation of local heritage. Proponents of popular nationalism emphasize a common beginning, shared historical memories, several elements of a common culture, and an association with a specific. They view Singapore as a nation-state with a unique and evolving identity destabilized by a liberal immigration policy. The elections generated considerable attention due to the gains by the opposition parties and the public airing of frustrations against the PAP government. These frustrations are strongly driven by the influx of new migrants, especially those classified as by the PAP government. In this article, I argue that popular nationalism has emerged in twenty-first century Singapore and examine the debates over the future of Singapore during and after the elections. (shrink)