Summary
In the 2012 Editors’ Introduction to the Settler Colonial Studies special issue on Palestine, decolonisation is the imperative goal that a settler colonial analysis restores: the historic response to settler colonialism, to be aimed at the structure itself rather than at its outcomes (Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.4-5).
Details
- From Wolfe’s elimination premise the editors draw the practical conclusion: “the central question for committed scholarship and liberatory movements should be how to develop a praxis that brings back decolonisation and liberation as the imperative goal” (Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.4).
- “The historic response to settler colonialism has been the struggle for decolonisation; in the absence of a settler colonial analysis, Palestinian strategies have tended to target or accommodate settler colonial outcomes rather than aiming to decolonise the structure itself” (PDF p.4-5).
- The editors set decolonisation against the terms they say have displaced it: a “‘post-colonial’ condition”, a “‘post-conflict’ situation”, a “‘post-Zionist’ society”, and the description of the Palestinian Authority’s establishment as “‘state-building’” (PDF p.3).
- Its condition, in their closing formulation, is international: the Palestinian struggle “can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, broader struggles – all anti-imperial, all anti-racist, and all struggling to make another world possible” (PDF p.5).
Related pages
Settler Colonialism, Liberation of Palestine, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, Patrick Wolfe