Thinking Responsibility Differently: Reconciliation and the Tragedy of Colonisation

Muldoon, Paul

doi:10.1080/07256860500153518

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In doing so, I join several others who have similarly argued for a tragic reading of suffering and difficult pasts for its potential in triggering understanding and reconciliation (e.g. Alexander 2004;Baker 2014;Euben 1990;Muldoon;. I am particularly inspired by David Scott's (2004) argument that postcolonial states ought to narrate their histories as tragedies.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

The anatomy of memory politics: a formalist analysis of Tate Britain’s ‘Artist and Empire’ and the struggle over Britain’s imperial past

Woods

2019

Am J Cult Sociol

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In this paper, I propose a new approach for understanding the meaning of memory politics, which draws upon the archetypal literary criticism of Northrop Frye. I suggest that the four archetypes elaborated by Frye-comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire-can be used as a heuristic device for interpreting the contested historical narratives that are associated with the politics of memory. I illustrate this approach through a case-study of 'Artists and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past', an exhibition held at Tate Britain in 2016, amidst increasing contestation over the meaning of the British Empire. In sum, I find that the exhibit narrated Britain's imperial past as a comedy, in which a key theme was the progressive cultural mixing of the British and the people they colonized. To conclude, I discuss the implications of such a narrative for constructing an inclusive, postcolonial British identity. As an alternative, I draw on Aristotle to suggest that a tragic narrative would have been more propitious.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

The anatomy of memory politics: a formalist analysis of Tate Britain’s ‘Artist and Empire’ and the struggle over Britain’s imperial past

Woods

2019

Am J Cult Sociol

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“…This paper has drawn from the Delgamuukw case and the Unist´ot´en camp to challenge hegemonic theories of environmental justice and propose ones that can be mobilized for decolonization practices. Through examination of the Delgamuukw case, the possibilities and limits to recognition through the mechanisms of the state, as previously laid out by indigenous scholars (Muldoon 2005, Borrows 1999, Coulthard 2014 were outlined. In this paper a proposal for a decolonizing Environmental Justice in the settler-colonial context was put forward, based on the pillars of self-governing authority, the undoing of the ontology of land as property, and epistemic justice.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blocking pipelines, unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory

Temper

2018

Local Environment

107

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Indigenous peoples are among the most affected by environmental injustices globally, however environmental justice theory has not yet meaningfully addressed decolonization and the resistance of indigenous communities against extractivism in the settler-colonial context. This paper suggests that informing environmental justice through decolonial analysis and decolonizing practices can help transcend the Western ontological roots of environmental justice theories and inform a more radical and emancipatory environmental justice. The Unist'ot'en Resistance and Action Camp blocking pipelines in northwestern British Colombia, Canada, their "Reimagined Free Prior and Informed Consent protocol" and the Delgamuukw case are described to discuss limitations of the state and legal framework for accommodating a decolonial and transformative environmental justice. A decolonial analysis informed by these two moments of Wet'sewet'ten history suggest limits and adaptations to the trivalent EJ framework based on recognition, participation and distribution. It is argued that a decolonizing and transformative approach to environmental justice must be based on self-governing authority, relational ontologies of nature and epistemic justice and the unsettling of power through the assertion of responsibility and care through direct action. This discussion is placed in the context of the expansion of the concept of ecological rights, for example through the enshrining of the "Rights of Nature" in the constitutions of countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador, to highlight the inherent tensions in the translation of indigenous cosmo-visions into legal systems based on universalist values.

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“…24 Fagenblat (2008), p 22 and Celermajer (2006), pp 153-83. See also Muldoon (2005). 25 Fagenblat (2008) The Myths of State In our book, we were concerned with investigating a precise aspect of that broader project: how historiography which takes that metaphor into account can in real terms be heard, or not, by law.…”

Section: The Metaphor Of Redemptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaphor of Redemption, Myths of State

Genovese¹

2011

Griffith Law Review

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The current revisioning of the nation-state in terms of questioning accountability for violence committed against Indigenous Australians was opened up by a shift in Australian historical scholarship that began to argue nation-building was inseparable from genocidal intent. This historiography has been part of a wider post-imperial turn that has refused nostalgia in order to understand how race was constructed as part of the imperial mission, and continues to refract and reiterate upon colony and metropole alike. This historiography has helped show how myths about the Australian state inform an Australian national consciousness, and has centralised the disruption of those myths, as well as the disruption of the idea that the political community was removed from any past practices of ʻthe stateʼ. Such historiography suggests a story of the state in which the narratives of coloniser and colonised are mutually constitutive, and in which the colonisers are asked to take accountability for the hurt of those who suffered, and continue to suffer, because of the policies of child removal in the past. The public debate that emerged in response to that historiography has been both responsive and resistant. I want to reflect on that historiography, how it emerged, how it operates in film and in law as important sites of public reckoning about race, and what that suggests for a nation-state caught between a denial of, as well as a desire for, redemption from its past shame.

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Thinking Responsibility Differently: Reconciliation and the Tragedy of Colonisation

Cited by 20 publications

References 14 publications

The anatomy of memory politics: a formalist analysis of Tate Britain’s ‘Artist and Empire’ and the struggle over Britain’s imperial past

The anatomy of memory politics: a formalist analysis of Tate Britain’s ‘Artist and Empire’ and the struggle over Britain’s imperial past

Blocking pipelines, unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory

Metaphor of Redemption, Myths of State

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