Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies) - Softcover

Edmonds, Penelope

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1349671797 ISBN 13: 9781349671793

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Synopsis

This book examines the performative life reconciliation and its discontents in settler societies. It explores the refoundings of the settler state and reimaginings of its alternatives, as well as the way the past is mobilized and reworked in the name of social transformation within a new global paradigm of reconciliation and the 'age of apology'.

About this title

Review:

“Penelope Edmonds, in Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation, employs a historical methodology to examine how reconciliation discourse is deployed and refuted in affective performances. ... a useful addition to the literature on transitional justice and on reconciliation in settler societies, particularly because they acknowledge the tensions around whether and how transitional justice might actually be of use for relationships between Indigenous peoples, non-Indigenous peoples and the state.” (Sophie Rigney, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 11 (2), July, 2017)

“The strength of Edmonds’ analysis lies in her transnational comparisons that show how Indigenous performances hold settler colonial societies to account for the way they sanitise the past through reconciliation events to realise a specious post-racial future. ... this book is a vital contribution to Indigenous studies because of the tendency of settler colonial societies to use the consensus politics of reconciliation to rationalise the theft of Indigenous lands and colonial violence.” (Joshua L. Reid, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 48 (2), May, 2017)

From the Back Cover:

This book examines the performative life reconciliation and its discontents in settler societies. It explores the affective refoundings of the settler state and reimaginings of its alternatives and, in particular, the way the past is mobilized and reworked in the name of social transformation within a new global paradigm of reconciliation and the 'age of apology'. In search of a new emancipatory politics, the book takes particular account of Indigenous-led refutations or reworkings of consensus politics in public culture. Taking case studies from the USA, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand, it traces the prehistory of reconciliation's present in settler states, a critical and contested political process which is especially salient where formal decolonization cannot occur. The dynamic process of drawing on the past to forge new alliances and imagined futures is a crucial aspect of the political realm – one that we are jointly acting out together; and it is worked out from the affective and overlapping spaces of heart and horror.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1349671797
• ISBN 13: 9781349671793
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 269