Hi y’all!
I’ve compiled a list of readings that speak to issues of nationalism, indigeneity, colonialism, and resistance/decolonization
The list is of course limited to what readings I’ve encountered at some point. They also come from a variety of academic disciplines and political movements (settler colonial studies, native studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies, feminist studies, trans studies).
And, with a few exceptions, these files were legally uploaded and shared… a lot of the time by the authors themselves, which I feel the need to point out because I love when authors can/do share their work online for free. (I say this not because I’m worried about the sanctity of ‘intellectual property’ but because I’m worried about things being deleted.)
Also re-linking to this list of pdf readings, “Natives Read Too,” from The Yáadihla Girls!
human rights/war/nationalism/sovereignty
- “What Do Human Rights Do?” by Talal Asad
- “On Torture: Abu Ghraib by Jasbir Puar
- “From Cold War to Trade War: Neocolonialism and Human
Rights“ by Susan Koshy- “Necropolitics” by Achile Mbembe
- “Algeria Unveiled“ by Frantz Fanon
- A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon
- History and Imperialism: A Century of Theory, from Marx to Postmodernism by Patrick Wolfe
- Who Sings the Nation-State? Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak
- “Where Lawlessness is the Law: The Settler Colonial Frontier as a Legal Space of Violence” by Julie Evans
- “1492: a New World View“ by Sylvia Wynter
- Frames of War by Judith Butler
- “Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics” by Patrick Wolfe
- Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space by Mark Rifkin
transnational/native/postcolonial feminisms & feminist critiques:
- Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism – Trinh T. Minh-Ha
- “Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory“ -Hazel V. Carby
- “Transnational Feminist Pedagogy: An Interview with Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan”
- “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty
- “Feminist Problematizations of Rights Language“ by Jasbir Puar and Isabelle Barker
- Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures by M. Jacqui Alexander & Chandra Talpade Mohanty
- “The Subject of Freedom” by Saba Mahmood
- The Spivak Reader
- Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa
- “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India“ by Partha Chatterjee
- “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak
- The Politics of the Veil – Joan W. Scott
- “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy“ by Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill
- “Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and Social Change” by Andrea Smith
decolonization, art, and resistance (not necessarily feminist):
- Edward Said and Critical Decolonization
- Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said
- “Decolonization is not a Metaphor“ by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang
- “Decolonizing Antiracism” by Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua
- Bury My Art at Wounded Knee / R.I.S.E
- The Boarding School Healing Project
- Center for Third World Organizing
- Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
queer theory/sexuality studies/native studies/trans studies
- Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest by Anne McClintock
- “Homonationalism As Assemblage: Viral Travels, Affective Sexualities“ by Jasbir Puar*
- Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith
- “Un-settling Settler Desires” by Scott Morgensen
Also the Unsettling America wordpress.- Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things – Ann Laura Stoler
- “Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the ‘Third Gender’ Concept“ by Evan B. Towle and Lynn Morgan
- “Transing and Transpassing Across Sex-Gender Walls in Iran.” by Afsaneh Najmabadi
- “Queer Settler Colonialism in Canada and Israel: Articulating Two-Spirit and Palestinian Queer Critiques“ by Scott Lauria Morgensen
- “Queer Theory and Native Studies: The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism” by Andrea Smith
*Actually just going to link to this page of Dr. Puar’s work because it’s great and relevant (and she also has a lot of work on Israel/Palestine).
critiques of humanitarianism/developmentalism:
- “Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflecting on Canadian Humanitarian Responses“ by Sherene H. Razack
- “The Rationality of Empowerment: Microcredit, Accumulation by Dispossession, and the Gendered Economy” by Christine Keating, Claire Rasmussen, and Pooja Rish
- “Reflections on Violence, Law, and Humanitarianism“ by Talal Asad
- “How to Write about Africa” by Binyavanga Wainaina
- “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns“ by Elizabeth Bernstein
- “Coca-Cola, Labor Restructuring and Political Violence in Colombia” Lesley Gill
[Really wish I knew more about this kind of work.]
Biopolitics, science, environmental justice
- “Peversity, Contamination, and the Dangers of Queer Domesticity“ -Nayan Shah
- “Your DNA Is Our History:’ Genomics, Anthropology, and the Construction of Whiteness as Property” by Jenny Reardon and Kim TallBear
- “Displaying Sara Baartman“ by Sadiah Qureshi
- “The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now” by Scott Morgensen
- “Black Bodies, White Science“ -Brian Wallis
- The Violence of Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics by Vandana Shiva
- “The Seed and the Earth” by Vandana Shiva
- “Earth Democracy: An Interview with Vandana Shiva”
- “Putting knowledge in its place: science, colonialism, and the postcolonial“ by Suman Seth
and…. U.S. politics
- “Workfare–Warfare: Neoliberalism, ‘Active’ Welfare and the New American Way of War” by Julie MacLeavy and Columba Peoples
- “Women and Chile at the Alamo: Feeding U.S. Colonial Mythology“ by Suzanne Bost
- “The People of California are Suffering’: The Ideology of White Injury in Discourses of Immigration” by Lisa Marie Cacho
- “American Studies without America: Native Feminisms and the Nation-State“ by Andrea Smith