# Decolonization is not a Metaphor # Decolonization is not a Metaphor  (1/26/2024, 2:58:02 PM) “Alongside this work, we have been thinking about what decolonization means, what it wants and requires” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 2](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=2&annotation=UVJRAKM6)) “Decolonization, which we assert is a distinct project from other civil and human rights-based social justice projects, is far too often subsumed into the directives of these projects, with no regard for how decolonization wants something different than those forms of justice.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 2](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=2&annotation=L35HUCGP)) “Further, there is often little recognition given to the immediate context of settler colonialism on the North American lands where many of these conferences take place” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 3](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=3&annotation=J7TRB7F8)) The land acknowledgement at the beginning of conferences/talks/papers has become so ubiquitous that they appear or on the cusp of appearing disingenuous. Land acknowledgements are more of a formality then a genuine acknowledgment of the traumas and hardships indigenous people experienced and continue to do so, at the colonial settler enterprise. “dangerous in how it domesticates decolonization.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 3](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=3&annotation=D5VBQML9)) “we want to be sure to clarify that decolonization is not a metaphor. When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future. Decolonize (a verb) and decolonization (a noun) cannot easily be grafted onto pre-existing discourses/frameworks, even if they are critical, even if they are anti-racist, even if they are justice frameworks” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 3](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=3&annotation=CQ3TCZP2)) “The easy absorption, adoption, and transposing of decolonization is yet another form of settler appropriation” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 3](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=3&annotation=WUAVSF59)) “External colonialism (also called exogenous or exploitation colonization) denotes the expropriation of fragments of Indigenous worlds, animals, plants and human beings, extracting them in order to transport them to - and build the wealth, the privilege, or feed the appetites of - the colonizers, who get marked as the first world.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 4](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=4&annotation=T9ZCJG5H)) “internal colonialism, the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people, land, flora and fauna within the “domestic” borders of the imperial nation.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 4](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=4&annotation=3L7IL6AX)) “we wish to emphasize that (a) decolonization will take a different shape in each of these contexts - though they can overlap4 - and that (b) neither external nor internal colonialism adequately describe the form of colonialism which operates in the United States or other nation-states in which the colonizer comes to stay” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 5](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=5&annotation=V2GQES57)) “Settler colonialism operates through internal/external colonial modes simultaneously because there is no spatial separation between metropole and colony.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 5](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=5&annotation=XG7MXRVN)) “Settler colonialism is different from other forms of colonialism in that settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 5](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=5&annotation=N7ZTYI83)) “This is why Patrick Wolfe (1999) emphasizes that settler colonialism is a structure and not an event” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 5](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=5&annotation=VBU8P9FX)) Agreed. Here my argument turns from traditional ideas of white settler colonialism (the first stage of the colonial process) to a multicultural settler colonialism where new settlers enter into the colonial project and participate (unknowingly or knowingly) in the continuation of the colonial enterprise. “Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place - indeed how we/they came to be a place.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 6](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=6&annotation=EYBUBNRV)) “Settlers are not immigrants. Immigrants are beholden to the Indigenous laws and epistemologies of the lands they migrate to. Settlers become the law, supplanting Indigenous” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 6](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=6&annotation=2HC5PDD4)) “aws and epistemologies. Therefore, settler nations are not immigrant nations (See also A.J. Barker, 2009).” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 7](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=7&annotation=93ALI56H)) “Settlers are diverse, not just of white European descent, and include people of color, even from other colonial contexts.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 7](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=7&annotation=VZGTE4LL)) “Though the details are not fixed or agreed upon, in our view, decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land simultaneous to the recognition of how land and relations to land have always already been differently understood and enacted; that is, all of the land, and not just symbolically.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 7](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=7&annotation=5A7TCNEM)) “Settler colonialism and its decolonization implicates and unsettles everyone.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 7](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=7&annotation=FXSLXKXF)) “Mawhinney builds upon Mary Louise Fellows and Sherene Razack’s (1998) conceptualization of, ‘the race to innocence’, “the process through which a woman comes to believe her own claim of subordination is the most urgent, and that she is unimplicated in the subordination of other women” (p. 335).” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 9](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=9&annotation=M99JEYIB)) “Ancestry is different from tribal membership; Indigenous identity and tribal membership are questions that Indigenous communities alone have the right to struggle over and define, not DNA tests, heritage websites, and certainly not the settler state.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 13](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=13&annotation=IIZF8L5B)) Heritage websites is an example of the commercialization of Ancestry. The need to justify your ethnic/racial/cultural/social lineage in order to attach modern identities to the past. Here, "byzantine" or "Byzantium" is problematic as it is an umbrella catch all term. Though many in the Roman world conseidered themselves ethnically Roman, not all inhabitants of Rhomania were Roman. Sources attest to a multitude of identities, many, if not most, are percieved and constructed through the eyes of elite/writers. Not the average non-elite citizen of the Roman world. “Difference becomes the conduit of identification in much the same way as pain does” (Razack, 2007, p. 379).” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 14](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=14&annotation=3IH4Z9X8)) “Mass print established national language and identity, an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1991) from which emerges ‘America’ as a nation as opposed to just an assortment of former colonies.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 15](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=15&annotation=QYUMT8JF)) “In addition to fabricating historical memory, the Tales serve to generate historical amnesia.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 16](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=16&annotation=F8U45RJE)) “Calling different groups ‘colonized’ without describing their relationship to settler colonialism is an equivocation, “the fallacy of using a word in different senses at different stages of the reasoning" (Etymonline, 2001).” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 17](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=17&annotation=RNPKJNKL)) “In particular, describing all struggles against imperialism as ‘decolonizing’ creates a convenient ambiguity between decolonization and social justice work, especially among people of color, queer people, and other groups minoritized by the settler nation-state.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 17](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=17&annotation=FBXSYHRY)) “The shuffling of Indigenous people between Native, enslavable Other, and Orientalized Other16 shows how settler colonialism constructs and collapses its triad of categories.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 18](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=18&annotation=KYLAQNEE)) “However an anti-colonial critique is not the same as a decolonizing framework; anti-colonial critique often celebrates empowered postcolonial subjects who seize denied privileges from the metropole. This anti-to-post-colonial project doesn’t strive to undo colonialism but rather to remake it and subvert it.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 19](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=19&annotation=L7GGZ93Q)) “or forwarding a thesis on decolonization without regard to unsettling/deoccupying land, are equivocations.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 19](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=19&annotation=IQQ6MCE5)) Geography and colonial thought: How to tackle what was Roman territoires spread across a multitude of modern nation states, while discussing Roman expansion as colonization? “Until stolen land is relinquished, critical consciousness does not translate into action that disrupts settler colonialism.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 19](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=19&annotation=S8SSP8PR)) “The essential thing is to see clearly, to think clearly - that is, dangerously and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? (Cesaire, 2000, p. 32)” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 21](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=21&annotation=TME3SZUA)) “ecolonization is not. It is not converting Indigenous politics to a Western doctrine of liberation; it is not a philanthropic process of ‘helping’ the at-risk and alleviating suffering; it is not a generic term for struggle against oppressive conditions and outcomes.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 21](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=21&annotation=YU9AUN9F)) “Decolonization is not a metonym for social justice.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 21](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=21&annotation=INQFRC5W)) “Moves  to  innocence  V:  A(s)t(e)risk  peoples   This settler move to innocence is concerned with the ways in which Indigenous peoples are counted, codified, represented, and included/disincluded by educational researchers and other social science researchers.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 22](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=22&annotation=JLR6HRPY)) “Indigenous peoples are rendered visible in mainstream educational research in two main ways: as “at risk” peoples and as asterisk peoples” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 22](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=22&annotation=7J82FUSZ)) “For example, “If U.S. land were divided like U.S. wealth” (figure 1.1) is a popular graphic that was electronically circulated on the Internet in late 2011 in connection with the Occupy movement. The image reveals inherent assumptions about land, including: land is property; land is/belongs to the United States; land should be distributed democratically” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 24](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=24&annotation=BH56H3KG)) “The beliefs that land can be owned by people, and that occupation is a right, reflect a profoundly settling, anthropocentric, colonial view of the world” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 24](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=24&annotation=CWQQWEF5)) “Settler colonization can be visually understood as the unbroken pace of invasion, and settler occupation, into Native lands: the white space in figure 1.2. Decolonization, as a process, would repatriate land to Indigenous peoples, reversing the timeline of these images.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 25](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=25&annotation=6HTNVZZC)) “Reconciliation is about rescuing settler normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 35](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=35&annotation=6UAI7ZSN)) “We want to say, first, that decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 35](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=35&annotation=MMRCI2AB)) “Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity.” ([Tuck and Yang, p. 35](zotero://select/library/items/2Q25HM24)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/P6URXZJL?page=35&annotation=DRNSSBG3))