| Kommentar |
The term postcolonial has been a subject of debate since it first entered our critical vocabulary. One of the main challenges to the temporal marker “post,” is that for indigenous peoples living under a settler colonial regime, colonialism is far from over. Recent years have seen a vast increase in scholarly interest in the particular structures and problematics of settler colonial societies. In this seminar, we will look at some of the narratives that undergird settler colonialism in what is now the United States and how those narratives and the ideologies that sustain them continue to shape the US’s own perception of itself and its place in the world. By looking at a variety of cultural texts such as literature, life writing, film, serial shows, and genre fiction, we will try to discern the specific contours of the US American settler colonial imaginary from the legal and religious justifications of early settlers to the colonial anxieties of 21st-century sci-fi and dystopian fiction. Special attention will be paid to the processes of differentiation that are part and parcel of the settler colonial logic, which include labor exploitation, differential racialization, and the consolidation of heteronormative gender binaries. |
