Concerning Violence

Understanding Settler-Colonialism & Violence in the Modern Nation-State

What’s this about?

“The ultimate expression of sovereignty largely resides in the power and capacity to dictate who is able to live and who must die. To kill or to let live thus constitutes sovereignty’s limits, its principal attributes. To be sovereign is to exert one’s control over mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of power.”
– Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics”

This is a series of free, open to public, virtual classes. For the next four weeks, every Friday and Saturday morning (EST – New York), I will be sitting in a Zoom room and facilitating a series of lectures and conversations centered around study, and more specifically, a critical study of the power and violence that pervades the modern nation-state and the colonial world-system. Each week has one attached text to it – I will attempt to capture the essential points of each text in my opening lecture, but it is highly recommended that you read these before coming.

In these lectures, I will try my best to talk about, and draw connections between, the different forms of violence that constitute the rule, order and law of the modern nation-state within the context of the larger global world-system. What connects violence on indigenous people, on Black people, and on immigrant populations residing in the US, to violence enacted through the explicit and tacit mechanisms of US imperialism abroad? This is what we will try to look at in the weeks to come.

While four short lectures are nowhere near enough to come to any form of holistic or deep understanding of this complex milieu, and certainly not enough to grapple with the complexities of local and regional realities as they effect marginalized and oppressed communities around the world (and I am no expert on specific regional issues or their histories), I hope that this course can at least give students who don’t know where to begin some foundational literature and perspectives.

Rules of attendance

Since this is a virtual seminar, I have to take some precautions and implement some rules for the safety of everyone involved.

This is an open-invite public seminar. Zoom registration links will be provided below an hour before on the day before the session. Please register below and you’ll be sent the zoom session link.
Once in the Zoom waiting room, please make sure you have your full name and affiliation if applicable (university or organization name) if you have one, showing – you won’t be admitted without it.
These sessions will not be recorded. Please do not make any recordings of the sessions. I am not using an institutional zoom. I will be using my own personal Zoom account instead.
The two sessions on Friday and Saturday cover the same content. If you miss a Friday (most people work), you may attend the Saturday session.
Sessions are capped at 100 attendees because of Zoom limits. If you miss Friday, you can attend the same lecture Saturday.

Rules of Conduct

The content that we will cover over these four weeks may not be easy to engage with – it may challenge you.

Please conduct yourself respectfully and kindly in the space. Come with an open mind and heart.
If you want to speak, please raise your hand first. Don’t interrupt or speak over others.
Please take some care in framing and articulating your observations or questions. If you are not sure how to ask a question or not clear on how to best articulate a point in a clear and respectful manner, take a step back, think and reflect on how you would frame what you say, and then raise your hand.
If you have any contentions, please contend respectfully. Things that are said hastily often (unintentionally) come out wrong, so take care to think about what and how you’re going to raise a contention or a counter-argument. Focus on addressing the point or the argument, not the person. Say what you want to say once, and then give room for others to process and respond if they want.
Disruptive, rude, abusive or otherwise violent behavior will have you thrown out of the zoom session immediately and banned from further attendance.

Remember: be open, be respectful, and most importantly, be kind.

When & What Time?

Friday and Saturday mornings, from 10:00a to 11:00a (EST – New York) unless given otherwise, and I can give up to 30m afterwards if students want to stay back and have further conversations.

Syllabus

Readings to go with the lectures are provided below. My talks will largely focus on the one core text, but I will, in all probability, reference the recommended readings (and more). If you want to read any of the texts, please buy the books and support the authors.

Oct 20 and 21. 10a. ‘A program of complete disorder’
Frantz Fanon, ‘Concerning Violence’, from The Wretched of the Earth (1961) (easily available in public domain)
Other readings to read with\against if you found the above useful:
Aimé Césaire, ‘Discourse on Colonialism’ (1955)
Saidiya Hartman, ‘Scenes of Subjection’ (1997)
Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, ‘The Falling Sky’ (2013)
Beth Lew Williams, ‘The Chinese Must Go’ (2018)

Nov 3. 10a. ‘A structure, not an event‘
Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’ (2006)
Other readings to read with\against if you found the above useful:
Fayez Sadegh, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965) (Available in public domain)
Lorenzo Veracini, ‘The Settler Colonial Present’ (2015)
Rosuara Sanchez & Beatrice Pita, ‘Rethinkin g Settler Colonialism’ (2014)
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, ‘False Dilemmas & Settler Colonial Studies’ (2020)

SATURDAY, NOV 4. SEMINARS FROM 10A TO 2P
10-11a. ‘A structure, not an event‘ (Lecture)
Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’ (2006)
11-11:30a. Excerpts from assorted writers, scholars and activists (Readings)
11:30a-12:30p. ‘Very few Americans have much to do with Muslims’ (Lecture)
Edward Said, ‘Islam as News’ (1980) (Available in public domain)
12:30p-1p. Excerpts from scholars and poets (Readings)
1p-2p. ‘A notion of “never again”’ (Lecture)
Sa’ed Atshan & Darnell Moore, ‘Reciprocal Solidarity’ (2014)

Nov 10 and 11. 10a. ‘Who is disposable and who is not’
Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’ (2003)
Other readings to read with\against if you found the above useful:
Carl Schmitt, ‘The Nomos of The Earth‘ (1950)
Michel Foucault, ‘Society Must be Defended’ (1975-1976)
Angela Davis & Cassandra Shaylor, ‘Race, Gender & The Prison-Industrial Complex’ (2001)
Jasbir K. Puar, ‘The Right to Maim’ (2017)

Nov 17 and 18. 10a. ‘A notion of “never again”’
Sa’ed Atshan & Darnell Moore, ‘Reciprocal Solidarity’ (2014)
Other readings to read with\against if you found the above useful:
Tiffany Lethabo-King and Janelle Navarro, ‘Otherwise Worlds’ (2020)
Gloria Anzaldua, ‘This Bridge Called My Back’ (1981)
Vijay Prashad, ‘The Karma of Brown Folk’ (2001)

The use of these texts, which are mostly essays and excerpts from complete works, for online and not-for-profit educational instruction is covered under section 107 of Title 17 (Copyright Law of the United States) and under the TEACH Act. Any images of texts taken to show in the classroom in face-to-face instruction are covered under section 110. Where possible, I have linked to publisher sources instead of reproductions for classroom use and encourage that students buy the texts if they want to do any deeper reading. The original wording of the section is h ere.