Writing,Space and Authority: Producing and Critiquing Settler Jurisdiction in Western Australia

On the edge of Stirling Gardens in central Perth, Western Australia, five large, old-fashioned pen nibs stand in a curved line, their tips in the ground. Anne Neil’s sculpture, Memory Markers, commemorates the history of this site, which includes the Supreme Court. Taking this sculpture as an emblem of writing, which in the context of its setting highlights the relationship between literature and law, this article explores the image of the pen in the ground. As a symbol of literacy, it evokes the powerful network of discourses—particularly law, science and religion—that underwrote the imperial project. It signals, in Michele Grossman’s terms, “the event of literacy [that] radically interrupts and disrupts—but never eliminates—pre-existing Aboriginal epistemologies”. The article goes on to explore the sculpture as a symbol of the assertion of jurisdiction, the speaking of law in and over colonised space. It analyses a group of written texts associated with this site, from colonial legal assertions of jurisdiction over Aboriginal people in Edward Landor’s The Bushman (1847), through a proclamation under the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA), to Stephen Kinnane’s Indigenous family memoir of life under that act, Shadow Lines (2004).     

Les dockers dakarois. L’organisation du travail dans un port ouest-africain, 1910–1990s

This paper deals with the long-term evolution of dock labor in Dakar. Through the utilization of archival sources and their analysis, this investigation explores the changes that occurred in this sector and primarily the reform plan developed during the world wars but that was never introduced into the labor regulations, mainly due to the colonial regime. In addition, this paper studies the legal changes since the 1970s when the dockers’ statute was settled. Furthermore, this research uses oral testimony from retired Senegalese dockers to study the way these workers observed these structural changes. It is the first time that this topic has been explored for the port of Dakar from a historical long-term perspective.     

Public health as an agent of internal colonialism in interwar Czechoslovakia: shaping the discourse about the nation’s children

Shmidt’s text discusses the specifics of internal colonialism in the discourses and practices of the dominant group (Czechs) concerning Slovaks and Rusyns, ethnic groups from the peripheral, eastern areas of interwar Czechoslovakia. By targeting the reproductive patterns of these groups, seen as undesirable by the authorities, internal colonialism shaped the discourse about children by consistently opposing the normalized childhood inside the nation to the supposedly abnormal child development outside the civilizing process. Shmidt focuses on three interwar projects aimed at introducing new public health practices as an ‘infrastructure of dependence’ with regard to the peripheral groups. Being directly supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, these projects contributed to building the new Czechoslovak nation and securing its international legitimacy.     

The British mosquito eradication campaign in colonial Lagos, 1902-1950

The impact of malaria on the demography of European settlers in Lagos from the mid-nineteenth century posed a serious threat to British imperialism in Nigeria. This prompted the British administration to take vigorous measures to address the unsanitary conditions within Lagos, a major causation of the disease. This paper examines the colonial programmes on the eradication of mosquitos in Lagos, the colonial capital of Nigeria. It highlights the political and economic implications of this programme, and the responses of African colonial subjects to the initiative. The government adopted divergent solutions, ranging from racial segregation to swamp reclamation. However, each of these had a downside. Segregation policies, at a time of growing nationalism among an increasingly politically conscious African educated class, would breed political unrest. Swamp reclamation, on the other hand, would require seizing privately owned land and depriving fishermen and wood collectors who earned a living by exploiting the resources of these swamps, critical for their survival and for the colony’s coffers. When the colonial administration finally settled on swamp reclamation, it faced the problem of cost that needed to be balanced with the sacrosanct principle that colonies should be self-sustaining economies and not be a burden to the metropolis. Existing studies have overlooked the resistance or reaction of Lagosians to swamp clearance and forest ordinance. The paper relies on a combination of primary, secondary and oral sources, including a body of archival documents and some interviews.     

The land of no taboo: agrarian politics of neglect and care in Madagascar

ABSTRACT

In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive to examine not only how people bestow taboos onto places, but also how they take them away. In this contribution, I use as a case study a 35-hectare parcel of agricultural land in Madagascar, where members of an extended family are debating whether or not to continue to follow their ancestral taboos while farming. Analyzing the debate, alternative historical, cultural and political narratives of land relationships emerge, including a fraught colonial history, ongoing battles over land tenure, shifting community demographics, and intergenerational conflicts. Overall, this stretch of land illustrates that agricultural landscapes may be rendered without taboo not because they lack meaning, but because they contain an excess of overlapping – and highly contentious – meanings.     

'Gold and Bracelet,Water and Wave': Signature and Translation in the Indian Poetry of Adela Cory Nicolson

Writing under the male pseudonym'Laurence Hope', Adela Cory Nicolson published three collections of poetic verses set in colonial India between 1901 and 1905, namely The Garden of Kama, Stars of the Desert and Indian Love. In the late 1880s, dressed as a young male Afghan groom, Nicolson routinely followed her husband to the military camps that the British colonial authorities had set up in Afghanistan. This experience of gender and cultural cross-dressing finds a special place in many of Nicolson's love poems. Although Leslie Blanch has claimed that the'mainspring of Laurence Hope's verses still elude us', it is clear that Nicolson relied heavily on appropriating the poetic languages of Hindu'bhakti' and Islamic'sufi' traditions, thereby transforming the erotic conventions of the late Victorian fin de sicle. Her use of poetic signature is central to the formation of such a poetics. Long ignored on grounds that it was merely part of the enormous left-over corpus of colonial exotica produced and consumed with unprecedented eagerness in the age of empire, Nicolson's poetry therefore invites a reappraisal on the grounds that it constituted a significant act of translation: a practice aimed at reconceptualizing notions of national poetic legacy under colonialism and at reworking gender and identity in relation to poetic voice.     

I Am Your Son,Baba

Our Black bodies have had colonial histories inscribed on them. This colonial project of inscribing Black bodies with colonial knowledge has fragmented our Black knowledge to the point of making us doubt our Blackness. In my effort to leave my Black children a road map for living a whole and healthy life as proud Black people, I engage my experience of being fathered in colonial Africa through a letter to my own Baba (father). This letter embodies the African orality structure of engaging, and reflects on how colonialism has fragmented Black families and traumatized our children as part of the colonial project. To expose this colonial trickery through dialogue is my way of beginning to re-establish my Black familial bonds. I also share this story to our diverse global community because our Blackness is a part of our common humanity. So in our global human diversity we center our relational humanity through storytelling. This means how we matter to each other is in the stories that we tell. I hope my story connects us so that we matter to each other without undermining the intersections of race, gender, disability, colonialism, class structures, poverty, and ageism. My story highlights the power of dialogue in healing fractured relationships, giving witness to colonial oppression and being a tool for engaging social justice.     

Keeping ‘our’ land: property,agriculture and tensions between Indigenous and settler visions of food sovereignty in Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper situates literature on food sovereignty and land reforms in relation to academic and popular writings about land issues in Canada. We argue that settler Canadian food sovereignty scholarship and activism has yet to sufficiently grapple with the implications of private property ownership in relation to ongoing processes of settler colonialism. We also argue that efforts to advance ecologically sustainable farming practices in Canada need to confront private property ownership in terms of its contribution to both capitalist and colonial violence.     

The limits of environmental remediation protocols for environmental justice cases: lessons from Vieques,Puerto Rico

The United States Federal Government has repeatedly put the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico in harm’s way due to the injurious after-effects of air-to-ground weapons testing. Most of the harm happened during the Navy’s 70 years on the island. Yet, the harm continues today considering that aspects of the cleanup count as continued acts of environmental injustice, viewed within the context of the island’s colonial history. Usually, this harm deals with public health issues, but the remediation protocols do not account for considerations such as cultural identity and heritage. This paper shows how the procedures for environmental remediation in Vieques qualify as a case of environmental injustice according to Robert M. Figueroa’s ‘environmental justice paradigm.’ The aim of employing this kind of approach is to pinpoint the underlying reasons why this is a case of environmental injustice.