Imagoed communities: the psychosocial space of settler colonialism

Abstract

Settler colonialism is a unique form of colonial domination, as its successful operation makes it increasingly difficult to identify as a colonizing project. The author asserts, in agreement with much of the literature, that settler colonialism follows a spatializing logic that transmorgrifies the territory of indigenous peoples into settler spaces. Moving beyond the literature, the author asserts that production of settler spaces simultaneously produces the settler as a political subject deeply invested in the reproduction and naturalization of those spaces. More importantly, that this process of subjectification remains open to radical instability in the face of assertive indigenous presences.