Mérédith Laferté-Coutu (University of Massachusetts, Boston) – Taking the Land for Granted

Abstract: This paper bridges debates in political phenomenology and settler decolonial studies by making the case for the relevance of paying some critical attention to “settler subjectivity” as a phenomenological concept. Specifically, I propose that a phenomenological account of subjectivity helps clarify the function of the subject—not as a subject of empire, but as part of a correlation between consciousness and world—in the constitution of a settler colonial world. I turn to two concrete cases where settler attachments to land maintain settler power over Indigenous life and land, in rural and urban contexts. The first is Eva Mackey’s ethnographic study of settler feelings in land disputes with the Caldwell First Nation in Southern Ontario and the Cayuga Indian Nation in Upstate New York. I read Mackey through Glen Coulthard’s reading of Fanon on the subjective dimension of colonial power, applied to the settler context of so-called Canada. The second comes…