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Mamdani’s new book is good on the difference between settlers and immigrants, and on why the “settler colonial” and human rights approaches often mislead in treating as criminal what are political problems.
Instead Mamdani wants people to look at the relevant acts not as individual crimes (a la Nuremberg) but as nation-building projects:
He describes as neoliberal the other or criminal model of treating historic and generative violence as acts of individuals.
Didn’t know Hegel wrote in 1820s about the genocide (not using that word of course) of native Americans (though I knew Montaigne did earlier)
His argument is important because it suggests the best way to address these legacies is through national resources or public goods, rather than individual responsibility via lineage
Mamdani wants to rescue decolonization from decolonization theory, which he thinks perpetuates the very racial and political identities that colonialism produced and relied on, and that we must remake, not reassert, to move toward justice
On Obama’s superficiality...
Not true. I like “War of Independence” over American Revolution for the same reasons but lots of people used the latter formulation in the 19th C
The book recognizes the colonial or settler colonial institutions and practices that made possible the US, and treats them as a counter to nationalism, not as delegitimizing the nation-state from which he wants one more equal citizenship
