Settler Memory and the ‘Unthought’

• In Event: American Democracy, American Dysfunction

Abstract

The paper carry out its analysis in three parts. First, I will deconstruct and reveal the role of settler memory in W.E.B. Du Bois’ canonical text, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880, with specific attention to the fundamental but under-attended role of land in the narrative he constructs, and the need to attend to the settler colonial dynamics that are implicit in the text and in the collective memory of the Reconstruction Era, especially on the left to the liberal side of the political spectrum.Second, I then recuperate the political memory of Indigenous and settler colonial history of this same period, and consider how doing so helps us to reimagine this era. For example, during the formal period of Reconstruction the other critical political and economic developments that were occurring came in the form of the treaties that the U.S. Federal Government was making and ratifying with Indigenous Nations. One treaty that stands out is the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie between the Great Sioux and Arapaho Nations and the United States. The creation of this treaty occurred because the U.S. government was “essentially suing for peace” in the wake of the Sioux Nation’s 1866 victory over the U.S. army garrisoned along the Bozeman Trail. Over the long term, the U.S. federal government did not live up to its treaty promises. I argue that this moment in Indigenous history is also an example of a “splendid failure,” to draw upon DuBois’ noted assessment of Reconstruction, in that it demonstrated effective Indigenous political resistance and self-governance in the face of U.S. settler aggression, even while the federal government failed to live up to its promises. Third, I consider what the political memory of the Reconstruction Era becomes for us today when we refuse the influence of settler memory on how we interpret its meaning. In particular, a more complicated reading of Reconstruction and of the place of DuBois’ work in the shaping of the left-liberal imaginaries offers the mnemonic fuel and imaginative potentiality of thinking through a co-existent abolitionist and decolonization project that opposes white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism collaboratively, rather than as distinct projects.

Author

• Kevin M. Bruyneel, Babson College