Development, Displacement, Dispossession

Session Submission Type: Paper Session: Traditional Format

Abstract

This panel offers both a deep engagement with the literary-critical and aesthetic forms of development, displacement and dispossession, as well as a rigorous and forward-thinking reflection on political-economic, critical-geographic, critical race studies, and postcolonial methodologies in thinking through these three terms.

Development, dispossessions, and displacement take many forms, and are enacted in a variety of environments: rural, suburban, and urban-industrial. But despite this diversity of tactics, aspects of the logic remain consistent: enclosures create private property out of commonly-held resources and land; dispossessions requisition resources; development fuels accumulation and produces private profit from these processes. This logic characterizes both the early modern rhythms of industrialization and colonialism, and the imperial depredations of our contemporary world.

In this panel, we bring together papers that show that these are not only violent and regrettable processes, but also constitute a framework through which we can understand the movement of history.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University (CA)

Individual Presentations

• Land for the Taking: Palestinian Landscape in an American Mirror - Gary Fields, University of California, San Diego (CA)

• “The Arabs of Palestine”: Reports on the Dispossession of Palestinians in US Journalism, 1946-1961 - Salah D. Hassan, Michigan State University (MI)

• Casta Capitalism, Recast Liberalism: Yucatán’s Improvised 1848 - David Kazanjian, University of Pennsylvania (PA)

• Settlers’ disorganization of indigenous societies as a means of control: The case of Palestine. - Ahmad Sa'di, Ben Gurion University (Israel)

• Resisting the Pedagogical Subject and the Aesthetics of Subaltern Space in Carlos Bulosan’s short stories - Malini Johar Schueller, University of Florida (FL)

Comment

• David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University (CA)