Settler Colonialism, Racial Capitalism, and the Question of Palestine

• In Event: Capitalism and Its Fundamentalisms: Imperialism, Colonialism, and Democracy From the Standpoint of Revolutionary Learning

Abstract

This paper will discuss the Zionist settler colonial project in Palestine. The paper examines the ways in which settler colonialism and racial capitalism are co-constitutive of one another. On the one hand, in the scholarship on settler colonialism invariably tends to focus on the logic of elimination that settlers enact for the conquest of land, and place emphasis on colonization solely with little attention given to racial capitalism (with the exception of a few scholars such as Glen Coultard). On the other hand, in the scholarship on capitalism, very little attention is paid to settler colonialism. In the context of Palestine, an anti-colonial liberation project that was once articulated by the Palestinian Liberation Organization has been lost as the Palestinian Authority adopted a neoliberal agenda and has been a security sub-contractor for the Israeli settler colonial state.

This paper will examine the relations that have produced this political and economic shift. More specifically the paper will examine the impact this has had for Palestinians and what remains of a praxis that is committed to an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, liberation project. This paper is of pedagogical significance because it will attempt to understand the shifts in political consciousness and the conditions that have informed these shifts.

Author

• Chandni Desai, OISE/University of Toronto