Abstract
Over the last 30 years, the self-determination efforts and objectives of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of ‘recognition’ — recognition of cultural distinctiveness, recognition of an inherent right to self-government, recognition of state treaty obligations, and so on. In addition, the last 15 years have witnessed a proliferation of theoretical work aimed at fleshing out the ethical, legal and political significance of these types of claims. Subsequently, ‘recognition’ has now come to occupy a central place in our efforts to comprehend what is at stake in contestations over identity and difference in colonial contexts more generally. In this paper, I employ Frantz Fanon's critique of Hegel's master–slave dialectic to challenge the now hegemonic assumption that the structure of domination that frames Indigenous–state relations in Canada can be undermined via a liberal politics of recognition. Against this assumption, I argue that instead of ushering in an era of peaceful coexistence grounded on the Hegelian ideal of reciprocity, the contemporary politics of recognition promises to reproduce the very configurations of colonial power that Indigenous demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
In the Canadian context, I use the terms ‘Indigenous’, ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Native’ interchangeably to refer to the descendants of those who traditionally occupied the territory now known as Canada prior to the arrival of Europeans settlers. I also occasionally use these terms in an international context to refer to those peoples who have suffered under the weight of European colonialism more generally. I use the term ‘Indian’ and phrase ‘First Nation’ to refer to those legally recognized as Indians under the Canadian federal government's Indian Act of 1876.
In the following pages, I use the terms ‘colonial’ and ‘imperial’ interchangeably to avoid repetitiveness. However, I do so acknowledging the important distinction that Edward Said (1994), Robert Young (2001), James Tully (2004) and others have drawn between these two interrelated concepts. In their work, a colonial relationship is characterized as a more direct form of imperial rule. Imperialism is thus a broader concept, which may include colonialism, but could also be carried out indirectly through non-colonial means. Following this logic, a significant amount of the world's population can now be said to live in post-colonial condition despite the persistent operation of imperialism as a form of ‘political and economic’ dominance (Young, 2001, 27). Canada, of course, remains a settler colony in which indirect imperialism has never typified the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the settler-state and society.
A number of studies have mapped the similarities and differences between the dialectic of recognition as conceived by Fanon and Hegel, but relatively few have applied Fanon's insights to critique the groundswell appropriation of Hegel's theory of recognition to address contemporary questions surrounding the recognition of cultural diversity. Even fewer have used Fanon's writings to problematize the utility of a politics of recognition for restructuring hierarchical relations between disparate identities in colonial contexts. For a survey of the available literature, see Gendzier (1974), Bulhan (1985), Turner (1996), Hanssen (2000), Kruks (2001), Oliver (2001), Gibson (2002, 2003), Chari (2004) and Schaap (2004).
References
Adams, H. (1975) Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View, Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers.
Adams, H. (1999) A Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization, Penticton: Theytus Books.
Alfred, T. (1999) Peace Power Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, Don Mills: Oxford University Press.
Alfred, T. (2005) Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Alfred, T., Coulthard, G. and Simmons, D. (2006) New Socialist: Special Issue on Indigenous Resurgence 58 (September–October), pp. 1–43.
Altamirano-Jimenez, I. (2004) ‘North American first peoples: slipping into market citizenship?’ Citizenship Studies 8 (4): 349–365.
Althusser, L. (1994) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in S. Zizek (ed.) Mapping Ideology, London: Verso, pp. 100–140.
Asch, M. (1999) ‘From ‘Calder’ to ‘Van der Peet’: Aboriginal Rights and Canadian Law’, in P. Havemann (ed.) Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, Auckland: University of Cambridge Press, pp. 428–446.
Ashcroft, B. (2001) Post-Colonial Transformations, Routledge: New York.
Assembly of First Nations (2005) Our Nations, Our Governments: Choosing our Own Paths, Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations.
Bannerji, H. (2001) Dark Side of the Nation, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
Barry, B. (2002) Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bhabha, H.K. (2005) ‘Forward: Framing Fanon’, in F. Fanon (ed.) The Wretched of the Earth, Boston: Grove Press.
Bulhan, H. (1985) Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, New York: Plenum Press.
Cairns, A. (2000) Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Cairns, A. (2005) First Nations and the Canadian State: In Search of Coexistence, Kingston, ON: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations.
Chari, A. (2004) ‘Exceeding recognition’, Sartre Studies International 10 (2): 110–122.
Day, R. (2000) Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Day, R. (2001) ‘Who is this we that gives the gift? Native American Political Theory and The Western Tradition’, Critical Horizons 2 (2): 173–201.
Day, R. and Sadik, T. (2002) ‘The BC land question, liberal multiculturalism, and the spectre of Aboriginal nationhood’, BC Studies 134: 5–34.
Dene Nation (1977) ‘The Dene Declaration’, in M. Watkins (ed.) Dene Nation: The Colony Within, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 3–4.
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (1997) Gathering Strength: Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan, Ottawa: Published under the authority of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (2005) A First Nations-Crown Political Accord on the Recognition and Implementation of First Nation's Governments, Ottawa: Published under the authority of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Duran, E and Duran, B (1995) Native American Postcolonial Psychology, Albany: State University of New York Press.
Fanon, F (1967) Black Skin, White Masks, Boston: Grove Press.
Fanon, F (2005) The Wretched of the Earth, Boston: Grove Press.
Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003) Redistribution or Recognition? A Political–Philosophical Exchange, London: Verso.
Gendzier, I. (1974) Fanon: A Critical Study, New York: Grove Press.
Gibson, N. (2002) ‘Dialectical Impasse: Turning the Table on Hegel and the Black’, Parallax 23: 30–45.
Gibson, N. (2003) Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Gordon, T. (2006) ‘Canada, empire, and indigenous peoples in the Americas’, Socialist Studies 2 (1): 47–75.
Hall, S. (1996) ‘The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees’, in D. Morley and K. Chen (eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, pp. 25–46.
Hanssen, B. (2000) ‘Ethics of the Other’, in M. Garber, B. Hanssen and R.L. Walkowitz (eds.) The Turn To Ethics, New York: Routledge, pp. 127–129.
Hegel, G.F. (1977) The Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kruks, S. (2001) Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Don Mills: Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1998) Finding our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada, Don Mills: Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (2001) Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship, Don Mills: Oxford University Press.
Larrain, J. (1996) ‘Sturt Hall and the Marxist Concept of Ideology’, in D. Morley and K. Chen (eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, pp. 47–70.
Macklem, P. (2001) Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Maracle, L. (1996) I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers.
Marule, M.S. (1984) ‘Traditional Indian Government: Of the People, For the People, and By the People’, in M. Boldt, J.A. Long and L. Little Bear (eds.) Pathways to Self-Determination: Canadian Indians and the Canadian State, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 36–45.
Markell, P. (2003) Bound By Recognition, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Nadasdy, P. (2005) Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Oliver, K. (2001) Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pippin, R. (2000) ‘What is the question for which Hegel's theory of recognition is the answer?’ European Journal of Philosophy 8 (2): 155–172.
Povinelli, E. (2002) The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism, Durham: Duke University Press.
Rorty, R. (1998) Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rorty, R. (2000) ‘Is ‘cultural recognition’ a useful notion for leftist politics?’ Critical Horizons 1 (1): 7–20.
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 5 Volumes, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services.
Said, E. (1994) Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage.
Schaap, A. (2004) ‘Political reconciliation through a struggle for recognition?’ Social and Legal Studies 13 (4): 523–540.
Schulte-Tenckhoff, I. (1998) ‘Reassessing the paradigm of domestication: the problematic of indigenous treaties’, Review of Constitutional Studies 4 (2): 239–289.
Scott, D (1999) Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Scott, D (2004) Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment, Durham: Duke University Press.
Scott, J. (2001) Power, Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Smith, A (2005) Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide, Boston: South End Press.
Taylor, C (1985) Philosophical Papers, Volume 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press.
Taylor, C (1989) Sources of the Self, Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press.
Taylor, C (1991) The Malaise of Modernity, Toronto: Anansi Press.
Taylor, C (1993) Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Taylor, C. (1994) ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in A. Guttman (ed.) Re-examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 25–73.
Tully, J. (1995) Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Tully, J. (2000) ‘Aboriginal Peoples: Negotiating Reconciliation’, in J. Bickerton, A. Gagnon (eds.) Canadian Politics, Third Edition, Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Tully, J. (2001) ‘The Struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of Freedom’, in D. Ivison, P. Patton and W. Saunders (eds.) Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 36–59.
Tully, J. (2004) ‘The persistence of empire: a legacy of colonialism and decolonization’, Paper presented at the international conference, Colonialism and its Legacies, University of Chicago, 22–25 April.
Turner, L. (1996) ‘On the Difference between the Hegelian and Fanonian Dialectic of Lordship and Bondage’, in L. Gordon, D. Sharpley-Whiting and R. White (eds.) Fanon: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 134–151.
Watkins, M. (1977) Dene Nation: The Colony Within, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Williams, R. (2001) ‘Hegel and Nietzsche: recognition and master/slave’, Philosophy Today 45 (5): 164–179.
Young, R. (2001) Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Coulthard, G. Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada. Contemp Polit Theory 6, 437–460 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300307
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300307