L Veracini
Biographic Data
| ID | 15183 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Veracini |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Veracini |
| SIGNATURE | VERACINI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swinburne University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3481-8535 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 95 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 706 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 94 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
South Africa, Gaza, Greenland
We analyse statements by US President Trump issued since returning to the White House in early 2025 and focus on pronouncements concerning three particular sites: South Africa, Gaza and Greenland. A coordinated array of specifically settler colonial imaginings emerges: South Africa is a site of past settler struggle–a spectre, it must be punished and turned into a warning; Gaza is a site of contemporary settler struggle–it must be erased and empt…
Migropessimism of the Intellect, Migro-Optimism of the Will
Engaging with Oral Community Language Collections in Australia
Genocide in Gaza and the End of Settler Colonialism
Foreclosure
This article appraises debates about modernism in 1930s and 1940s Australia in relation to the cultural and political traditions of settler colonialism. We theorise settler modernist and anti-modernist engagements as conditioned by a succession of negations constituting 'Australia' as what we have previously termed 'the negative Commonwealth'. Both rejections and affirmations of European modernist traditions considered the imminent arrival in Aus…
Should we consider the Settlerocene
Introduction
Einführung in Settler Colonial Studies
Settler Colonialism
Indigenous Internationalism Against Imprisoned Indigeneity in Australia and Palestine
Indigenous Australians and Palestinians experience some of the highest rates of incarceration and state violence in the world.In this article's first section we focus comparatively on administrative detention and other forms of incarceration to underline a commonality of oppression that is both historical and contemporary.We examine settler colonial structures of domination and the impact of structural violence on Indigenous bodies, seeking to un…
The negative Commonwealth
Federated Australia was seen for a long time as a significant social 'laboratory'. The Commonwealth itself was seen as an 'experiment'. This widespread metaphor relied on a particular pattern of perception: the country was 'new' (it was not), and the country was allegedly isolated (it was not, at least not completely). Many believed that its social environment could be controlled, like that of a scientific laboratory. A laboratory is designed to …
Germany's anti-antisemitic complex and the question of settler colonialism
Recognition beyond recognition
This essay focuses on the subject position of settler colonizers to interpret the developing global politics of Indigenous recognition in the settler societies and in Australia in particular. It focuses on the dynamics of recognition in the specific context of Indigenous–settler relations, on the contribution settlers may make to decolonial passages, on the ways perpetrator trauma shapes the settler colonial polity, and on the role truth telling …
Imagining the Settler-Colonial City
This article introduces the essays collected in this special issue of the Urban History Review and sketches the urban imagination of settler-colonial political traditions. It focuses on the way settler cities are imagined, argues that the settler-colonial city may be seen as distinct from other urban formations, and suggests that the urban form is a constitutive component of settler-colonial formations and their imaginaries. Settlers, the founder…
Settler Colonialism and Science Fiction
For those who were not Indigenous to it, the Americas were once the ‘New World’, colonies, and distant and alien places. When it comes to imagining new worlds, there is no better new world than a literally brand new one. Mars is the closest, and humans recently hurled a few sophisticated objects at it. Billionaire Elon Musk is planning to hurl a few more in that direction and turn it into a colony. Mars, however, has been mainly an imagined place…
Cinema, the Settler
While the history and technology of cinema are considered for the purpose of achieving decolonial ends, this paper suggests that ‘classic’ cinema may be considered a quintessentially settler colonial medium. However, the moving image is now delivered in new ways and through new devices, and streaming has transformed global patterns of cinema production and consumption. Thus, two developments are considered in relation to this transformation. On t…
‘New’ Media
Can one colonise or liberate cyberspace, space that is not actually space [...]
Islamophobia, Antisemitism, Zionism, Settler Colonialism
This article discusses Islamophobia and its relationship with antisemitism in the context of the radical European right’s recent shift towards pro-Israel positions and away from its traditional antisemitism. Whereas this shift also has US and Australian manifestations, this article suggests that current Islamophobic utterances can be seen as surrogate antisemitism
Chapter 6 – Colonialism and Genocides Notes for the Analysis of a Settler Archive
The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1868–1945
Colonialism
Colonialism: A Global History interprets colonialism as an unequal relationship characterised by displacement and domination, and reveals the ways in which this relationship has been constitutive of global modernity. The volume focuses on colonialism's dynamism, adaptability, and resilience. It appraises a number of successive global colonial 'waves', each constituting a specific form of colonial domination, each different from the previous ones,…
Colonialist and Decolonial Metaphors
This paper argues that metaphors and colonial phenomena are related. It focuses in particular on the implications of metaphor for the study of colonialism and for the struggle against it. The aim is to harness metaphor’s power for decolonial rather than colonial uses
The Colonizing Self
Vanishing Natives and Taiwan’s Settler-Colonial Unconscious
Is settler colonial studies even useful
This brief article is a response. It engages with recent critiques of settler colonial studies as an intellectual endeavour. Settler colonial studies, a number of scholars have argued, is at best useless, but worse, it may actually be detrimental to Indigenous struggles. What is the use of studying settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination when this knowledge is irrelevant to the struggle against a disempowering politics of forced reco…
Introducing
settler colonial studies aims to contribute to the consolidation of a new scholarly field. This process requires that colonial and settler colonial phenomena be analytically disentangled. They have generally been seen either as entirely separate, or as different manifestations of colonialism at large. Neither stance, however, allows a proper appraisal of settler colonialism in its specificity. In contrast, in this introduction to this new scholar…
The Settler Colonial Present
The Settler Colonial Present explores the ways in which settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination informs the global present. It presents an argument regarding its extraordinary resilience
Settler Colonialism
In a necessarily selective way, this paper explores the historiographical evolution of 'settler colonialism' as a category of analysis during the second half of the twentieth century. It identifies three main passages in its development. At first (until the 1960s), 'settlers', 'settlement' and 'colonisation' are understood as entirely unrelated to colonialism. The two do not occupy the same analytical field, pioneering endeavours are located in '…
Settler Colonialism
A vivid exploration of the history of a very powerful and long lasting idea: building European worlds outside of Europe. Veracini outlines how the founding of new societies was envisaged and practiced
The Other Shift
This densely argued essay offers an original approach to the study of Israel-Palestine through the lens of colonial studies. The author-s argument rests, inter alia, on the distinction between colonialism, which succeeds by keeping colonizer and colonized separate, and settler colonialism, where ultimate success is achieved when the settlers are “indigenized” and cease to be seen as settlers. Referring to the pre-1948 and post-1967 contexts, the …
Settler Collective, Founding Violence and Disavowal
This paper outlines a number of approaches to an analysis of settler colonial subjectivities, the exploration of a specific state of mind and the detection of a number of paranoiac dispositions in a particular set of political traditions. At the same time, this paper explores the possibility of a Lacanian (i.e. imaginary-symbolic-real) interpretation of what is here defined as the settler colonial situation. First there is an imaginary spectacle,…
The Two Faces of American Freedom
Lorenzo Veracini reviews the book 'The two faces of American freedom' by Aziz Rana, published by Havard University Press, Cambridge, 2010
Suburbia, Settler Colonialism and the World Turned Inside Out
While its primary aim is to explore possibilities for new research, this article contends that suburban and settler colonial imaginaries are related. It suggests that an awareness of the settler colonial “situation” and its dynamics can help an original approach to the interpretation of suburban forms (and vice versa). References to the suburban “frontier” have been frequent in both public discourse and scholarly debate, and suburban phenomena ch…
South Africa's settler-colonial present
South Africa’s settler-colonial past is widely acknowledged. And yet, commonplace understandings of the post-apartheid era and a focus on the end of segregation make an appraisal of settler colonialism in present-day South Africa difficult and controversial. Nonetheless, we argue that an understanding of South Africa’s “settler-colonial present” is urgent and needed. We suggest that settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination survives ap…
Decolonizing Settler Colonialism
This article argues that there is a need to talk about settlers and to settlers in order to undo settler colonialism. In its first section, the article talks about settlers, and offers a rejoinder to recent criticism of settler colonial studies as a scholarly subfield. In its second section, the article talks to settlers, and outlines a number of possible decolonizing passages. Specifically, this article calls for the development of a cultural pe…
Wakefield, Marx, and the world turned inside out
This article focuses on Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory of colonization, on Karl Marx's response to it, and on the role that settler colonialism as a global phenomenon played in shaping their thought. Marx's rejoinder to Wakefield's interpretation of an episode in the early colonization of Western Australia, when servants had deserted a wealthy colonist, was a foundational moment in the development of his general argument. Wakefield's reaction t…
Containment, Elimination, Endogeneity
This essay focuses on settler colonialism as a developing mode of domination with contemporary manifestations. It highlights the similarities between historical settler colonialism and a contemporary global order fundamentally characterized by a logic of elimination and containment. On the basis of this analogy, the essay outlines what is here understood as the global settler-colonial present and a developing new category: endogeneity
Defending Settler Colonial Studies
The article focuses on Australian settler colonial studies. The author discusses the critique of settler colonial studies by historians Tim Rowse and Patrick Wolfe, explores the notion that colonial settlers attempted to eliminate indigenous Aboriginal Australians, and examines the history of indigenous sovereignty
Historylessness
Most cabbies would confirm that 'Australia has little history'. This is remarkable; how can one explain this often repeated trope? While having 'little' history should be understood in the sense that Australia has a short chronology (as dialogically opposed to 'Old Europe', for example), this refrain could also be understood as a way of expressing a perception that Australia is, relatively speaking, an especially 'historyless' society. This artic…
The global turn
Clare Shamier and Lorenzo Veracini review the book 'The global turn: Theories, research designs, and methods for global studies' by Eve Darian-Smith and Philip C. McCarty, published by University of California Press, 2017
Settler Colonial Automobilities
A growing body of scholarship employs the concept of ‘automobility’ to understand the practices, meanings and values with which cars have become invested. Analysis of settler colonial phenomena has also recently cohered into a distinctive transnational research strand. This article aims to integrate the findings of these two previously unconnected scholarly agendas in order to ask the following questions: can the existence of a distinct settler c…
District 9andAvatar
District 9 and Avatar are extraordinarily alike: both released in 2009, they tell a very similar story (even if they frequently invert the value signs). One would think that the scriptwriters have collaborated in some way. The first section of this paper analyses comparatively the two movies and identifies their common interests and a multiplicity of crucial differences. This comparison registers an extraordinary thematic and narrative convergenc…
Emphatically Not a White Man's Colony
Settler Colonialism and the Construction of Colonial Fiji
The evolution of historical redescription in Israel and Australia
This article compares two processes of historiographical redescription. The ‘founding violence’ emerges in both cases as a crucial site for the production and reproduction of historical and historiographical discourses—a contested ground in the process of redefinition of national identity. Historical revisionisms and deadlocked ‘reconciliations'’
What’s unsettling about On Settling
This article considers the current relevance of settler colonial tropes, narratives and idioms by discussing the opening section of On Settling (2012), a recently published book authored by respected political scientist Robert E. Goodin. While Goodin argues that ‘settling’ should be considered a ‘normatively defensible practice’, my critique focuses on his assumed link between ‘settling’ in general and settler colonialism in particular. The first…
Rethinking Social Justice
Lorenzo Veracini reviews the book 'Rethinking social justice: from 'peoples' to 'populations'', by Tim Rowse, published by Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2012
Settlers and Expatriates
Review of the book 'Settlers and expatriates', edited by Robert Bickers, published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010
Genocide in Gaza and the End of Settler Colonialism
The negative Commonwealth
Federated Australia was seen for a long time as a significant social 'laboratory'. The Commonwealth itself was seen as an 'experiment'. This widespread metaphor relied on a particular pattern of perception: the country was 'new' (it was not), and the country was allegedly isolated (it was not, at least not completely). Many believed that its social environment could be controlled, like that of a scientific laboratory. A laboratory is designed to …
Germany's anti-antisemitic complex and the question of settler colonialism
JAS review of books
Clive Moore, Sunshine and Rainbows: The Development of Gay and Lesbian Culture in Queensland, St Lucia, University of Qld Press, 2001, pp 244, pb S29.95. Peter Spearritt, Sydney's Century: A History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2000, 319 pp, hb $79.95. Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, 2000, pp 384, pb $35.00. Robert Dixon, Prosthetic Gods: Travel, Representation, and Colonial Governa…
Towards a further redescription of the Australian pastoral frontier
This article proposes a reading of Aboriginal agency on the Australian 'pastoral frontier' that departs from some of the conventional interpretative patterns.1 Such a proposal simultaneously constitutes a reinterpretation of the secondary sources published since the late 1960s, as well as a critical analysis of the historical debates on Aboriginal 'collaboration' and resistance
JAS review of books
Brigid Hains, The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn and the Myth of the Frontier, Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp 218, pb S49.95. ISBN 0522850367. John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838, University of New South Wales Press, 2002, pp 176, pb $29.95. ISBN 0868407569 John Carroll, Terror: A meditation on the meaning of September 11, Scribe Publications, pp 106, pb $16.95. ISBN 0908011849. Helen Caldicott, The New Nuclear Danger: G…
The evolution of historical redescription in Israel and Australia
This article compares two processes of historiographical redescription. The ‘founding violence’ emerges in both cases as a crucial site for the production and reproduction of historical and historiographical discourses—a contested ground in the process of redefinition of national identity. Historical revisionisms and deadlocked ‘reconciliations'’
A Prehistory of Australia's History Wars
While an extensive debate has recently addressed more contemporary contributions to historical scholarship, the historiographical background to Australia's History Wars has rarely been appraised. This article proposes an interpretative narrative of the evolution of Aboriginal history during the 1970s and 1980s. While before the late 1960s a systematic historiography of Aboriginal-white relations did not exist, these decades have witnessed the eme…
Israel and Settler Society
This book challenges two paradigmatic aspects of a wide historical literature: first, that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is intractably unique and largely defies comparative approaches (Israel and Palestine are cited here in alphabetical order), and, second, that this struggle consists exclusively or mainly of a conflict of national/religious revival/liberation and bears little resemblance with typically colonial conflicts. On the contrary, Is…
Books
Taking Assimilation to Heart Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 1887–1937. By Katherine Ellinghaus. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Pp. 276. $US49.95 cloth. The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality. By Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Pp. 285. $41.95 paper. A Higher Authority: Indigenous Transnationalism and Australia. …
Historylessness
Most cabbies would confirm that 'Australia has little history'. This is remarkable; how can one explain this often repeated trope? While having 'little' history should be understood in the sense that Australia has a short chronology (as dialogically opposed to 'Old Europe', for example), this refrain could also be understood as a way of expressing a perception that Australia is, relatively speaking, an especially 'historyless' society. This artic…
America Town
Lorenzo Veracini reviews the book 'America town: building the outposts of empire' by Mark L. Gillem, published by University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2007; Martin Shaw reviews the book 'The criminal law of genocide: international, comparative and contextual aspects', edited by Ralph Henham and Paul Behrens, published by Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2007; Karen E. Smith reviews the book 'The ethics of foreign policy', edited by David B. MacDona…
Emphatically Not a White Man's Colony
Settler Colonialism and the Construction of Colonial Fiji
Settler Collective, Founding Violence and Disavowal
This paper outlines a number of approaches to an analysis of settler colonial subjectivities, the exploration of a specific state of mind and the detection of a number of paranoiac dispositions in a particular set of political traditions. At the same time, this paper explores the possibility of a Lacanian (i.e. imaginary-symbolic-real) interpretation of what is here defined as the settler colonial situation. First there is an imaginary spectacle,…
Introduction
The expectation that every corner of the globe would eventually become embedded in an expanding network of colonial ties enjoyed widespread currency during the long nineteenth century. A theoretical analysis of what is here defined as the settler colonial situation could perhaps start with Karl Marx and Friederich Engels’ remark that the “need of a constantly expanding market for its product chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the gl…
Consciousness
In this chapter, I focus on the way settler perceive their predicament and on a number of paranoiac dispositions characterising the settler colonial situation. This chapter also explores the possibility of a Lacanian (imaginary-symbolic-real) interpretation of settler colonial phenomena. First, there is an imaginary spectacle, an ordered community working hard and living peacefully Little House in the Prairie -style. Then, there is the symbolic a…
Sovereignty
In this chapter, I outline a special type of sovereign entitlement that is claimed by a specific class of settlers: those who have come to stay, those who will not return “home”. 1 It is an animus manendi that distinguishes the settler from the other colonists — as the very word “settler” implies, it is the intention to stay (as opposed to the sojourners’ intention to return) that contributes the crucial differentiating trait. Thomas Jefferson, f…
Population
A comprehensive body of historical and postcolonial literature highlights how the colonial situation is fundamentally premised on the sustained reproduction of a series of exclusive dichotomies (i.e., good and evil, civilised and primitive, culture and nature), the most essential being the one separating coloniser and colonised. In contrast, in this chapter, I argue that the settler colonial situation establishes a system of relationships compris…
Narrative
Settler colonialism has been resistant to decolonisation. Some settler polities decolonised later, some tentatively, some not at all.1 And yet, as underscored, for example, by the 2007 UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and by its careful assertion of an indigenous right to self-determination that must be respectful of the sovereignty of existing states, there is a need to focus on the possibility of post-settler colonial futures …
The Imagined Geographies of Settler Colonialism
The expectation that every corner of the globe would eventually become embedded in an expanding network of colonial ties enjoyed widespread currency during the long nineteenth century. A global analysis of the imagined geographies of settler colonialism could perhaps start with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' 1848 remark that the 'need of a constantly expanding market for its product chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe', an…
Settler Colonialism
A vivid exploration of the history of a very powerful and long lasting idea: building European worlds outside of Europe. Veracini outlines how the founding of new societies was envisaged and practiced
Telling the End of the Settler Colonial Story
Settler colonialism has been resistant to decolonization. Some settler polities decolonized later, some tentatively, some not at all (Veracini 2007a). And yet, as underscored, for example, by the 2007 UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and by its careful assertion of an indigenous right to self-determination respectful of the sovereignty of existing states, there is a need to focus on the possibility of postcolonial futures in a n…
Isopolitics, Deep Colonizing, Settler Colonialism
This essay contributes to interdisciplinary reflection on settler colonialism and decolonization by proposing an analysis of two characteristic traits of the ‘settler colonial situation’: isopolitics and deep colonizing. The first section outlines isopolitical relations as an alternative possibility to sustained colonial domination on the one hand, and internationally recognized independence within an international system of formally independent …
Suburbia, Settler Colonialism and the World Turned Inside Out
While its primary aim is to explore possibilities for new research, this article contends that suburban and settler colonial imaginaries are related. It suggests that an awareness of the settler colonial “situation” and its dynamics can help an original approach to the interpretation of suburban forms (and vice versa). References to the suburban “frontier” have been frequent in both public discourse and scholarly debate, and suburban phenomena ch…
Books
Of a ‘contested ground’ and an ‘indelible stain’
This article proposes an interpretative narrative of the evolution of Aboriginal history as a scholarly enterprise during the 1990s and in more recent years. The 1990s were characterised by attempts to synthesise the interpretative traditions resulting from previous decades of scholarly activity. In more recent years, the debate has shifted dramatically, dealing specifically with the genocidal nature of white Australia's policy towards Aboriginal…
Settlers and Expatriates
Review of the book 'Settlers and expatriates', edited by Robert Bickers, published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010
Historical Document Afterword
2011). Historical Document Afterword: On the Rights of the Settlers of Australia. Settler Colonial Studies: Vol. 1, A Global Phenomenon, pp. 196-201
History (70 works) · Sociology (65 works) · Political science (61 works) · Colonialism (60 works) · Archaeology (47 works) · Law (46 works) · Philosophy (32 works) · Politics (30 works) · History (26 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (23 works)