Euthanasia Politics and the Indian Wars
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2993334 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stefan Aune (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 71 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 789-811 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/aq.2019.0054 |
| OpenAlex | W2978730999 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 12 |
This essay charts the emergence of a biopolitical militarism during the "Indian Wars," demonstrating the centrality of colonialism to the forms of conflict we now label "counterinsurgency." Most critical work on counterinsurgency and the biopolitics of warfare focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, if we turn our attention to the violence that accompanied US continental expansion, colonialism emerges as a key site for the development of biopower, which manifested in what I call "euthanasia politics." Euthanasia politics names a specific moment in the history of US colonialism when a growing imperative to manage Native life was combined with an increasingly indiscriminate approach to military violence. To these overlapping forms of state power was added the colonial nostalgia of the "vanishing Indian," the presumption that Native people's extinction was inevitable. The US Army during the nineteenth century was preoccupied with Native people as populations to be manipulated, confined, governed, and in many cases, destroyed. In this essay I chart the emergence of this euthanasia politics through the public debate over what was known as the "Indian Question," and I demonstrate how it manifested in the policies and strategies of the US Army
Biopower · Colonialism · Criminology · Militarism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Presumption · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · History · Law · Military History and Strategy · Torture, Ethics, and Law
They Called It Prairie Light
The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual
The Comanche Empire
Security and Terror
A programme of global pacification
Population and Affective Perception
Tense and Tender Ties
Washita
Removals
Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education
The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903
The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2023 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |