Settler aesthetics—Theorizing and contesting settler colonialism through art practice

Abstract

The growing scholarship on settler colonialism largely understudies aesthetics. Settler colonial logics work not only through the elimination, dispossession, and criminalization of Indigenous populations but also through the erasure of Indigenous narratives and aesthetics. Aesthetics communicate a particular system of knowledge and power that can either refute or perpetuate settler colonial projects. I use the term “settler aesthetics” to foreground an understanding of aesthetics as dynamic socio-spatial practices through which state and non-state actors assert power, construct particular visions of a city, and shape conditions of belonging. Settler aesthetics demonstrate how the logic of elimination and the work of settler memory reproduces and is reproduced through various visual modalities. I argue that as geographers, we must examine both contemporary settler colonial projects that continue codifying cities as purely settler spaces without Indigenous presence and resistance, and spaces that insist on Black, Latinx, and Indigenous presence and livingness. This paper therefore explores how scholarship on decolonizing and anti-colonial art practice and theory can inform emerging scholarship on settler colonial urbanism that centers perspectives and practices of Black and Indigenous presence and resistance.