Memory, land, and white innocence in the empire-state (2022) Plenary Commentary

ABSTRACT In National Historic Landmarks across North America, Laura Pulido unearths the production of a cultural memory that preserves the myth of white innocence by systematically denying the constitutive role of colonialism and chattel slavery in the territorial development of the United States. In this reflection essay, I read Pulido’s paper alongside James Baldwin’s writings on white innocence to highlight two of its many timely contributions to theoretical and political engagements with cultural memory in the US empire-state. First, I extend Pulido’s insightful analysis of disavowal to situate white innocence as an empire-state strategy for preserving the constitutive social relations of colonial racial capitalism. Second, I discuss Pulido’s generative gesture toward land as a site from which to forge a relationship to the past marked not by disavowal but by what Baldwin understood as the alternative to white innocence: the capacity for responsibility.