Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
Mark Rifkin
In Settler Common Sense, Mark Rifkin explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. Although the books he focuses on are not about Indians, they serve as examples of what Rifkin calls “settler common sense,” taking for granted the legal and political structure through which Native peoples continue to be dispossessed.
In analyzing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Rifkin shows how the novel draws on Lockean theory in support of small-scale landholding and alternative practices of homemaking. The book invokes white settlers in southern Maine as the basis for its ethics of improvement, eliding the persistent presence of Wabanaki peoples in their homeland. Rifkin suggests that Henry David Thoreau’s Walden critiques property ownership as a form of perpetual debt. Thoreau’s vision of autoerotic withdrawal into the wilderness, though, depends on recasting spaces from which Native peoples have been dispossessed as places of non-Native regeneration. As against the turn to “nature,” Herman Melville’s Pierre presents the city as a perversely pleasurable place to escape from inequities of land ownership in the country. Rifkin demonstrates how this account of urban possibility overlooks the fact that the explosive growth of Manhattan in the nineteenth century was possible only because of the extensive and progressive displacement of Iroquois peoples upstate.
Rifkin reveals how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands. Further, he investigates the ways that contemporary queer ethics and politics take such ongoing colonial dynamics as an unexamined framework in developing ideas of freedom and justice.
Reviews
"A sophisticated and rigorous interdisciplinary work, Settler Common Sense is a wonderful, unsettling contribution to American literary studies, native studies, and queer studies."
Beth Piatote
University of California, Berkeley
"A sophisticated and rigorous interdisciplinary work, Settler Common Sense is a wonderful, unsettling contribution to American literary studies, native studies, and queer studies."
Beth Piatote
University of California, Berkeley
"A sophisticated and rigorous interdisciplinary work, Settler Common Sense is a wonderful, unsettling contribution to American literary studies, native studies, and queer studies."
Beth Piatote
University of California, Berkeley
"A useful starting point for further analysis, laying the groundwork for future scholars to explore how a variety of cultural products—if subtly—encouraged the dispossession of Native Americans during one of the US’s most important periods of physical growth and ideological development."
CHOICE
"A useful starting point for further analysis, laying the groundwork for future scholars to explore how a variety of cultural products—if subtly—encouraged the dispossession of Native Americans during one of the US’s most important periods of physical growth and ideological development."
CHOICE
"A useful starting point for further analysis, laying the groundwork for future scholars to explore how a variety of cultural products—if subtly—encouraged the dispossession of Native Americans during one of the US’s most important periods of physical growth and ideological development."
CHOICE
"Rifkin presents clear, fascinating, and focused readings of texts that offer new questions for how queer studies tools can be used in connection with ethics (queer and Indigenous) to read foundational literary texts."
American Literature
"Rifkin presents clear, fascinating, and focused readings of texts that offer new questions for how queer studies tools can be used in connection with ethics (queer and Indigenous) to read foundational literary texts."
American Literature
"Rifkin presents clear, fascinating, and focused readings of texts that offer new questions for how queer studies tools can be used in connection with ethics (queer and Indigenous) to read foundational literary texts."
American Literature
"It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to the full richness of Beyond Settler Time. Rifkin is meticulous in positioning his own work in relation to other scholarship, and while at times this forces the reader to work through the extant discourse surrounding a particular novel or text to get at the new interpretive kernel, that work is always rewarding. . . . Beyond Settler Time is a valuable contribution to the field of indigenous studies."
David J. Carlson
Journal of American Studies
"It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to the full richness of Beyond Settler Time. Rifkin is meticulous in positioning his own work in relation to other scholarship, and while at times this forces the reader to work through the extant discourse surrounding a particular novel or text to get at the new interpretive kernel, that work is always rewarding. . . . Beyond Settler Time is a valuable contribution to the field of indigenous studies."
David J. Carlson
Journal of American Studies
"It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to the full richness of Beyond Settler Time. Rifkin is meticulous in positioning his own work in relation to other scholarship, and while at times this forces the reader to work through the extant discourse surrounding a particular novel or text to get at the new interpretive kernel, that work is always rewarding. . . . Beyond Settler Time is a valuable contribution to the field of indigenous studies."
David J. Carlson
Journal of American Studies
"Offers an important reminder of the expropriation and erasure on which nineteenth-century American culture was built, even after 'Indians' have ostensibly vanished from areas like New England and New York."
Modern Philology
The Erotics of Sovereignty
"Offers an important reminder of the expropriation and erasure on which nineteenth-century American culture was built, even after 'Indians' have ostensibly vanished from areas like New England and New York."
Modern Philology
The Erotics of Sovereignty
"Offers an important reminder of the expropriation and erasure on which nineteenth-century American culture was built, even after 'Indians' have ostensibly vanished from areas like New England and New York."
Modern Philology
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Other Books
The Cambridge Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies
The book provides a detailed analysis of important work in queer and trans studies over the past thirty years. Stretching from early figures (such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Cathy Cohen, José Muñoz, and Sandy Stone) to the most recent scholarship, it offers a rich account of these fields’ major ideas and contributions while indicating how they have evolved.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, Governance
What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? The Politics of Kinship shows how ideologies of family recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention.
Speaking for the People
Native Writing and the Question of Political Form
Speaking for the People examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. It shows how works by nineteenth-century Native authors illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
Fictions of Land and Flesh
Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation
In Fictions of Land and Flesh Mark Rifkin explores the impasses that arise in seeking to connect Black and Indigenous movements, turning to speculative fiction to understand those difficulties and envision productive ways of addressing them.
Beyond Settler Time
Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination
What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? Beyond Settler Time investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks.
Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
The book explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. It shows how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands.
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination
The Erotics of Sovereignty looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. It illustrates how these authors affirm the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty.
When Did Indians Become Straight?
Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty
The book explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation.
Manifesting America
The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space
The book explores the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period, particularly over Native Americans and former Mexicans.
Other Books
The Cambridge Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies
The book provides a detailed analysis of important work in queer and trans studies over the past thirty years. Stretching from early figures (such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Cathy Cohen, José Muñoz, and Sandy Stone) to the most recent scholarship, it offers a rich account of these fields’ major ideas and contributions while indicating how they have evolved.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, Governance
What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? The Politics of Kinship shows how ideologies of family recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention.
Speaking for the People
Native Writing and the Question of Political Form
Speaking for the People examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. It shows how works by nineteenth-century Native authors illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
Fictions of Land and Flesh
Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation
In Fictions of Land and Flesh Mark Rifkin explores the impasses that arise in seeking to connect Black and Indigenous movements, turning to speculative fiction to understand those difficulties and envision productive ways of addressing them.
Beyond Settler Time
Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination
What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? Beyond Settler Time investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks.
Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
The book explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. It shows how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands.
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination
The Erotics of Sovereignty looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. It illustrates how these authors affirm the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty.
When Did Indians Become Straight?
Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty
The book explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation.
Manifesting America
The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space
The book explores the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period, particularly over Native Americans and former Mexicans.
Other Books
The Cambridge Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies
The book provides a detailed analysis of important work in queer and trans studies over the past thirty years. Stretching from early figures (such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Cathy Cohen, José Muñoz, and Sandy Stone) to the most recent scholarship, it offers a rich account of these fields’ major ideas and contributions while indicating how they have evolved.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, Governance
What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? The Politics of Kinship shows how ideologies of family recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention.
Speaking for the People
Native Writing and the Question of Political Form
Speaking for the People examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. It shows how works by nineteenth-century Native authors illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
Fictions of Land and Flesh
Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation
In Fictions of Land and Flesh Mark Rifkin explores the impasses that arise in seeking to connect Black and Indigenous movements, turning to speculative fiction to understand those difficulties and envision productive ways of addressing them.
Beyond Settler Time
Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination
What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? Beyond Settler Time investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks.
Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
The book explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. It shows how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands.
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination
The Erotics of Sovereignty looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. It illustrates how these authors affirm the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty.
When Did Indians Become Straight?
Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty
The book explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation.
Manifesting America
The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space
The book explores the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period, particularly over Native Americans and former Mexicans.
ConTact me
mrifkin@buffalo.edu
Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies
1030 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260
ConTact me
mrifkin@buffalo.edu
Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies
1030 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260
ConTact me
mrifkin@buffalo.edu
Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies
1030 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260
Copyright ©Mark Rifkin. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright ©Mark Rifkin. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright ©Mark Rifkin. All Rights Reserved.