Settler Colonialism and the Ends of Analogy

Description

Iyko Day, a professor and chair of English at Mount Holyoke College, will give the keynote address for the inaugural symposium Keywords for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism, titled "Settler Colonialism and the Ends of Analogy." The symposium is hosted by the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism. The keynote address will be followed by a reception with light refreshments.

Analogy has been vital for imagining transnational solidarity in our historic moment. As we bear witness to the unfolding genocide in Gaza, analogies to South African apartheid, Jim Crow, and the Trail of Tears have served as important entry points for understanding the Palestinian experience and for developing a sense of shared struggle with other colonized and racialized populations. Despite the potential for coalitions based around a shared identification of common experiences, such frameworks can also be limited. Reflecting on the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of racism, immigration, and colonialism, my presentation will explore the possibilities and limits of analogy. I will discuss reactionary backlashes against analogies to "settler colonialism" and "Indigenous decolonization" while considering solidarity politics beyond analogy.

Iyko Day is a professor and chair of English and affiliated faculty in the Department of Critical Race and Political Economy at Mount Holyoke College. She is a faculty member and former co-chair of the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program. Day is the author of Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2016) and her essays have appeared in American Quarterly, Amerasia, Monthly Review, and PMLA and magazines such as Art Forum and Brooklyn Rail. She coedited the special issue "Solidarities of Nonalignment: Abolition, Decolonization, and Anticapitalism" for Critical Ethnic Studies and has edited forums in Verge: Studies in Global Asias and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. She currently coedits the book series Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Relationality for Temple University Press and is a member of the Critical Ethnic Studies journal editorial collective. Her current research focuses on Marxism and racial capitalism, colonialism and nuclear antipolitics, and the visual culture of logistics.