1st Edition
Desettlering as Re-subjectification of the Settler Subject Towards Alternative Traditions and Identity
This book offers an intervention into the process of decolonization through the re-subjectification of the settler subject. The authors draw on what Deleuze and Guattari call minor threads of philosophy, pedagogy, spirituality, and healing practices rooted in neglected lineages of European thought and ceremony. The book proposes a methodology for unontologizing the settler subject, which they term "desettlering." Rather than fetishizing indigenous theory and practice as a mode for resubjectifying settlers to facilitate land-based decolonization, it offers a fresh approach by looking toward alternative sets of traditions and identities. These alternatives are used to interrogate minoritarian European philosophies, practices, and beliefs, which the authors propose could be deployed to unontologize the settler within current historical conditions. Asserting that such a process is not volitional but a historical necessity, the book offers a novel and timely investigation into who settlers become if they intend to engage seriously in decolonization. It will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and researchers in psychological science, social psychology, counseling, philosophy, indigenous studies, and sociology.
Introduction: Logics of Subjectification. 1. Desettlering. 2. Philosophy: Dismantling Colonial Logics and Providing Alternatives. 3. Intersections of Social Identity. 4. Political Activism and Common Reconciliation. 5. The University and the Settler Professor. 6. Desettlering Counseling and Therapy. 7. Spirituality: Lineages, Traditions, Ceremony, and Shamanism. 8. Desettlering Redux.
Biography
Kathleen S.G. Skott-Myhre is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. She is the author of Feminist Spirituality under Capitalism: Witches, Fairies and Nomads as well as the co-author of Writing the Family: Women, Auto-ethnography, and Family Work.
Hans A. Skott-Myhre is Professor in the Social Work and Human Services Department at Kennesaw State University. He is the author of Youth Subcultures as Creative Force: Creating New Spaces for Radical Youth Work, and Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry: Reconceptualizing the Self Beyond Capitalism.
Jeffrey Galvin Smith is a white-skinned Canadian with settler colonial privilege, born on the unceded lands of Stz'uminus First Nation, several generations dislocated from his ancestral lands (Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales). He works as an independent therapist, consultant, and educator, focusing on creative anti-colonial approaches to institutional analysis and critical well-being.
Scott Kouri is a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in Victoria, BC. His doctorate is in Human and Social Development from the University of Victoria.
