Description
Book SynopsisHow do colonial histories matter to the urgencies and conditions of our current world? How have those histories so often been rendered as leftovers, as 'legacies' of a dead past rather than as active and violating forces in the world today? With precision and clarity, Ann Laura Stoler argues that recognizing 'colonial presence' may have as much to do with how the connections between colonial histories and the present are expected to look as it does with how they are expected to be. In Duress, Stoler considers what methodological renovations might serve to write histories that yield neither to smooth continuities nor to abrupt epochal breaks. Capturing the uneven, recursive qualities of the visions and practices that imperial formations have animated, Stoler works through a set of conceptual and concrete reconsiderations that locate the political effects and practices that imperial projects produce: occluded histories, gradated sovereignties, affective security regimes, 'new
Trade Review
"Duress: Imperial Durabilities In Our Times is a timely book. It can be read as both a work of postcolonial analysis and a methodological guide to conceptual history. Ann Laura Stoler’s willingness to wrestle uneasy mercurial modern terminologies into valuable approaches to the histories of imperial formations is refreshing and exemplary." -- Ed Jones * LSE Review of Books *
"Stoler adds different insights and contexts to much material that is not new. Perhaps one test of the value of this is that it is difficult to read Duress without applying its insights both to the ways we engage in ethnographic enterprises and to current situations. Stoler provides the reader with much to consider and underscores the urgency of doing so." -- James Phillips * American Ethnologist *
"Stoler’s book is both timely and innovative. . . . [Duress] takes us on a journey that looks at the genealogy of imperial violence, its traces in the present and its continuous re-shaping of contemporary societies on the one hand, and on the other, how new stories emerge and counterdiscourse shapes imperial violence." -- Olivette Otele * Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History *
"Innovative and thoughtful. . . . Stoler has for a long time now moved between different concepts, disciplines, and subdisciplines with an agility that is inspiring. . . . A pressing and timely book that will be of interest to all concerned with questions on liberation and entrapment." -- Shirin Saeidi * Journal of International and Global Studies *
"Stoler casts her net wide and deep and convincingly shows that colonialism is more complex, and more present, than most histories acknowledge." -- Aviva Chomsky * American Historical Review *
"A tour de force. Stoler’s encyclopedic knowledge of the literature is impressive and the book might be used as a reference for those hoping to move the needle in postcolonial studies—to advance the agenda of the subfield . . . Stoler has ably demonstrated that Foucault’s work is relevant to locales beyond France. And yet, I am left to ask whether, in a sense, Stoler might simply stand alone, without Foucault, now more than ever as her own theoretical proficiencies are brought to bear on our colonial present." -- Anne-Maria Makhulu * Anthropological Quarterly *
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Appreciations xi
Part I. Concept Work: Fragilities and Filiations
1. Critical Incisions: On Concept Work and Colonial Recursions 3
2. Raw Cuts: Palestine, Israel, and (Post)Colonial Studies 37
3. A Deadly Embrace: Of Colony and Camp 68
4. Colonial Aphasia: Disabled histories and Race in France 122
Part II. Recursions in a Colonial Mode
5. On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty 173
6. Reason Aside: Enlightenment Projects and Empire's Security Regimes 205
7. Racial Regimes of Truth 237
Part III. "The Rot Remains"
8. Racist Visions and the Common Sense of France's "Extreme" Right 269
9. Bodily Exposures: Beyond Sex? 305
10. Imperial Debris and Ruination 336
Bibliography 381
Index 419
