Corey Snelgrove

Contact

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts - Political Science Dept

Email: cjsnelgr@ualberta.ca

Overview

Area of Study / Keywords

Indigenous-Settler Relations Settler Colonialism and Decolonization Critical Theory Political Theory Marx and Marxisms

About

I am a settler scholar that works in the areas of Indigenous-Settler Relations, Settler Colonialism and Decolonization, and Critical Theory. Prior to joining the University of Alberta, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto working with Dale Turner. Before that I completed an MA in Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria and a PhD in Political Science at the University of British Columbia where I worked with Glen Coulthard, Barbara Arneil, and Heidi Stark. I am also a member of the Prairie Indigenous Relationality Network.

Trained in political theory, my research and teaching takes a ‘theoretical’ approach to the field of Indigenous Politics. More specifically, my theoretical background is in critical theory broadly conceived, which Karl Marx aptly described as “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age”.

I am interested in approaches that consider problems – in my case, settler colonialism and the struggle for Indigenous self-determination – in relationship to social formations as a whole. These ‘wholes’ are complex and contradictory in two senses. First, they are composed of different elements, classes, and groups that do not always work together. Second, these ‘wholes’ are open to struggle and contestation that erupt because of a gap between normative expectations – whether that norm be internal, external, or immanent – and ‘reality’. Because these wholes are contradictory, they are also crisis prone. As a result, work has to be done to keep ‘wholes’ together and sometimes this requires reform. But as histories around the globe teach us, struggle and contestation may lead to more fundamental transformations. In other words, revolution.

Historically, Indigenous peoples’ struggle for self-determination emerge out of the contradiction between land as a relation versus land as a resource as well as the norm of self-determination and the realities of colonial and capitalist domination. While historically white settlers have understand Indigenous dispossession to be in line with their interests, I seek to advance the possibilities of non-Indigenous people acting in solidarity with Indigenous peoples struggles for self-determination against settler colonialism. In line with the anti-authoritarian thrust of critical theory that cautions against imposing a moral law from without, this involves challenging investments in settler colonialism with and against the normative expectations of its addressees.

I take this approach to Indigenous Politics for three reasons. First, situating the problem of colonization in relation to a social whole enables an appreciation for how forms of domination – capitalism, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy – relate to one another. Second, understanding these social wholes as crisis prone enables an appreciation for how settler colonialism is a dynamic process – its mode of operation can adjust in response to contestation while dispossession remains. Third, the emphasis on contestation and contradiction prevents attention to a ‘changing same’ from succumbing to fatalism. A fundamental transformation remains possible. Indeed, returning to the first point, there are many reasons why one might join in a transformative struggle.

Research

1) The Politics of Reconciliation after the Blockade (Book Manuscript)

Informed by Marxist political theoretical traditions and Indigenous critical theory, this project addresses the political problems that follow from an understanding of the connections between capitalism and settler colonialism in an era of reconciliation. While the insights of the project bear on settler colonial formations across the globe, it thinks from the particular context of Canada. Since the adequacy of our ‘answers’ depends crucially on the adequacy of our conception of the ‘problem’, my primary and overarching objective is to (1) challenge the bifurcation of the political from the economic in our (1a) understanding of the problem of settler colonialism and (1b) more normative visions of decolonization. In terms of the former, one way to understand settler colonialism is that it represents a process of subsumption of Indigenous forms of life under a capitalist totality. This subsumption, in turn, shapes the dynamics of Indigenous-state/settler relations over time and places determinate limits on the scope of recognition. In terms of the latter, this understanding of the dynamics of Indigenous-state/settler relations requires a shift from the “political form” of co-existence that has dominated liberal and critical approaches to the politics of difference since the 1990s to the “social form” of co-existence. The question then becomes how do we decolonize the way we produce and reproduce our lives together?

Two secondary objectives of the project are to reconstruct the (2a) possibilities of solidarity and (2b) treaty in light of this redescription of the problem of settler colonialism. With respect to (2a), I argue that implication is a capacious concept to understand non-Indigenous complicity in settler colonialism because it describes what I call alienated participation in injustice – in other words, many but certainly not all non-Indigenous people participate in settler colonialism without any intentional will or consent. Rather than a way to exculpate non-Indigenous people, “alienated participation” is one way to ground solidarity with Indigenous peoples in transformative projects of decolonization understood as a sharing of a more expansive conception of freedom. With respect to (2b), I draw out the formal antagonism between the social form of capitalist societies, where actors are primarily responsible to price signals, and Indigenous treaty visions, where actors are responsible to one another and other-than-human relations. I conclude with a reinterpretation of socialism on stolen land in dialogue with Indigenous treaty visions.

2) The Essential Works of Leroy Little Bear (edited book manuscript with Gina Starblanket and Matt Wildcat)

Besides these projects, I am working on the following topics:

Stuart Hall and the Politics of Reconciliation
Theodor Adorno, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and the Dialectics of Implication
Settler as Seriality
The State Debate in Contemporary Canadian-Indigenous Politics
Treaty as Socialization

Browse more courses taught by Corey Snelgrove

Contact

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts - Political Science Dept

Overview

Area of Study / Keywords

About

Research

Courses

POL S 305 - Contemporary Political Theory

POL S 327 - Indigenous Politics in Canada

POL S 532 - Indigenous Engagement, Governance, and Policy

Featured Publications

Treaty as De-Fetishizing Critique: A Social Theory of Treaty Interpretation

Returning to Totality: Settler Colonialism, Decolonization and Struggles for Freedom

Settler Colonialism and the Limits of the Legal Form

Political Action in the Time of Reconciliation

Treaty and the Problem of Colonial Reification

Unsettling Settler Colonialism: The Discourse and Politics of Settlers, and Solidarity with Indigenous Nations