Farming a land long-colonized yet never renouncing its colonial ideology is paradoxical
Evidence
The authors’ yearning for Rhodesia points to their reluctance to coexist with black Zimbabweans for whom Rhodesia is synonymous with anti-black racism and cultural, political, and economic violence. Their lack of enthusiasm to coexist is manifest in their fluency with myths of black invisibility, black discomfiture with so-called civilized standards of life, and white ingenuity in unlocking the value of supposedly vacant African lands that are also portrayed in Rhodesian discourse as having stayed untouched since the beginning of time. Thus, it is paradoxical that white Zimbabwean commercial farmers should feel justified to own land in Zimbabwe without purging colonial settler values, Rhodesian identities, and Hegelian supremacist ideas in their conception of place, time, and humanity. — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists, 82
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The paradox — claiming legitimate residence in a decolonized present while holding an origin-myth that denies that present’s legitimacy — is a dense structure worth sitting with for the grievance-decoupling question.
- XREF: Echoes the ‘vacant land’ / terra nullius myth-making tracked in my trees-as-infrastructure framing of settler place-making, and in Things Fall Apart’s collision of place-conquest with prior habitation. — connects to: White farmer memoirs undercut their own entitlement claims by clinging to Rhodesian supremacist discourse — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 82; Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 246; Colonial destruction of other cultures undermines the colonizer’s own civilization — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 247 (+3 more)
Related
- Colonial development rhetoric masked systematic resource extraction from native lands. (similarity 0.81)
- Rendering black people invisible legitimated colonial land seizure. (similarity 0.80)
- Resurrecting settler identities weakens rather than strengthens white land claims. (similarity 0.80)
- White Zimbabwean memoirs contest land loss via colonial-era ideology. (similarity 0.80)
- White farmer memoirs undercut their own entitlement claims by clinging to Rhodesian supremacist discourse (similarity 0.80)
- Settler titles frame land reform as ruination of an Edenic white paradise (similarity 0.80)
- Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri — Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists White Authors and the Fast Track Land Reform Program in Post-2000 Zimbabwe (similarity 0.79)
- Narratives of black invisibility legitimate land seizures by erasing prior claims (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy
#expands(0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 246 - Colonial discourse acknowledges non-Europeans’ priority on land but denies their authority
#corroborates(0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 644 - Colonial destruction of other cultures undermines the colonizer’s own civilization
#expands(0.78) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 247 - Local conditions, not colonial ideology, determined the form of colonization
#contradicts(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 425