Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States - (Unsettling Colonialism in Our Times) by Emile Badarin (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Using Palestine as a case study, this book shows how recognition politics operate to legitimize long-standing colonial power structures. This book forwards a new, theoretically ground-breaking perspective to show that in colonial contexts, settlers use recognition to legitimize and normalize the dispossession and elimination of indigenous people.The book critically examines the Euromodern categories of race, racism and racial hierarchies and the interplay between colonialism, racism and Zionism. Central to this analysis is how anti-Zionism became equated with anti-Semitism, which has led to the advancement of both settler-colonialism in Palestine and Israel's recognition on the international stage"--

Book Synopsis

Using Palestine as a case study, Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States shows how recognition politics operate to legitimize long-standing colonial power structures.
In existing scholarship, recognition has been seen as an asset coveted by indigenous communities. This book forwards a new, theoretically ground-breaking perspective. Emile Badarin shows that in colonial contexts, settlers use recognition to legitimize and normalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous people. More than this, settler-colonial states themselves actively pursue recognition, employing it as a means to further the elimination of the indigenous societies they seek to replace. In making the case, the book critically examines the Euromodern categories of race, racism and racial hierarchies and draws new conclusions about the interplay between colonialism, racism and Zionism. Central to this analysis is how anti-Zionism has been strategically equated with anti-Semitism, and effectively used as a tool for the advancement of both settler-colonialism in Palestine and Israel's recognition on the international stage. The book delves into indigenous normative resistance against colonial recognition politics through the lens of the Palestinian practice of ?umud (steadfastness), extracting its philosophy of liberation as a pathway towards a decolonial future for all in Palestine and beyond.

Review Quotes

Recognition and misrecognition have been crucial to enabling and furthering colonial subjection. They still are, and Emile Badarin insightfully unpacks the operation of this dynamic. Could a systematic focus on recognition contribute to finding an ethical way out of the current disaster in Palestine?
Lorenzo Veracini, Professor, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States by Emile Badarin brings the world up to speed with how dispossession and elimination is sought to be normalized in Palestine. What Zionists have historically failed to understand is how the Palestinian child they torment and force to remove and deny the living insignia of their historic pride of place will grow up, master a defiant prose, and come back to raise that flag even higher for the whole world to see... Emile Badarin's bold, brilliant, and defiant voice in this book is the voice Israel and its US and European handlers have failed to silence and suffocate!
Hamid Dabashi, Professor, Columbia University, USA

About the Author

Emile Badarin, born and raised in Palestine, holds a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, UK. He is the author of Palestinian Political Discourse (2016) and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on international and Middle East politics and the Question of Palestine.