ABSTRACT
The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.
(Cohen 2009)
At a time when the governments of industrialized nations and spokespersons of leading international organizations sing the praises of globalization, it may seem intellectually quaint – if not entirely out of place – to resuscitate a discussion of colonialism. Yet, as far back as the seventeenth century, colonialism has left an enduring mark on modern nation states, particularly those of the post-colonial variety. In discussing the “colonial present” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, geographer Derek Gregory notes that “while they may be displaced, distorted, and (most often) denied, the capacities that inhere within the colonial past are routinely reaffirmed and reactivated in the colonial present” (Gregory 2007: 7). It is not only the territorial and economic dimensions of colonialism that left their mark; as the late Edward Said noted (1994; 1978), so did Orientalism’s colonial culture and its instruments of power.
