Abstract: The thoughts I attempt to articulate in "Lessons" turn to Graeber and Wengrow's formulation of "Indigenous critique" by way of the current Israeli genocide of the Indigenous people of Palestine in Gaza. The "lessons", I suggest, lead us back to the now out-of-favour critique of representation, albeit with a particular twist: we see representation breaking down (whether politically or in terms of accurate representation) while representations (specifically, of the genocide) proliferate widely. With the tension between representational failure and representational proliferation returning us to often ignored issues of representation, what becomes clear in Graeber and Wengrow's formulation of "Indigenous critique" is a like attempt to make certain forms of Indigenous representation invisible even when they can be freely viewed.
Tony C. Brown (Thu,) studied this question.