The Governance of the Prior

This essay asks how critical indigenous theory might intervene in the field of critical theory. What originates here that does not in other disciplinary phrasings and phases and cannot without doing some violence to the tasks indigenous critical theory sets for itself? It begins to answer this question by introducing a form of liberal governance – the governance of the prior – that critical indigenous theory illuminates. And it argues that rather than referencing a specific social content or context, social identity or movement, critical indigenous theory disrupts a network of presuppositions underpinning political theory, social theory and humanist ethics (obligation) which are themselves built upon this form of liberal governance.