Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States by Kevin Bruyneel (review)

Reviewed by: Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States by Kevin Bruyneel Brydon Kramer (bio) Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States by Kevin Bruyneel University of North Carolina Press, 2021 IN SETTLER MEMORY, Kevin Bruyneel introduces his titular concept to show how racial discourses in the United States often invoke notions of Indigeneity and settler colonialism yet, simultaneously, undercut their contemporary political relevance. For Bruyneel, this occurs through a dual process of "remembering and disavowing" Indigeneity and settler colonial violence to reproduce white settler domination (xiii). By taking this "complicated absent/presence" seriously (2), Settler Memory offers a rich discussion on the power of collective remembrance that nuances concepts like the logic of elimination and colonial amnesia to compel readers to be accountable to the multiple histories of the white settler nation-state. In fact, the text's most compelling contribution shows how any "cure" for settler memory must exceed the (liberal) desire to "just know better" (16). Working through five substantive chapters, Bruyneel traces both the "persistent shaping force" of settler memory (xiii) as well as the concept's implications for racial politics. In chapters 1 and 2, he attends to popular narratives within "antiracist Left memory" to show how engagement with events like Bacon's Rebellion and Reconstruction tend to eschew Indigeneity and settler colonialism (18). As Bruyneel makes clear, tendencies to "drop" Indigeneity and conflate land and property within such literature not only contribute to ongoing colonial violence and dispossession by positioning Indigenous people as "the living dead" (22), but they also limit political analyses by "quarantining" land from labor (47). This obscures the co-constitutive relationship between settler colonialism and slavery as well as how property and (hetero)patriarchy converge to produce white settler domestic spaces. What makes Settler Memory stand out, however, is how Bruyneel adds to concepts like the logic of elimination and colonial amnesia by telling a multistoried history of colonialism in the United States. Building on the work of Black and Indigenous feminist theorists, the author emphasizes disavowal's "productive capacity," which is often glossed over within dominant antiracist and settler colonial analyses. Bruyneel shows how colonial regimes, rather than simply forgetting or erasing Indigenous people and settler violence, rely End Page 116 on the disavowal work of settler memory to invoke depoliticizing references to Indigenous nations. In doing so, he also reveals how radical thinkers like Baldwin's "fraught" relationship with Indigeneity (in chapter 3) can share "common ground" with liberal defenses of racist mascots (124–31) and white supremacist celebrations of colonial conquest (139)—in that, each invokes notions of Indigeneity and settler colonialism while, simultaneously, deflecting from "the implications and obligations" that come with this knowing (3). Although clearly possessing different intentions that he is careful not to conflate, Bruyneel points to these different articulations of settler memory to show how simply naming the ongoing presence of Indigenous people and settler violence is not enough to disrupt settler colonialism. Rather, efforts to decolonize require alternative stories that offer radical interventions and liberating possibilities for all—but especially for Black and Indigenous people. Perhaps one area where Bruyneel's text leaves me wanting more is its consideration of the liberating possibilities that are opened by stories that refuse settler memory. Although chapters 4 and 5 briefly explore what resisting settler memory can look like via Indigenous resistance at Standing Rock (144) and the work of the Lipan Apache Indian Defense/Strength group (159), Bruyneel primarily attends to diagnosing articulations of settler memory. This compels him to center the work of disavowal in places where one may have hoped for greater consideration of the possibilities that emerge through the refusal of settler memory. Admittedly one of the tasks that lies before all of us living on stolen lands, this hope for the centering of alternative stories and their liberating possibilities is at least partially satisfied when Bruyneel reads Long Soldier's Whereas and Sharpe's In the Wake in the conclusion. For him, each of these texts serve as examples that coinhabit a "radical poetics and politics refusing settler memory" (170). In sum, Bruyneel...