Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Introduction

Coulthard’s book appeared in 2014 in the Indigenous Americas series of the University of Minnesota Press and grew out of his doctoral thesis and his article “Subjects of Empire” (2007). Its title echoes Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, and Fanon’s critique of Hegelian recognition runs through every chapter. The first chapter takes on Charles Taylor’s “The Politics of Recognition”; the second follows the Dene struggles of the 1970s and 1980s over land and self-determination; later chapters deal with reconciliation and resentment, with the gendered politics of self-government and, in the conclusion, with the Idle No More movement. Its key concept, “grounded normativity”, names the ethics that comes from land-based practices. The book won several prizes and is widely taught in Indigenous studies and political theory.

Connections

Builds on

• Capital1867 · Karl Marx
• Black Skin, White Masks1952 · Frantz Fanon
• God Is Red1973 · Vine Deloria Jr.

Criticizes

• Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition1992 · Charles Taylor

Taken up in

• As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance2017 · Leanne Betasamosake Simpson