Subversive Intimacies: Resisting Settler Colonialism's Shallow Attachments

Abstract

Gathering texts by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and authors, this dissertation asks, how does settler colonialism depend on disjointed and shallow attachments, and how do Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists respond to and rise above the asociality of this structure? I draw on a range of creative responses—graphic novels, music, poetry, fiction, activism—as a means of assessing how Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples creatively respond to settler colonialism’s shallow attachments. The multifocal, multilocal exploration—different theoretical standpoints, historical moments, territories, and traditions— is part of understanding the settler colonial assemblage and the many ways in which creative production resists, subverts, and exceeds this structural oppression. Several warp threads run through this dissertation to hold this project together: settler-colonialism, Indigenous knowledge, diaspora, racialization, biocapitalism, relationality and asociality, solidarity, anthropocentrism and the anthropocene, intimacy, embodiment, and place.