On Settlerness‪.‬

Triangular Relations Whereas a comprehensive body of historical and postcolonial literature highlights how the colonial situation is premised on the sustained reproduction of a series of exclusive dichotomies, what is here defined as the settler colonial situation establishes a system of relationships comprising three different agencies: the settler coloniser, the indigenous colonised, and a variety of differently categorised exogenous 'Others' (Veracini 2010). (1) In this context, indigenous and subaltern exogenous Others appeal to the European sovereign to articulate grievances emanating from settler abuse, the metropolitan agency interposes its sovereignty between settler and indigenous communities or subaltern exogenous Others in order to assert colonial control, and settlers insist on their capacity to autonomously control indigenous policy as a crucial marker of their substantive sovereignty. Significantly, this system of relationships should be understood as a dynamic circumstance where indigenous and exogenous alterities and metropolitan control are all understood as progressively disappearing in a variety of ways: extermination, expulsion, incarceration, containment, and assimilation for indigenous peoples (or a combination of all these elements), restriction and selective assimilation for subaltern exogenous Others, and an ultimate affirmation of settler control against metropolitan interference (or a coordinated devolution of responsibility that preempts the need for revolutionary disruptions on the other). Only the settler body politic in its ultimate assertion against metropolitan interference and against indigenous residues or other insurgencies is expected to survive this inherently temporary triangulation. (2)