Critical Social Inquiry 0255 - Indigenous Nihilism

What if a settler future is already dead? This course explores Indigenous nihilism as both a philosophical provocation and a set of material conditions under world systems built to sustain Euro-American colonial conquest. Drawing from critical Indigenous studies, and Black, Indigenous, and non-European anarchisms, we will examine how anti-colonial nihilism (or doubts about the existence of meaning, purpose, and progress under modern/colonial conditions) emerges out of dispossession, racial terror, and a sober analysis of what is even possible under prevailing conditions. We will engage with key texts (which includes formal scholarship as well as zines, art, films, documentaries, and music) that interrogate our understanding of meaning, meaninglessness, despair, futility, futurity, and negation. We will consider how these ideas are deepened and complicated when read through Indigenous cosmologies, practices, pedagogies, and desires. These provocations will encourage us to destabilize dominant, concessionary, and settler-driven narratives of resilience, reconciliation, justice, and revolution. In doing so, we will consider what it means to think, teach, learn, relate, and act after hope. Keywords:Native American, Indigenous, Nihilism, Anarchism

In/Justice Students should expect to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time