IFF Research Seminar: Hedda Smedheim Bjerklund (IFF), "Indigenous Resistance and the Limits of Civil Disobedience"

Civil disobedience has long been regarded as a vital tool for strengthening the social and legal order. As pointed out by John Rawls, civil disobedience can have a justice-enhancing value (1999, 336). Habermas has further described civil disobedience as a “guardian of legitimacy” (Habermas 1985, 99), while deliberative democrats (Markovits 2005; Smith 2013), republican democrats (Arendt 1972), and radical democrats (Celikates 2014, 2016) focus on the potential of civil disobedience to enhance democratic legitimacy. Yet, as the theory of civil disobedience is designed only for the special case of a nearly just society, for those citizens who recognize and accept the legitimacy of the constitution, the unique contexts and struggles of Indigenous resistance are frequently overlooked or misunderstood. While public, nonviolent, and conscientious breach of laws has proven to be a powerful means of communicating experiences of oppression and fostering the negotiation of Indigenous rights, conceptualizing such as civil disobedience in colonial contexts requires careful considerations. For many indigenous movements, the legitimacy of the colonial state is precisely what is being contested. Consequently, Indigenous activism frequently operates in a dual mode: rejecting the colonial state’s legitimacy while simultaneously engaging with it to demand recognition, restitution, and justice. In this paper, I critically examine this duality and argue that the settler-colonial context ought not to be understood by Rawls’ conditions and normative requirements for civil disobedience.

Wednesday 30/9, 12:15 – 14:00

Location: Teorifagbygget HUS1, Innsikten 1.524 and on Teams

This seminar is part of the IFF Research Seminar series. For link to Teams, please contact the organiser.