Colonial Continuities - A study of anti-racism in Aotearoa New Zealand and Spain

Abstract

Drawing on critical race and decolonial theory, the thesis seeks to interrogate the lack of engagement in anti-racist work and Peace and Conflict Studies literature with race and colonialism as structuring mechanisms of much of the conflict and violence that afflicts the world today. Moreover, this thesis seeks to explicate the role of colonialism in shaping conceptualizations of race and racism and how the very concept of race (and whiteness) is placed in relationship to the historicity of racism within anti-racist discourse in Spain and Aotearoa New Zealand. Undertaking a genealogy of the concept of race in racism and anti-racism literature in Spain and New Zealand, and employing a discourse analysis of anti-racism material, including interviews with practitioners, the thesis finds that anti-racism is practiced by rejecting the concept of race altogether. Spanish anti- racism is delinked from colonial history and focused on immigration. In Aotearoa New Zealand, anti-racism is primarily focused the contestation of colonial history in order to defend the rights of Māori, but simultaneously disregards how global ideas of race impact other non-white subjects in the country.Identifying the colonial encounter as fundamental to the discursive formation of race, the thesis interrogates how coloniality circumscribes the possibilities of anti-racism.

The history of the Spanish empire and its colonies and the Anglo colonial exploration of Oceania were crucial sites for the production of racial thought. While neither Spain nor New Zealand have been a central focus of research on anti-racism or racism more broadly, this dissertation aims to put ‘the periphery’ at the center of critical race studies of anti-racism. Discourse analysis of anti-racism materials highlights how the disregard for coloniality’s historical continuities is reflected in the absence of engagement with white privilege alongside racism. The dissertation demonstrates how the structure of whiteness, in which anti-racist groups exist, impacts and perpetuates patterns of forgetting and ignorance. For anti-racism this means that not engaging racism in its past and present iterations, and failing to conceptualize race and racialization as historically evolving, runs the risk of re-producing violence and perpetuating racial injustice.