The dissertation argues that we witness a contingent synergy in contemporary Israel-Palestine between an apparent functional superfluity of Palestinians, and Palestinian labor in particular, with respect to the interests of Israeli capitalists, and their disposability with respect to the identitarian logic of exclusionary ultra-nationalist and settler-colonial politics. Under a matrix of inclusion/exclusion, I propose, Palestinians are today superfluous in a double sense: as the unproductive of the capitalist system, and as the undesired racialized population beyond the pale of law. I show how, with the withering of a majority of Palestinian workers from the labor market with the becoming capital rather than labor-intensive of the Israeli economy, and with the (unequal) opening of the global labor market that allowed for their substitution with migrant workers, Israel gradually but systematically began shedding its responsibility for the administered population, concomitantly with enforcing an ever greater control over their bodies and territory. Thus, premised on a principle of minimal responsibility for and maximal control over its subject population, Israeli subjugation of Palestinians is based today on control beyond discipline, and de-capacitization of economic production beyond direct exploitation. Israeli arrangement, control, and management of space and movement today has as its aim to disengage Palestinians i.e., creating a space with the intention of minimizing unwanted encounters with, and responsibility for the subjugated population, while maintaining the highest possible degree of control over them. Predicated on the obviation of native labor as means for its economic flourishing, Israel’s separation regime has mostly expelled Palestinians from the circuits of production and, ostensibly, also from most Jewish Israelis’ conscious mind. No longer mediated to the same degree by the sort of engagements previously operative—be it in the sense of labor relations or cohabitation of public space—racial violence structurally distinct from, and potentially more intensive than that of “exploitative racism” is daily threatening to materialize. This diagram of militarized capitalism, I suggest, illuminates a crisis of both the State of Israel and of late capitalism, insofar as both increasingly require excessive exercises of violence in order to self-preserve. If capitalism is said to produce its own gravediggers in the guise of the unemployed and the poor, in Israel capitalist elites mitigate the resulting antagonisms by turning increasingly to nurtured ethnonationalist sentiments and a racialized welfare state under a neoliberal mantel, thus alleviating pressures from itself and displacing dissatisfaction onto a criminalized Palestinian “Other.” I propose that bringing about egalitarian forms of collective life in Israel/Palestine hinges not simply on the recognition of vulnerability, precarity and ontological interdependence as the sine qua non of the human condition (and thus as a foundation for ethical prescriptions and norms), but crucially also on engineering the (political) vulnerability of those structures, institutions and actors that are today in large measure invulnerable or immune to the claims and demands of anti-apartheid and anti-capitalist struggles. I suggest that such an effort would require a radical re-orientation of the unchosen adjacency between Palestinians and Israeli-Jews, and might be brought about vis-a-vis coalitional politics drawing on the remaining webs of interdependence across the segregated landscape of Israel-Palestine, working through the fundamental contradiction between Zionist territorial maximalism and the the imperative to reduce if not entirely avoid contact with Palestinians, and on multiple registers—from directly anticolonial struggles to those under a non-hegemonic articulation.

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Drawing on Foucault’s conception of “subjugated knowledges,” this thesis attempts to articulate a subjugated anti-colonial reading of Marx so as to interrogate the discursive modifications effected within Marxism after Marx, specifically as those modifications relate to the conditions of possibility regulating Marxist understandings of race and colonialism. This genealogy proceeds by offering a critical re-examination of the ways in which Marxists of the Second International theorized a “modern,” “scientific” account of imperialism, one that expunged important insights into the nature of colonial-capitalism at the same time it established a new knowledge of capitalist expansion and the world market. This Leninist schematization of imperialism is theorized in relation to “deraceination,” a neologism arising from this project and describing the manifold discursive processes by which Marxism was uprooted from its grounding materialist premises while it underwent an ideological de-racialization that eschewed discussions of race and Indigeneity in Marxist political economy. After this critique of the Leninist schematization of imperialism, deraceination is elaborated by revisiting the early history of Marxist feminism, leading to the conclusion that the historical subjugation of the basic materiality of race and gender was accomplished in no small part through the definition of “the woman question.” By liberating this subjugated trajectory of Marxist thought, this thesis argues for the necessity of reincorporating an anti-colonial reading of Marx into our understandings of Marxism and Marxist feminism.

Using part of James Cook’s first voyage of discovery in which he explored the Australian coast, and Joseph Banks’s 1772 voyage to Iceland as case studies, this thesis argues that late eighteenth-century travelers used scientific voyages to present audiences at home with a new understanding and scientific language in which to interpret foreign places and peoples. As a result, scientific travelers were directly influential not only in the creation of new forms of knowledge and intellectual frameworks, but they helped direct the shape and formation of the Empire. The thesis explores the interplay between institutional influence and individual agency in both journeys. As a result, it will argue that the scientific voyages that were most influential in the imperial process were those directed and funded by the state.

This thesis illustrates how Pompey’s annexations and organizing of the eastern provinces for Rome were more pragmatic than imperialistic. Greek and Eastern specialists are used in order to give a better back story than the imperialist thesis offers in its reasoning for the annexations. By adding more detail from the Greek and Eastern perspective, other dimensions are opened that shed new light upon the subject of Pompey’s eastern settlements. Through this method, the pirate campaign and the annexation of Syria are greatly developed, especially in concern to changes in culture that Pompey’s settlements forced. The culture of piracy and banditry were curbed by the eastern annexations. In Syria the Greek settlements were revived and protected from the expansion of Arab and Jewish dynasts. Considering the annexation of Pontus, a more detailed analysis on the lex Pompeia and the new taxation system is developed, which questions parts of the imperialist thesis especially in regards to role of the publicani. Graeco-Roman cultural spread is also developed in the Pontus chapter to show some of Pompey’s motives. Previous works are expanded upon and synthesized into this work, the aim being to reconcile some of the arguments, concluding with the proposition that Pompey, his efforts, and his settlements, were more pragmatic than imperialistic

This dissertation is an interpretive analysis of the political background of the American annexation and administration of the Philippine Islands between 1900 and 1920. It seeks to analyze the political value of supporting and opposing imperialism to American political parties and elites. Seeking to capitalize on the American victory over Spain in 1898, the Republican Party embraced the annexation of the Philippines as a way to promote an idea of rising American international power. Subsequently, their tenure in the Philippines can be analyzed as bringing industrialization to the Philippines for political gain, casting themselves in a politically popular role of nation builders and bringers of democracy. In opposing the Republicans, Democrats became anti-imperialists by default. After overcoming the initial unpopularity of that ideology, they were able to redefine it in such as way as to co-opt the original Republican successes in the Philippines. As such, the Democratic tenure in the Philippines emphasizes political gamesmanship and patronage that allowed them to effectively "steal" the credit for the democratization of the Philippines for partisan gains against the Republicans.

The native policy of Sir Theophilus Shepstone was influential in the evolution and formation of mid-nineteenth century Natal. From 1845 to the incorporation of Natal into the Union of South Africa in 1910, the native policy of Theophilus Shepstone dictated the organization and control of a native population of well over 100,000. The establishment and makeup of this system was an important institution in not only the history of Natal, but South Africa as a whole. While Shepstone was significantly impacted by the events of his early life, the main aspect of Shepstone's policy remained the Locations System. This system, created by the Commission for the Locating of the Natives in 1847, would dominate much of Shepstone's early career in Natal, especially the challenges made to the system during the formative years of the native policy. Shepstone's work in Natal would be called into question by several government officials, including Lieutenant-Governor of Natal Benjamin Pine. This conflict with the Natal government would eventually lead to Shepstone's abandonment of the Locations System for what would become known as his "Grand Removal Scheme." While the failure of this scheme would lead to the complete incorporation of the locations system, the longevity of the locations system itself is a product of the astuteness of Shepstone. While the colony of Natal was significantly impacted by economic and social factors, Shepstone remains one of the most influential figures in the evolution of the native policy of British Natal.

This dissertation traces the relationship between the cultural formations of 1980s U.S. imperialism and the ascendance of neoliberal capitalism. Analyzing government documents, popular and literary fiction, movement memoirs and photography, and popular music, the dissertation argues that neoliberal discourses, logics, and affects were articulated by state and university representations of U.S. imperialism, as well as by the feminist and solidarity movement cultures that attempted to oppose the United States' overt and covert interventions in the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The dissertation demonstrates how the university, the military, and the state reconfigured the materialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist imperatives of 1960s and 1970s movement cultural formations into fantasies of neoliberal recognition and tools for the production of neoliberal entrepreneurial subjectivities. But it also tracks how representations of U.S. imperialism provided resources for U.S. subjects to adjust affectively to new neoliberal dislocations and temporalities. Chapter 1 contends that sex radical memoirs by Kate Millet, Joan Nestle, Cherríe Moraga, and Samuel Delaney offered a vision of sexual solidarity politics that reinforced neoliberal arguments favoring economic privatization and apolitical citizenship. Chapters 2 and 3 show how these movement visions of desire and intimacy extended to the Caribbean and Central America, abetting U.S. imperialist violence and neoliberal economic transformations. I argue that Paule Marshall and Audre Lorde's cultural feminist attempts to reclaim a lost Caribbean heritage helped lay the affective groundwork for Grenada's neoliberalization, then examine how Central America solidarity movement culture, including fiction and photography by Barbara Kingsolver and Susan Meiselas, similarly naturalized neoliberal logics of privacy and intimacy. The second half of the dissertation turns to literary and popular culture, demonstrating how images and sounds of U.S. imperialism registered and soothed anxieties over new neoliberal economic conditions. Chapter 4 asserts that creative writing program fiction by Robert Olen Butler, Tobias Wolff, and Lorrie Moore mobilized the figure of the Vietnam veteran to offer readers a model for managing the volatility of post-Fordist capitalism. Chapter 5 contends that the pop/rock love-gone-wrong songs that scored the U.S. invasion of Panama offered a new genre of explanation for U.S. imperialism in the neoliberal age. / 2023-03-31T00:00:00Z

This dissertation explores a history of prosperity in Egypt from the vantage point of engineering works. It examines an Ottoman-Egyptian conception and organisation of prosperity and shows how it was unmade by practices of profit-making implemented by British civil engineers and colonial officials. The dissertation explores the case of one engineering project, namely the Egyptian railways, which were built over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In disputes over routes, connections, construction methods, costs and accounts, Ottoman-Egyptian engineers and officials attempted to organise the country's possibilities through “entanglements” with agrarian forms of life and particular configurations of debt, money and commodities. Ending with the decades of the Anglo-French financial control and British occupation of Egypt, the dissertation shows how “interest” and “development” emerged to reflect the priorities of European bondholders to whom the railways were pledged. In considering “interest” and “development,” the dissertation provides a colonial history of two of the most persistent economic categories.

This dissertation explores the layering of colonial and imperial processes in the Northern Rio Grande region of North America from a material perspective. It investigates how different outside influences shaped the development of San Antonio del Embudo, a vecino land grant community, from the 18th to 20th centuries. Based on historical, archaeological, and anthropological research, the study traces the accumulation and impact of various processes on Embudo. It places particular emphasis on how vecino life responded to existing and emerging Indigenous political and economic dynamics and the impact of later American colonialism. The dissertation analyzes excavation data to track changing settlement patterns over time and examines ceramics found in excavation contexts to understand Embudo's role in the regional ceramic economy. Additionally, it draws on archival records and community knowledge to aid in archaeological interpretation. This work reveals the multifaceted social position of vecinos in the Northern Rio Grande. Vecinos have, at times, embodied Spanish colonial policies and aspirations. Yet they have also forged long-term relations with Pueblo nations, negotiated an ambivalent relationship to American settler colonialism, and developed distinct ways of dwelling in the region through centuries of navigating Spanish, American, and Indigenous influences.