Colonization, coloniality and bio-power: biopolitics in Queensland, Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay illustrates how a Foucauldian theory of power could re-examine postcolonial, coloniality or colonization contexts, as opposed to the current structuralist and hierarchal theories of understanding power that colonization studies, such as coloniality/modernity or postcolonial studies, use to theorize colonization and race. I argue that a structuralist and hierarchal conceptualization of power relations in understanding colonization and its relationship with racism can be problematic, and that the Foucauldian heterarchical (non-hierarchal) understanding of power relations instead draws a more complete picture of the operation of colonization. In order to demonstrate this claim, I firstly briefly explain how colonization has been mainly theorized through postcolonial and coloniality studies. Then I introduce the relevance of Michel Foucault’s work in the problem of colonization, focusing on his theories of racism and the idea of biopolitics. Then I illustrate how a heterarchical theory of biopolitical power was used against Indigenous Australians in Queensland via the implementation of the Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act of 1897. Lastly, I offer some preliminary notes for conceptualizing the global assemblage of the ‘State of Exception’ in the context of colonial Queensland, Australia.