Thread by @anthroprofhage

This week i presented the keynote for the Australian Anthropological Society - AAS annual conference. My paper dealt with a question I have been slowly developing for some time now: what is the nature

of Israel's relation to the west within the western colonial project? To do so, I argue that we need to explore the many strands of scholarship that help us understand the place of violence, and the modes of

positioning of the perpetrators of colonial violence, within that project:

First, we need to study the works that see colonialism as a space of multiple insertions and different ways of belongings to the colonial

project. This is to help us explore the position of those who actually engage in what I am calling 'colonial necrophilic labour' as opposed to those who mainly benefit from this labour without perpetrating it. The latter are the beneficiaries/exploiters who

reap a certain necrophilically-laced surplus from the labour of killing performed by others. This necrophilic surplus marks all the social, economic and cultural benefits gained by those inserted in the colonial project.

Second, we need to look at the ancient and modern

historical studies of racialised minorities recruited to perform this necrophilic labour. Something like a history of racialised mercenary communities, like the sepoys used by the British, and the tirailleurs sénégalais used by the French. But before that there

are the Mamluks of the Islamic Empire and even earlier the Nubians of the Egyptian empire. I've also read a bit about the 'Buffalo soldiers' in the United States but I need to explore this more.

Third, we need to investigate the relation between killing and pollution studied by

many historians and anthropologists in various parts of the world. Among the latter this is done with particular attention to cleansing rituals. This opens the way to understand the way the mercenary communities mentioned above end up being marked by the necrophilic labour that

they perform. No only do they provide those who use them with the benefits of the killings they perform but also protect them by absorbing the polluting stains that such a killing leaves on the warrior caste (see Dumézil for the Indo-European contexts).

Finally, we need to examine how these communities of polluted warriors end up being positioned after they have finished performing their labour. some like the Mamluks of the Islamic Caliphate end up seizing power, others, like the Blacks who helped the

British during the American wars end up left to rot at the margins of society.