Olivia C. Harrison. Natives Against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2023. Paperback. ($28.00). 284 pp. ISBN 9781517910600
In six chapters, a prologue, an introduction, and an epilogue, Olivia C. Harrison’s Natives Against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France illuminates how antiracist, anti-nativist, and pro-migrant social movements in post-World-War-II France have been linked concretely and ideologically to anticolonial struggles in Palestine and Turtle Island. She thereby offers a compelling argument as to how French nativism by white supremacists is inherently connected to France’s history as a colonial power as well as the Republic’s continuing coloniality. A masterful retort to the French far right who perceive themselves as sharing an identity with Indigenous peoples of former and current colonies – she demonstrates that, in fact, (formerly) colonized immigrants in the French republic are the kin of the colonized Indigenous of the world – as well as a furthering of the ongoing critique of liberal French Republicanism’s coloniality, Harrison’s book is a valuable resource for those looking to explore what she calls transindigenous identification.
The first chapter of Natives Against Nativism explores how “the first autonomous movements for migrant rights in postcolonial France” (25) framed “the struggle for migrant rights in France as an extension of the anticolonial struggle” (29-30). Here, Harrison elegantly shows how these movements perceived the rights “they [were claiming] in France [as] analogous to the rights they were denied as colonial subjects” (41). She then connects these early efforts to Bouchra Khalili’s The Tempest Society (2017). Chapter Two continues this exploration of early attempts to relate the “migrant question” with (de)coloniality by exploring how Jean Genet’s work stages the relationship between Palestinian anticolonial resistance and his critique of the coloniality of identity and French nativism. As she states it, Genet links “the Palestinian question to anticolonialism and antiracism in France in a complex critique of nativist identity” (66). In this chapter, Harrison interestingly pays particular attention to the reasons behind why Genet “never explicitly advocated for the foundation of a sovereign Palestinian nation-state” (56). In the following chapter, Harrison interrogates how the postmillennial French far right has co-opted the rhetoric of early antiracist movements. Through a reading of the literary and activist career of Farida Belghoul and her being championed by the far-right ideologue, Alain Soral, Chapter Three tracks “the paradoxical recuperation of antiracist discourse in anti-immigrant circles” (80). In so doing, Harrison reveals how French far-right appropriations of antiracist movements and ideas requires the deformation of those ideas and practices to justify and legitimize white French nativism.
Chapter Four shifts towards a visual analysis with how “the French-Algerian dramaturge Mohamed Rouabhi” (99) uses photography in order “to denaturalize” the “production of the indigène (the ‘native’) via the colonial gaze” (100). That is, Rouabhi asks how it is possible to represent colonized peoples “without reproducing the colonial cliché” (102-3). This visual analysis continues in Chapter Five through an analysis of the cinematic work of Jean-Luc Godard. This chapter demonstrates how Godard interrogated his own implication in the colonial history of Palestine through his previous representation of the colonized other. Harrison shows how Godard attempted to illuminate how Western cinema’s attempt to represent the colonized other has served to obscure their life-worlds in favor of romanticizing their political reality for Western audiences.
The body of the book then concludes with an analysis of the relationship between the “migrant question” in France and the colonization of Palestine. Through what Harrison calls a “less granular and exhaustive” (166) analysis than the other chapters, in Chapter Six she critiques the discourse “that turns (post)colonial migrants into strangers/foreigners” insofar as, she argues, it is “colonial history that produced the racialized identities” of said migrants (165). That is, the perceived “migrant question” in France is in fact part of the ongoing history of French coloniality.
Unfortunately, I am unable to include all of the details and corollaries of Harrison’s close readings throughout the body of the work (e.g., her wonderful reassessment of the archive of post-Algerian-Independence antiracist movements in France). Precise in its object of analysis and expansive in terms of the arguments developed regarding that object of analysis, Natives Against Nativism is a keystone text in terms of exploring the concrete manifestations of transindigenous identification and consciousness of the colonial history of the “migrant question” in France in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Any limitations of the book, I find, are to be seen in the introduction, where it feels as if Harrison’s argumentation is frequently truncated; the issues of Natives Against Nativism, I recommend, are not found in Harrison’s analyses or conclusions, but rather that her argumentation would profit from greater elaboration. To give just two examples: First (and, in my purview, most significantly), she admits that (formerly) colonized subjects living in France are not fighting for sovereignty, to the contrary of many Indigenous communities in Palestine and Turtle Island. She seems to gloss over this issue (p. 4) and tries to make up for it with a fascinating and provocative close reading of the concept of indigène in France (pp. 4-7). Nonetheless, this does not change that the question of sovereignty distinguishes the “migrant question” and decolonization as two distinct social movements – an ostensible aporia that is not resolved in the pages of the book. Second, she introduces the thinking of Alain de Benoist (pp. 16-9). Benoist has proved to be a difficult figure to analyze – despite being frequently associated with white nationalists, he has denounced his connections to racist white nationalist thinking and renounced his early explicitly racist work at the same time that he continues to publish his work on platforms with connections to white nationalism and, as Harrison aptly notes, to positively cite racists like Arthur de Gobineau (though, as is stated in Natives Against Nativism, Benoist consistently diminishes, ignores, and/or dehistoricizes said racism) – and the abbreviated discussion of Benoist’s work does not fully address this difficulty. For instance, Harrison argues that his work furthers the French nativist notion of “counter-colonization” (17) (i.e., France colonized the earth, and now migrants from across the world are “colonizing” France), but does not present citations of Benoist using that notion in his work, instead implying that Benoist’s thinking on “reciprocal decolonization” reflects the nativist theory of “counter-colonization”. It is precisely this distinction that has allowed Benoist to escape being definitively categorized as a white nationalist, and Harrison (as well as us, her readers) may have benefited from a full chapter dedicated to a profound critique of his thinking. Undoubtedly, Harrison has thought these issues out, and with the book totaling less than 200 pages an extension of her marvelous analysis would have been welcome.
In the end, Natives Against Nativism is a wonderful study that connects contemporary antiracist movements by migrants in France, white nationalist discourses of nativism, and decolonial struggles in settler empires. It will be of great value for scholars and students looking to understand the contemporary debates regarding migration in France, the significance of the notion of indigeneity, and contemporary articulations of intercultural decolonial struggles between Indigenous communities. Furthermore, her connection of the “migrant question” and Indigeneity is a welcome intervention in contemporary debates about decolonization. Indeed, her tracking “the conditions that turned indigènes (natives) into immigrants in France” (25) is an extremely valuable argument in current discussions of planetary Indigeneity and decoloniality. In addition, for those looking for engaged and detailed close readings of the work of Jean Genet, Jean-Luc Godard, Mohamed Rouabhi, Farida Belghoul, and all other collectives and individuals analyzed by Harrison, Natives Against Nativism will be highly appreciated.