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The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism
Examines how “Indianness” has propagated U.S. conceptions of empire
In 1761 and again in 1769, European scientists raced around the world to observe the transit of Venus, a rare astronomical event in which the planet Venus passes in front of the sun. In The Transit of Empire, Jodi A. Byrd explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. Byrd argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable “Indianness” that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources.
Examining an array of literary texts, historical moments, and pending legislations—from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s vote in 2007 to expel Cherokee Freedmen to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill—Byrd demonstrates that inclusion into the multicultural cosmopole does not end colonialism as it is purported to do. Rather, that inclusion is the very site of the colonization that feeds U.S. empire.
Byrd contends that the colonization of American Indian and indigenous nations is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future where the losses of indigenous peoples are not only visible and, in turn, grieveable, but where indigenous peoples have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms.
In 1761 and again in 1769, European scientists raced around the world to observe the transit of Venus, a rare astronomical event in which the planet Venus passes in front of the sun. In The Transit of Empire, Jodi A. Byrd explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. Byrd argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable “Indianness” that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources.
Examining an array of literary texts, historical moments, and pending legislations—from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s vote in 2007 to expel Cherokee Freedmen to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill—Byrd demonstrates that inclusion into the multicultural cosmopole does not end colonialism as it is purported to do. Rather, that inclusion is the very site of the colonization that feeds U.S. empire.
Byrd contends that the colonization of American Indian and indigenous nations is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future where the losses of indigenous peoples are not only visible and, in turn, grieveable, but where indigenous peoples have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms.
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
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1200 people want to read
About the author
Jodi A. Byrd
2 books14 followersJodi A. Byrd is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and assistant professor of American Indian studies and English at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 6, 2019
"By foundationally accepting the general premise that racialization (along with the concomitant interlocking oppressions of class, gender,and sexuality) causes the primary violences of U.S. politics in national and international arenas, multicultural liberalism has aligned itself with settler colonialism despite professing the goal to disrupt and intervene in global forms of dominance through investments in colorblind equality. Simply put, prevailing understandings of race and racialization within U.S. post- colonial, area, and queer studies depend upon an historical aphasia of the conquest of indigenous peoples." (p. xxxvi).
August 16, 2012
brilliant and gutsy book. must-read, esp. for those invested in the intersection of postcolonial and indigenous studies.
March 6, 2016
An unbelievably interesting thesis and work of critical theory. Generally, her thesis is that "Indian-ness" is a sign to signify the need for domination of Empire. However, Byrd's lack of clarity and prolixity prevents the reader who is not totally immersed in post-structuralism from following along. Aside from not explaining her use theorists (her chapter on Derrida and Deleuze is nearly unreadable), I found her use of the concept of specter/spectral/haunting, based off of Derrida own found in "Specters of Marx", to be enviously creative and conceptually powerful. As was her use of Zizek's parallax view. While I did not understand everything, Byrd showed me some different ways to theorize power and Empire, and for that, I am grateful to have read this book.
February 4, 2023
Honestly hands down the most breathtakingly powerful and comprehensive work of scholarship I have read. Redefines what is possible in critical theory and academic writing in general. Over ten years old and still gut-punch relevant, prescient as heck.
I’m not going to attempt a full summary, as others will have done this better than I ever could—as more accomplished readers, writers, thinkers, and also given I’m a white settler in so-called australia. But as I am privileged to think in-company with Indigenous scholars in this place, this text has powerfully illuminated and reinforced for me that whatever thinking and activism (and artmaking) I am doing, no matter how radical and liberatory my intentions, it is grounded ontologically on and in-relation-to stolen Indigenous Land and sovereignty:
“As the liberal state and its supporters and critics struggle over the meaning of pluralism, habituation, inclusion, and enfranchisement, indigenous peoples and nations, *who provide the ontological and literal ground for such debates*, are continually deferred into a past that never happened and a future that will never come.” (p 221, emphasis added)
For this reason, “indigenous peoples must be central to any theorizations of the conditions of postcoloniality, empire, and death-dealing regimes that arise out of indigenous lands” (p xiv). Indigenous peoples and thinkers are the originary thinkers and embodied presences of “survivance” (Vizenor) from which any theorisation might be possible. Byrd suggests “reading mnemonically”, that is, “to connect the violences and genocides of colonization to cultural productions and political movements in order to disrupt the elisions of multicultural liberal democracy that seeks to rationalize the originary historical traumas that birthed settler colonialism through inclusion” (p xii).
They end the book with the profoundly generous statement that “it is time to imagine indigenous decolonization as a process that restores life and allows settler, arrivant, and native to apprehend and grieve together the violences of U.S. empire” (p 229). I would argue this extends to other settler colonial contexts, such as australia, but requires the deep commitment to honouring the ontological grounding of Indigenous Peoples, Lands (Nations), thought/theorising, sovereignty and survivance, and to Truth Telling of histories and ongoing complicities that lead you (as individual/as social category/as settler state) to being/implicated in this place.
Enormous and continuous thank yous to Prof Jodi A. Byrd for this text.
I’m not going to attempt a full summary, as others will have done this better than I ever could—as more accomplished readers, writers, thinkers, and also given I’m a white settler in so-called australia. But as I am privileged to think in-company with Indigenous scholars in this place, this text has powerfully illuminated and reinforced for me that whatever thinking and activism (and artmaking) I am doing, no matter how radical and liberatory my intentions, it is grounded ontologically on and in-relation-to stolen Indigenous Land and sovereignty:
“As the liberal state and its supporters and critics struggle over the meaning of pluralism, habituation, inclusion, and enfranchisement, indigenous peoples and nations, *who provide the ontological and literal ground for such debates*, are continually deferred into a past that never happened and a future that will never come.” (p 221, emphasis added)
For this reason, “indigenous peoples must be central to any theorizations of the conditions of postcoloniality, empire, and death-dealing regimes that arise out of indigenous lands” (p xiv). Indigenous peoples and thinkers are the originary thinkers and embodied presences of “survivance” (Vizenor) from which any theorisation might be possible. Byrd suggests “reading mnemonically”, that is, “to connect the violences and genocides of colonization to cultural productions and political movements in order to disrupt the elisions of multicultural liberal democracy that seeks to rationalize the originary historical traumas that birthed settler colonialism through inclusion” (p xii).
They end the book with the profoundly generous statement that “it is time to imagine indigenous decolonization as a process that restores life and allows settler, arrivant, and native to apprehend and grieve together the violences of U.S. empire” (p 229). I would argue this extends to other settler colonial contexts, such as australia, but requires the deep commitment to honouring the ontological grounding of Indigenous Peoples, Lands (Nations), thought/theorising, sovereignty and survivance, and to Truth Telling of histories and ongoing complicities that lead you (as individual/as social category/as settler state) to being/implicated in this place.
Enormous and continuous thank yous to Prof Jodi A. Byrd for this text.
Want to read
October 25, 2020Complicating Barker’s view of voluntarism, Jodi Byrd’s theorization of settler colonialism accounts for the involuntary conditions of migration. She offers the term arrivant “to signify those people forced into the Americas through the violence of European and Anglo-American colonialism and imperialism around the globe.” For Byrd, structures of coerced migration distinguish the arrivant from the settler.
June 13, 2024
Definitely deserves a longer review at some point. The first book that an old debate coach recommended to me, I understood very little of the analysis in this book back in high school. What does Byrd want to reveal through the critiques of specific events? I think this quote in the introduction sums up a lot:
"And though I do critique the elisions and logics that have continued to inform settler colonial politics that have remained deeply rooted within liberal humanism’s investments in the individual, in the singular, and in the racializations of white possession, I also want to imagine cacophonously, to understand that the historical processes that have created our contemporary moment have affected everyone at various points along their transits with and against empire."
Chapter 6, in particular, is uniquely discomforting from the perspective of an Asian American. But I think Byrd's ultimate contention is that we cannot understand colonization through the framing of racialization, despite their hesitancy to say this is always true (justifiably so).
"...analyses of competing oppressions reproduce colonialist discourses even when they attempt to
disrupt and transform participatory democracy away from its origins in slavery, genocide, and indentureship. One reason why a “postracial” and just democratic society is a lost cause in the United States is that it is always already conceived through the prior disavowed and misremembered colonization of indigenous lands that cannot be ended by further inclusion or more participation."
"And though I do critique the elisions and logics that have continued to inform settler colonial politics that have remained deeply rooted within liberal humanism’s investments in the individual, in the singular, and in the racializations of white possession, I also want to imagine cacophonously, to understand that the historical processes that have created our contemporary moment have affected everyone at various points along their transits with and against empire."
Chapter 6, in particular, is uniquely discomforting from the perspective of an Asian American. But I think Byrd's ultimate contention is that we cannot understand colonization through the framing of racialization, despite their hesitancy to say this is always true (justifiably so).
"...analyses of competing oppressions reproduce colonialist discourses even when they attempt to
disrupt and transform participatory democracy away from its origins in slavery, genocide, and indentureship. One reason why a “postracial” and just democratic society is a lost cause in the United States is that it is always already conceived through the prior disavowed and misremembered colonization of indigenous lands that cannot be ended by further inclusion or more participation."
April 15, 2024
Read for a seminar-- super dense but super provocative and challenging arguments about US multiculturalism and the logics of settler colonialism, all through a poetic set of motifs of transit and movement
November 6, 2022
Long live indigenous critical theory. I’m still figuring out how parallax view works but happy to endlessly return to this text and make it move.
September 6, 2025
Reading native Hawaiian self articulation through varied moments of differentiation from and uptake of “Indianness” was absolutely killer. Wow
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews