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46 Pol. Theory 3 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/ptxa46 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Political Theory 2018, Vol. 46(1) 3-28 Theft Is Property! The ©2017 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: Recursive Logic of sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1 177/0090591717701709 Dispossession journals.sagepub.com/home/ptx $SAGE Robert Nichols' Abstract This article offers a preliminary critical-historical reconstruction of the concept of dispossession. Part I examines its role in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century struggles against European feudal land tenure. Drawing upon Marx's critique of French anarchism in particular, I identify a persistent limitation at the heart of the concept. Since dispossession presupposes prior possession, recourse to it appears conservative and tends to reinforce the very proprietary and commoditized models of social relations that radical critics generally seek to undermine. Part II turns to use of the term in Indigenous struggles against colonization, both in order to better grasp the stakes of the above problematic and suggest a way beyond it. Through a reconstruction of arguments by Indigenous scholars and activists, I seek to show the coherence and novelty of their formulation by suggesting that dispossession has come to name a unique historical process, one in which property is generated under conditions that require divestment and alienation from those who appear, only retroactively, as its original owners. In this way, theft and property are related in a recursive, rather than strictly unilinear, manner. Part III provides a specific historical example in the form of nineteenth-century US property law concerning squatters and homesteaders. Keywords dispossession, expropriation, property, theft, colonialism 'Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Corresponding Author: Robert Nichols, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, 1414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN, USA. Email: rbnichol@umn.edu