Colonise

An act of domination, whether territorial or politico-ideological. A deliberate act promoting processes of expansion and exploitation, establishing new forms upon preceding landscapes, thereby transforming them. Such processes have historically involved and provoked migrations of varying levels of impact and reach—witness, for instance, the interplanetary scale currently unfolding—alongside conflict and contestation: wars and other modes of violence, including symbolic violence, enacted through varied forms of subjection. Extreme instances of colonisation, both past and present, stand documented, demonstrating the persistence of the ancient practice of subjugating peoples, imposing upon them new scenarios and conditions—enslavement, for instance. Colonisation further presupposes invasion as either strategy or activity inherent to the very act itself.

Silvio Luiz Cordeiro