Colonization

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that colonization as a set of military, socio-economic, and cultural practices extends beyond narrow definitions of territory and power. Drawing on Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the ‘contact zone’, the chapter identifies some of the extended ramifications of fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. It focuses in particular on the invasion’s consequences for the Italian migrant community in Scotland and on the response of Harlem’s African American community explored in Claude McKay’s novel, Amiable with Big Teeth, written in 1941 but published only in 2017. McKay’s novel operates across different scales from the hyper-local to the global pointing to the complexity of colonization’s effects. It reveals contradictions in categorizations of race and other social hierarchies and leads to reflection on multilingual hierarchies and the politics of translation.