About

Background

I am Rowland Keshena Robinson (he/him/his), an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. I belong to the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, and I have been living and working on the territories of our relatives the Anishinaabeg and the Rotinonshón:ni, in the region currently called southern Ontario, since 2005.

I earned my PhD in sociology in 2020 with a dissertation titled Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts: An Autoethnographic Account of the Imaginarium of Late Capitalist/Colonialist Storytelling. In this work, I explored how Nativeness is shaped, used, and transmitted within the philosophical, racial, legal, political, semiotic, and narrative frameworks of United States and Canadian settler colonialism, from an Indigenous, decolonial, and anthropological perspective.

Before I became a full-time Assistant Professor in the Department in the Summer of 2022, I worked as a sessional instructor in the same department, as well as in Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, and Social Development Studies at Renison University College. I also taught in Indigenous Studies at St. Paul’s University College and was the Coordinator of the Indigenous Studies Minor Program.

Teaching

In the Department of Political Science, I currently teach, or am developing, a number of courses, including:

• PSCI 228: Introduction to Indigenous Political Thought\
• PSCI 326: Multiculturalism and Democracy: Within, Against, and Beyond
• PSCI 362: Government and Politics of Indigenous Peoples
• PSCI 368: Global Discourses on Colonialism
• PSCI 462: Contemporary Indigenous Political Theory

Interests

My interests are varied and sometimes divergent. My work of my doctoral studies, focused on the question of Native identity and “Nativeness.” In this context, I examined questions such as how Nativeness is defined and understood by the state and the law, as well as by Native people themselves, and how Nativeness relates to more abstract issues, such as the shape and purpose of Native cultural production, the criteria for being “authentically” Native, the ontological position of Nativeness in North America, the meaning of Nativeness as a sign within systems of signification, and the impact of the visible consumption of Nativeness (as identity, as cultural product, as ethical stance) within settler-colonial ideologies and narratives.

In addition, my work engages with and addresses questions of sovereignty and law, dispossession and territoriality, race and racialization, fascist and anti-fascist movements, decolonization, ideology, narrative, and mythmaking, and political economy. Both academically and politically I also have a long-standing interest in various theoretical perspectives, from Marxist cultural theory (Lukács, Korsch, Postone, Neumann, Adorno, Gramsci, Marcuse, Benjamin, Althusser, Jameson, Debord, Negri) and political economy (World-Systems Analysis, Third Worldism), modern anarchism and communization (Tiqqun, the Invisible Committee), semiotics (Saussure, Peirce, Barthes, Greimas), poststructuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard), and decolonial thought (the EZLN, Fanon, Mignolo, Dussel, Quijano, Maldonado-Torres, Wynter).

Besides my academic work, I have many personal interests in philosophy. I think of myself as a non-specialist lay student of the Eurowestern philosophical tradition, which is the cultural and textual foundations of the society I live in. My self-study mainly focuses on what Fredric Jameson might call “the Moderns” (Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche), but I intend to eventually also explore the Ancients (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle). I am particularly drawn to the “continental” tradition, especially phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Löwith), existentialism (Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, Lewis Gordon, Paget Henry), in addition to the Marxism, structuralism and poststructuralism I already mentioned. I am also tentatively venturing into the analytic school, especially Wittgenstein. However, as much as these modes of thought interest me, I always study these ideas in relation to Europe’s rise as the dominant world power, and how colonialism and coloniality are the hidden and silent bases for the evolution of Eurowestern philosophy.

Beyond this, religious philosophy and the philosophy of religion are also among my interests, especially the traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism (Mādhyamaka, Tiāntāi, Huáyán, and Chán/Zen/Thiền schools), Daoism, Sufism and the various forms of Shīʿa Islam, and North American Indigenous thought. I am also fascinated by the history of Christianity, as I grew up in a strongly Christian-influenced country, but was raised secularly with a former Roman Catholic and Anglican as parents, leaving me curious about the beliefs and history of those around me. In particular, I have long been drawn to topics such as textual criticism of the Old and New Testaments, doctrinal and theological debates, mysticism, and philosophy. I am also curious, but have never truly dived into, non-mainstream Christianities and other religious movements which sprouted from the same or nearby soil (Gnosticism, for example, as well as Mandaeism, Manichaeism, Marcionism, and Zoroastrianism).

Since I was a child, my father inspired me to love the sciences, especially physics (astrophysics, quantum physics, theoretical physics) and evolutionary biology (from Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould). I have always enjoyed reading authors such as Lee Smolin, Carlo Rovelli, and Roger Penrose, even if I do not understand everything they say. As my academic work and interests evolved, I also became deeply interested in the philosophy and sociology of science, and how they relate to questions such as what is science, how to do science, what is scientific knowledge, how science is connected to colonialism, and how the dominant scientific approach obscures, silences, or suppresses other ways of knowing and seeing the world.