• queermunist she/her
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    2 months ago

    Fanon doesn’t go into the distinctions, per se, but I have my own.

    Being bourgeois is always a choice and they can stop being bourgeois any time they want. Some are born into their material relations by inheritance, of course, but any business owner can get a real job whenever they want or could give up their ownership of the means of production to their workforce. Being bourgeois is not just something they are, it’s something they choose to do.

    Settlers, by contrast, can only stop being settlers if they leave the settler colony. The ones that migrated obviously can just go back home, but what about their children? For a settler born on the settlement, being a settler is something they are and was never something they chose to do. If the child of settlers wants to stop being a settler, the only choice is to become a traitor.

    I think that puts settlement-born-settlers into a distinct material position that can’t be related to being bourgeois.