The spiritual vulnerability of colonial settlement, I would argue, is one important reason why both Christian and secular condemnations of credulity and superstition have long been so anxious, and so resonant, in colonial modernity. As the persistence of Indigenous spiritual jurisdiction shows, however, even if those living in settler-colonial states use concepts such as property, law, and secular reason to close their ears to the steady hum of Indigenous presence on the land, the vibrations refuse to go away.
My 2018 book The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary’s Journey on Indigenous Land was part of The Immanent Frame’s forum discussion entitled Modernity’s Resonances: New Inquiries into the Secular. My contribution to that discussion can be read here.
The Story of Radio Mind asks us to pay attention to how hearing the Other is contingent on material, historical, and even personal conditions of audibility. By drawing on that method, we might consider how the “Other” is not only the colonized Indigenous figure but also the political opponent of reconciliation. Klassen therefore invites us into murkier political territory where we cannot take the conditions for listening for granted. We would do well to think more carefully about how such conditions come about.