Abstract

Locke has become a central figure in postcolonial theory in ways that at times overextend the context and content of his writing. This chapter seeks to explain this appeal by examining recurring metaphors, lacunas, and linguistic manoeuvres in Locke’s writing, arguing that they capture essential elements within colonial practices or imaginaries. Through such a mode of literary reading, the chapter traces structures of self, sovereignty, and relations )to land and to others), and shows how Locke has identified, perhaps inadvertently, elements that would become key to colonial domination. Since many of these elements emerge from ambivalences and inconsistencies—ones we find both in Locke and in the logic of settler states’ operation—what is often seen as the weakness of Locke’s argument emerges here as part of what made it, sometimes despite itself, so relevant to understanding settler colonialism.