Toward a Discourse on Recreational Colonialism: Critically Engaging the Haunted Spaces of Outdoor Recreation on the Colorado Plateau

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates the ways in which place-based belongings are constituted through outdoor recreation. By applying material-discursive theories of rhetoric to spaces of outdoor recreation on the Colorado Plateau such as the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, rock climbing landscapes in the Navajo Nation, adventure mountain biking practices that trace a 19th century stagecoach route, and ultra running trails at Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation and on ancient trails that connect Hopi Villages, and elsewhere, I examine the affective relationships between those activities, landscapes, and cultures. Drawing on spatial and environmental rhetoric and critical theories of race, gender, and sexuality, I analyze affective investments in white settler colonialism to argue that such spaces are more than recreational. The framework I have developed to better explain such spaces, Recreational Colonialism, positions outdoor recreation as the new language of colonialism. Recreational Colonialism is both a discourse and a performance that-in many ways explored in this dissertation-connect outdoor recreational discourses to a trifecta of oppressions through which white settler colonialism depends: white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy.