Elena Ruíz on the Architecture of Impunity: Structural Violence in the Colonial Present

Abstract

Elena Ruíz’s Structural Violence: The Makings of Settler Colonial Impunity reconceptualizes structural violence as a dynamic, self-repairing system that sustains settler colonial domination. Drawing on anti-colonial, feminist and critical race and system theories, Ruíz argues that harm operates through recursive patterns that adapt to critique and regenerate via legal, cultural and epistemic mechanisms. By introducing concepts such as “impunitycraft” and “interpretive wealth,” the book explores how settler colonialism maintains racialized and gendered hierarchies while masking violence through cultural gaslighting and epistemic capitalism. With this intervention, Ruíz engages with complex questions about the adaptation strategies of structural colonialism as a long-standing project rather than an episodic experience.