Beyond white virtue: reflections on the first decade of critical race and whiteness studies in the Australian academy

This article undertakes two related tasks. Firstly, it provides one account of the origins of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association ACRAWSA) in 2003 and considers some of its significant events, publications and relationships. Secondly, it reflects on the survival of critical race and whiteness studies(CRWS) in the cultural space of the neo-liberal university. The arguments of three critical race and whiteness studies scholars are used to support me on this journey. To understand the challenges of thinking, speaking and writing critically about matters of race and whiteness, I draw on David Theo Goldberg’s distinction between anti- racism and anti-racialism in The Threat of Race (2009). I draw on Sara Ahmed’s study On Being Included (2012) to explain an increasing disarticulation between an anti- racist politics centred on equality—on the one hand—and ‘diversity’ talk and practice —on the other. The last part of the talk turns to the matter of Indigenous sovereignty, drawing on a key concept from the work of ACRAWSA’s founding president, Aileen Moreton-Robinson. I argue that ACRAWSA’s focus on everyday manifestations of the “possessive investment in patriarchal white sovereignty” (2011) have provided intellectual and ethical resilience in the face of the neo-liberal university’s radically individualising trajectory. I conclude with a call to scholars working within CRWS to resist the gendered temptation of white virtue as we enter the Association’s second decade

Culture as ‘Ways of Life’ or a Mask of Racism? Culturalisation and the Decline of Universalist Views

I begin and conclude the article by arguing that culturalisation has contributed significantly to the decline of the Left and its universal ideals. In the current climate of public opinion, ‘race’ is no longer used, at least openly, as a scientific truth to justify racism. Instead, ‘culture’ has become the mysterious term that has made the perpetuation of racist discourse possible. ‘Culture’, in this newracist worldview, is the unquestioned set of traits continually attributed to the non-White Other, essentially to de-world her Being and de-individualise her personhood. In other words, ‘culture’, as it is used in the old anthropological sense, is the magic incantation with which the Other is demonised, mystified, and/or ridiculously oversimplified. I focus on the phenomenon of ‘culturalisation’ as a common new-racist method of de-politicising the Other’s affairs and surrounding socio-political phenomena. The article is an attempt to discredit the paradigm of ‘culture’ as a pseudo-concept used commonly in cultural racism. This cultural racism routinely assumes ‘culture’ to be a natural given almost exactly as the pseudo-scientific paradigm ‘race’ was (and is still) used in some discourses of biological racism. If mentality X attributes categorical differences to different groups of people based on A and A is assumed to be natural, ahistorical, and/or metaphysical, then X is a racist mentality. Obviously, A does not have to be skin-color or ‘blood’ in order for X to be racist

Racialised desires: the colonial preoccupations of fantasy

The articles in this special themed section were submitted by presenters at the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association’s 2012 Annual Conference on the theme ‘Racialising Desire’. This introduction briefly outlines the subject of ‘racialised desires’ while canvasing the articles collected within. In this so-called ‘post-race’ age, the perpetual racialisation of desire and the anxieties produced by interracial sex and romance, serve as embarrassing reminders of the continuing intimacies of coloniality. To recognise the existence of racialised desires means insisting upon the sociality of fantasy. The fact that our carnal lusts, erotic daydreams and romantic longings are racially inflected (if not delimited) is symptomatic of the intimate reach of the empire. Racialised desires survive as the seductive workings of coloniality. They testify to the extent to which coloniality embeds itself in the personal, the private and the psyche, making it difficult to dislodge without in some sense dismantling modern subjectivities

Different antiracisms : Critical race and whiteness studies perspectives on activist and NGO discussions in Finland

This thesis explores antiracism by activists and professionalized civil society in mid-2010s Finland. It develops and diversifies an established but less elaborated notion that antiracism is not merely opposition to racism. As such, the thesis provides analytical interpretations of antiracism’s variations and the scope and limits of different antiracist approaches and the related definitions of racism. The analysis is situated in a period when several discussions on antiracism were evolving. The study builds on interviews with activists engaged in grassroots antiracist initiatives; texts produced by antiracist bloggers; non-governmental organizations’ antiracist campaigns; and a complementary set of participatory observation in antiracist events. The different antiracist initiatives observed in the study could be described in generalizing terms as association-driven antiracism; antiracist self-representation by people of colour; antiracism against the far and extreme right; and antiracist activism for migrants’ rights. The analysis of the data is based on an understanding that the observed antiracisms both reproduce and, at least locally, reshape the existing discussions on race and racialization. The dissertation is situated in the field of critical race and whiteness studies. The key concepts derive from critical analyses of race, racism and antiracism. More specifically, the thesis draws on a set of concepts that have been used to explicate the ways in which race and racism or normative whiteness are systematically dismissed as a part of social reality. At the same time, the thesis strives to show the ways in which the hegemonic order is challenged in the context of the data. The thesis arrives at four main conclusions. First, it addresses differences between conceptions of racism as an exception, a singular, event-bound phenomenon and a part of a structure. While exceptionalist views on racism and discussion on events are common in the data, there are efforts to address racism as structural phenomenon. Relatedly, as the second main finding, the thesis shows how exceptionalist understandings of racism are produced through intersectional categorizations other than those constituting racialization. This means that the societal significance of racism is diminished through connecting racism to societal margins or connecting it to a specific age group. The third main finding suggests that antiracisms differ from each other significantly according to the ways they (do not) address racialization and whiteness. Finally, a majority of the antiracist initiatives explored focus on different types of exclusions as opposed to understandings of racism as exploitation. In brief, the thesis discusses the distinct uses of the label antiracism, and antiracist conceptions of racism in civil society in Finland and it provides analytical understandings of similarities and differences between distinct antiracist approaches, strategies, and ways of conceiving racism.Väitöskirja tarkastelee aktivistien ja kansalaisjärjestöjen ajamaa antirasismia/ rasisminvastaisuutta 2010-luvun puolivälin kansalaisyhteiskunnassa Suomessa. Väitöskirja kehittelee edelleen ja monipuolistaa tunnustettua havaintoa siitä, että rasisminvastaisuus ei ole pelkistettävissä rasismin vastakohdaksi. Siten väitöskirja tarjoaa analyyttisia tulkintoja rasisminvastaisuuden eri muodoista, erilaisten antirasismien laajuudesta ja rajoista sekä näihin liittyen rasismia koskevista erilaisista määritelmistä. Analyysi sijoittuu aikakauteen, jolloin monet rasisminvastaisuuteen liittyvät keskustelut voimistuivat. Tutkimus perustuu seuraaviin aineistoihin: haastattelut ruohonjuuritason antirasistisissa aloitteissa toimivien aktivistien kanssa, rasismia vastustavien bloggareiden tekstit, kansalaisjärjestöjen rasisminvastaiset kampanjat sekä mainittuja aineistoja täydentävät havainnot rasisminvastaisista tapahtumista. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltuja erilaisia rasisminvastaisuuden muotoja voi luonnehtia yleistävästi seuraavin määrein: yhdistysvetoinen antirasismi, PoC:n antirasistinen itsemäärittely, antirasismi ääri- ja laitaoikeiston rasismia vastaan sekä siirtolaisten oikeuksiin keskittyvä antirasismi. Aineiston analyysi perustuu ymmärrykseen siitä, että tarkastellut rasisminvastaisuuden muodot toistavat ja ainakin paikallisesti myös muokkaavat olemassa olevia rodun ja rodullistamisen diskursseja. Väitöskirja sijoittuu kriittisen rodun ja valkoisuuden tutkimuksen alaan. Keskeiset käsitteet juontuvat rodun, rasismin ja antirasismin kriittisistä analyyseista. Tarkemmin sanottuna työ perustuu käsitteisiin, joiden avulla on avattu sitä, miten rotu, rasismi tai normatiivinen valkoisuus sosiaalisen todellisuuden osina systemaattisesti ohitetaan. Samaan aikaan väitöskirja pyrkii havainnollistamaan sitä, miten hegemoninen järjestys myös haastetaan aineiston kontekstissa. Väitöskirjan tulokset esitetään neljän johtopäätöksen kautta. Ensimmäinen niistä koskee sitä, miten rasismin määritellään yhtäältä poikkeukselliseksi, yksilakiseksi ja tapahtumiin sidotuksi mutta toisaalta myös rakenteelliseksi ilmiöksi. Samaan aikaan kun rasismin esittäminen poikkeuksena on tavallista tarkastellussa aineistossa, aineisto sisältää myös esimerkkejä siitä, miten rasismia käsitellään rakenteellisena ilmiönä. Tähän liittyen työn toinen keskeinen johtopäätös on se, että rasismin esittäminen poikkeuksena tapahtuu myös muiden kuin rodullistamiseen suoraan liittyvien intersektionaalisten kategorisointien avulla. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että rasismin yhteiskunnallista merkitystä vähätellään kytkemällä se marginaalisiin ryhmiin tai tiettyyn ikäluokkaan. Kolmas johtopäätös koskee sitä, miten rasisminvastaisuuden muodot eroavat toisistaan siinä, miten ne käsittelevät (tai eivät käsittele) rodullistamista tai valkoisuutta. Viimeinen neljästä johtopäätöksestä on, että tarkastellut antirasismit keskittyvät nimenomaisesti erilaisiin ulossulkemisen muotoihin sen sijaan, että rasismi käsitteellistettäisiin riistoksi. Lyhyesti sanottuna väitöskirja käsittelee antirasismin eli rasisminvastaisuuden erilaisia sovelluksia ja rasismia koskevaa ymmärrystä Suomeen sijoittuvassa kansalaisyhteiskunnassa. Työ tarjoaa käsitteellisiä näkökulmia erilaisten rasisminvastaisten lähestymistapojen yhtäläisyyksiin ja eroihin sekä niissä valittuihin strategioihin ja käsityksiin rasismista

Notes on Captain Cook’s gambling habit: Settling accounts of white possession

This article brings critical race and whiteness theory and gambling studies together with recent academic ‘history experiments’ to engage with a field of academic research surrounding the figure of Captain Cook. An investigation of how ‘Cook culture’ is refracted through everyday practices, spaces and products of gambling highlights a habitus of white possession which continues to define Australian belonging against Indigenous sovereignty claims. I show how the belief that Cook, as an agent of history, couldn’t have done otherwise in his first encounters with Indigenous people in this place renders non- Indigenous people incapable of being otherwise than subjects of white possession. After linking processes of white home-making to a gambling logic implicit to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the illusio, I conclude with personal reflections to illustrate the role of fantasy in sustaining everyday manifestations of Cook Culture

Ever widening circles of compassion

This paper argues that Darwin’s work relied upon patriarchal white assumptions of entitlement to knowledge, their objects and the processes of knowledge production. It assumed an objective observer and fashioned their conquest of knowledge, knowledge production and the objects of knowledge to fit patriarchal white supremacist views. I posit that this materialist view has been promulgated as the only legitimate view, despite being debunked within quantum physics and quantum cosmology, and has led us to these dark times. The consequences risk the future of the planet and all its sentient inhabitants. However, Charles Darwin also posited in his meticulous observations that evolutionary development depends on ever-widening circles of compassion as the deepest primal instinct of all creatures – a view shared by First Nations peoples, such as Indigenous Australians colonised under Liberal/Neoliberal regimes and Tibetan (and others) colonised under Communist regimes. Neoliberalism has increased the intensity of consequences in Australia; however, this paper argues that the concept of a shared origin is the fundamental error about the nature of reality presented in metaphysical realism in triad with extractive possessive consumerism. The latter prioritises economic growth and hedonism and values only external happiness rather than a Eunomia understanding of wellbeing, where Eunomia refers to a general sense of inner wellbeing not caused by perceived external stimuli. CRAWS scholars can draw on ever widening circles of compassion as First Nation and critical ally scholars, educators and activists, to reorient our past understanding and present mindful embodiment for a fiercely compassionate future

The Catastrophe of Images

A review of:Allen MeekBiopolitical Media: Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare LifeRoutledge, Abingdon, 2016ISBN 9781138887060 RRP £90.00 (hb