In this paper, I propose that if dominant white understandings of colonisation rely upon a relatively linear interpretation of history, then the unsettling of this linearity may allow for the voicing of a critical reading of racism in Australia. In order to do this, I suggest that psychoanalysis may provide a means for understanding the everyday talk of white people in ways that may challenge the now/then accounts of history that are used to deny ongoing acts of white violence and, thus, to refuse the fact of Indigenous sovereignty. Through a brief analysis of focus group data with white Australians, I suggest that we may see repression at work when those of us who are descendants of white colonisers attempt to manage our relationship to the past. However, I also suggest that such acts of repression are never successful; they reveal the contingency of the present upon the past, and forever unsettle the location of white people in Australia.Damien W. Rigg
