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

Abstract

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