Imagining the Good Indigenous Citizen: Race War and the Pathology of Patriarchal White Sovereignty

Aileen Moreton-Robinson

doi:10.5130/csr.v15i2.2038

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v15i2.2038

Keywords:

Patriarchal white sovereignty, race war, rights, Indigenous pathology

Aileen Moreton-Robinson

Queensland University of Technology

Abstract

In June 2007, the Australian federal government sent military and policy into Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory on the premise that sexual abuse of children was rampant and a national crisis. This article draws on Foucault’s work on sovereignty and rights to argue that patriarchal white sovereignty as a regime of power deploys a discourse of pathology in the exercising of sovereign right to subjugate and discipline Indigenous people as good citizens.

Issue

Vol 15 No 2 (2009): Critical Indigenous Theory

Section

Critical Indigenous Theory (Peer Reviewed)

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Author Biography

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Queensland University of Technology

Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Goenpul woman from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia. She is Professor of Indigenous Studies, Indigenous Studies Research Network, at the Queensland University of Technology. Prior to this appointment she taught women’s studies at Flinders University and Indigenous studies at Griffith University and the University of South Australia. Her books include Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (2000), the edited collections Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (2004) and Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters (2007), and a collection co-edited with Dr Maryrose Casey and Dr Fiona Nicoll, Transnational Whiteness Matters (2008).

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Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Queensland University of Technology