The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty

Description

The White Possessive explores the links between race, sovereignty, and possession through themes of property: owning property, being property, and becoming propertyless. Focusing on the Australian Aboriginal context, Aileen MoretonRobinson questions current race theory in the first world and its preoccupation with foregrounding slavery and migration. The nation, she argues, is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson is professor of Indigenous studies at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and is director of the National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network. She is author of Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism and editor of several books, including Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters.

"Aileen Moreton-Robinson brilliantly shows how systematically identifying whiteness with possession and dispossession deserves foregrounding in Indigenous studies."-David Roediger, University of Kansas, author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All "The White Possessive showcases the unique intellectual contribution of Aileen Moreton-Robinson, both within Australia and internationally. Prising apart concepts of race, ethnicity, and cultural difference, her book makes visible and accountable to patriarchal white subject of possession that subtends them."-The International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies "Moreton-Robinson provides her readers with an indispensable theoretical analysis with which they can (re)think the way in which the possessive logics of whiteness structure racialised populations, particularly Indigenous subjects, experiences of (non)belonging and displacement in contemporary settler colonial life."-Sociology "Most of the essays in the volume are on Australian Indigenous issues, but have relevance globally. This book provides many thought-provoking insights that could help bridge divides between scholars of indigeneity and those of whiteness."-Tribal College Journal "Moreton-Robinson provides important conceptual tools to think through how we interpret and contest settler sovereignty today and into the future."-Antipode