Living the Dream After White Australia: The White Possessive

In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@jonpiccini) discuss The White Possessive by Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Goenpul woman from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia and is Professor of Indigenous Research at the University of Queensland.

Moreton-Robinson’s work provides a root-and-branch critique of modernity from the perspective of Indigenous Sovereignty and produces a set of critical concepts to think against the operation of race and whiteness both within Australia and beyond.

Other sources mentioned include The Act of Disappearing (meanjin.com.au) by Amy McQuire and the work of Onyeka Nubia, David Roediger and Noel Ignatiev

Listeners should be aware that this show discusses racism, including racist violence.

Music by Chasing Ghost

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Living The Dream After White Australia Ep3: White Nation

In this episode Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) continue their discussion about race, whiteness and Australia. This time they are reading Ghassan Hage’s classic of ‘90s Theory’ White Nation . We talk through his ideas about Whiteness, White Nationalism and fantasy, his critique of tolerance and multiculturalism and try to work out what these ideas give us and also what they miss. How does Hage’s work reflect the changes in Australian society, its internal conflicts and the ruptures and continuations in radical ideas?

We finish this episode with Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face – picked as an example of a particular kind of humour produced by 70s/80s multiculturalism. Since then we have discovered that Joe Dolce, a self-declared Leftist, has moved over to writing for Quadrant, largely it seems due as a reaction to cultural debates. So there you go.

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Living The Dream After White Australia Ep2: A New Britannia

In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@JonPiccini) discuss Humphrey McQueen’s A New Britannia. This is the first of three books we are reading as part of a series on race and capitalism in Australia,

We try to come to grips with his argument and its explanation of racism as arising from the specifics of class formation in Australia, how it challenged established Leftwing thought and its implications for today.

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We reference

Two Radical Legends: Russel Ward, Humphrey McQueen and the New Left Challenge in Australian Historiography

Music by Redgum

Living The Dream After White Australia Part 1

This is part 1 of our new reading series on race in Australia and the struggle against it. Over the next 3 or so months Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) will be reading A New Britannia by Humphrey McQueen, White Nation by Ghassan Hage and The White Possessive by Aileen Moreton-Robinson.  In this episode we set out why we are doing this, our thinking at this point in time and briefly discuss what the White Australia Policy was and wasn’t and the whys and whynots.

We encourage all our listeners to read with us and join us in the discussion.

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Correction: I mention Nelson Peery as being a member of DRUM/League of Revolutionary Black Workers. He wasn’t. You can find an interview with him about his life and works here

As for DRUM and the League you can find an interview with Darryl ‘Waistline’ Mitchell and Donald Abdul Roberts here

You should read Hard Crackers and its recent offshoot (split?) Gasoline and Grits too

Insurgent Notes has a special issue dedicate to the life and works of Noel Ignatiev

Music by Wyatt Waddell