Whitening Race Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism

Whitening Race comes to fruition at a time in world history and global politics when questions about race require critical investigation and engagement. Since the 1990s international scholars have developed a powerful cultural critique by making whiteness an analytical object of research. Whiteness has become the invisible norm against which other races are judged in the construction of identity, representation, subjectivity, nationalism and the law. With its focus on Australia, the book engages with relations between migration, Indigenous dispossession and whiteness. It creates a new intellectual space that investigates the nature of racialised conditions and their role in reproducing colonising relations in Australia. Aileen Moreton-Robinson has brought together scholars from a range of disciplines: philosophy, cultural and gender studies, education, social work, sociology and literary studies. All engage critically with the location of the social and discursive construction of whiteness.