A politics of uncertainty: good white people, emotions & political responsibility

ABSTRACT

My purpose is to consider the role that uncertainty might play in reimagining political responsibility in Australia. There is a growing body of scholarship that is re-examining what it might mean to be settler colonial and politically responsible. It urges settlers to not only comprehend their complicity in structures of violence and oppression – colonialism, environmental degradation, racial inequality, for example – but more so, to know how they are constituted by the racial logic of settler colonialism. In a sense, it is asking progressive settlers not to turn away from the uneven distribution of suffering, trauma and vulnerability towards the ease, certainty and satisfaction of much good white politics. I want to reflect upon how fundamental certainty is to the reproduction of settler colonialism. Or more so, the refusal of uncertainty, which is a denial of being implicated and the limitations of one’s knowingness. To do so, I bring critical Indigenous studies and settler colonialism into conversation with studies of emotion and affect. If the white settler emotional economy stymies anti-racism – innocence, fragility, anxiety – then emotions are a site for ethical and political action. Doubt and uncertainty don’t feel good, but they tell of other political possibilities, and ways to reform responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Uncertainty
• indigenous/settler relations
• Australia
• emotional politics
• settler colonialism
• political responsibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Beginning # 1 is drawn from my monograph, and slightly reconfigured (Slater 2019).

2. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for seeking clarification and their insights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Slater

Lisa Slater is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her work examines Indigenous-settler relations, in all of its messy, complex materiality. She explores what influences policy-makers, such as government and non-government agencies, and ‘progressive’ settlers’ engagement with Indigenous Australians, and how it plays out in concrete local forms. Secondly, she examines how Indigenous people utilize cultural initiatives to contest settler colonialism and affirm sovereignty. She asks how are solutions to social problems, wellbeing and the future differently imagined? Her projects have a strong focus on remote and rural Australia. Her monograph, Anxieties of Belonging in Settler Colonialism, was publish in 2019, Routledge.