Toward the dialogical study of politics: hunting at the fringes of Australian political science

ABSTRACT

Australian political science is broadly derivative of British-European liberal ideas and prescriptions. It supports Settler governance by following dominant political dynamics, and struggles to engage with Indigenous political ordering other than through British-European settler-colonial logics. In response, this article experiments with a dialogical approach to studying political science that is responsive to Indigenous frames of reference and attentive to the colonial political relationship that Indigenous and non-Indigenous people share. We first document and attempt to break with the structural politics of knowledge that conditions Australian political science. We then deploy an idiom for advancing macro-level and informal insights for knowing liberalism on the Australian continent. The final section outlines a selection of key challenging questions that Australian political science needs to address if it is to enter into more appropriate relations with Indigenous political ontology and peoples of the continent.

澳大利亚政治学大体上说来是英国-欧洲自由主义思想及路数的衍生品。它追随主流的政治走势，支持了殖民统治，并努力涉足原住民的政治秩序，而不是依循英国-欧洲的定居-殖民逻辑。本文尝试着取一种辩证思路来研究政治学，这种政治学针对了原住民的参照框架，关注了原住民和非原住民共享的殖民地政治关系。作者首先论述了澳大利亚政治学所基于的知识的结构政治学，并试图与之分道扬镳。作者随后分析了一个习语，以便在宏观和非正式层面上理解澳大利亚大陆上的自由主义。最后部分简要举例澳大利亚政治学需要解决的一些挑战性问题，如果该学科打算跟这个大陆的原住民政治本体及人民建立更恰当关系的话。

KEYWORDS:

• Aboriginal politics
• liberalism
• settler-colonialism
• knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Morgan Brigg is Associate Professor at The University of Queensland. He has a professional background in mediation and conflict resolution and his research interests include exchange between Indigenous and Western political systems and philosophies.

Mary Graham is Adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Queensland. She has longstanding experience in government agencies, community organisations and universities, and her research interests include politics, law, and comparative philosophy.

Lyndon Murphy is Lecturer at Southern Cross University. He has a wide-ranging professional background in Indigenous affairs and his research interests include the politics of Indigenous public policy.

Notes

1. Here we make intentionally catachrestic use of the Aboriginal English term.