Accordingly, the restorative work in question operates only at the epistemological level. That is, it affects the ques
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tion of how white Australia presents itself and how this self-presentation must be received. The restorative work can
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not address the question of how white Australia is in relation to the land given that Indigenous dispossession has given rise to a white Australian collective that, as we suggested, has lost the integrity of its being, its ontological power for sovereign self-institution through immediate possession of the land. So it can never have a transformative impact at the ontological level. Having lost the grounding of the very idea of self-institution—though not the cultural investment in con
-
forming …show more content…
This epistemological construction of the white property-owning insider who is at once the non-white out
-
sider is potentially embodied as the migrant / refugee who is welcomed into the country. That is, a certain category of
(im)migrant is positioned to give and receive the necessary form of mutual recognition whilst remaining readily visible as a foreigner. Indeed the white Australian onto-pathology and consequent dependence on a perpetual-foreigner-with
-
in provide the key to understanding how the institutions of dominant white Australia ambiguously position certain migrant and ethnic groups who fall within the control of the white Australian state. Although migrancy forms part of the history of all non-Indigenous Australians, dominant white Australia does not typically identify with the catego
-
ries of the immigrant, the migrant or the ethnic. Instead, a presumptive association of migrancy with some racialized element(s) epistemologically reinforces the association of migrancy with foreigner-being and the corresponding on
-
tological illusion that the members of the white Australian collective have somehow always already been here. The cat
-
egories, migrant and immigrant, are thus reserved for
-
tion of how white Australia presents itself and how this self-presentation must be received. The restorative work can
-
not address the question of how white Australia is in relation to the land given that Indigenous dispossession has given rise to a white Australian collective that, as we suggested, has lost the integrity of its being, its ontological power for sovereign self-institution through immediate possession of the land. So it can never have a transformative impact at the ontological level. Having lost the grounding of the very idea of self-institution—though not the cultural investment in con
-
forming …show more content…
This epistemological construction of the white property-owning insider who is at once the non-white out
-
sider is potentially embodied as the migrant / refugee who is welcomed into the country. That is, a certain category of
(im)migrant is positioned to give and receive the necessary form of mutual recognition whilst remaining readily visible as a foreigner. Indeed the white Australian onto-pathology and consequent dependence on a perpetual-foreigner-with
-
in provide the key to understanding how the institutions of dominant white Australia ambiguously position certain migrant and ethnic groups who fall within the control of the white Australian state. Although migrancy forms part of the history of all non-Indigenous Australians, dominant white Australia does not typically identify with the catego
-
ries of the immigrant, the migrant or the ethnic. Instead, a presumptive association of migrancy with some racialized element(s) epistemologically reinforces the association of migrancy with foreigner-being and the corresponding on
-
tological illusion that the members of the white Australian collective have somehow always already been here. The cat
-
egories, migrant and immigrant, are thus reserved for