International Journal of Critical Psychology

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special issue: ‘White Terror/(Post)Empire’

    Guest editors: Lorraine Johnson-Riordan (University of South Australia) and Damien W. Riggs (University of Adelaide)

     In this age of (post)Empire and the decline of Western modernity, new (old) questions are surfacing around identity, subjectivity and transformative movements for peace (anti-war movements) and reconciliation in multiple inter-national locations (from Australia to Europe to North America to Israel and Palestine and the Middle East). Claims are made for ‘one world’ and ‘one nation’, one global time and space but what may appear to be an emerging ‘global racelessness’ would instead appear to be a fusion fantasy masking new forms of racialised violence, nationally and internationally, indeed, a resurgence of white terror. The reconciliation of ‘primitive’ peoples to ‘Modern Man’ (in the case of Australia, for instance) is said to be a fait accompli, and the postcolonial movement is deemed ‘over’ by conservative Governments. Whilst there are ongoing attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples into white nations, Middle Eastern asylum seekers (the new ‘others’ of the white nation) are either forcibly kept outside its borders or detained behind barbed wire fences within. Meanwhile, nightly television images show Muslim girls being refused entry to schools in France in the name of secularism, and Iraqi prisoners dehumanized in the name of a ‘war against terrorism, homeland security, justice, freedom and democracy’. In multiple acts of racialised state and public violence, in acts of refusal, denial and resistance, in discourses of racelessness, sameness and assimilation, in hyper/formances of white raced masculinities and femininities in the service of white nationalism, the reassertion of white hegemony over ‘others’ who represent the East is carried out with renewed intensity.

     This special issue invites a range of papers which address the implications of these current manifestations of white terror - both for critical psychology, and within society more broadly - and their relation to discourses of (post)empire. Papers could address (but are not limited to):

    The condition/position of asylum seekers in multiple contexts and/or dominant white perceptions of/discourses relating to asylum seekers;

     Story telling, the politics of representation and the empowerment/healing of Indigenous peoples, with a focus on who determines what counts within these categories; The resurgence of white racism in Europe;
Racial/sexual violence against Eastern ‘others’ (eg Iraq, France); Neo-nationalism, white violence and their relation to white masculinities and femininities (e.g., ‘100% White’, a film produced by Channel 4, UK);Processes of ‘working through’ in the reconciliation of the colonised and colonisers both in former colonies and sites of Empire; Critical psychology and new possibilities for critical studies of whiteness.

    Abstracts/proposals/enquiries should be sent to damien.riggs@adelaide.edu.au

Papers due March 30th 2005

Finalised papers due to editors September 2005

Publication date: February 2006

     Obviously we welcome papers submitted earlier than these dates, so as to facilitate the referee process and to ensure timely publication.

Critical Psychology Network (http://www.uws.edu.au/criticalpsychology/crit-psych-net)