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Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation
Dr Aileen Moreton-Robinson
The University of Queensland
In this paper I examine the relationship between knowledge, representation
and whiteness. I contend that by analysing this relationship we can come to
understand the silence, normativity and invisibility of whiteness and its
power within the production of knowledge and representation. I begin by
considering how whiteness assumed the status of an epistemological a priori
in the development of knowledge in modernity by universalising humanness.
Whiteness as an epistemological a priori provides for a way of knowing and
being that is predicated on superiority, which becomes normalised and forms
part of analysis. Making a direct connection between the a priori of
whiteness and representations of the Indigenous other, I examine the work
of white male and Indigenous scholars in Aboriginal postcolonial studies.
Bio:
Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Geonpul woman from Quandamooka (Moreton
Bay). Previous to her appointment as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at the
University of Queensland, she taught Indigenous Studies at Griffith
University, Brisbane and Women's Studies at Flinders University in
Adelaide. She is author of Talkin Up to the White Woman: Indigenous women
and Feminism, (QUP), and her writings in the area of native title, race,
whiteness and feminism have been published in anthologies and journals here
and abroad.
<a.moretonrobinson@uq.edu.au>