WHITE SUBJECTIVITY AND RACIAL TERROR: TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF RACIAL VIOLENCE

This article seeks to understand the enactment of racial violence, here symbolised by the British Union flag, from the perspective of white subjectivity. Utilising David Theo Goldberg's conceptualisation of "identity-in-otherness", and Aileen Moreton-Robinson's concept of the "possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty", the article makes the claim that racial violence is the predictable outcome of a whiteness that must negate the 'other's' difference whilst preserving the integrity of racialised space. The argument is illustrated with examples drawn from three sources: the author's personal experience; the fictive portrayal of racial violence in Hanif Kureshi's novel The Black Album; and the events of the Cronulla Beach pogrom in December 2005.