Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert Queer Politics and Representation in a "Postcolonising" Nation — Page 2:
6 Aileen Moreton-Robinson's ("Possessive") work on the "possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty" suggests three key aspects that demonstrate the investments that white people in Australia have in perpetuating such forms of disavowal. Firstly, she suggests that the possessive logic "works ideologically and discursively to naturalize the nation as a white possession," secondly, that it is "predicated on exclusion and what it does not own — the sovereignty of the Indigenous other" and finally, it "promotes the idea of race neutrality on the premise that 'race' only belongs to the other" (5-6). In this section I will elaborate some of the implications of these points in regards to white queer claims to belonging in Australia.
7 An example of when those of us who identify as white queers may demonstrate an acceptance of a possessive logic is when we attempt to seek equality with the white heterosexual majority in regards to rights. The claiming of rights by white queers may signify a desire not only to have our entitlement to such rights recognised, but also to have the legitimacy of white queer identities acknowledged as valid forms of citizenship (Phelan). This desire for an acknowledgement of validity (in addition to the right to civil liberty and protection), whilst understandably representing a desire to live a life free of anti-queer violence, also signifies a desire for acknowledgement within a white national imaginary — one that as Moreton-Robinson ("Possessive") suggests is founded upon the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty. The particular white national imaginary that I refer to here is one that seeks to disavow ongoing histories of white violence, one that seeks to construct the white nation as a good nation, and one that ultimately seeks to posit an a priori right to belonging for white people in Australia.
8 The desire by some white queers to secure a place within such a white national imaginary may therefore potentially come at significant cost. One example of this may be the ways in which white queers are encouraged to make a committed investment to the terms for belonging as set by the nation. To seek protection within the nation, and to do so through a desire for an acknowledgment of being requires taking on board (at least to some degree) the terms for sanction determined by the State (Butler). This obviously presents a problem to white queers, namely; whose rights and desires take precedence in a postcolonising nation? Should our primary responsibility as white queers be first to an ethical engagement with Indigenous sovereignty, and only then to securing rights for other groups of people who are also currently disenfranchised within the national space? Or, as Shane Phelan has suggested, does a desire for full citizenship on the part of white queers require a radical rethinking of national belonging that would take as its ground the fact of Indigenous sovereignty, a move that could be productive of a "queered" national space that could then begin the important work of rethinking how we understand belonging? And of course there is the pressing need to consider what it may mean to be a queer person living in Australia who does not identify as white, and who may well experience an uneasy relationship to lesbian and gay rights movements that typically do not allow a space for representations of queer non-white people: how is citizenship possible for someone whose life is disavowed in multiple, concurrent ways?
9 The previous point about reconfiguring the national space suggests that there is a pressing need to examine how particular groups of people are currently afforded some form of belonging, whilst others are excluded. White queers who seek a place within the nation as recognised citizens thus trade on the configurations of national imaginary that are currently sanctioned, and which are founded on both the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty and the construction of other groups of people (such as asylum seekers) as enemies of the nation. Understanding white queer belonging from this perspective may involve viewing belonging as a practice of co-option, whereby previously disenfranchised groups (such as white queers) are given space within a white national imaginary (albeit on terms highly delineated by the heterosexual majority) in order to reinforce the hegemony of whiteness (Riggs, "Possessive"). Complicity with such practices thus reveals the contingency of queer rights upon the forms of citizenship already available within colonial nations, rather than necessarily representing a radical repudiation of "heteronormative citizenship" (Johnson).
10 Carol Johnson suggests that the terms for white queer belonging that are set by the nation encourage a form of passing, whereby those of us who identify as white queers must be complicit with our own oppression in the form of passing off our relationships as "just like" heterosexual relationships, and in not being "too threatening" in our behaviours and words in public spaces. She suggests that this encourages the performance of the subject position "good queer," whereby certain non-heterosexual bodies are granted recognition as a result of their ability to look as the nation would desire them to look (i.e., not queer, not threatening, not subversive, etc.).