Nomophilia and Bia

The love of law and the question of violence

Maria Giannacopoulos
Flinders University

Following on from Sherene Razack’s assertion that white settler society continues to be structured by a racial hierarchy where white settlers ‘become’ the original inhabitants, this essay argues that specific attention must be focused on particular structures, in this case on the colonial structuring dimensions of Australian law that generate the enabling conditions for ‘Australia’. The purpose of the investigation in this essay is to foreground what is at stake when scholars in the field of race and whiteness studies, as well as in related fields, ignore the structural components of ongoing legally colonial relations by effectively producing nomophilic theories which are imbued with confidence and faith about law, taking for granted that law can produce the equality and fairness it promises. This nomophilia in effect disallows a complete critique of colonial relations since it skims over the structural colonial dimensions of white law.  

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© borderlands ejournal 2011