‘Australia’ as competing projects of settler nationalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nationalism has fallen out of academic fashion over the past several decades. In this article, we refocus on nationalism as a crucial dimension of the continuing settler-colonial project that is ‘Australia'. Across the settler political spectrum, nationalist teleologies envisage a moment of completion, in which conflictual settler-colonial relations will be resolved in the form of an imagined-as unified, coherent and legitimate settler nation. Here, we trace the dynamics of settler nationalism within and beyond the recent debate over an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, identifying a ‘good colonist/bad colonist' dynamic which we contend works to conceal the eliminationist logics of the Australian settler-colonial project at large. Whereas conservative settler nationalists attempt to (re)construct a white settler nation founded on fantasies of terra nullius, ‘progressive' settler nationalists seek to build a ‘mature’, reconciled nation-to-come by incorporating limited forms of Indigenous difference within the settler national body. Between these apparently opposing modes of settler nation-building, the unity and coherence of the nation is maintained, while prior and persisting Indigenous sovereignties are denied and disavowed (despite this, they endure). We conclude with our reflections on the necessity of undoing settler investments in the idea/l of Australia, and the political limitations they continue to impose.