| Abstract: | In the 1980s, the Far West of New South Wales appeared as a flashpoint for racial tension and conflicts between Aboriginal people and the police. A number of direct confrontations occurred. At the time, attention to Aboriginal/police relations was under constant media scrutiny as pressure mounted for a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. Yet, even in national terms, the incidence of racial tension was abnormally high. This paper seeks to explore the social context of some of these events and to analyse the cultural and social questions they give rise to in terms of racial tensions in new ways. The tracing of the sociological categories of race and their inequitable consequences seemed less important than the local performative dynamics of race. The article seeks to explore a world where rumour and gossip, fantasy and violence add significantly to the complexity of social relations and in a manner not adequately encompassed by sociological assumptions of race. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us (Kristeva 1982:4). |
