CFP - Law and Whiteness - Special issue of ACRAWSA eJournal (Deadline: 18 July 2008)

CFP - Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association
eJournal

Special Issue: Law and Whiteness

Edited by Trish Luker (ANU) and Jennifer Nielsen (SCU)
Released December 2008

This special issue seeks to publish work which critically interrogates the interface between mainstream laws and legal systems, race and whiteness. Typically within dominant legal discourse, the operation of whiteness remains obscured by claims to neutrality, objectivity and impartiality, and the overwhelming desire to promote formal—rather than substantive—equality. These claims render mainstream law particularly resistant to critique, as they obscure the operation of whiteness as the invisible norm by which an originary and unquestionable legitimacy is claimed.

Groundbreaking work in whiteness studies in both the United States and Australia has highlighted the discursive and social effects of mainstream law and its potential to uphold a racialised system predicated upon white privilege and the illegitimate claim of white sovereignty. Despite these important interventions by key theorists, dominant laws and legal systems remain fertile sites for analysis.

The editors are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches which employ critical theory to interrogate the way whiteness functions within law—for example, as ideology, as a signifying practice or as epistemology. We welcome creative work such as poetry and short pieces of fiction. Issues that could be explored include the federal government’s intervention in Indigenous communities, the denial of Indigenous sovereignty, immigration laws, the detention of asylum seekers, security law and policy and the ‘threat’ of terrorism, and racial harassment and racist violence.

Timeline

Submission deadline 18 July
Reviewers’ comments for authors 30 September
Corrections and amendments 31 October

The issue is to be launched at the ACRAWSA conference in Melbourne, 3–5 December 2008.

For information about the e-Journal and a copy of the style guide, see: http://www.ejournal.acrawsa.org.au. All articles will be peer-reviewed and therefore DEST eligible. The journal is open access.

For further information about the issue and submission, contact:

Trish Luker / trish.luker@anu.edu.au
Tel: 02 6125 8515

Jennifer Nielsen / jennifer.nielsen@scu.edu.au
Tel: 02 6620 3081