Geopolitics of Aboriginal Sovereignty: Colonial Law as ‘a Species of Excess of Its Own Authority’, Aboriginal Passport Ceremonies and Asylum Seekers

Authors

Joseph Pugliese, Macquarie University

Abstract

In her trenchant critique of the manner in which settler-colonial law, in its seemingly progressive manifestation through the Mabo Native Title legislation, in fact operated as a ‘particularly problematic form of neocolonial practice’, Penny Pether (1998: 130) demonstrates how this assertion of contemporary neocolonial practice was predicated on the High Court’s refusal to address the charged issue of Aboriginal sovereignty – with all the attendant foundational ramifications that this would have entailed. In adjudicating on this issue, Australian settler-colonial law was, in Pether’s (1998: 124) memorable phrase, acting as ‘a species of excess of its own authority’. If, Pether (1998: 116) argues, Mabo was marked by what ‘the judgment refuses to do’ (that is, acknowledge Aboriginal sovereignty), then it is also inscribed, paradoxically, by what it ‘makes imaginable’: that Aboriginal sovereignty has never been extinguished – despite over two hundred years of colonial rule (of law).

Recommended Citation

Pugliese, Joseph, Geopolitics of Aboriginal Sovereignty: Colonial Law as ‘a Species of Excess of Its Own Authority’, Aboriginal Passport Ceremonies and Asylum Seekers, Law Text Culture, 19, 2015, 84-115.
Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol19/iss1/4