gender (iJUculture sexua lity William J. Spurlin General Editor Vol.6 PETER LANG New York • Washington, D.C/Baltimore • Bern Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Brussels • Vienna • Oxford Damien W. Riggs Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert Queer Rights/Race Privilege PETER LANG New York • Washington, D.C/Baltimore «Bern Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Brussels • Vienna • Oxford ■SB m e# 5 What's Love Got to Do with It? In this chapter I extend my arguments made in the previous two chapters in regards to identity by examining what it means to claim state sanction based on (a) a particular notion of what it means to be a 'good queer', and (b) the reification of sanction as referring to particular white understandings of subjectivity. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed (2003), Luce Irigaray (2002) and Judith Butler (2004), I provide an account of the limitations that arise when state sanction is taken as being the be all and end all of queer rights. In order to elaborate these issues, I focus in this chapter on the slogan 'Love makes a family', a phrase that has been recently employed in a number of (predominantly white) queer parenting rights campaigns. Such campaigns draw on a discourse of love to demonstrate that queer parents love their children in much the same way that heterosexual parents love their children. Whilst it is presumed that this will be an important counter to constructions of queer parents as pathological, my suggestion is that it may do very little to actually examine how discourses of love work in the service of the white nation,1 and how they may render those of us who identify as white queer parents complicit with white violence against non-white people (in particular Indigenous people and those people positioned as 'enemies of the nation'). This I believe is an important analytic move, as it has been far too easy for those of us who identify with this subject position to presume that our marginalised position in regards to sexuality somehow locates us outside white privilege (see also Barnard, 2004; Běrubě, 2001). In the sections that follow I elaborate how discourses of love in regards to the slogan 'Love makes a family' hinge upon particular understandings of pareriting and families. By examining how such discourses of love may work in the (dis)service of white queer parenting rights, I suggest that rights campaigns must do more 76 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert than simply push for legislation that recognises the rights of queer people who are taken to be always already white and middle-class. They must also occur in a context whereby we examine how citizenship and belonging is constructed in Australia upon the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty, and through the construction of certain people as being enemies of the white nation. I will propose that these types of disavowal demonstrate some of the ways in which a desire on the part of some queer people in Australia to be acknowledged or recognised as citizens with particular rights may be seen to render queer rights campaigns complicit with the new forms of Empire that are being played out in post-colonising nations. My intention in analysing the slogan ťLove makes a family' is not to suggest that love' doesn't have a place in queer families, but rather that love as a burning towards another' may constitute part of the work of understanding how power operates through privilege, and what this may mean for white queers living in Australia. Such an approach would not locate those of us who identify as white queers outside of white hegemony, but rather may allow for an ethical engagement with love that recognises its inherent ambivalence as constitutive of possibilities in the context of a 'post-colonising nation'. The Object of Love Privileging the use of verbs which take a direct object encourages the subject-object relation to the detriment of the subject-subject relation, which needs a little more indirection in order to avoid.the reduction of the other to an object of one's own... "I love to you" is more unusual than "I love you", but respects the two more: I love to who you are, to what you do, without reducing you to an object of my love. (Irigaray, 2002, p. 60) In her recent work on love, Luce Irigaray highlights the problems that arise within the English language as a result of its predominant focus on substantive meaning. This focus on the substantive produces a logic whereby language is assumed to represent the literal interpretation of objects, rather than understanding language What's Love Got to Do with It? 77 as an always inadequate topi for interpreting ourselves and our experiences. This literalisation of language is evident in the slogan 'Love makes a family', which produces a very particular form of love that is rendered intelligible within a substantive framework. More specifically, the love' in love makes a family' is accorded a functional role, where it is understood to be productive of the category family. Love thus becoriaes something that: (a) is done to us (i.e., we are loved' into a family), (b) is formative of who we are, or are not (i.e., those of us in families are loved'), (c) excludes certain forms of family (i.e., those that are not 'all about love'), and (d) produces a realm of intelligibility within which subjects are acted upon as objects (i.e., love' is an agency that is directed towards or upon us). One outcome of this is that when we talk of love making a family' we are directed into making a series of substantive assumptions that promote certain family forms over others, and which construct love' as an action that is all encompassing. The implicit directive is that a real' or 'good' family will know that it is constituted through love-that the meaning of love or its value within a family is unequivocal. One of the problems that arise from rights campaigns organised around the slogan 'Love makes a family' is that the endorsement of love becomes an organising principle for political action. Yet, following Sara Ahmed, we may ask the question: "How has politics become a struggle over who has the right to name themselves acting in love?" (2003, p. 1). Ahmed's question challenges us to look at what the naming or claiming of love may achieve in relation to politics. Moreover, it questions which types of love are allowed, and which types of love are disavowed. If, as common knowledge tells us, queer people have historically been constituted as engaging in forms of love that are prohibited, or which are actively depicted as immoral or pathological, then surely any political rhetoric that highlights love' as the central motif will potentially work in the service of those who would seek to perpetuate the disavowal of queer people. It would be naive to think that simply by claiming to be acting 'out of love' that queer parents will be accorded rights. Thus as :Phelan (2001) suggests: "Appeals to [lesbian] maternal love and examples of happy families will continually confront the fear that these parents' love will lead their children to accept that which should not be accepted. Maternal love then becomes not domesticating and instructive, but seduc- 78 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert tive" (p. 64). Such fear is often evidenced when public opinion is solicited in relation to legislation over lesbian and gay rights. For example, in relation to šame-sex marriage rights in the US, one heterosexual respondent stated that Contrary to some opinions, love does not make a family. Love, certainly, is one component of a healthy family, but to say that love makes a family places the well-being of children into the hands of subjective emotions and standards. I would offer, instead, that based on centuries of experience and valid research, that only when a man and woman lovingly commit to a lifetime of fidelity, responsibility and hard work are the best interests of children and society served. (Finn, 2002, p. 2) Here it is proposed that the statement 'Love makes a family' must be measured against Valid research', which takes as central the role of 'man and woman' in constituting Valid' (rather than 'subjective') love. Here again the substantive function of the slogan 'Love makes a family' works against lesbian and gay parents to deny that we can adequately 'do' the type of love that is required to constitute a family. Phelan's (2001) point above in regards to seduction also demonstrates an important consideration in regards to the gendered nature of discourses of love. The Stigmatisation and pathologisa-tion of same-sex attraction does not occur in the same ways for queer men and queer women. Whilst this may be an obvious point, there are several implications that result from it in relation to the slogan 'Love makes a family' that may be less obvious. The first of these is the degree of threat that queer female or male bodies present to the patriarchal nation. Queer female bodies (and by association, queer female parents) may challenge the nation through the repudiation of men's control over women, or through the refusal to recognise patriarchy as legitimate. The bodies of queer males (and queer male parents) threaten the hegemony of patriarchy in different ways. Gay men may be seen as undermining patriarchy through a refusal to perform masculinity in particular acceptable ways, or in performing acceptable masculinity within the context of a queer male (read: non-normative) body. Of course, queer men and women may do all or none of the above. My point is What's Lom Got to Do with It? 79 that the ways in which the bodies of queer men and women are differentially understood as threats to the nation impacts upon the types of access we are allowed in relation to families and parenting. Whilst, as Phelan suggests above, lesbian mothers may be depicted as seducing their children into an 'unhealthy lifestyle', gay men may be (and indeed are) depicted as physically seducing their children (Riggs, 2004a; 2006c; Rofes, 1998). The gendered nature of parenting, alongside the acceptable forms of maternal and paternal love available under heteropatriarchy, work in conjunction with one another to position queer parents as 'loving inappropriately'. Claiming that 'love makes a family' may thus do very little to destabilise negative portrayals of queer families in regards to normative discourses of familial love. A final outcome that may result from the use of the slogan 'Love makes a family' is that love becomes primarily functional-it serves to do things. Love in this sense becomes a form of legitimi-sation, a form of justification, and ultimately I would suggest, a form of domestication. Robson (1992) suggests that lesbian parents become domesticated when certain normative understandings of family and parenting are imposed upon, and accepted by, lesbian parents. The notion that 'lov^ makes a family' is of course not solely the product of queer rights campaigns. The use of love as a rhetorical tool for justifying certain family forms (i.e., the heterosexual nuclear family), and for protecting the rights of certain family members over others (i.ei-, men over women, parents over children), has long been identified as oppressive (e.g., Pollack & Vaughn, 1987). Taking on board the notion of 'love makes a family' without problematising it or questioning the logic that inheres to it may thus be counterproductive to the aims of lesbian and gay rights campaigns. As I will discuss in the following section, there is also the potential that 'love' as a constitutive discourse of family may work in the service of the white nation, regardless of the sexuality of the parent. Citizenship and State Sanction Moving towards citizenship for sexual minorities will require not just an expansion of somfe boundaries, but a wholesale re- 80 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert thinking of the relations among citizenship, family, masculinity, religion and sexuality. (Phelan, 2001, p. 9) As the Australian nation continues to be confronted by the fact of Indigenous sovereignty, alongside a recognition of ongoing histories of colonisation and dispossession, there exists a profound uneasiness in relation to white claims to belonging in this country. For some people, this uneasiness is routinely dismissed through recourse to discourses of Indigenous violence', or 'the inevitability of progress'. Such discourses seek to justify colonisation and thus discount the histories of white violence that Indigenous narratives demonstrate (Riggs & Augoustinos, 2004). Yet in much the same way, this uneasiness is dismissed by white people who seek to 'right the wrongs', or engage in 'anti-racism'. Claims to benevolence, to 'giving up power', or involvement in 'practical reconciliation' also serve to overwrite Indigenous narratives of violence, or at the very least, to justify white belonging in Australia (Riggs, 2004d). Such claims do not represent a 'turning toward another', but rather demonstrate one of the ways in which a focus solely on "showing the face of the white subject... sustains the direction or orientation of [the] gaze, whilst removing the 'detour' provided by the reflection of the other" (original emphasis, Ahmed, 2004, p. 5). In other words, a focus on the 'good things' that white people engaged in anti-racism do, or a discussion of privilege that fails to look at what privilege is founded upon, serves to maintain a focus primarily on white people, without actually examining the relationship that white people are always already in with Indigenous people, amongst others (Nicoll, 2004a). These points about the disavowal of white violence are also evidenced in the ways in which white queer parents attempt to seek equality with the white heterosexual majority in regards to rights. The claiming of rights by white queers signifies a desire not only to have entitlement to such rights recognised, but also to have the legitimacy of particular queer identities acknowledged as valid forms of citizenship (Phelan, 2001). This desire for an acknowledgment of validity (in addition to the right to civil liberty and protection), whilst understandably representing a desire to live a life free of anti-queer violence, also signifies a desire for acknowledgment within the national imaginary. Such a desire, however, could potentially come at significant cost. What's Love Got to Do with It? 81 One aspect of this cost would be a committed investment to the terms for belonging as set by the nation. Whilst the nation is composed of a great range ojf people from a wide range of cultures, the politics, economics and social fabric in Australia is predicated upon 'illegal possession' (Moiieton-Robinson, 2003). To seek protection within the nation, and to do so through a desire for an acknowledgment of being, thus; requires a taking on board (at least to some degree) of the terms for sanction set by the State (Butler, 2002). This obviously presents a problem to white queers, namely: whose rights and desires take precedence in a postcolonising nation? Should our primary responsibility as white queers be first to an ethical engagement with indigenous sovereignty, and only then to securing rights for groups; of people who are also currently disenfranchised within the national space? Or, as Phelan suggests in the above quote, does a desire for full citizenship on the part of white lesbians and gay men require a radical rethinking of national belonging that would take as its starting point the fact of Indigenous sovereignty, a move that could be productive of a 'queered' national space that begins the important work of rethinking how we understand belonging, families and parenting (Barnard, 2004; Nicoll, 2001)? And of course there is the pressing need to examine what it may mean for a queer Indigenous person who lives within the Australian nation (shaped as it is upon the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty), and who may well experience an uneasy relationship to queer rights movements, which typically do not allow a space for representations of queer Indigenous people: how is citizenship possible for someone whose life is disavowed in multiple, concurrent ways? To return to my focus on the slogan 'Love makes a family', the above point about reconfiguring the national space requires that we examine how love hjas been used to secure the white nation. Ongoing contestations over land rights and native title, and the refutation of them under the current Howard government, represents a form of white violence whereby Indigenous people are positioned as not adequately 'loving the nation'-as knowingly attempting to destabilise the white nation. This, in combination with the ongoing pathologisation of Indigenous families and parenting (as evidenced through the refusal of the Howard government to offer an apology to the Stolen Generations), suggests that we may see how the type(s) of love given sanction within the nation are 82 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert those that pledge allegiance to a white history of Australia. As Povinelli (2002) suggests, "Love does not make an Indigenous family qua traditional family to the Australian Parliament and courts, nor do local notions of corporeality, proximity, affect, place, context, or spirituality" (p. 227). The reification of national love therefore serves to perpetuate the colonisation of Indigenous people's lives by confirming the status of white hegemony in Australia. White queer parents who seek a place within the nation as recognised citizens thus trade on the forms of national love that are currently sanctioned, which are founded upon both the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty and the construction of other groups of people as enemies of the nation. What is required here, then, is an understanding of how the use of the slogan 'Love makes a family' by white queer parents works in the service of Empire. Empire building from this perspective becomes a practice of co-option, whereby previously disenfranchised groups (such as white queers) are given space within the national imaginary (albeit on terms highly delineated by the heterosexual majority) in order to reinforce the hegemony of whiteness. This provision of space turns on the reification of particular forms of love, and requires that white queer parents accept the particular 'ideal object' of love that is reinforced by the white nation. Complicity with such practices of Empire thus reveals the contingency of queer rights upon the forms of citizenship already available within colonial nations, rather than necessarily representing a radical repudiation of 'heteronormative citizenship' (Johnson, 2003). National Loving & 'Good Queers' The construction of subordinate identities may sometimes not necessarily take the form of constructing minority plaintiff identities so much as constructing plaintiff identities that still privilege, and indeed in a sense perform, dominant identities-identities that pass. (Johnson, 2002, pp. 327-328) At this point it may be instructive to return to Irigaray's (2002) questioning of the substantive logic of love-as-having. In her excellent discussion of love and its operations in relation to nationalism, What's Love Got to Do with It? 83 Sarah Ahmed (2002) elaborates how love-as-having (object directed love) becomes a form of national ownership, whereby the love that we lay claim to reinforces wjio we are. In other words, when we claim a form of love as our éwn-when we take an object as being the site of our love-then that love enables us to claim a position within the national ideal in Regards to loveable objects. Our love for another thus becomes the love of what another can bring us, or what they represent to us. Love in this sense does not represent a turn towards the other, but rather forecloses the reciprocity that a 'love to another' (in Irigaray's terms) could engender. Love-as-having-love as a symbolic j approximation of a national ideal through ownership of the objject-may do very little to refuse the types of love that claim hegemony within the nation. Indeed, love as ownership may very well reinforce the types of 'loving belonging' that have informed white belonging in Australia since colonisation. It is of course important to clarify here the limitations to the above explication of love-as-having in regards to white lesbian and gay parents. Whilst the slogan 'Love makes a family' would appear to demonstrate a certain willingness to commit to the terms for belonging or acknowledgment within the white Australian nation, it must also be recognised that under the current Howard government there are limitations as to how far queer people will be admitted into the national space, regardless of any commitment to a particular white model of state sanction. Carol Johnson (2002) suggests that the terms for queer rights that are set by the nation encourage a form of passing, whereby queer people must be com-plicit with our own oppression in the form of passing off our relationships as 'just like' heterosexual relationships, and in not being 'too threatening' in our behaviours and words in public spaces. She suggests that this encourages; the performance of the subject position 'good queer', where certain non-heterosexual bodies are granted recognition as a result of their ability to look as the nation would desire them to look (i.e., not queer, not threatening, not subversive etc.). In regards to 'Love makes a family' campaigns, the notion of the loving (lesbian or gay) family', whilst potentially running the risk for accusations of 'seduction', may also in part conform to the non-threatening image of lesbians and gay parents as being 'just like' heterosexual parents (Clarke & Kitzinger, 2004). 84 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert One of the key problems that arises from this location of queer parental love within the terms of a national imaginary (alongside the previously discussed problems of objectification and ownership) is that it is premised upon the exclusion of non-heterosexual families and parenting styles that do not or cannot conform to those deemed acceptable (Phelan, 2001). Thus, for instance, whilst 'Love makes a family' type campaigns may push for the rights of all queer families, it is far less likely that children in families with bisexual or transgendered parents, or where the parenting roles are shared between a wide range of people (e.g., poly-amorous relationships) will be recognised as exhibiting legitimate forms of love. This again draws attention to the distinction between access to rights, and acknowledgment of being-whilst some lesbians and gay men may be able to gain acknowledgment of the validity of our relationships within a national imaginary, this may come at the expense of those queer families or relationships that are not accorded acknowledgment (Stoler, 2001). Furthermore, it is not only the case that white queers are able to claim a space for our love as a result of ongoing colonising violence against Indigenous people (e.g., in regards to the refutation of land rights claims and the refusal to offer an apology or negotiate a treaty). The white nation also reinforces its hegemony by positioning certain groups of people (e.g., asylum seekers) as being enemies of the nation. Whilst of course many white men and women, both heterosexual and queer, do indeed challenge the government's policies on mandatory detention and other forms of human rights violations against asylum seekers, this does not negate the fact that our belonging as white people is further secured through the construction of certain groups of people as enemies. Political and media representations in Australia of the 'children overboard scandal' demonstrate one of the ways in which a position of love is claimed by the white nation through contrast with those positioned as unable to appropriately love their children'. In other words, reports of asylum seekers threatening to throw their children overboard in order to be granted asylum (reports which have since been shown to be false) were used by the Howard government to bolster the contrast between white Australians who love their children', and asylum seekers who will 'risk their children's lives' (O'Doherty & Augoustinos, 2005). Asylum seekers are What's Love Got to Do with It? 85 thus positioned as threats both to their own children and to the 'national love' of white Australians. Finally, in a global context, where white/dominant group members maintain such a stranglehold on economies, politics and social welfare, it would be disingenuous to. suggest that white queer people in Australia do not stand to benefit from such imbalances in power. As I suggested earlier, whilst there are many white people (queer or otherwise) who challenge particular acts of exclusion or oppression (such ás through refusing to shop at multinationals or campaigning for £n end to sweat shop labour or petitioning for acknowledgment of;human rights violations), this does not change the fact that we continue to live in a social and political chmate that both prioritises our voices and opinions, and which continues to afford us privilege. Claiming a position of love in Australia currently is thus extremely tenuous, and whilst it may be true within particular queer households that love makes a family', such love is highly contingent upon the contents of a national imaginary that refuses love to many groups of people, and which is founded upon the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. Loving Other-wise We cannot then equate love with justice. Justice is not about learning to love others, let alone loving difference. Justice is not about "getting along", but should preserve the right of others not to enter into relationships, 'to not be with me', in the first place. The other, for example, might not want my grief, let alone my sympathy, or love.... Love is not what will challenge the very power relations that idealisation "supports" in its restriction of ideality to some bodies and not others. In fact "to love the abject" is close to the liberal politics as charity, one that usually makes the loving subject feel better for having loved and given love to someone whom is presumed to be unloved, but wh*ch sustains the.very relations of power that compels the charitable love to be shown in this way.... In the resistance to speaking in the name of love, in the recognition that we do n^t simply act out of love, we can find perhaps a different wayJbf orientating ourselves towards others. (Ahmed, 2003, pp. 44f'J47, original emphases) 86 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert In this section of the chapter, I would like to tentatively sketch out some of the possibilities for loving other-wise'. This term, which I take from the work of both Luce Irigaray (2002) and Lorraine Johnson-Riordan (2005), suggests a number of important dimensions of love in the context of a postcolonising nation. Most importantly, this term is not intended to suggest a benevolent turn towards the other-that 'all we need is love' to do the work of addressing white violence in Australia. Instead, the term loving other-wise' suggests two potentially more productive and honest engagements with an ethics of love in a postcolonising nation. First, there is the need, as Sara Ahmed (2004) suggests, for white people seeking to challenge white privilege to not simply stop at interrogating our own privilege, but that such an examination of privilege must entail a 'turning towards the other'. Such a turn need not be one of benevolence (i.e., to 'help the other'), nor one seeking solace (i.e., 'the other can teach me what to do better'), but rather would constitute a recognition of how white privilege is constituted through its corollary of both Indigenous disadvantage and the construction of some groups of people as 'enemies of the State'. 'Loving other-wise' in this sense may represent a move towards recognising the role that the location of the other plays (and has always played) in the constitution of the white self: the ways in which notions of the 'good white person' have always already been contingent upon constructions of 'the primitive', constructions that, whilst not reflecting the actual location of the other, do signify how the (absent) presence of the other is engaged with. This generates questions such as 'what purpose do constructions of "Indigenous threat" (for example) serve the white nation?' rather than questions that seek to look simplistically at either 'what is white privilege?' or 'what are the problems faced by the non-white other?' Whilst understanding white privilege and non-white disadvantage has an important place in challenging the hegemony of whiteness, the notion of being 'wise of the other' may enable us to actually turn towards the other at the same time as we examine white privilege. This may also involve, as Sara Ahmed suggests above, a recognition of the fact that another may not want to enter into a loving relationship' with the one who offers love, or that claims to love may be unwelcome in regards to racialised power imbalances. This brings me to the second implication of the term loving other-wise'. This is perhaps a more literal meaning: that there is a What's Love Got to Do with It? 87 need to understand how love is constituted in a network of power relations, 'otherwise' we will fail to see how claims to love may work in the service of white hegemony. This understanding of loving other-wise' places a prohibition on blithely continuing the government sponsored agenda for 'practical reconciliation', with the presumption that all that is: needed is yet more (white) attention to issues of Indigenous disadvantage. Such a presumption constitutes what Fiona Nicoll (2001, $ 154) has referred to as the difference between 'reconciliation to' jjfto make another resigned or contentedly submissive"), and 'reconciliation with' (which "conveys the meaning of 'harmonising!, 'healing' or 'making friendly after estrangement"'). The term loving other-wise' in this sense is thus a clear signal to those of us who identify as white to begin the work of thinking through how wftite violence continues to be enacted in the name of the national good (Rutherford, 2002). The term also suggests, again following Ahmed (2003), that attempts by white Australians to engage in 'reconciliation with' Indigenous people may be refused-that the ambivalence of love in a postcolonising nation such as Australia requires that those of us who identify as white must recognise that our desire for 'harmonising' or 'healing' may be neither desired or welcomed by Indigenous people. Recognition of the ground of Indigenous sovereignty as the precursor to any engagement with reconciliation by white people thus allows for the possibility of refusal as an inherent right of Indigenous people who are recognised as knowing subjects. To do anything else would be to yet again fail to understand white identities as constituted through racialised power networks that cannot be sidestepped simply by naming whiteness or 'owning up' to white privilege (Ahmed, 2004). Whilst an extended discussion of how racialised power acts in the service of subject constitution will be provided in the following chapter (see also Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Riggs & Augoustinos, 2005), it is important to point out here how power as an artefact circulates between people in the service of subject constitution (as opposed to the assumption that it operates solely within people). Such an understanding of power holds important implications for how we understand loving Ibther-wise'. If power is understood as the property of the (white) individual, something that can be taken or given up at will, then power will always remain the property of those who hold hegemony! (Moreton-Robinson, 206). Thus the 88 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert power to tolerate, or to give up power, becomes yet another reinforcement of power itself, rather than an actual engagement with another who may be the object of that power (Hage, 1998; Nicoll, 2001). Power in this sense is evident in the slogan 'Love makes a family', where a substantive logic makes one person an object of another's love. This notion of a one-to-one correspondence between the object of our love and our approximation of a national ideal of love fails to adequately understand how the national ideal circulates as an object that is impossible to have. To have love (to own or posses love) is not the same as being for love (Irigaray, 2002), much the same as to lay claim to power is never sufficient enough to actually occupy a site of unequivocal power (Butler, 1997). Racialised power circulates upon and between bodies, but cannot be pinned down as a property that is held without challenge. Obviously certain (white) bodies lay claim to a position of power, and indeed occupy a site of privilege that is dependent upon the enactment of power, yet such bodies are always constituted in a relationship to historical and spatial forces that are constantly under contestation. To see power as a property solely of particular white bodies (and thus to see other bodies as always without power) is to reinforce the illusion of white sovereignty that has itself been dependent upon a disavowal, rather than an overwriting, of Indigenous sovereignty. Following Hook (2005), we may thus understand this disavowal as having forever changed white claims to power. In other words, the confrontation with the fact of Indigenous sovereignty cannot be simply denied or displaced, but rather the act of disavowal demonstrates that the white subject (and nation) is forever changed by the encounter. Forms of 'national love', and the types of love for another' claimed within the rhetoric of government sponsored reconciliation, are examples of the ways in which this encounter is managed. Chapter Summary I tell a story about the relations I choose, only to expose, somewhere along the way, the way I am gripped and undone by these very relations. My narrative falters, as it must. Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. This seems so clearly the case with grief, What's Lobe Got to Do with It? 89 but it can be so only becajuise it was already the case with desire. (Butler, 2004, p. 23) j.: ■ The above points about the ways in which power circulates around discourses of love in postcoloriising nations such as Australia demonstrate the ambivalence of love. Love, whether it be for the nation, for another, or as an act of familial constitution, is always contingent in Western (post)fcolonial nations upon the suppression of its other: hate. This suggests that in order for us to understand how love functions as a nationalist practice (and what this may mean for the slogan 'Love m4kes a family'), we must look at the location of claims to love within a range of historical frameworks (Stoler, 2001). How do claims to love work to distance us from violence? How does love-as-havihg serve the purpose of claiming ownership or a right to acknowledgment? And how may the claim to 'act from love' actually enacjt a violent erasure of those who are taken as an object of this lovej? What I have demonstrated in this chapter are some of the problems that may arise irom|the claim that 'Love makes a family'. Slogans such as these, whilst potentially having some utility in equal rights campaigns, ma^ do very little to challenge white queers to examine our complicity in practices of exclusion, particularly those more subtle forms that work in the service of Empire. Though it may be important tb gain access to rights for the sake of our#families, and whilst an accompanying acknowledgment of the validity of our family forms pay be of vital importance for some queer people, it is important that this does not come at the expense of examining how discourses of love may demonstrate a possessive investment in patriarchal white sovereignty. As I have suggested throughout the past few chapters, rights claims that start from individual queers, and which rely on singular identity politics to make their claims, may not adequately account for ongoing histories of white violence and their role in legitimating white belonging and citizenship. What would seem to be required, then, is a move towards what Butler (2004) has referred to as the ways in which our relationships with others 'undo us'. Rather than positing that loves makes a family', we may instead look at how love 'unmakes' a family, in both negative and positive ways. For example, in regards to negative ways that love 'undoes us', how may discourses of love 90 Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert marginalise particular families, or tear families apart when violence results from claims of love? How may families fall apart when some members refuse to accept the types of love that other family members value? In regards to the potentially positive outcomes of being undone by love', we may look at how the decon-struction of discourses of love holds the potential for creating radical understandings of family and kinship (as queer families have long been engaged in, see Weston, 1994): How may the unmaking of particular family forms (specifically, the heterosexual nuclear family) contribute to the destabilisation of heteropatriar-, chy and result in a concomitant shift in understandings of rights, citizenship and the white nation itself? These types of questions, which draw attention to the inherent ambivalence of love, demonstrate how we are undone by the relationships we have with other people. This is not only the case for those we are 'in love' with, or those we take as the objects of our love, but also for those with whom our relationships are based less on love and more on fear, resentment or disavowal. We are undone precisely when our claims to love reflect back to us those people we refuse love to, or whose love we designate as invalid. Reflecting on how love operates in the service of hate and exclusion will be an important role for rights campaigns that recognise the need to acknowledge and engage with their complicity with regimes of white terror and new incarnations of Empire. G# 6 Possessive Investments The impetus for this finajl chapter comes from the challenge presented to white queer people by the fact of Indigenous sovereignty. As Fiona JNTicoll (2000) suggests, writing as a white queer woman, "Indigenous sovereignty exists because I cannot know of what it consists; my epistemological artillery cannot penetrate it" (p. 370, original emphasis). To write of what Indigenous sovereignty means to those of us who identify as white queers living in Australia is j thus not to attempt to speak for Indigenous sovereignty, but rather to recognise how it constitutes a fact that is formative of white identities in Australia. In other words, as a nation defined as ^ostcolonising', Australia continues to engage in the refutation of Indigenous sovereignty, and continues to claim rights for white people that come at the expense of Indigenous people. Yet, as Ni|oll suggests, such rights claims never actually serve to fully overwrite Indigenous sovereignty, nor do they erase Indigenous rights to belonging and ownership. As I will elaborate throughout this chapter, claims to rights by white queers may thus be seen in maáy ways to render us complicit with what Aileen Moreton-Robinson |2004) refers to as the 'possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty-in pushing for rights, white queers may well affirm our commitment to the terms for belonging set by the white nation. | The 2004 federal election in Australia provided me with one example of how Indigenous riglfts may at times conflict with or challenge the rights that white Queers attempt to claim. This was particularly evident to me in th