“Never Settler Enough”

The Double Economy of Terror and Deaths in Custody in Australia

Authors

  • Suvendrini Perera Curtin University, Perth
  • Joseph Pugliese Macquarie University, Sydney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.44.2.14

Keywords:

Indigenous deaths in custody, settler state, police violence, racial terror, Deathscapes

Abstract

In this article, the authors examine the systemic nature of state violence and racial terror in the context of the Australian settler state and Indigenous deaths in custody. Drawing on Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton’s (2003) concept of a “double economy of terror,” the authors contend that police violence and Aboriginal deaths in custody must be read in terms of the standard operating procedures of a double economy of terror that ensures the institutional reproduction of the Australian settler colonial state. Death in police custody, Perera and Pugliese argue, is coextensive with the larger governmental and administrative apparatuses of the colonial state. In the face of the settler state’s systemic ignorability of the ongoing racialized violence against Indigenous peoples, the authors conclude their paper opposing such a state with an Indigenous voice that refuses tacit acquiescence and that howls with rage at the mounting Aboriginal deaths in custody and rates of Indigenous imprisonment.

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Published

2023-12-22

How to Cite

Perera, S. ., & Pugliese, J. . (2023). “Never Settler Enough”: The Double Economy of Terror and Deaths in Custody in Australia. Filozofski Vestnik, 44(2), 307–28. https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.44.2.14

Issue

Vol. 44 No. 2 (2023): The Body in the Field of Tensions between Biopolitics and Necropolitics: Analyzing the Future of the Prosthetic Body in the 21st Century

Section

Bodies of Necrolives

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