ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the book’s central question: why does Indigenous political will produce anxiety in progressive settler colonial Australians? It introduces the subjects of study - good white women - and the themes and concerns of the book, and revisits and revises the concept of settler anxiety. To do so, the chapter examines and details the cultural dynamic that produces ‘good white people’. To develop a more nuanced understanding of the anxious subject, the chapter draws upon the work of critical studies of affect and emotion and critical theory. It analyses the threat that Indigenous political will pose to settlers’ sense of home and ethical belonging. The central argument is that settler anxiety is an effect of and a refusal to encounter Indigenous political claims and difference. Two modes of anxiety are identified. Firstly, worrying about Indigenous people, which is an evasion of the political: a virtuous anxiety. Secondly, an encounter with the political that interrupts settler certainty and suspends agency. The latter is politically potent if it is harnessed to enable a deeper understanding of how settler concern works to maintain colonial power relations, unsettle good white people, and thus contribute to decolonisation.
