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Unsettling emotions: settler innocence in Australia Day debates

ABSTRACT Contestation over the date of Australia Day is waged yearly as a passionate culture war between conservatives who wish to ‘save the date’ and progressives arguing to ‘change the date’. This article argues that despite clear ideological differences, settler engagements with both movements reflect a common emotional commitment to preserving a positive self-understanding as innocent and benevolent political actors. Both movements are therefore similarly invested in the maintenance and justification of settler authority, though by way of very different strategies. It follows that broader relations between settlers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are at least partially constituted by dynamics of collective settler emotion that are felt deeply in relation to disputed qualities of Australian nationhood, sovereignty and culture. This analysis further reveals the pressing need to move beyond the narrow boundaries of ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ settler identity in which discussions of Indigenous politics are all too often trapped.