ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009
EDITORIAL: WHITENESS STUDIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEME IN 2009, SOME COMMENTS
LEIGH BOUCHER & JANE CAREY
The articles in this issue all emerged out Journal on the “politics of good feeling”: of the intellectual and political work that how “certain bodies are seen as the took place during the 2008 Re-Orienting origin of bad feeling, as getting in the Whiteness Conference in Melbourne. i way of public happiness”. Here, Ahmed First, then, we would like to thank all the argued the continuing need for presenters and participants who made attention to “histories that hurt”. Making the trip to Melbourne in early December. links between the painful history of In many ways, the following articles colonialism, the study of whiteness, and attest to both the vitality of whiteness regimes of “productive” political feeling studies in Australia and the political in the present, she explained, “The challenges that currently shape the field. history of happiness is inseparable from The conference itself represented the the history of empire … happiness was fusion of two nascent conference used to justify European imperialism as a traditions: the annual ACRAWSA moral project … The civilising mission conference which has, without question, could be described as a happiness provided a focus and impetus for the mission”. She concluded, “We cannot let solidification of the field in Australia, and go of this history, we cannot give up the Historicising Whiteness conference labouring over its sore points … [we held in 2006, which brought together cannot] cover over bad feelings and historians interested in the study of the pasts they keep alive … We might whiteness. In 2006, the latter – perhaps need to hold on to histories of suffering, to the convenors surprise – revealed just to stay as sore as our points” (Ahmed how much work Australian historians 2008: 12 & 14). History, then, as a series of were producing in the field (Boucher, stories we choose to tell about the past, Carey and Ellinghaus 2007). Thus, while is centrally implicated in the way we in keeping with the best traditions of understand our present and the whiteness studies this collection is possibilities (and need) for change certainly interdisciplinary, historical within it. perspectives are well represented. Equally, the 2008 conference was an Historians at the 2006 and 2008 attempt to bring whiteness studies and conferences – the editors of this edition postcolonial theory into more careful amongst them – suggested that history dialogue – in part because we would has something specific to contribute to suggest that elements of postcolonial the field of whiteness studies; namely, an theory direct scholars to the material increased attention to the importance contexts of power and imperialism (see of time and place. As we (with Katherine (Boucher, Carey and Ellinghaus 2008). Ellinghaus) have argued, whiteness needs to be more robustly historicized In one sense, then, this issue follows on because the mechanisms that maintain from Sara Ahmed’s (2008: 1) reflections its power and legitimacy are far too in the 2008 edition of the ACRAWSA e- variable to the explained by any
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straightforward Manichean binary. While embed our theoretical assumptions historians have recently incorporated about racial privilege more carefully in the terms “white” and “whiteness” into times and places. their analytic vocabulary, “the specificities of how, historically, white This insight has substantive implications identity was formed and shaped are for both the critical study of whiteness only starting to be examined” (Carey, (as an identity and as an oppressive Boucher and Ellinghaus 2007: vii). relation) and the field’s utility as a Although the vitality of whiteness studies mechanism to interrogate our own has been produced, in part, by its contemporary academic context. As interdisciplinarity – even as historians the accounts of pedagogy, university have produced some of its crucial US administration, knowledge production scholarship – an historicised approach to and university hiring in this edition whiteness differs in substantive ways from confirm, the intellectually “possessive much existing scholarship. Whilst logic” of whiteness is manifesting in whiteness studies (alongside, we would newly oppressive ways. On the other suggest, postcolonial theory) has hand, histories of whiteness are not produced a rich theoretical and political without their own political and vocabulary to interrogate racial power theoretical problems; interrogating the and privilege, historians have expressed operation of racial privilege in the past a little discomfort with the ways in which can, in some ways, smooth over the this vocabulary often effaces the impact more politically and epistemologically on and experiences of historically challenging implications of whiteness embedded people. If whiteness studies studies in the present (and perhaps, fundamentally asks scholars to track the many historians have been able to elide unevenly relational character of these implications because of the racialisation (whites and their various temporal distance of their subject). The Others), then historians’ attention to recent histories of multiculturalism and empirical specificity raises a series of racial and apology politics in Australia substantive questions. Whilst have, in many cases, re-oriented the interrogating the “logics”, “grids”, and power and privilege of whiteness in “structures” of whiteness is a crucial rhetorics of inclusion and empowerment project, historical (or historicised) work that fail to address the normalising suggests that the dynamic of imperatives of white racial power. They racialisation and racial privilege are have also, paradoxically, provided new much more temporally variable than a ways to intellectually and institutionally single trans-historical theoretical quarantine both non-white scholars and vocabulary would imply. An historicized the political implications of their work. As approach necessarily involves thinking Aileen Moreton-Robinson remarked in about how the structures and dynamics the final session of the 2008 conference, of whiteness are always oriented by time historians of whiteness might similarly and place. Historians thus tend to be less learn much from their disciplinary interested in “naming” the ways in which neighbours. white racial identity has been normalised, and instead tend to track There is no question that scholars in the the relationship between racialising fields of sociology, political science, dynamics and specific historical and education and (contemporary) cultural political processes and contexts. studies have been much better at Thinking historically about whiteness, thinking about the ways in which the then, suggests that we might need to production of contemporary academic
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knowledge needs to do more than Pratt (2004: 209) point out in relation to simply “take aim” at whiteness. Taking the national imaginary: the challenge of whiteness studies seriously in the academe requires the management of non-white significant epistemological and people in the white nation- institutional transformation. We can’t space is ordered in terms of a simply examine whiteness, add some relationship where white people assume that their place is at the Other subjects and “stir”. Rather, as centre or core of the nation, Susan Mlcek suggests in her article, defined in relation to both whiteness studies needs to question internal non-white others and “what is knowledge, who has it, and external non-white margins or what can be done with it?” As Aileen periphery. Moreton-Robinson (2008: 85-6) argues, the scene of academic knowledge So too, the criticisms generated by production – as it echoes with the wider whiteness studies in the academe, discourses of inclusion and which are so frequently being left up to empowerment – “obscure[s] the more non-white interlocutors to articulate, are complex way that white possession offered inclusion under the terms and functions socio-discursively through parameters of the very white knowledge subjectivity and knowledge production”. it purports to critique. A number of the Whilst scholars in the US might look upon papers in this collection attest to just the continued production of whiteness how difficult securing substantive studies scholarship in Australia with some change can be – not least in the ways in envy (Roediger 2006), its apparent which Indigenous academics and institutional security (indicated by the learners seem to be bearing the political production of work, professional and emotional weight of this associations, conferences, and hiring) transformation. As convenors of the 2008 conceals a troubling resistance (whether conference, we are not unaware of the intentional or patterned) to the ways in which our own conference – at epistemological and institutional times – simultaneously failed to address implications of the field. As the political the material, intellectual and imperatives of whiteness studies and organisational implications of two-way postcolonial theory challenge cross-cultural engagements (and thus pedagogies, knowledges and marginalised non-white knowledges), institutions, the practices and patterns of demanded that non-white speakers the academe (and individuals within it) perform the disruptive work of whiteness actively or unintentionally fail to do the studies, and, perhaps, implicitly asked necessary epistemological and non-white informants to smooth white structural work to address these critiques consciences. As white convenors and – even as, or perhaps because, rhetorics editors we would like to take this of white virtue and inclusion effectively opportunity to recognise the emotional, dull the sharp edges of whiteness political and intellectual work that non- studies. Indeed, as Ron Hoenig’s study of white participants broadly and the representation of refugees suggests, Indigenous speakers in particular one of the ways in which white practices performed at the 2008 conference, and subjectivities maintain their authority even as we acknowledge that our is via a condescending tendency to recognition will always fail to offer incorporation to minorities. As comprehend the experience and Catriona Elder, Cath Ellis and Angela impact of this work. There are individual psychic and emotional costs to being
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asked to continually articulate collective frame of European imperialism. and individual histories of suffering and Focussing on education as a key pain (even as we concur with Ahmed’s colonial response to the perceived call to maintain their disruptive dangers of “miscegenation”, Cote seeks presence); we need to find a way to to develop “a comparative framework distribute these costs more evenly. that links colonial settlements in Asia and Australia”. Across these diverse contexts **** he suggests that education was a crucial mechanism of colonial The contributors to this issue take knowledge and management, and whiteness studies in some significant new central both to securing whiteness and directions. Vera Mackie’s article makes defining its boundaries: “Education … a major new contribution to an under- evidently held the key to gaining the explored area – how whiteness has cultural capital in terms of which operated in Asian contexts. Her work whiteness could be safeguarded and demonstrates how we need to think advanced”. Educational strategies were about “location” and “perspective” in developed in direct relation to anxieties our understanding of whiteness as both about whiteness. Cote thus argues for an historical and political endeavour. “the universality of a linked discourse of Western understandings of whiteness whiteness and class across [European] were not simply transported into this Imperial Asia”. Other work, however, has sphere. While some recent work has highlighted the multiple and often sought to “provincialise” the United divergent tropes of whiteness in States in area of whiteness (Boucher, circulation throughout the nineteenth Carey and Ellinghaus 2007 and 2009; and twentieth centuries (eg. Boucher, Moreton-Robinson, Casey and Nicoll Carey and Ellinghaus 2007 and 2009; 2008), she argues “it is necessary to Carey and McLisky 2009). As Mackie understand how whiteness has been suggests, “whiteness has a specific seen by non-white observers, and that history in particular localised cultural and we need to be sensitive to local social contexts … the concept cannot taxonomies of difference which are not easily be generalised beyond these always reducible to the white/non-white contexts”. These contrasting views distinction which is hegemonic in the exemplify two key currents of recent Euro-American centres”. Mackie’s whiteness scholarship – one which analysis of literary representations in emphasises the transnational dimensions early twentieth century Japan of whiteness (see also Lake and compellingly shows how speech and Reynolds 2008) and the other which dress encoded whiteness for bodies that focuses on the importance of local most gazes would place outside the dynamics. boundaries of whiteness. The politics and poetics of location have a substantive Continuing the theme of “locating” impact on the ways in which this plays whiteness, Sam Ritchie’s article explores out. More comparative studies of the “fluid” nature of nineteenth century whiteness outside the “Anglo-Saxon” conceptions of “race” in colonial world are needed. Victoria, using the specific case study of the missionary Francis Tuckfield. He Joost Cote also considers Asian explicitly contrasts Tuckfield’s extensive productions of whiteness (in use of the term “Whites” to refer to the comparative relation to Australia), but coloniser population with the work of this time very much situated within the Leigh Boucher and Claire McLisky, who
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both found this term was rarely used by generation Jewish female, living in post- other nineteenth century Victorian apartheid, post-colonial South Africa missionaries and politicians. The uneven and debates within South African nature of this identification is intriguing. whiteness studies around what Melissa Ritchie’s analysis, which focuses on Steyn (2006) identifies as a post-1994 Tuckfield’s “sense of racial self” as a sense of psychological “dislocation” “white man”, also provides a great which certain white South Africans are example of the ways in which “good experiencing”, she insists that white men” are situated in times and challenging racial privilege must places. This has consequences both for necessarily equate to loss for whites. our understanding of nineteenth-century Particularly, “for those ‘White Africans’, Australia, and the ways in which who staked much of their identity on strategies of racialisation can ensure their privileged whiteness”. She uses the white privilege even as “care” is being specific example of her own artwork offered. depicting “immigrant” experiences to illustrate her “lived experience of post- Moving from the historical to the colonial hybridity”. contemporary, Ron Hoenig continues the exploration of the “good white self”, The final three articles deal with the this time in the wider context of important arenas of pedagogy, Australian political and cultural life. curriculum, knowledge production and Examining media representation of university administration and hiring in asylum seekers, particularly in relation to relation to Indigenous knowledge, the 2002 “lip sewing” protests at students and academics. Susan Mlcek, Woomera, he argues that they provide exploring the “whiteness behaviours” the cultural Other against which the text currently present in curriculum delivery, constructs an ideal audience and the asks “which pedagogical framework is reader a moral cultural self: “In both most effective for Indigenous learners?” ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ representations She argues that challenging oppression of asylum seekers media workers and requires both a transformation in the media system construct the asylum pedagogy and a re-conceptualization seeker as a raced other in contrast to an of “the subject” of knowledge, which of ‘invisible’ good white Australian Self”. His course is not an easy task. Mlcek too work provides a good example of how reflects on narratives of “white good”: “well intentioned” engagements and representations of Others don’t behaviours of good are also necessarily confront racial privilege. In enacted from a deep sense of this case, even as non-white people are moral obligation that when we engage with Indigenous represented/included, this inclusion students, for example, we act functions to ease white conscience from a position of thinking we rather than address actual inequality. know what is best for them rather than acknowledging that Leora Farber’s article provides a our benign benevolence comes significant example of the kind of work rather from the “anxiety of white people need to do in order to whiteness” (Riggs and deal with the kinds of histories, legacies Augostinos 2004) accompanied and presents of the previous (and by the need to belong, to validate, and to maintain a following) work. Proposing “tentative useful position in Australian correlations” between her own position society. “as a white, English speaking, second-
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Next, Andrew Gunstone charts the assumed they had the right to access broad institutional scene of Indigenous these resources without paying for them. studies in the Australian academe. Similarly to Mlcek, he argues that Fredericks thus draws out the strong links “practices of whiteness substantially between Indigenous studies curricula restrict the ability of universities to and issues of power, especially genuinely address the education needs institutional power: the ways in which the of Indigenous students, staff and field of Indigenous Studies is caught community members”. Even as between the unequal forces of the Indigenous studies centres and (white) academe and the critiques of its knowledge seem to have institutional Indigenous practitioners. This article thus support, Gunstone demonstrates how suggests a substantive failure by the the material terms of this support academe to disrupt the institutional and continue to exclude Indigenous people, material formations that continue to focussing the key areas of governance, oppress Indigenous people. At present, anti-racist policies and training, junior Indigenous staff are doing too Indigenous employment, research and much of this disruptive work, and this is curriculum. In all of these areas, having concrete emotional, psychic Gunstone’s research has shown that and intellectual consequences for those universities have both failed to appoint practitioners. As Fredericks observes: Indigenous people, and failed to genuinely consult with Indigenous With all of this activity in communities. Thus, Indigenous peoples’ universities in terms of official presence in university decision-making is documents, one could be lead to believe that there has been often as a general staff representative a dramatic change in how rather than Indigenous representative. Indigenous Studies, Indigenous Gunstone too notes that “Often the epistemologies and Indigenous most substantial attacks on Indigenous peoples are regarded. How is it cultural safety come from ‘well- then that, being an Indigenous meaning’ white university staff and person within the academy can students”. be explained by Phillips 2003: 3) as an “on-going struggle The final article in this edition by Bronwyn against colonial domination” (and described by Miranda Fredericks is perhaps the most powerful. (2003: 344) as “a heartbreaking Through sharing her personal endeavour”? experiences as a case study, Fredericks raises, and critically addresses, issues Her personal case study demonstrates which have far-reaching implications. “how hard it can be to engage with the Her work demonstrates “how Indigenous Academy when those within it are Studies is controlled in some Australian reproducing imperial attitudes and universities in ways that witness processes which marginalise and Indigenous people being further exclude us whilst proclaiming they want marginalised, denigrated and to include and involve us … Universities exploited”. She recounts how one are not the safe places we would like to Australian university “invited” her to think they are”. Returning to a recurrent participate in a major review of their theme in this edition, she describes the Indigenous Studies courses, but offered feelings of anger and surprise “when it is no payment in return for her services, other academics who espouse notions knowledge and experience. They of justice and equity with whom we
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experience tension and conflict in on a monograph that examines the asserting our rights and cultural values”. relationship between graduated sovereignty and suffrage in the **** nineteenth century British settler world. Jane Carey holds a Monash Fellowship Discussing the recent “affirmative turn” at Monash University, researching the in critical scholarship (which has argued racial population politics of British settler that “we have paid too much attention colonialism. She has published articles in to melancholia, suffering and injury and Gender and History and the Women’s that we need to be more affirmative”), History Review . Sara Ahmed (2008: 12) has expressed a concern that this “turn” has been based Acknowledgments on a distinction that presumes “bad feelings are backward and conservative Our thanks to Katherine Ellinghaus (co- and good feelings are forward and convenor) and Prudence Flowers progressive. Bad feelings are seen as (organiser) of the 2008 Re-Orienting orientated towards the past; as a kind of Whiteness conference, as well as to all stubbornness that “stops” the subject the conference volunteers. We are also from embracing the future”. Ahmed’s indebted to Sarah Pinto for her observations are particularly pertinent in outstanding editorial assistance in the context of the recent shift towards preparing this edition for publication. recovering more “positive” moments of interracial exchanges both historically, on the colonial frontier, and within References contemporary cultural studies. If there are some common conclusions that can Ahmed, S. 2008. ‘The Politics of Good be drawn from across the diverse Feeling’, ACRAWSA e-Journal , 4(1), contributions to this edition it is that 1-18. dynamics of racial privilege are Boucher, L., Carey, J. & Ellinghaus, K. remarkably historically malleable, and a (eds.) 2009. Re-Orienting Whiteness: consistent motif in their mobilisation has Transnational Perspectives on the been (and continues to be) an History of an Identity , New York: interdependence between oppressive Palgrave. structures and “good intentions”. ——2007. Historicising Whiteness: Histories and examples of “care” and Transnational Perspectives on the “support” all too compellingly reveal Emergence of an Identity , how dynamic the maintenance of racial Melbourne: RMIT Publishing. power can be, even if they might offer Carey, J., Boucher, L. and Ellinghaus, K. neat affirmations for current day politics. 2007. Historicising Whiteness: Towards So too, the (white) academe needs to a New Research Agenda, in L. acknowledge how the offer of political Boucher, J. Carey and K. Ellinghaus inclusion can simply re-orient the (eds.) Historicising Whiteness: legacies of colonialism in newly Transnational Perspectives on the oppressive ways. Emergence of an Identity , Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, vi-xxiii. Author Note Carey, J. and McLisky, C. (eds.) 2009. Creating White Australia , Sydney: Sydney University Press. Leigh Boucher is a Lecturer in Modern Elder, C., Ellis, C. and Pratt, A. 2004. History at Macquarie University in Whiteness in Constructions of Sydney, Australia. He is currently working
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Australian Nationhood: Indigenes, Moreton-Robinson, A., Casey, M. and Immigrants and Governmentality, in Nicoll, F. (eds.) 2008. Transnational A. Moreton-Robinson (ed.) Whitening Whiteness Matters , Lexington Books: Race: Essays in Social and Cultural New York. Criticism , Canberra: Aboriginal Riggs D. and Augostinos, M. 2004. Studies Press, 208-221. ‘Projecting Threat: Managing Lake, M. and Reynolds, H. 2008. Drawing Subjective Investments in Whiteness’, the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society , Countries and the Question of Racial 9(2), 219-36. Equality , Melbourne: Melbourne Roediger, D. 2006. ‘Whiteness and Its University Press. Complications’, The Chronicle of Moreton-Robinson, A. (ed.) 2004. Higher Education , 52(45), July 14, Whitening Race: Essays in Social and
i The conference title was taken from a forthcoming book: Boucher, Carey and Ellinghaus, Re-Orienting Whiteness , 2009.
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ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009
EDUCATION AND THE COLONIAL CONSTRUCTION OF WHITENESS
JOOST COTÉ
Abstract universality of a linked discourse of whiteness and class across Imperial Asia. European imperialism spawned Introduction settlements of invasive white communities throughout Asia and Africa. Stoler and Cooper (1997: 27) In the cultural outposts of western argue these evolving colonial societies societies – whether they be “settler became subject to what amounts to an colonies” or “colonies of exploitation” – extended bourgeois project such that whiteness, as a physical and cultural “we can … not understand the category, was seen to be particularly construction of whiteness without vulnerable. Far from the cultural exploring its class dimensions”. If, in terms heartland and the institutional sources of of that project, nineteenth-century cultural values, for metropolitans white metropolitan society was deemed settlers were often the subject of derision vulnerable to the ravages of a brutish (eg., Twopeny 1976 [1883]; Daum 1888). and unruly working class, these white Of more immediate concern, however, colonial outposts, whether constituted was the state of European culture they as settler colonies or colonies of embodied and the influence upon exploitation, were even more vulnerable persons and culture of the proximity of to the more insidious danger of the cultural “other” (N. Cooper 2005; miscegenation. Racial intermingling Vann 2005; White 1981). Where in became simultaneously an issue of class metropolitan Europe, the unruly and ill- and race. Imperialism therefore added disciplined working class masses a further dimension to the on-going appeared to threaten established class definition of “bourgeois-ness”: the arrangements and the economic discourse of whiteness transforming a practices upon which these were national discourse into a discourse on based, in the colonies control of the civilisation. reproduction of bourgeois values was seen to be directly threatened by race. In focusing on education as the colonial authorities’ response to what they Stoler and Cooper (1997) have defined perceived of as the danger of mixed European colonialism as an extended parentage, this article develops a European bourgeois project and comparative framework that links suggest that the conceptualisation of colonial settlements in Asia and whiteness was inseparable from this Australia. It examines the discourse class-based dynamic in both surrounding miscegenation, education metropolitan and colonial settings. While and the “rising generation” in the late the colonial context made more evident nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and urgent broader civilisational and in the Dutch East Indies British India, biological issues, such concerns were French Indo China and (British) Australia. also evident in delineations of urban In so doing, I demonstrate the underclasses in a metropolitan class- based agenda (Platt 2005; Mayne 1993;
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Kidd et al. 1985). In both contexts quoted in Stoler 2002b: 66). Similar anxiety was particularly predicated on derogatory remarks were made about the future behaviour of the offspring of Australians by some British visitors (White the “unruly classes” and solutions 1981: 52-61). i suggested in terms of discourses and policies centred on education. But here Within the settler element of colonial it was particularly the locally-born societies in Asia, however, the more children of the settler classes in colonial vitriolic comments were directed at settlements who represented the most settlers of mixed parentage. In the case vulnerable element, given the biological of British India, distinction was made and cultural “dangers” inherent in a between “half-breed, Chichi, East colonial context. This ensured that Indian, Eurasian, Indo-Britons, and ... schooling became a key cultural Anglo-Indian’ (Ferro 1997: 116-7). In the institution in safeguarding the isolated Dutch East Indies terms such as islands of whiteness in the vast stretches “halfbloed ”, “Indo ”, “kleurling ”, and of empire – as indeed it was in “Eurasian” were employed while in safeguarding “civil society” in the French Indo-China the terms “métis ” was “wastelands” of industrialised universally applied to such people metropolitan Europe. (Stoler 2002c). In British Australia, where demographic ratios were quite different, In colonial societies, whether settler and attempts were made to keep colonies or “colonies of exploitation”, people of mixed parentage strictly great anxiety surrounded the definition outside the perimeters of white society, of “the boundaries of identity” (Stoler the term “half-caste” (and other 2002a; Caplan 2001: 6-10). They were “fractions” of Europeanness!) was “not made up of easily identifiable and universally employed (Reynolds 2005). ii discrete biological and social entit[ies]” (Stoler 2002b: 42), even within what In the late nineteenth and early counted as European society. twentieth centuries, keeping European Increasingly sharp distinction was made settlers white provided a powerful bond between “settlers” or “blijvers ” in the linking metropolitan and colonial elites. Dutch East Indies, “colons ” in French Increasingly, efforts by cultural Indo-China, “domiciled” in India, or “gatekeepers” across Europe’s Asian “Australians” in the British Australian periphery to “whiten” (culturally and colonies on the one hand, and biologically) what counted as European “newcomers”, “totoks”, “French”, “non- were characterized by racial anxiety. domiciled” or “English” on the other. In This was so whether we examine small this contrast, settlers were already white colonial enclave communities in culturally and biologically defined in Asia proper or those on the margins of “shades of grey” against metropolitan, the larger settler colonial society of the culturally white, citizens. Governor British colonies on the Australian General of French Indo-China, Paul continent. While different demographic Doumer, for instance, referred to local ratios of European and “native” French colonial officials as “France’s populations undoubtedly impacted on flotsam and jetsam on the Indochinese such anxieties, iii these gatekeepers had shores” (quoted in Bang 1971: 33), while to look two ways: outwards towards the a post-colonial account described a unEuropean cultural environment that “colon” as “a barbarian. He is a non- threatened these European enclaves, civilised person, a ‘new man’ … he … and inwards, into the heart of settler appears as a savage” (Dupuy 1955, society itself, to try to bolster it against
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the spread of cultural and biological Alfred Deakin, one of the architects of contamination (Anderson 2003; Vann the new settler federation, confidently 2005). “Colonial control” argues Stoler, declared that “in another century the “was predicated on identifying who was probability is that Australia will be a ‘white’, who was ‘native’, and which White Continent with not a black or children could become citizens rather even dark skin amongst its inhabitants.” than subjects, on which were legitimate This was supposedly because “[t]he progeny and which were not”. (Stoler Aboriginal race has died out in the South 2002b: 43). But whiteness was not merely and is dying fast in the North and West a matter of cultural anxiety: it also had [while] … [o]ther races are to be direct political and economical registers excluded by legislation if they are tinted and, of no less significance, also to any degree” (quoted in Anderson become a question of defence. 2002: 90). iv
Saving whiteness: separation by law In all four imperial settlements under discussion attempts were made to contain the problem of “contamination” In Asia’s European colonies, and in by creating laws to distinguish and marginal communities in British Australia, establish barriers between races. Where the class and racial boundaries were the “racial other” formed an constantly being undermined. Indeed, indispensable element of European daily miscegenation and economic life, however, achieving such separation disadvantage were typically seen to was difficult. Colonial legislative efforts correlate and the cultural outcome therefore largely focussed on the manifested in the culture of families and enactment of marriage and paternity children (Bosma and Raben 2004; laws intended to separate the adult Hawes 1996). Generalised across “half caste” and mixed race offspring colonial society, miscegenation was from their native roots (Stoler 2002b). seen to threaten what Robert Young Dutch colonial law distinguished three called a “raceless chaos” (quoted in ethnic categories, Europeans, Caplan 2001: 5), or the possibility of “Inlanders” and “Foreign Orientals” white imperialists being “elbowed out (Fasseur 1994), and, as in French Indo- and hustled and even thrust aside” in China, defined specific legal the world, as Charles Pearson said in entitlements of the differing racial 1896 (cited in Tregenza 1974). In British communities in separate legal codes. India, Robert Knox (1850) believed that This meant that legal category could “separation [between the races] and (and did) override race (and skin purity [of race] were the sole alternative colour), and no separate legal to extinction” (quoted in Caplan 2001: distinction was made between “pure 4), while in the Netherlands Bas Veth white” and “not-so-white” and “brown” (1900) wrote that products of colonial once leaglly defined as belonging to the miscegenation had even begun to seep category European (Stoler 2002a). v In into metropolitan cities back home, and British India, however, further legal that the Netherlands’ own future could distinction was made between “pure only be secured by the continuing white” and “half white” elements of the dominance there of a race of blue- European populaton and, unlike in the eyed, blond farmers in the country’s Dutch East Indies, Anglo-Indians were north (Coté 2005). Located discursively separately indicated in censuses between these two political categories, (Caplan 2001). in Australia it was predicted that “the problem” had been largely contained.
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In the Australian colonies, on the fused with those of race in the biological peripheries of colonial settlement, where inheritance of settlers’ children. The an interdependent ménage of prospective manifestation of such European, Indigenous and Asian settlers attributes were seen as directly evolved a pioneer economy (Reynolds, endangering the fragile nature not just 2003), “half-castes” were classed within of authority in the colony but, more the indigenous population. In such generally, the representation of the relatively isolated areas demographic white race and civilisation abroad, and conditions comparable to those even of undermining the imperial elsewhere in imperial Asia existed (Coté centre. 2001) and according to one observer, gave rise to the emergence of “a race Saving Whiteness: separation of nearly white people living like through education aborigines” (Reynolds 2005: 124). Here statistical reports prepared by the “Aboriginal Protection” authorities If these legal delineations went some distinguished between “full-bloods” and way to define the issues and set out a “half castes” (and other percentages of basic framework for the future, they did “Aboriginalness”, Reynolds 2005) as a little to resolve the immediate problem basis for further legislative action. of the “rising generations”. The colonial- Between 1886 and 1920 a series of born increasingly seemed to be slipping parallel laws were enacted across the away from some ideal concept of colonies (later states and territories of civilisation that frames the discourse on the later Federated states of Australia), whiteness in the latter part of the and such laws became more systematic nineteenth century. In practice, those as “outback” Australian society within the European domain with money progressed into the 20 th century. vi Their (and thus social status) were generally intention, if motivated by welfare able to maintain their European concerns for the children involved, was credentials via regular “furloughs” home. to separate white men and their More significantly, to maintain their offspring from Indigenous and mixed longer-term position, they sent their race partners, and from “full-blood” children to Europe to be educated, or Indigenous communities, by both educated them privately with imported specifically targeting an existing and governess and tutors. This renewed evolving mestizo community and injection of metropolitan values proscribing further interracial relations, to contributed to maintaining the “wash out” indigeneity in mainstream distinction between European Anglo-Saxon society (Reynolds 2005: metropolitan and colonial cultural 115-30; Haebich 1988: 134-37). vii attributes. The majority of children of poorer European families – and this Underlying such enactments was the category in Asia was dominated by apparent assumption on the part of people of mixed parentage classified colonial observers that the social and European – largely remained “trapped” cultural pre-conditions that had initially in the colony by their lower earning encouraged cross-racial relations would capacity. Failure to improve their own be persevered in subsequent domestic and their children’s educational (and environments and thus further the cultural) qualifications, and thus future spread of “racial degeneracy” (Stoler earning capacity and status within a 2002b: 67). This assumed also that the colonial hierarchy, increasingly also left negative moral attributes of class were them open to competition from
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(western) educated indigenous modern”, the manifestation of European graduates. viii “civilisation”, could most strikingly contrast with various forms of Indigenous Education therefore evidently held the and settler tradition, and where key to gaining the cultural capital in consequently “degeneration” was most terms of which whiteness could be readily observed. safeguarded and advanced. Any resolution to the problem of maintaining By the 1860s, in the European Asian and “whiteness” within the colonial settler Australian colonies, parallel concerns society thus eventually focused on “the were being expressed about colonially- rising generation” – as was also born youth, particularly children of contemporaneously the case for those mixed racial parentage. In the Dutch concerned with the reproduction of East Indies, from the earliest days of a dominant bourgeois values in the school inspectorate, inspector reports industrialized and rural regions of the commented on the “reluctant, irregular metropole (Reeder 1985). But if local and incomplete” attendance of schooling for poorer settler children colonial children but blamed this on the offered a potential pathway to a better fact that pupils typically experienced future this also required the separation of “little encouragement” and came from European – and particularly poorer an environment characterized by Eurasian – from indigenous children. “damaging association with slaves and servants” which included the use of An examination of the discourse around “unsavoury and bastardized language” education then, reveals much of the (Inspector’s Report 1823 cited in colonial anxiety surrounding whiteness Algemeen Verslag 1850: 9). The and locates education policies as a key condition of teachers in the first half of instrument for protecting whiteness. As in the nineteenth century was not metropolitan Europe, it was in the urban considered to be much better: many centres of the colonies that the risk of “demonstrated a lacklustre interest in “class contamination” was seen to be the vocation to which they have bound most concentrated, and with which themselves” (Algemeen Verslag 1850: 9). discourses of degeneration were But it was specifically the poor typically associated. This was, in the first intellectual and moral condition of place, because cities in imperial Asia colonial youth, the majority of whom represented the most significant lived in urban areas, that concerned concentrations of Europeans. But Asian educational authorities: cities were also the locations where inter-racial contact was historically more the limited receptiveness, the widespread and intimate, and the extremely low intellectual and formation of extended mestizo mental capacity, the lack of attentiveness, the complete communities an established dispirited nature of the children phenomenon, even before European born here and then [usually] of colonialism (Bosma and Raben 2004). mixed race; weaknesses and (By contrast, in the Australian colonies, limitations which in part, no where anti-Indigenous and anti-Chinese doubt, find their origins in nature policies had driven “the problem” to the but to which nevertheless bad peripheries of white settlement, it was upbringing, especially in the only there that very similar communities early years of childhood evolved.) At the same time, cities were contributed to significantly (Algemeen Verslag 1850: 10). also social contexts where “the
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In British India, where belated initiatives European environment of those to found a school system for European “vulnerable” settler children who were settlers emerged after the assumption of already the focus of concern because Imperial rule in 1860, very similar of the influence of the Indonesian arguments were being aired. As in the womenfolk who dominated their home Dutch East Indies, a significant environments. ix In a move presented as percentage of settler children were not progressive but primarily motivated by a attending school – in 1879 this desire to remove the pressure of amounted to an estimated forty per Indonesian parents to gain entry to cent of European and Eurasian children European schools, the colonial of school age (between 11,000 and government introduced a dual 12,000, Caplan 2001: 37). As in the Dutch (separate races) elementary school colony, it was primarily children from system in 1892. x This provided a form of relatively poorer families and mainly western education in Malay language, “Anglo-Indians” – those who might be and later, a further sub-elementary considered the aspiring sections of the village school system using a local European poor – who attended, leaving language medium into which a majority still unschooled. Such Indonesian aspirations for access to sentiments reflect the prominence of European culture were diverted (Ricklefs class concerns and sensitivity to the 2001: 199-203). social divide within both the European community and the wider racial context The same approach was employed in of the discourse. French Indo-China where similarly separate indigenous schools were Securing lower class European and established for Vietnamese. Initially, as in Eurasian children for a white future the Dutch East Indies, schools implied, as already indicated above, established on the metropolitan model the need to separate these most for French and Eurasian settler children vulnerable elements from indigenous also accommodated children of claimants to access to Western Vietnamese fathers employed in the education. The question of co- administration or who were of significant education – that is, of indigenous rank, “when space permitted”. This children in European schools – became practice, however, was increasingly more urgent towards the close of the viewed with “alarm”. French authorities nineteenth century, and crucial in the and colon representatives expressed twentieth. In British India authorities had concern about the disadvantages early expressed concern at “the experienced by settler children spectacle of a generation of natives compared to metropolitan children that highly educated … side by side with an resulted from overcrowded classes – by increasing population of ignorant and implications because of the numbers of degraded Europeans”. Such a situation, Vietnamese children included – and Bishop Cotton believed, “would be about “the level of instruction [that] had subversive of ‘our Indian Empire’” fallen because of both [the resulting] (quoted in Caplan 2001: 55). In the large class sizes and ill-prepared Dutch East Indies, where children of Vietnamese students” (Kelly 2000: 81). Indigenous elites had traditionally been Here too, a systemic separation was permitted to attend European introduced into the school system elementary schools, their presence (although not until 1917) which offered towards the end of the century came to Vietnamese a dual system consisting of be seen as further undermining the a watered-down Western education in
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urban areas and a “reformed” the number of half-castes among the traditional education for the rest. xi student body would inevitably result in a Secondary schools remained, as in the lowering of the general standard of Netherlands East Indies, open to French education for all children in attendance’ speaking, economically able, (Cecil Cook, quoted in Reynolds 2005: Vietnamese, since at higher social levels, 162). mixed schooling could be risked and had the potential advantage of Underlying such concerns was also the promoting the assimilation of an more tangible issue of security. In British indigenous elite with colonial interests India, according to one commentator, (Ferro 1997: 136). Eurasians presented “a source of present mischief and future danger to the In a somewhat reversed but tranquillity of the Colony” which “should comparable process, in the peripheral they be well led and politically regions of colonized British Australia the organized, could pose a risk to British growing “half-caste community” was security” (cited in Caplan 2001: 26). In also being represented as constituting – the Dutch East Indies, as in the and no doubt did in fact constitute – a Philippines, Eurasians did indeed form pauper class. Concern about numbers, cohesive and energetic political and attempts to use education to organizations that went on to claim “civilize” these remnants of whiteness autonomy. In the Indies, after several reflected similar sentiments in the Asian transmutations, a short-lived Eurasian- colonies. But here policies were carried lead independence movement under out with much greater discursive and the Eurasian leader Douwes Dekker in physical violence since they concerned 1912 declared its goal to lead a parents legally classified as “native”. In combined settler and indigenous Queensland from 1865, authorities movement for autonomy. In a slightly automatically deemed all children of later and more hysterical version, an Aboriginal and “half caste” mothers up Australian investigator pointed to the to the age of 21 as “neglected children” political implications of permitting the and claimed the right to remove and further development of: institutionalize them. These “Stolen generations” were collected in separate an immoral, degenerate coloured Industrial Schools and care institutions to population which under the influence be trained to undertake domestic (girls) of communist agitators, is becoming indolent, embittered and and technical (boys) occupations in revolutionary. The existence of the European society (Haebich 2000: 149- coloured community along such lines 50). In the Northern Territory in 1930, strikes at the very basis of the White where this separate class was estimated Australia policy already gravely to be 852 and rising (compared to a threatened here by the prolific fertility declining European population of less of Australian-born Chinese (Cook 1932 than 3000) it was predicted that “[i]f the cited in Reynolds 2005: 166). existing trend continued, the half-castes would become the predominant part of Saving whiteness: the local population in fifteen or twenty Commissions of inquiry years” (Reynolds 2005: 16). xii In the meantime, a 1930 report argued, The effects of the 1880s depression, the children of mixed race needed to be possible threat of imperial competitors, removed from or limited in numbers in the rise of Japan, together with growing European schools since ‘any increase in signs of indigenous as well as settler
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nationalism, all contributed to “whitening” the colonial settlers of the heightened concerns about the quality future. of these European enclaves. In this context, the moral fibre of the colonial A 1902 Inquiry into the condition of community, and ultimately its physical European urban pauperism in the Dutch and military capacity to protect and East Indies emphasized that this class of expand European civilization, became people posed a threat to the existing paramount considerations for imperialists order “given the place which it is and their colonial counterparts. At the deemed desirable for the European end of the nineteenth century one finds element of the population here to an increasing number of official occupy in the midst of the native enquiries taking place, as more population” (Rapport der Pauerisme- sophisticated colonial bureaucracies Commissie 1903: 5). In other words, it established more systematic threatened the racial hierarchy upon investigations into the condition of the which colonialism, and European poorer classes of the European colonial imperialism, was founded. While communities. Like similar inquiries at the manifesting itself in unemployment and time into the condition of the urban poverty, the root cause of their working classes in metropolitan Europe, economic condition was seen as a these official colonial investigations matter of morality: the lack of innerlijke represented the more pronounced kracht , of moral strength, of this urgency in the desire for social reform, community. Despite a recognition that often bringing together the interests of the solution to poverty in the end had to political, class-conscious conservatives be an economic one, the report insisted with more progressive, social reformers. the solution “in the first place will have to be found in] those factors innate in the Characteristically, these inquiries persons themselves” (12). Implicitly, focused on the future, investigating the therefore, pauperism was the legacy of likely prospects of the up-coming the negative character traits inherited generation. And, as in metropolitan directly from the Indigenous parent, or Europe also, the “battlefront” in the indirectly from the Indigenous colonies by the end of the nineteenth environment in which the child was century was gradually shifting from raised. prevention and suppression to re- education and the introduction of A similar Inquiry in British India in 1891 welfare provisions to ameliorate found an estimated 7.9 per cent of economic conditions. But once again, in Europeans and 22.3 per cent of the colonies the issue was seen as being Eurasians (who constituted almost half more urgent than in the metropole, the the European population of 21,000) in consequences of inaction more Calcutta were paupers ( Report of the dramatic, and the often-unexpressed Pauperism Commission 1892). As in the motivation was racial as much as it had Dutch report, this pauper class “lived in overtones of class sentiment. The huts like natives and slept on the civilisation of whiteness was increasingly ground” (Report of the Pauperism being defined in public enquiries in Commission 1892: xiv) and, as the Dutch terms of the characteristics of the inner report concluded, they similarly lacked moral stamina of individuals, which “moral fibre”. The Reverend Charles came to be seen as the ultimate Walter Jackson told the Commission: defence against “Asia”. This meant There are many reasons for the poor condition of these people:
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the chief are drunkenness, “listless, helpless and idle class” on the pride, promptness to resign … southeastern edge of a continent There is a great want of located in Asia, far from the heartland of perseverance and absolute Europe, that underpinned the urgency recklessness as to consequences. The class is of urban reform in Australia. Like the utterly improvident ( Report of existence of the Eurasian poor in the Pauperism Commission Calcutta or Batavia, it represented more 1892: xvii). than an economic problem: it simultaneously represented a potential In Australia, both in the separate threat to the robustness and prestige of colonies before federation and as a the white race in Asia. In the words of nation after 1900, a spate of similar one witness to the Royal Commission inquiries into (primarily) urban social into the Declining Birthrate in Sydney: conditions expressed direct or indirect “on the welfare of the [Anglo-Saxon] reference to class cultures, implicitly and race essentially depends the standards explicitly in connection to the European of a right living and right-thinking community’s proximity to its Asian and community” (cited in Hicks 1978: 25), Indigenous environment. Here too, the while the Birthrate Commissioners solutions advocated were predicated themselves, reflecting the mood of on the “education” of the rising national anxiety, concluded: generation. In the European-dominated south, it could be argued, concerns The problem of the fall in the were expressed in terms more birthrate is … a national one of comparable to those of metropolitan overwhelming importance to the Australian people, perhaps Europe. There, the physical and moral more than to any other people, condition of the urban working classes and on a satisfactory solution more clearly reflected the class basis of will depend whether this white anxiety. However, unlike similar country is ever to take its place concerns expressed about the urban among the great nations of the working classes in Europe, these were world (cited in Hicks 1978: 146). voiced against the background of an awareness of the isolation of the minority But in metropolitan Australia, it was not European community within an Asian just the number of white children but hemisphere. Thus, as in the Asian also the quality of their education that colonies, here too commissioners and was of “overwhelming importance”. This witnesses linked concerns about adult was not only because this befitted a poverty, perceived moral decline, and “new nation”, but also because this new race. Often duplicated across the nation represented Europeanness – and legislatures of the semi-independent the only real representation of whiteness Australian states, xiii such investigations – in the Asian region. The Victorian Royal came to similar conclusions to those of Commission into Technical Education, leaders of European enclaves to the and the later parallel commission in New north. While the commissioners on the South Wales (as had similar Dutch and Melbourne Board of Inquiry on British colonial reports), advocated the Unemployment (1902), for instance, provision of more practical and less similarly noted the “demoralizing effect” academic education as the principal of unemployment giving rise to “the way to re-engage the children of the existence of [a] listless, helpless and idle urban working classes. Each class” (cited in McCallman 1982: 94-5), in recommended varieties of agriculture, fact it was the existence of such a military, and technical vocational education to ensure the working class
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children would not follow in the path of as well as assurance of “quality”. To be their nineteenth-century parents. French, Dutch or Anglo-Saxon, to be Significantly, Australian educators could part of a greater French, Dutch or British also emphasize patriotism and civic Empire, was at once a symbol of their education, ideals which remained less whiteness as much as it provided a clear to settlers in the Asian colonies. But sense of security that their society and its above all, it was made clear that values would, despite adversity, and the education – of the “inner man” as well overwhelming demographic disparities, as the “technical man” – was to protect triumph in the end. race and the dominance of whiteness in the Asian hemisphere (at least in its Conclusion British hue). In a patriotic address to school children in the state’s publicly- In the colonial context, the metropolitan funded schools on Empire Day in 1907, issue of class was exacerbated by the the Victorian Director of Education truncated nature of European society declared: and by the imminence of race, both So long as we share the within the body of the European undoubted benefits conferred community and the broader cultural by membership of the Empire, it environment. Transferred to the colonies, is surely our duty to uphold it by imperial bourgeois discourses assisted to developing at this end of the define the parameters of what was earth a sturdy, self-reliant race, being defended as “civilisation”, and able to work with brains and to thus more directly coloured by use to advantage the best “whiteness”. Colonial “white trash” results of the world’s knowledge … Each unit must make itself fit represented a particular and acute by education to bear its part in problem in imperial Asia: it threatened the world struggle. And here I the European entities imperialism had would point out that although I constructed. By linking the well-known may appear to overemphasize Australian racial discourse more directly the industrial result of with that of other white colonial outposts education, I do not undervalue in Asia, it becomes apparent, despite as great forces in keeping our the evident different demographic and Empire together, wise and sane geographic characteristics, how much political ideal, clean social life, a high standard of justice as of this parallels the preoccupations, shown in our dealings of class anxieties, and solutions elsewhere. with class, and of our own people with other people (Tate Towards the end of the nineteenth 1907). century, action to safeguard whiteness in Asia increased apace, driven by the It is of course not surprising that in the conjunction of three developments: the Australian context the discourse on first stirrings of indigenous demands to whiteness was more obviously wrapped participate in colonial modernity; the up in nationalist sentiment: the colonies increasing penetration of colonialism had only just federated while elsewhere into indigenous space; and increasing Asia European enclaves, although they inter-imperial competition. In this protested the need for greater context, European bourgeois anxieties autonomy, existed in political limbo. At developed a significant edge since the same time, however, as with other these concerns directly equated with outposts of Europe in Asia, imperial wider issues of racial domination, identity provided an essential insurance whether, as the Australian Charles
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Pearson would have it, the continuation University. He researches colonial of the domination of the world by the cultures and modernity in early 20th “white race”, or, more chauvinistically, in century Indonesia and has published terms of inter-national competition. numerous articles on Dutch colonial policy and practice and translated and Traditionally, social separation and a edited two volumes of letters by the culture of colonial “unmodernity” had Indonesian feminist pioneer, R. A. Kartini, protected better-off colonial families and co-edited and contributed to a both from the “contamination” of book on Indisch Dutch migrants in pauper classes and from discourses of Australia ( Recalling the Indies , 2005). His respectability. However, in the face of latest publication is Realizing the dream increasingly articulate Asian demands of R. A. Kartini: her sisters' letters from from without, the spread of democratic colonial Java (Ohio 2008). agitation from within, and a broader cultural anxiety within both metropolitan References and colonial bourgeois establishments, the social isolation of poorer European Algemeen Verslag van den Staat van and Eurasian families (and children) from het Schoolwezen in Nederlandsch- “respectable society” could no longer Indië . 1850. be sustained. White settlers, wherever Algemeen Verslag van den Staat van they were in Asia, felt themselves, in an het Schoolwezen in Nederlandsch- immediate or indirect sense, to be in Indië . 1863. danger. From a metropolitan Anderson, W. 2002. The Cultivation of perspective, colonial settlers were Whiteness: Science, Health and already “not white enough”, but within Racial Destiny in Australia , Carlton: their midst were those who were even Melbourne University Press. less white. The problem of pauperism – Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2008. or chronic economic unproductiveness Australian Historical Population – amongst a social category of Statistics, 2008 , Europeans in colonial Asia was
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Caplan, L. 2001. Children of Colonialism: Kelly, G.P. 2000. Schooling and National Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial Integration: The Case of Interwar World , Oxford: Berg. Vietnam, in D. Kelly (ed.), French Cooper, N. 2005. Disturbing the Colonial Colonial education: Essays on Order: Dystopia and Disillusionment Vietnam and West Africa , New York: in Indochina’, in K. Robson and J. AMS Press, 73-106. Lee (eds.) France and ‘Indochina’: Kidd A. and Roberts, K.W. (eds.) 1985. Cultural Representations , Boulder: City, Class and Culture: Studies of Lexington Books, 79-94. Social Policy and Cultural Production Coté, J. 2001. ‘Being White in Tropical in Victorian Manchester , Asia: Racial Discourses in the Dutch Manchester: Manchester University and Australian Colonies at the turn Press. of the Twentieth Century, Itinerario , MacCalman, J. 1982. ‘Class and 25(3-4), 112-135. Respectability in a Working-class ——2005. Romancing Tempo Doeloe: Suburb: Richmond, Victoria before The Literary Construction of ‘Tempo the Great War’, Historical Studies , Doeloe’, in J. Coté and L. 20(78), 90-103. Westerbeek (eds.) Recalling the Platt, H. 2005. Shock Cities: The Indies: Colonial Culture & Environmental Transformation and Postcolonial Identities , Amsterdam: Reform of Manchester and Chicago , Aksant, 133-174. Chicago: The University of Chicago Een Onderzoek naar de Toestand van Press. het Nederlandsch-Indische Leger uit Rapport der Pauerisme-Commissie . 1903. een Zedelijk oogpunt beschouwd, Batavia. door de Vereeniging tot Bevodering Reeder, D.A. 1977. Predicaments of City der Zedelijkheid in de Children: Late Victorian and Nederlandsche. 1898. Overzeesche Edwardian Perspectives on bezittingen en de Nederlandsche Education and Urban Society, in D. Vereeniging tegen de Prostitutie. Reeder (ed.), Urban Education in the Fasseur, C. 1994. Cornerstone and 19 th Century , London: Taylor & Stumbling Block: Racial Classification Francis, 75-94. and the Late Colonial State in Report of the Pauperism Committee . Indonesia, in R. Cribb (ed.) The Late 1892. Calcutta. Colonial State in Indonesia: Political Reynolds, H. 2003. North of Capricorn: and economic foundations of the The Untold Story of Australia’s North , Netherlands Indies 1880-1942 , Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Leiden: KITLV Press, 31-56. ——2005. Nowhere People: How Ferro, M. 1997. Colonisation: A Global International Race Thinking Shaped History , London: Routledge. Australian Identity , Melbourne: Haebich, A. 2000. Broken Circles: Penguin/Viking. Fragmenting Indigenous Families Stoler, A. 2002a. Rethinking Colonial 1800-2000 , Freemantle: Freemantle Categories: European Communities Arts Centre Press. and the Boundaries of Rule, in A. Hawes, C.J. 1996. Poor Relations: The Stoler (ed.), Carnal Knowledge and Making of a Eurasian Community in Imperial Power: Race and the British India, 1773-1833 , London: Intimate in Colonial Rule , Berkeley: Curzon. California University Press, 22-40. Hicks, N. 1978. ‘This Sin and Scandal’: ——2002b. Carnal Knowledge and Australia’s Population Debate, 1891- Imperial Power: Gender and Morality 1911 , Canberra: ANU Press. in the Making of Race, in A. Stoler
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(ed.), Carnal Knowledge and Tate, F. 1907. Empire Day , Melbourne: Imperial Power: Race and the Department of Education, Intimate in Colonial Rule , Berkeley: Government Printer. California University Press, 41-78. Twopeny, R. 1976 [1883]. Town Life in ——2002c. Sexual Affronts and Racial Australia , Melbourne: Penguin. Boundaries: Cultural Competence Tregenza, J.M. 1974. Pearson, Charles and the Dangers of Métissage, in A. Henry (1830 – 1894), in Australian Stoler (ed.), Carnal Knowledge and Dictionary of Biography , Imperial Power: Race and the
In Australia in 1901 a mixed European Notes population, largely of British origin, numbered approximately 2 million, an estimated indigenous population of about 95,000 and a Chinese population of almost 30,000, the i White is of course anxious to point out that latter two groups concentrated on the more positive self-assessments were margins of European settlement (Vann 2005; generated in the Australian colonies just as in Caplan 2001; Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Dutch East Indies. Local spokesman, for 2008). instance, were defending colonial society iv Anderson (2002) shows, however, how and establishing metropolitan-equivalent settlement (and possession) of northern cultural and learned institutions (Bosma and Australia by white people nevertheless Raben 2004). remained a rhetorical and scientific problem. ii Indeterminate terms with changing v In the Dutch East Indies especially, meanings such as “Anglo-Indians” in British significant numbers of non-Europeans, India and “Indisch” in the Dutch East Indies including children of Indonesian mothers were often used generically to refer to long legally acknowledged by their European term settlers to distinguish them from fathers, were included in the census temporary (European) residents. category ‘European’. iii By the 1930 census, the Dutch East Indies vi Major legislation in this context includes the European population was 300,000, of whom Victorian Aborigines Protection Law approximately two-thirds were of mixed Amendment of 1886, and similar acts in descent, in a total population of around 60 Queensland (1897), Western Australia (1905), million; in French Indo-China a population Australian territories (1912-18), South Australia defined as European was approximately (1911-23) and NSW (1918). 80,000 in a total population of 20 million. On vii The Victorian legislation, known as the the Indian sub-continent, British India census “Half-castes Act” (1886), was seen to reports did not provide ethnic breakdown, promote “the process of merging” half- meaning the number of Europeans in a total castes into the mainstream community to population of almost 319 million is unknown.
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ultimately remove evidence of the Indigenous presence (Reynolds 2005: 122). viii Class structure in colonial Asia becomes increasingly complex as a new indigenous western-educated class takes its place in the colonial structure. This largely twentieth- century phenomenon cannot be adequately addressed here. Suffice to say that the evidence suggests increased rather than decreasing racial delineations in the first half of the twentieth century on the one hand, and a greater complexity surrounding whiteness on the other, as increasing numbers of “non-white” persons demonstrate its attributes. ix Even where their mothers were not Indonesian, the universal practice in colonial homes was to maintain native “nannies” and a complement of native servants. x This legislation expanded existing native schools, separating these into First Class and Second Class Native schools. Post- elementary schooling remained racially “co- educational” and Indigenous aristocrats continued to demand and achieve access to European schools, including Dutch universities, for their children. xi As in the Dutch East Indies, government provision of schools for natives was also intended to discourage the establishment of “free schools”; that is, schools established by indigenous nationalists (Kelly 2000; M. Ricklefs 2001: 238-9). xii Reynolds appears to be possibly the first modern historian to have considered “the half-caste” as a demographic entity in the Australian context. He shows that, while statistics across the various states demonstrate the steady growth of a mestizo community, legislators effectively ignored this phenomenon. xiii Prominent commissions of inquiry include the Royal Commission on Unemployment (1900), Board of Inquiry into Unemployment (1902), the Royal Commission into Technical Education (1899-1901) and a series of investigations into the “living conditions of the poor” culminating in a Royal Commission in to the Housing of the Poor (1914) in Melbourne and the Royal Commission into the Declining Birthrate (1903) and Royal Commission into Public Education (1906) in Sydney.
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ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009
DIS-LOCATION / RE-LOCATION : COLONIAL AND POST- COLONIAL NARRATIVES OF WHITE DISPLACEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA
LEORA FARBER
Abstract experiences are considered as manifestations of the immigrant’s need to re-locate within their new In this article, I propose correlations environment, entailing re-evaluations of between my ambivalent position as a personal and collective ideologies of white, English speaking, second- gendered and Jewish whiteness. generation Jewish female living in post- apartheid, post-colonial South Africa Introduction and debates within South African whiteness studies around what Melissa Steyn (2006) identifies as a post-1994 In this article, I propose tentative sense of psychological “dislocation” correlations between my ambivalent which certain white South Africans are position as a white, English speaking, experiencing. Underpinnings of white second-generation Jewish female living identity were and are being challenged in post-apartheid, post-colonial South through processes of redress; anchors Africa and debates within South African which previously held whiteness in place whiteness studies around what South are, arguably, shifting or have been African sociologist, Melissa Steyn (2006) removed, resulting in a sense of identifies as a post-1994 sense of displacement for those “White Africans” psychological “dislocation” which she who staked much of their identity on proposes certain groups of white South their privileged whiteness. Africans have and are currently experiencing. i In proposing these In proposing these correlations, I correlations, I reference the artwork of reference the artwork of the Dis- my exhibition Dis-Location / Re-Location. Location / Re-Location exhibition. The The artwork draws analogies between artwork draws analogies between the the “immigrant” experiences of two “immigrant” experiences of two Jewish Jewish protagonists – the colonial protagonists – the colonial Englishwoman Bertha Marks, who Englishwoman Bertha Marks, who immigrated to South Africa in 1885 from immigrated to South Africa in 1885 to Sheffield at the age of 22 to enter into enter into an arranged marriage, and an arranged marriage with the myself as post-colonial persona. Bertha’s entrepreneur Sammy Marks ii – and myself experiences of dislocation and as post-colonial persona. Marks’ alienation from the colony are experiences of dislocation and paralleled with my experiences of alienation in the colony are paralleled displacement from a society caught in with my experiences of displacement the throes of reconstruction and redress. and alienation from a South African Selected synchronic linkages between society caught in the throes of Bertha’s and my subjectivities as Jewish reconstruction and redress. Both South Africans are touched upon. Both experiences are considered as
ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2009
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manifestations of the immigrant’s need framework, identity is positioned as to re-locate within their new hybrid; polyglot, heterogeneous and environment, entailing re-evaluations of diverse; an unstable construction which personal and collective ideologies of challenges and destabilises gendered whiteness. Enlightenment and Modernist conceptions of cultural purity and The exhibition, which takes the form of authenticity. photographic, sculptural, installation, performance, video and sound art, Although marked differences lie in the travelled to seven national South African two personae’s colonial and post- galleries and museums between June colonial contexts, underpinning both 2007 and September 2008. The experiences are questions related to methodology which underpins it was their positions as white South African practice-led research. During the subjects, and by extension, their process of producing the creative work, subjectivities as Jewish South Africans. certain theoretical positions which I The various complex, multifaceted, and touch on in this article informed the uniquely inflected positions that Jews content of the work and, similarly, my have occupied in South African society, theoretical research teases out content particularly during the apartheid era, from the creative work, effecting a have informed numerous historical and cyclic, reflective integration of theory theoretical studies (see for e.g., Shimoni and practice. I therefore write this paper 2003; Shain 1994; Leveson 1996; as both artist – maker of the creative Bethlehem 2004; Sherman 2000; work – and academic – providing a Mendelsohn & Shain 2008) and reflective explication of the artwork in constitutes a complex and broad area theoretical terms. of investigation. Whilst an in-depth engagement with the formation and In the artwork, my lived experience of enactment of South African Jewish post-colonial hybridity is visually subjectivities is beyond the scope of this paralleled to the colonial persona and article, I provide glimpses of South historical circumstances of Bertha Marks. African Jewish subjectivities as they are Marks lived an insular life in which metonymically represented in the two hierarchical colonial and Victorian personae featured in the exhibition. conventions of class, language, race Given that there is no singular South and gender differences were preserved African Jewish subjectivity and that all and upheld, and within which whiteness subjectivities are inextricably bound up was privileged as a product of race and in their own specific cultural-historical social class. Whilst Marks’ experience moments, I only propose certain was quintessentially colonial in her synchronic linkages between Marks’ and attempts to retain Anglicised customs, my subjectivities as Jewish South Africans morals, behaviours and values in an in this article, in a similar manner to the alien environment, and was combined way in which these are suggested in the with a secularised, acculturated artwork. However, these will always be practice of orthodox Judaism, I, as a rendered problematic by the diachronic South African-born, white, second- specificities that they necessity elide. generation Jewish female, explore ambivalences of “dis-placement” and In the first section of this article, I outline “belonging” within a rapidly certain key issues which directly and transforming, post-apartheid indirectly relate to both personae’s environment. Within this post-colonial South African Jewish subjectivities. These
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hinge around questions which lie at the from their privileged position of core of Gideon Shimoni’s text whiteness in a society which displayed Community and conscience: the Jews in rudiments of racial discrimination long apartheid South Africa (2003). As both before the official institutionalisation of Marks’ and my subjectivities are apartheid in 1948, that Shimoni questions inextricably linked to our respective the multifaceted implications of South socio-political contexts, brief African Jewry’s moral heritage and contextualisation is provided for both historical experience. cases in the two sections to follow. Finally, I examine how each persona’s In examining the complex and often subjectivity is articulated in the artwork. contradictory relations between community and conscience in the South African Jewish subjectivities modern South African Jewish experience between 1930 and 1994, Shimoni (2003: 73) draws a distinction Shimoni details the political behaviours between two facets of political of Jews as members of the dominant behaviour which characterised Jewish white minority, focussing his discussion on experiences in South Africa. He points to the period 1948-1994, during which time the extraordinary prominence of Jewish apartheid was the official political order. individuals in the radical and liberal Underpinning his investigation is the streams of political opposition to the observation that “the Jews in South apartheid system. The political and Africa have shared in the status of the ethical commitment of a relatively large privileged society based upon a system number of South African Jews to anti- of legalised racial discrimination” (2003: apartheid campaigns are reiterated in 1). It was of fundamental importance for Nelson Mandela’s words, inscribed as the socio-economic prospects of Jewish part of the display on contributions of immigrants to South Africa that they had South African Jewry to the apartheid the status of being Europeans or struggle in the National South African “whites” (3), despite the ironies and Jewish Museum in Cape Town. These complexities of being “othered” and read: "In my experience I have found suffering periods of anti-Semitic Jews to be more broad-minded than discrimination. Shimoni (78) comments most whites on issues of race and that although Jews were outsiders in politics, perhaps because they relation to the vested interests of themselves have historically been victims society’s state authorities, social classes, of prejudice" (Fellner 2009). However, and dominant ethnic groups – and despite the salient presence of Jews although the shadow of Afrikaner within the various forms of opposition to nationalist anti-Semitism was ever- the apartheid regime, Shimoni (2003: 73) present – this marginalisation differed highlights the avoidance of association from those contexts in which Jews were with these “radical” streams on the part directly victimised, for instance, in czarist of the vast majority of Jews; their Russia. He argues that this kind of acute tendency to cluster around a position in marginalisation is not applicable to the white political spectrum just left of South Africa, where Jews had full civic centre, and most significantly to this equality and enjoyed all the privileges of article, their position as “silent the dominant white population (78). bystanders”. From the outset, the Jewish immigrant entered into what Shimoni terms “the Shimoni (2003: 29) outlines how this dominant, caste-like system” (2) in South position of “silent bystander” was Africa, as part of its white sector. It is
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instituted and reinforced by the official colonial prejudices and behaviours, not representative organ of the Jewish so much for the sake of acceptance community, the Jewish Board of and integration but most likely because Deputies, from 1933 onwards. The Board these were accepted conventions and steered away from any engagement norms of the colonial society of which with the political struggle against the she was an integral part. Her upper-class government’s apartheid regime, issuing position allowed for this, for as Shimoni policies throughout the 1950s and 1960s (2003: 6) observes, the “lower-class” which stressed that “neither the Board of Jewish immigrant generations were “too Deputies, as its representative preoccupied with basic concerns of organisation nor the Jewish community livelihood, social adjustment and coping as a collective entity, can or should take with new languages to be concerned up an explicit attitude in regard to with rights and wrongs of the regnant specific policies in the political field” system of race relations and exploitation (Shimoni 2003: 30). By and large, the in the country”. orthodox rabbinate adopted a similar attitude. Most orthodox rabbis took the My Jewish subjectivities relate to view that Jews ought to recognise that childhood experiences of growing up in they were no more than “guests” in the apartheid South Africa during the 1960s lands of galut (exile), and that they and 1970s. My parents were first- should remember that South Africa generation immigrants from Lithuania offered Jews economic freedom, as well and Latvia. As immigrants who arrived in as upward mobility and ultimate the anti-Semitic climate of the 1930s prosperity. As Shimoni observes (2003: which preceded the Nationalist party’s 272), deep-seated fears of anti-Semitism rise to power, their modes of adaptation underlay these attitudes and (and those of their parents) played out behaviours, as the Jewish community felt in the kinds of non-involvement with the themselves to be hostage to Afrikaner injustices of apartheid which Shimoni nationalist goodwill. He sums this up as points to. For them, the concerns of follows: safety, security, family well-being and economic prosperity were paramount. Because the Jews were part and They thus formed part of community of parcel of the privileged white minority, “silent bystanders” to whom Shimoni their welfare was unmistakably refers, whose silence might be read as dependent on conformity with the tacit acceptance of the Nationalist white consensus. Within the party and its policies, yet could also be parameters of that consensus, they were more liberal than most other read as a mode of survival, for having whites. But to challenge the fled Eastern Europe from the threat of parameters of that consensus which Nazi power, they and their parents were liberally allowed equal opportunities no doubt well aware of the precarious and rights for all whites but denied position they occupied as immigrant them to non-whites, was perceived by Jews. most Jews – including many who deplored apartheid – as courting a Thus, despite the differences in our clear and present danger (2003: 76). socio-political contexts, and differences
in the way our experiences play out in Marks and my South African Jewish relation to these, both my and Marks’ subjectivities thus hinge around our South African Jewish subjectivities are positions as Jewesses who form part of underpinned by the privileges and the privileged “white” or “European” benefits of having been part of the sector. Marks accepted and upheld
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dominant white population. In certain impoverished, unkempt; as representing respects, our responses to this “silent the “dirty proletariat from the Polish complicity” (which Marks herself Russian border” (Leveson 2001: 15). enacted), are a form of my grappling Further to this discrimination by the with the necessity of coming to terms gentile populace, their arrival caused with my South African Jewish whiteness divisiveness within the already and the multiple racial, historical and established Jewish community. The cultural privileges that this embodies. “Litvaks”, or “Peruvians” as they were disparagingly termed, were viewed as Alienation and displacement; embarrassments by the established integration and acculturation Jewish communities, as they posed a threat to their already precarious social position by inviting anti-Semitic In order to contextualise Marks’ position sentiments (Leveson 2001: 18). However, as an upper-class Jewess of English Leveson (2001: 18) notes that this origin in fin-de-siècle South Africa, I negative image of the Jew was begin this section with a cursory sketch counterbalanced by the many of selected racial positionings in South immigrant Jews such as Sammy Marks, Africa at the time. Despite some fluidity who earned reputations for their business in identity constructions, fundamental ingenuity and upward mobility. iii colonial attitudes towards race, as an ascriptive attribute signified by skin As Sherman (2000: 505) notes, these colour, were firmly in place. Those Yiddish-speaking “Peruvian” Jews who classified as “white” were dominant over came to South Africa from Eastern the various other social groups, Europe moved from one discriminatory collectively designated as “non- society to another. Sherman describes Europeans”. The latter groupings how the most contorted of all comprised Africans, Asiatics and mixed- accommodations to racist norms by race persons, termed “Coloureds” immigrant Jews was to be found (Shimoni 2003: 2). These “caste-like” amongst those Peruvian Jews who classifications were made despite the worked in the “eating houses” which fact that economically, there was flourished from 1903 to the 1940s. These already an inextricable catered to blacks along the gold-mining interdependence between whites and reef of the Transvaal and were the other racial groups. The white racial unashamedly known as “kaffir-eating group was further segmented into an houses” or “kafferitas”. Even though they institutionalised duality of Afrikaans and were socially and politically privileged English cultures, and further sub-divisions over black workers, as whites who emerged within the immigrant Jewish served blacks food these Jews were community. doubly discriminated against – both by the white ruling classes, and by more These subdivisions were notable at the well-established Jews who owned the outset of the third major wave of Jewish eating houses and employed the immigration, roughly between 1890 and socially despised “Peruvians” for 1910, which brought the most exploitatively low-wages. Being anxious impoverished Eastern European Jews to to become acculturated to their South Africa. Unlike the already adoptive country, the “Kaffireatniks”, as assimilated Anglo-German Jewish the Peruvian Jews working in the eating community, these “greenhorns” were houses were termed, steadily developed regarded by the urban gentile racist attitudes (Sherman 2000: 511). This population as “other” – alien,
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is borne out in the Yiddish language observes: “When all else was left behind, which, as Sherman (2000: 511) points these were retained, even if only in a out, absorbed the country’s all- modified form, perhaps more symbols of pervasive racist discourse. iv As Sherman Jewish identity than for religious content. notes in relation to these “Kaffireatniks”, For Marks and many other Anglicised “their own empowerment along a Jews, Judaism had become more a number of shifting socio-political frontiers matter of personal integrity than of demanded that they construct for religious conviction”.v themselves an identity exclusively defined by the parameters of racism” As an Anglo-Jewish immigrant to South (2000: 507). White supremacy, racial Africa, Marks’ sense of displacement, or discrimination, and social separation of dislocation from her new environment, the races were thus not the sole domain was physical, social and psychological. of the Afrikaner – these were also rooted Like the seedling roses she imported in British colonial policies and in the weekly from Kent to plant in her practices of English-speaking South recreated Victorian English rose garden Africans, and played themselves out in on the South African “ veld ”,vi she herself perverse ways amongst the burgeoning was “transplanted” onto African soil, Jewish community (Shimoni 2003: 18). It coming from an upper-middle class was into this “caste-like”, divisive society Anglo-Jewish family in Sheffield, where that Marks entered in 1885. she had enjoyed an active social life and community support. As Mendelsohn Although her father, Tobias Guttmann, (1991: 187) notes, Zwartkoppies was a had been president and treasurer of the 12-mile carriage ride away from the Sheffield Hebrew congregation, Richard developing urban centre of Pretoria, Mendelsohn (1991: 197) notes that and therefore trips into town were Marks’ orthodoxy was an acculturated, limited to special occasions. secular one of the “lukewarm, anglicised Mendelsohn elaborates on her loneliness variety so characteristic of the Jewish at Zwartkoppies and homesickness for elite in Victorian England”. Jewish England, noting that despite the dietary laws were loosely observed in luxurious comforts of her surroundings, her kitchen, with grocery lists including a Zwartkoppies remained a place of variety of shellfish such as lobster and emotional, intellectual and physical crayfish, which are forbidden by Jewish restriction and isolation for Marks. This law, and regular deliveries from the sense of physical isolation and Connaught butchery in Pretoria, which separation from her family and “home” supplied only non-kosher meat was coupled with the intellectual, (Mendelsohn 1991: 198). Like many of emotional, creative and psychological her Anglo-Jewish contemporaries, Marks constraints of the patriarchal social celebrated Christmas, hosting large constructs which dictated her life as a annual Christmas parties and concerts (Jewish) Victorian wife, mother and at the mansion, called Zwartkoppies, woman. which Bertha’s husband Sammy built for her and their eight children. The Marks However, although physically isolated family did however celebrate Passover and barred from formal power, colonial and the High Festivals. These festivals, women like Marks were, as Anne together with the rites of passage (such McClintock observes, “not the hapless as male circumcision and bar-mitzvahs ) onlookers of empire, but were were the most enduring of their Jewish ambiguously complicit both as observances. As Mendelsohn (1991: 198) colonisers and colonized, privileged and
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restricted, acted upon and acting” a need to relocate myself within this (1995: 6) Bertha’s social position as an rapidly transforming environment. This upper-class, white, Jewish Victorian process of “relocation” entails a re- woman was not neutral, and her evaluation of both personal and loneliness and isolation might have been collective naturalised westernised and exacerbated by her intellectual and Eurocentric values, morals, ideologies emotional attempts to retain her Anglo- and beliefs, embedded in South Africa’s Saxon customs, morals, behaviours and colonial past and within my values her new environment. For consciousness. Shaping a sense of self- instance, her relations with “non- identity within the emerging society Europeans” were limited to employer- seems to necessitate a process of employee or domestic mistress-servant discarding and/or re-evaluating these spheres. For her, blacks were invisible in ingrained attitudes, whilst retaining those social terms, and thus, her upholding the which seem to still hold currency and Victorian convention which dictated value. Steyn poignantly describes this as that it would not be “right and proper” a need to “know one’s whiteness, reach for her to converse with the servants into it, feel its texture, before it will let might have intensified her loneliness, one go” – or perhaps, before one will let resulting in the mansion over which she it go (Steyn 2001: 133). Whilst this re- presided becoming her “gilded cage” evaluation is a personal process, it is also (Mendelsohn 1991: 187). public, as post-1994 reformative changes in South African society have Milton Shain observes that in mid- prompted a need for the reframing of Victorian England perceptions of Jews cultural, racial, and political identities on did have some negatively charged new and contested political and dimensions, but were mostly relatively psychological terms. benign (1994: 11). Nevertheless, the ironies of being a Jewess who might Melissa Steyn (2001) and South African have encountered anti-Semitism in historian Gerald L’Ange (2005) discuss England upholding the colonial position ambivalence as a psychological state of presumed innate, white superiority in which currently informs part of the larger South Africa seems to have been lost on South African public consciousness. Both Marks, as they were to many of her note how the demise of apartheid and generation, position and class. Thus, it its accompanying white majority rule in might be argued that the loneliness and South Africa has prompted a need for isolation which she experienced as an redefinition of diverse South African immigrant was exacerbated by her cultural identities. For some South Jewishness, which set her culturally apart Africans, the need comes as a result of from neighbouring communities, as well tensions between traditional customs as by her attempts to retain the colonial and the influences of globalisation, avoidance of “others” of different race, westernisation, capitalist consumer ethnicity, class, language and religion. culture; for others, such as white, English speaking cultural groups whose ancestry White dislocation in post-Apartheid can be traced back along differing South Africa time-lines to European lineage, conception of themselves as “African” is a contested point of ambivalence, My sense of displacement in post- debate and/or negotiation. Although all colonial, post-apartheid South Africa is Europeans in South Africa can trace characterised by a sense of their lineages back to European origin, psychological dislocation , coupled with
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Steyn argues that it is particularly so for Themes of white alienation and English-speaking South Africans who displacement have been explored in have historically tended to retain a South African literature, for instance in largely Eurocentric worldview, and thus JM Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year (1997) have had a more obviously bifurcated and Disgrace (2000), and in Antjie Krog’s relationship to the African continent. In Country of my Skull (1997), wherein she contrast, as Steyn points out, Afrikaner confronts her position as a white identity is predicated on being “of Afrikaans woman acting as a journalist Africa” – a premise based on at the Truth and Reconciliation dissociation with their earliest European Commission hearings. Krog’s position is roots and on a long established sense of particularly fraught, as her personal self-identification with the land (2001: intimacies with Afrikaners, the Afrikaans 103). language, and apartheid, are also her terms of “belonging” as a South African. Steyn and L’Ange discuss how the fall of Theoretical work in the terrain of South colonialism and apartheid has left many African whiteness studies has been done English-speaking whites feeling severed by sociologists such as Steyn and from their European roots. Steyn (2006) Natasha Distiller and in the visual arts by comments that, post-1994, she perceives Liese by van der Watt. However, local a “crumbling of the old certainties of whiteness studies is relatively new what it meant to be white in South research terrain within South Africa. It is Africa”, noting that many whites highly pertinent at this time, for, as Steyn seemed to feel “dislocated” from the observes, new dispensation. Certain underpinnings of white identity were and are still being This is one of those moments in a challenged through processes of historical process where change is so transformation and redress; anchors that far-reaching, but also so accelerated that one may catch the process of previously held whiteness in place are, social construction ‘in the act,’ as arguably, shifting or have been South Africans shape narratives of removed. The ideological thrust of social identity that will provide apartheid denied pride in black identity, bearings in previously uncharted giving rise to a post-1994 societal waters (2001: xxii). challenge of defining what a Pan- African identity might constitute. This has L’Ange (2005) controversially uses the lead to various post-apartheid term “White Africans” to describe those discourses, an example of which is people who staked much of their former South African President Thabo identity on their privileged whiteness and Mbeki’s concept of an African who are now positioned in a country Renaissance. The latter validates local which is in the process of redefining itself ethnic signifiers, working to “reframe and as African, within the context of the interpret these signifiers through the African continent. This term is contested; example of a broader African problematics around whether some experience” (Klopper 2000: 217). These South Africans are more “authentic” may be located against the backdrop South African citizens than others, who of global (Dyer 1997, 1998; Frankenburg has the right to consider themselves 1993, 1997; Nakayama & Martin 1999; members of the South African nation, Vron & Back 2002), as well as within the and whether white South Africans need emerging field of South African (Steyn to “earn the right to call themselves 1999, 2001, 2006; Distiller & Steyn 2004; African” – or can even call themselves van der Watt 2003) whiteness studies. “African” – constitute some aspects of
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this debate. For some Jewish South and position ourselves within, the Africans, these questions surrounding narratives of the past (1994: 23). conceptions of South Africa as “home” and of themselves as “African” are Halls’ conception of identity as a matter further complicated by their Zionist of “becoming” resonates with the affiliations. As Shimoni (2003: 5) states, phrase “we are in a process of settling in Israel – an act termed aliya , becoming”, currently used by certain the Hebrew word for ascent – was South African cultural theorists to always integral to the Zionist describe emergent South African programme, which had its roots in identities. This phrase implies that stable interwar independent Lithuania; it is or concretised “South African identities” generally perceived as an act of are, and might indefinitely be, “in altruistic service to the cause, or as an process”. South African artist and idealistic act of personal self-fulfilment. academic Thembinkosi Goniwe points The concept of Israel as a secular or out that “Black people are always religious Jewish “homeland” has performing, adjusting to the system, prompted a sense of dual loyalties for speaking the foreign language. Black many South African Jews. Yet as Shimoni people are always ‘becoming’”. comments, “In general for Jews in South Goniwe suggests that these processes of Africa, confidence in the continued becoming could, in tandem, affect viability of Jewish life in the new world white South Africans, as he urges: “Let’s lands of the Diaspora imparted a all become part of this process of vicarious quality that enabled them to becoming” (quoted in Kasibe 2006: 25). identify with the idea of a return to Zion Within this “process of becoming”, new without necessarily regarding it as speaking trajectories, relationships applicable to themselves” (2003: 4). between home and elsewhere, global Thus, for many white South Africans and and local, tradition and modernity are in particularly for those Jewish South a state of fluidity, transforming ways in Africans with Zionist affiliations, which we approach questions of “belonging” and “home” still seem to be subjectivity, identity and creative contested terms. agency.
The second-generation exploration of The Dis-Location / Re-Location immigrant identity investigates how exhibition: hybridity; grafting; cutting conceptions of contemporary South and hysteria African cultural identities might be renegotiated in terms of hybridity. Stuart In the artwork on the Dis-Location / Re- Hall’s (1994) theorisation of identity as a Location exhibition, hybridity is matter of “becoming” as well as of considered as a product of grafting. In “being” is pertinent here: each of the three core narratives of the
Far from being eternally fixed in some exhibition, ( Aloerosa; Ties that Bind Her; essentialised past, [cultural identities] A Room of Her Own , 2006-2007) the first are subject to the continuous “play” of incision or cut inevitably leads to a history, culture and power. Far from grafting of organic or inorganic being grounded in mere “recovery” of materials into the protagonist’s flesh. My the past, which is waiting to be found, use of the term “graft” is influenced by and which when found, will secure our Colin Richards’ definition of the term sense of ourselves into eternity, which, he argues, involves both contact identities are the names we give to the and exchange – interactions that different ways we are positioned by, commonly intersect across difference
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(1997: 234). When a graft takes place hybridisation, which produces fusion but the boundaries crossed can be “the mixture remains mute and opaque, traumatically transgressive – signifying a never making use of conscious contrasts deep incision that wounds and can and oppositions” (Bakhtin 1981: 360), is leave permanent scars, even though it operationalised. Unconscious hybridity may also lead to productive and gives rise to amalgamation rather than successful fusion. contestation which, like creolisation, is an imperceptible process, whereby two or more cultures merge to produce a new mode, language, world view or object (Young 1995: 21). Intentional hybridity sets different points of view against each other in a conflictual structure, which retains an elemental organic energy and open-endedness (Bakhtin cited in Young 1995: 22).
Given its correlations with the creative work, in which organic species of plants and human skin are shown to conjoin through grafting, the term “hybridity” has been chosen to refer to processes of cultural fusion. Hybridity, like the term “grafting”, has a biological etymology – it was originally used to describe the outcomes of crossing two plants or animals of different species, possibly as the result of grafting. In terms of horticulture, a graft’s purpose is to cultivate new orders, through actions of cutting, severing, transplanting and attaching different species to and from Figure 1: each other. Commonly used in post- Farber, L. 2006-7 colonial discourse to describe a range of Aloerosa: Transplant social and cultural borrowings, Image size: 135.8 h x 102 w cm exchanges and intersections across Archival pigment printing on Soft Textured Fine Art paper, 315 g ethnic boundaries and the emergence Editioned 1/9 of new cultural forms that might ensue Photograph by Michael Meyersfeld from such mixes, hybridity and grafting refer to both biological and cultural I use the term ”hybridity” with specific “merging”. reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary model of “organic hybridisation” and In the work on the exhibition, the two Homi K. Bhabha’s (1994) post-colonial women’s narratives are visually and model which allows for the emergence phonetically grafted throughout the of a “Third Space”. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work, in ways that are part-fictionalised, linguistic model of hybridity differentiates part-autobiographic and part-historically between “organic” (unconscious) and factual. The imagery slips between the “intentional” hybridisation. Within the factual Bertha Marks, whose artwork, his concept of organic performance is based on first and
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second-hand research, and her The protagonist is represented as fictionalised persona, whose thoughts, engaged in needlework activities, emotions and actions are based on typically considered as “women's work” imaginative projection. South African in the Victorian era and as a signifier of Victorian colonialism is referenced “femininity” through docility and labour through the period settings and (Parker 1984: 4, 5). Representation of this Victorian styling, yet this referent is activity is given a subversive twist in that simultaneously located within the she appears to be working on her skin as present, signified by the plastic fabric of opposed to fabric. This subverted each skirt worn, and the protagonist’s needlework activity becomes a short, boyish haircut. Using my body as metaphor for an Anglo-Jewish (white) metonym for myself and Bertha Marks – woman trying to negotiate a sense of the combination of whom I shall being “African” within a (post)colonial hereafter refer to as “the protagonist” – I environment. perform our identities as post-colonial and colonial white Jewish women in three core narratives, presented as a series of staged photographs. In certain works, the images more obviously address Bertha’s experience; in others it more openly addresses mine. In these images, the protagonist is represented as dressed in contemporary forms of hybridised, Victorian/African-style clothing and often appears in the Victorian setting of the Sammy Marks Museum, Pretoria, the former home of Bertha and Sammy Marks. vii
Figure 3: Farber, L. 2006 A Room of her Own Performance still Photograph by Michael Meyersfeld
This conception of women’s work, and the claustrophobic passivity associated with domestic labour in Victorian England, is subverted through the implication that the act of sewing can be redefined into a form of agency. Needlework becomes a means through which Marks unsuccessfully struggles to reaffirm – and I ambivalently manage to Figure 2: renegotiate – a sense of identity as a Farber, L. 2004-7 white Jewish woman living in Aloerosa: Induction (post)colonial Africa. Albeit reluctantly in Image size: 65 x 65 cm Marks’ case, these intimate acts of Archival pigment printing on Soft Textured Fine Art paper, 315 g cutting and conjoining of white flesh Editioned 1/9 and indigenous South African aloes, Photograph by Hannelie Coetzee pearls and white African beads suggest
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the creation of new subjectivities: grey, dismantling the structural privilege it hybrid identities that are the product of entails, can be a painful, lonely and grafting signifiers of Europe and Africa. alienating growth process, as she Her various insertions into the body are poignantly states in relation to her own shown to “take” and transform into new experience: hybrid plants, beaded flowers or scarification markings. In the Aloerosa I continue to struggle through the and A Room of Her Ow n series, the multiple fences of white identity that protagonist’s pale white skin becomes a my heritage constructed to define me. But bits of flesh remain caught in the site of disfiguration – the violence of the barbs. A white skin is not skin that can plant’s simulated growth is the outcome be shed without losing some blood of a self-initiated, genteelly delicate, yet (Steyn 2001: xvii). violent action of cutting and insertion. Although these actions arise from a desire to integrate or “belong”, they might be read as metaphors for cultural contestation. As foreign to the body, the aloe plant signifies insertion of an indigenous, alien culture, which takes root and disfigures the body through its forceful growth under the skin. Emphasis is on contact and subsequent combination of difference through processes that imply bodily violation, abjection, disfiguration and pain. By deliberately inserting the “other” into my body, I, more so than Marks, actively invite and embrace the “stranger/other” within. Figure 4: Farber, L. 2006
A Room of her Own Although the “taking” of the graft is Performance still imaged as physical in the work, Photograph by Michael Meyersfeld metaphorically this insertion of the “other” and its “taking root” is also a Berthas’ bedroom in the Sammy Marks psychological process. My choice of the Museum forms the context for the key aloe plant relates to the healing video work, and the subsequent properties attributed to the aloe-vera photographic prints and stage set leaf. Whilst the aloe vera leaf is said to installation, A Room of Her Own (2006- have soothing qualities, bitter-aloe 2007). The bedroom becomes a leaves are used to make a purgative, metaphoric “transitional space” wherein which cathartically cleanses the body of the protagonist performs a series of toxins. Thus, the act of stitching aloe physically and psychologically leaves into her body may be seen to transformative acts of grafting on her suggest processes of physical healing body. These grafts of diverse materials and purging which in turn might evoke and cultures are shown to give rise to the sense of psychological trauma new identity formations. In this series, inherent in acculturation processes. As Victorian constructs of femininity such as Steyn notes, willingness to take on the needlework and historically gendered implications of one’s racialisation into psycho-logical/somatic “disorders” such “whiteness” and to cooperate in as hysteria, sexual fetishisation and the
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sublimation of desire, are imaged as speculatively, as a result of having to means by which Marks and I deal with conform to strict colonial conventions transformative physical and regarding race and class. In my case, psychological changes in response to this enactment of speech might be read our respective alien/alienating as compensatory for the years of environments. These “disorders”, generational “silences” which were part particularly hysteria, represent ways in of my parents’ and grandparents’ which, historically, women feigned survival strategies as immigrant Jews in disease in an attempt to bring unspoken South Africa. From this perspective, traumas into words or to draw attention cutting, or self-mutilation, as it is used in to their social, intellectual, creative and the work, has transgressive potential – emotional constraints under patriarchy. through its evocation of abjection and Correlations between hysteria and self- through its potential as an act of self- mutilation or cutting as forms of agency directed rebellion and anger. It could are suggested. lead to liberation not only from entrenched gender roles, but also from Cutting the skin to the point of releasing conventional or accepted racial or blood is a contemporary practice religious categorisations and to common amongst westernised teenage reconceptualisations of identity. The girls, used as a means of inflicting pain representation of hysteria and the on oneself. The relief provided by the sublimation of desire associated with it, endorphins released into the body as well as the protagonist’s cutting, “anesthetises” the person’s emotional might therefore be considered as pain. Psychologists note that cutting is a historical and contemporary forms of way of “speaking” when one is unable, agency. verbally, to express overwhelming emotions or unfulfilled emotional needs; In the work, analogies between these a desperate cry for help in the face of a historical and contemporary psycho- devastating sense of alienation, lack of logical/somatic states and those of belonging, powerlessness, and abjection, liminality, rapture and the abandonment (D’Arcy 2007; Ellis 2002: sublime are thus suggested. Although 12). these states are clearly differentiated, they are commonly underpinned by a Feminist writers like Rose Ellis (2002) loss of ego boundaries, resulting in propose that cutting is a response to dissolution of clear distinctions between certain expectations embedded in “self” and “other”; an ambiguous state patriarchal ideologies, rather than a of “in-betweenness”. In the artwork, this symptom of individual psychopathology. is shown to be achieved through From this perspective, cutting, like confrontation with and acceptance of hysteria, might be seen as a way in the “other” within, in accordance with which women choose to (re)negotiate French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s patriarchal regulation over the conception of the boundaries of femininity. The “stranger/other/foreigner” as being protagonist’s cutting is suggested as a positioned as within the self. As she way of voicing her anger in the face of states: situations in which she felt/feels powerless. For Marks, this anger might Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: have been as a result of her being he is the hidden face of our identity, “silenced” by her position as a woman in the space that wrecks our abode, the time when understanding and affinity a rigidly patriarchal society, or, flounder. By recognising him within
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ourselves, we are spared detesting him I draw an analogy between my, and to in himself (Kristeva 1991: 1). some extent Bertha Marks’, imagined habitation of this “transitional space” For both Marks and I, this closeness to and Bhabha’s conception of the “third the “other” is threatening, albeit in space”, which “displaces the histories different ways. It necessitates a coming that constitute it, and sets up new to terms with our whiteness(es), and the structures of authority, new political multiple racial, historical and cultural initiatives, which are inadequately privileges that this implies. For Marks, this understood through received wisdom” process was fraught with fear and (1990: 221). Implicit in my use of the term anxiety, given that she lived in an era in is the emergence or “coming into which colonial communities regarded being” of unscripted formations of themselves as superior to the indigenous expressions, positions and production. populations they encountered in the Bhabha’s description of the interface colonies. Convinced that these between cultures as “those ‘in-between’ indigenous groups were uncivilised, and spaces that provide the terrain for therefore fundamentally different and elaborating strategies of self-hood – inferior to themselves, they avoided any singular or communal – that initiate new form of cultural contact and exchange. signs of identity, and innovative sites of Therefore, for Marks, any contact with collaboration, in the act of defining the the “other” would have been so idea of society itself” seems to threatening that, if she had initiated any encapsulate the possibilities in hybrid, processes of transformation, these would transforming conceptions of have only been cautious and tentative. contemporary South African identities In my case, where physical contact with (1994: 1, 2). According to Bhabha, the “other” has lost some of the entering this space encourages a transgressive significance it once had, perception of difference as “neither (given that “the other” has now One nor the Other but something else assumed a name/identity), this struggle besides, in-between” (1990: 219). is symbolic and, ultimately, psychological. Secondly, this in-betweenness might be linked to Kristevian abjection wherein However, before the protagonist can the “unclean threat” of the abject puts cross threatening cultural or the subject in a state of in-between- psychological boundaries, she has to ness; a person’s sense of self – the idea enter a liminal space of “in- of having a unified, separate and betweenness” between “self” and distinct identity – is disrupted through the “other”. Upon entering this space, her loss of ego boundaries between self and growing closeness to the other is not only other (Kristeva 1982). As Kristeva notes, uncomfortable and unnerving, but also whilst “the vulnerability of the borderline threatening. Yuri Lotman speaks about is a threat to the integrity of the ‘own the criss-crossing of boundaries which and clean self’ it can also offer a liminal leads to “a constant state of hybridity … space where self and other may always oscillat[ing] between identity intermingle” (53). This intermingling and alterity”, which in turn results in a engenders a terror or rapture in the tension that is most evident at its subject, which gives rise to and boundaries (Lotman cited in perpetuates a sense of ego dissolution. Papastergiadis 1995: 14). Certain This correlation between Bhabha and correlations between Kristeva’s Kristeva suggests that what is potentially conception of abjection and Bhabha’s productive can also be terrifyingly “third space” might be proposed. Firstly,
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disruptive, for, as Lynda Nead (1997) the “Africaness of being white in South notes, in “[a]ll transitional states … it is Africa”. the margins, the very edges of categories, that are most critical in the In what I consider to be the final image construction of … meaning” (6). of the exhibition, A Room of Her Own: Redemption, the protagonist is represented as being in such a transformative, liminal state of rapture. The blood-red embroidery cotton which she used to stitch the leaves into her skin has grown within her flesh, forming both roots and veins in her calf. The aloe leaves which she stitched into her thigh have withered, and at their central core, replacing the petit-point rose which appeared to have been stitched onto her thigh, a new, succulent hybrid aloe has emerged. It is on this endnote of deep ambivalence that the exhibition is inconclusively suspended, hovering in that liminal, hybrid space of becoming Figure 5 : which Farber, L. 2006 A Room of Her Own: Redemption leaves no option but to acknowledge Image size: 100 h x 133.2 w cm that one has lost one’s home, the Archival pigment printing on Soft Textured place of a “safe” homogenous Fine Art paper, 315 g identity to which one can return. Editioned 1/9 (Steyn 2001: 145). Photograph by Michael Meyersfeld
Author Note In the artwork, the protagonist’s experience of in-between-ness is played out through references to the Victorian Leora Farber holds an MA in Fine Art construct of hysteria. She is often (cum laude ) from the University of the represented as fainting and/or Witwatersrand. She is currently a collapsing, losing self-control and/or self- Johannesburg-based practicing artist, discipline and, therefore, personal and Director of the University of restraint and dignity. These poses mimic Johannesburg’s Faculty of Art Design the release of sublimated desires and Architecture’s Research Centre, recorded in Victorian representations of titled Visual Identities in Art and Design . hysterical women. In certain images, analogies between this heightened References transformative, emotional state and those of rapture and the sublime are Bethlehem, L. 2004. ‘Membership, suggested. viii In the ways they are Dismemberment and the Boundaries imaged in the work, these ambivalent of the Nation – Manfred Nathan’s emotions seem analogous to Steyn’s Sarie Marais : A Romance of the (2006: 114) characterisation of the Anglo-Boer war’, African Studies , attainment of hybridity with regard to 63(1), 95-117. that group of white South Africans who consciously and actively grapple with
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Bhabha, H. K. 1994. The Location of L’Ange, G. 2005. The White Africans: Culture . London & New York: From Colonization to Liberation , Routledge. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball. D’Arcy, L. 2007. Cutting , Leveson, M. 1996. People of the Book:
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Steyn, M. 1999. White Identity in Context: Steyn, M. & Distiller, N. 2004. The End of A Personal Narrative, in T. K. Blackness: Returning the Soul of Nakayama & J. N. Martin (eds.) Black Folk to their Rightful Owners . Whiteness: The Communication of New York: Anchor Books. Social Identity , Thousand Oaks & Van der Watt, L. 2003. ‘The Many Hearts London: Sage, 264-278. of Whiteness: Dis-investing in ——2001. Whiteness Just Isn’t What it Whiteness Through South African Used to Be: White Identity in a Visual Culture’, PhD Thesis, State Changing South Africa , New York: University of New York, Stony Brook. State University of New York Press. Ware, V. & Back, L. 2002. Out of ——2006. ‘Revisiting Whiteness in Post Whiteness: Colour, Politics and Apartheid South Africa, 12 Years On’, Culture , Chicago & London: Keynote Address, Revisiting University of Chicago Press. Identities/Postcolonialities in an ever Young, R. J. C. 1995. Colonial Desire: changing South African Socio and Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Geopolitical Climate, University of Race , London & New York: Cape Town. Routledge.
Notes accommodation for her daughters who were boarding in London. See Mendelsohn 1991: 200 for details. vi South African colloquial term for the bush. i With acknowledgement that the text I am This term, which is Afrikaans in origin, is used referring to was written in 2001, and that to describe the dry, uninhabited, marked changes might have taken place uncultivated yellow-brown grasslands, since then. common to the Gauteng province in which ii For biographic details on Sammy Marks, see Johannesburg and Pretoria are located. This Mendelsohn 1991. contrasts with the rose-garden, which iii Jewish prosperity was ambivalently represents a colonial formalising and regarded by the general population, and, as cultivation of nature. vii Milton Shain (1994: 17) notes, by the 1880s, This site has conceptual links to the two embryonic stereotypes of the Jew in research, as Sammy Marks' background as South Africa had emerged, namely “the an immigrant/diasporic Jew from Lithuania gentleman – characterised by sobriety, correlates with my life-history. His humble enterprise and loyalty, and the knave – beginnings as a peddler and subsequent rise characterised by dishonesty and cunning”. to prosperity may be likened to those of my The image of the knave correlates with the maternal and paternal grandparents, who, image of the avaricious Jew -- the filthy as Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, were immigrant who deprived the locally born forced to start a “new life” as general colonial of employment and exploited the dealers in South Africa. Both generations of local population” (Leveson 2003: 18). diasporic Jews saw South Africa as the “New iv Yiddish words such as ‘ shiksas ’ (Jewish World”, a place of “better prospects” in the women who marry gentile men), ‘chazars’ form of economic and educational (literally translated as pigs, usually used in opportunities. viii relation to non-Jews) and ‘ goyim ’ (usually To suggest this loss of dignity I looked at used in a derogatory sense to describe non- the third stage of a full hysterical attack Jews) are characteristic examples of such photographically documented by the racist parlance. The word ‘kaffir’ also French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot featured strongly; serving the same (1825-1893). Charcot recorded these images derogatory function it performed in English while working at the Sâlpetrière Hospital in and Afrikaans. Paris from 1862-1893. v This view of Judaism as a matter of personal integrity is borne out in Marks’ concern for the difficulties of finding suitable Jewish
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ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009
THE EPISTEMOLOGY THAT MAINTAINS WHITE RACE PRIVILEGE, POWER AND CONTROL OF INDIGENOUS STUDIES AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ PARTICIPATION IN UNIVERSITIES
BRONWYN FREDERICKS
Abstract 2008; Gunstone 2008; Moreton-Robinson 2005a). The term Indigenous Studies within this article refers to content which This article represents my attempt to turn encapsulates Australian Aboriginal the gaze and demonstrate how Studies and/or Torres Strait Islander Indigenous Studies is controlled in some Studies (Nakata 2006: 265) and studies Australian universities in ways that that may include references to witness Indigenous peoples being further Indigenous peoples in other geographic marginalised, denigrated and exploited. localities. Once located within I have endeavoured to do this through anthropology and history, Indigenous sharing an experience as a case study. I Studies may now be found, taught and have opted to write about it as a way of researched within all faculties in a exposing the problematic nature of university and across numerous racism, systemic marginalisation, white disciplines including health, education, race privilege and racialised subjectivity politics, law, geography, environmental played out within an Australian higher science and business (Moreton-Robinson education institution and because I am 2005a). It is now a cross-disciplinary dissatisfied with the on-going status quo. endeavour and seemingly is a site of In bringing forth analysis to this case collection and redistribution of study, I reveal the relationships between knowledge about Indigenous people oppression, white race privilege and (Brady 1997; Nakata 2006). Andrew institutional privilege and the Gunstone (2008: xxi) in his recent epistemology that maintains them. In discussion paper on Indigenous Studies moving from the position of being silent explains that in the current climate on this experience to speaking about it, I Australian institutions are: am able to move from the position of object to subject and to gain a form of urged that the teaching of Australian liberated voice (hooks 1989: 9). Indigenous Studies must involve Furthermore, I am hopeful that it will Indigenous people in curriculum encourage others to examine their own development and delivery of practices within universities and to Australian Indigenous Studies; this challenge the domination that involvement should not just occur for continues to subjugate Indigenous the purpose of increasing the number and diversity of the voices heard, but peoples. rather should also occur to address issues of power, governance and Introduction control of what is being studied and taught.
Indigenous Studies in Australia and Martin Nakata, focusing on Indigenous indeed the world has witnessed a scholarly involvement within Indigenous growth across all levels of education Studies, states that “[u]nderpinning over the past twenty years (Grieves
ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2009
FREDERICKS: THE EPISTEMOLOGY THAT MAINTAINS WHITE RACE PRIVILEGE
Indigenous academic involvement in and anti-discrimination policies and Indigenous Studies is a definite procedures. commitment to Indigenous people first and foremost, not to the intellectual or With all of this activity in universities in academic issues alone” (2006: 266). In terms of official documents, one could other words Indigenous people must be be lead to believe that there has been involved in Indigenous Studies and the a dramatic change in how Indigenous programs must address Indigenous Studies, Indigenous epistemologies and peoples’ issues and the systemic power Indigenous peoples are regarded. How inequalities and white hegemony in the is it, then, that being an Indigenous academy. Indigenous people have person within the academy can be been involved at a number of explained by Jean Phillips (2003: 3) as an universities where there are initiatives to “on-going struggle against colonial embed Indigenous perspectives in the domination” and described by Deborah curriculum (Hart 2003; Nakata 2004; Miranda (2003: 344) as “a heartbreaking Phillips 2003; Phillips and Lampert 2005). endeavour”? Miranda in discussing the There have additionally been on-going position of Indigenous academics in the discussions and forums, workshops and United States of America states that conference sessions on the colonising some have become: practices of western research methodologies and the call for disgusted and exhausted by the Indigenous methodologies which constant battles; some have challenge the imperial basis of western graduated with degrees only to find that non-Native scholars fill many of knowledge and the images of the positions in Native Studies; others Indigenous “Others” (Smith 2005; 1999). have simply turned their tremendous In response to these discussions, gifts and energies in other directions, presentations and papers, Aileen discounting the university as a place Moreton-Robinson (Queensland with potential to make a difference. University of Technology) and Maggie Walter (University of Tasmania) have Her position resonates with the words of developed a Postgraduate Masterclass Victor Hart (2003: 13 & 14), an Program in Indigenous Research Indigenous Australian, when he states Methodologies that moves beyond that our lectures are “about unpacking critiques of Western research paradigms and exorcising the everyday, garden to defining and explaining Indigenous variety racisms that the majority of white methodologies that are accountable to Australians bring consciously and Indigenous communities. The unconsciously to learning” and that we Masterclass was offered in 2006, 2007 find ourselves increasingly “in ideological and 2008. i The suggestions and wars where fidelity to the struggle is strategies put forward for Indigenous being tested by mostly neo-conservative Studies and the on-going discussions non-Aboriginal notions of liberation”. across numerous Australian universities Others such as Phillips (2003) also see have also been coupled with the universities as sites of growth and development of official university change for both Indigenous and non- documents in the form of Reconciliation Indigenous people. Personally, even Statements, Welcome to Country or though I know that our experiences as Acknowledgement to Country offerings, Indigenous people within universities Indigenous recruitment or employment often reflect the experiences we have strategies and university wide anti-racism as Indigenous people in broader society, I still get surprised and angry when it is other academics who espouse notions
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of justice and equity with whom we following week I received a letter (dated experience tension and conflict in 26 September 2005) thanking me for asserting our rights and cultural values. accepting the invitation and providing information relating to the membership In this article I demonstrate how the of the review panel; a schedule for the racism and the devaluing of Indigenous two day face-to-face meeting (17-18 people is less bloody than in earlier October 2005); copies of the course Australian history but is still perpetuated study guides and all the resource by non-Indigenous people with privilege material; a copy of the university’s and power, including academics who graduate attributes guidelines; and a have control of Indigenous Studies and copy of the university’s generic skills who can demonstrate an understanding guidelines. Based on the materials and of what hooks (1994: 16) terms “book the terms of reference, I anticipated knowledge”. In particular, I explore how that it would take two to three days of social control and cultural dominance preparation work if I was going to be operate, and are deployed in inter- actively engaged with the curriculum racial relations and subject positions materials. This coupled with the two-day within universities which continue to workshop equalled approximately five marginalise and oppress Indigenous days of work. peoples. This will be done through presenting an experience as a case Pamela Croft then contacted me and study and analysing it utilising critical made me aware that she was also race theory and whiteness studies. I wish invited to be a member of the review to name my experience and raise panel. Pamela is another Aboriginal objection to the practices as described woman and holds a Professional in this paper in an attempt to move from Doctorate in Visual Arts (DVA, see Croft the position of being silent to speaking 2003). Pamela advised me that the about it in an attempt to interrupt white university was not offering any payment privilege and to reject the paradigm of for our work nor was it prepared to offer control and certainty (White and any other benefits that they may have Sakiestewa 2003). I seek to move from been able to offer. At that time I was not the position of object to subject and to employed and was a registered gain a form of liberated voice (hooks recipient of unemployment benefits. I 1989). I encourage others to examine was living on $220 a week. Pamela was their own practices within universities self-employed. We could therefore not because as Devon Mihesuah (2003: 326) participate without personally incurring asks: “if we do not take charge and costs. The costs included declining other create strategies for empowerment, work that may have come up for me who will?”. that week and travelling to and from that university. I made contact with the Setting the Scene for “Inclusion” university-based academic who originally rang me and discussed the matter. I was told that no payment In September 2005 I was invited to join would be offered however, lunch, an academic panel that would review morning tea and afternoon tea would an Australian university’s courses in the be provided each day and dinner on field of Indigenous Studies. Initially I said the first evening. I was made to feel like I yes to the invitation thinking that it was a was “money hungry” despite gifting my respectful recognition of what I could time freely in the past to a number of bring to the review and that it was a universities for educational activities and genuine gesture of inclusion. The
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events. I believed what was being asked person. Two of these have received of me in this instance was too great grant monies, researched and written in without attributing a remunerative value the field of Indigenous Studies. The or any form of reciprocity. That is, the gift Indigenous man on the review panel that I was asked to provide was too who was employed in that university great to ask for considering that there does not have any responsibility for the was no developed relationship of Indigenous Studies courses and as hospitality or reciprocity (Kuokkanen already stated is based in the 2003). From Kuokkanen’s (2007) Indigenous centre of that university perspective it is also the continued where Indigenous student support and taking for granted that limits the Indigenous tertiary preparation development of hospitality between programs are provided. This university is Indigenous and non-Indigenous not, as explained by Nakata (2004: 5), a peoples. In this case, I believe I was place where Indigenous Studies being taken for granted. programs are “Indigenous run, managed and taught” or “increasingly Turning now to the other people listed as under the nominal authority or members of the review team. Of the ten management of Indigenous names on the review team, seven academics”. It is, as Hart (2003: 14 & 15) belonged to people working for the asserts, “within the domain of mostly university conducting the review. From non-Aboriginal academics” and where this, six were non-Indigenous people. This they can be in a “whole series of included two women one with relationships with Aboriginality without qualifications in education and the ever losing the relative upper hand”. In other with qualifications in nursing and this regard, this university has failed to do education. There were four men who what Gunstone (2008: xxi) explains they collectively had qualifications in need to do, which is “address issues of humanities, psychology and sociology. power, governance and control of what Among this seven, there was one is being studied and taught”. Lastly, as Indigenous man who was working in the seven of the people were employed Indigenous centre of that university. He and based within that university and was also formally enrolled in a research their wages were covered by that higher degree program in that university university they were remunerated while and one of the non-Indigenous men on they participated in the review. Some in the review panel was one of his research this group were also tenured employees. supervisors. There was one Indigenous man from a university in another part of Beginning to Dissect “Inclusion” Australia also listed as a member of the review panel. He had qualifications in Within this university, non-Indigenous education and also worked within an people are remunerated to talk about Indigenous centre. There were Indigenous peoples, cultures, additionally two Indigenous women’s knowledges and histories and to gauge names on the list, Pamela’s and mine. how much knowledge and
understanding others will gain about In relation to the Indigenous Studies Indigenous people. As such they hold content, three of the non-Indigenous what is considered “legitimate men had mixed responsibilities for the knowledge” that underpins and Indigenous courses/subjects/modules, maintains their power within the that is, coordinating the major and university (Alfred 2004; Henderson 2000; individual courses or being a contact Martin 2003; Smith 1999). The people
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that clearly owned Indigenous Studies oppression” (Moreton-Robinson 2005b: within this university were non-Indigenous 26). people. As will be demonstrated, the processes of the review and the terms in Through my telephone discussion with which Pamela and I were invited to the university-based academic who had participate excluded us from holding originally contacted me, and on critical any form of ownership, even reflection, I knew that Pamela and I temporarily, and would lead to what were being expected to give our Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2005b) would knowledge, skills and abilities in describe as a further investment in the Indigenous Studies for “our people” white possession of Indigenous Studies in based on “goodwill”, “community that university. Had I participated in the service“ and for “white people who review under the conditions set down for wanted to learn about us”. The university me, it would have maintained the staff involved had based our possible discrepancies of power and control participation on their epistemiological between the paid non-Indigenous framework of us as Indigenous women employees on the panel who talk about, with doctoral postgraduate write about and who are given authority qualifications (Croft 2003; Fredericks to control information within the 2003). Our possible participation was university about Indigenous people, and constructed through our Indigenous the authentic Indigenous voices of embodiment as racial and gendered Indigenous women who were offered no objects and based on their desire for us value other than what Marcelle Gareau to be the Indigenous “Other”, albeit with (2003: 197) calls a “targeted resource” doctoral qualifications: the symbols of and Shahnaz Khan (2005: 2025) terms a attainment and credentials of the “native informant”. We would be academy. We were defined as both undertaking this position in order to subject and object through our legitimate the academic processes of Aboriginality and offered a positioning non-Indigenous people. This amounts to of subjugation and subordination. From a recycling of the colonial power the review team’s perspective this is gained through colonisation and a what would add value to the review distinct difference between those with and provide legitimacy and advantage institutional privilege and those without. to the university and the non-Indigenous Indigenous Studies and Indigenous people. The non-Indigenous people people are objectified and reproduced were positioned as the experts and as objects within this context and are knowers and offered the on-going what Moreton-Robinson (2008) would positioning of authority, legitimacy, term “epistemological possessions” of domination and control. We were being the non-Indigenous people involved in asked to perform the role of female the review and by this university. I also Indigenous academics who would be noted that what was spoken of, as a used to service the non-Indigenous form of gift or thanks by the contact academics in the same way that person, was food, which in fact Indigenous people were required to resonated as a reminder of the past as if service non-Indigenous people in food rations were being offered from the colonial history (Huggins 1989; Rintoul coloniser to the colonised (Rintoul 1993). 1993). As explained by Moreton- In short, my participation without Robinson (2008: 86), placing us in such a payment would have affirmed “white service relationship also positions our domination and economic success at Aboriginality “as an epistemological the cost of racial and economic possession to service what it is not” and
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to “obscure the more complex way that review, is riddled with contradictions white possession functions socio- considering that not all the people discursively through subjectivity and currently responsible for Indigenous knowledge production”. It also diverts Studies in that university have our attention from our own and qualifications in the field of Indigenous community priorities to the priorities of Studies. Somehow in this instance and in the dominant society. The situation others, non-Indigenous people are able represented a form of identity politics to undertake a process of that is rooted in Australian colonial metamorphosis, which allows them to history and that has contributed to the teach within the Indigenous Studies ongoing historical, legal and political domain and maintain the artificial racialisation and marginalisation of barriers that continue the racism in Indigenous peoples. academia (Galvan 2003). All the while they are able to develop and grow their If it was only our “authentic” academic curriculum vitaes to prove Aboriginality that the university wanted, their worthiness to teach Indigenous then other Aboriginal women would Studies. Moreover, the whole argument have been asked, for example Elders, that “you don’t have to be one to teach Traditional Owner representatives, Indigenous Studies” is negated when the leaders in specific fields or community issue of needing an Indigenous person members from the community in which arises for the purposes of equity, cultural that university is physically located. If it diversity, representation, to sit on a was our qualifications in terms of our committee, be a resource to assist in disciplines then we would also not have connecting students to community been included because, in other groups, or, in this case, to be a member circumstances, staff in that university of a review panel (Deloria 2004; have explained that I could not work Mihesuah 2004). In this there is a within the field of Indigenous Studies difference between authority and because I did not have an “academic authenticity and legitimate and pedigree” (Deloria 2004: 25) in illegitimate knowledge. Indigenous Studies. That is, I had not undertaken an Indigenous Studies major If Pamela and I had agreed to do what in my undergraduate or postgraduate was asked of us, what would have studies. This is despite undertaking resulted is that we as the only two scholarly work in the field within health Indigenous women would have given and education and being recognised our time, skills, abilities and specific by the field by being granted a National knowledge in Indigenous content for and Medical Research Council free while all the other members of the (NH&MRC) Post-Doctoral Research review panel, including the non- Award in Indigenous Health (2006); a Indigenous “Indigenous experts”, would Visiting Fellow position in Indigenous have been paid for their time, skills, Studies in another university (2007); and abilities and specific knowledge in membership of the Australian Institute of Indigenous content. It is also laden with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander all the other complexities that Studies (AIATSIS, 2008). accompany messages of devaluation and disregard. Had we participated Saying No given the situation then maybe we might have found ourselves deeper within the system that marginalised us What I have been told in the past, and and that seeks to constantly use and the evidence associated with the
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take possession of us. In this we share the concern for our rights or empowerment. experience that so many other They can act in ways that insulate Indigenous women experience, that of themselves, their disciplines and being deprecated (Moreton-Robinson institutions in order to protect their 2000). The Indigenous man from that privileges (Smith 1999) and can instate institution who participated in the review gatekeepers to guard their entitlements, colluded in this deprecation, whether creating a comfort zone and unwittingly or not, by participating in the marginalising dissenting Indigenous playing out of the scenario that voices (Rigney 1998; Stanfield 1993). I witnessed the reproduction of racialised also came to the conclusion through my and institutionalised power and discussions with the Elder that I did not privilege. I wanted to resist cooption to a wish to reflect the image of me that was position of intellectual servitude to epistemologically defined by non- members of the dominant society and Indigenous people (Moreton-Robinson believed that if I did participate that I 2007) and enacted in the invitation. would be expected to do little more than play the role that Vine Deloria I then wrote a formal letter detailing my (2004: 29) terms a “house pet”. concerns to the chairperson of the review panel and stated that I would not I sought counsel from an Elder who participate in the review. I asked for my explained that just because non- letter to be circulated amongst the Indigenous people might know a lot review team. I also sent my letter as an about Indigenous affairs and Indigenous attachment to an email. I did not politics does not mean that they will receive an acknowledgement of my support Indigenous people, our communication or a reply via email or in worldviews and our values over their a letter. Nor did I receive a telephone own, and it doesn’t mean that they will call from the chairperson of the review not put Indigenous people down in the panel, or from anyone else on the process. In essence they might protect review panel or from that institution. In and maintain their own interests in not hearing anything or receiving a Indigenous issues by the denial and letter back from anyone associated with exclusion of Indigenous people and our the review I came to understand that sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson 2004a). the review had nothing to do with Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s (2004b) engaging us with scholarly respect. By theoretical understandings are not telephoning and not responding to important to draw upon at this point. my letter or email I was further de- She explains that the protection and authorised, discarded and deprecated. investment in white values and interests I was again bluntly reminded that the is rooted in the possessive logic of invitation was on the university’s terms patriarchal white sovereignty, and that and just how easy it is for institutions such there might be anxiety about as universities to dispossess and exclude dispossession which is “harnessed to instil us and for them to maintain power, and hope through possessive investments in control. In not communicating with patriarchal white sovereignty” (2008: Pamela or me, the university and those 102). As a result of their possessive within it connected to the review, investments in patriarchal white endorsed their positioning, privilege, sovereignty, non-Indigenous people can advantage and their rationalising of act against Indigenous sovereignty ownership. They didn’t have to verbally claims about our being, our knowledge, say “this is mine” or “this is ours” because our culture and our land and show no their actions and non-actions
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demonstrated the possessive logic of non-Indigenous people are awarded white sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson kudos, creditability and seen as 2004b). honourable (Lampert 2003) for their work within Indigenous Studies. Pamela and I I experienced intense frustration at the were asking for no more than non- lack of response from anyone on the Indigenous academics would ask for in review panel or the university and while I the same situation and for which they struggled with trying to understand the think they are entitled. We were asking atmosphere of silence, the academics for the same form of personal and involved in the review benefited from institutional legitimisation and respect their “silenced position by proxy” that they think they deserve. (Lampert 2003: 23). I wondered why did they not engage with us? Why didn’t Had I undertaken the role of panel anyone contact Pamela or me? Was member I would have fully engaged the Indigenous man a willing within the review panel process. I would accomplice to these activities? Was it have critically read the materials, about their unwillingness to engage and contributed to the discussion and to give up their privilege and power and ensured that my participation was not their resistance to changing the status “token”, and that I was not positioned as quo? Vicki Grieves (2008) in her recent “native informant”. I would have been in work writes of the recognisable stress a position to offer valuable critique, put that Indigenous scholars experience forward suggestions for change and within environments such as universities. raised issues relevant to the content. I She draws on the work of Williams, knew if Pamela and I didn’t participate Thorpe and Chapman (2003: 68-91), then we couldn’t do any of this and that who explain how the relationship the people handling the review panel between whiteness and knowledge might say that they had asked often creates stress on many levels for Indigenous people, and that the Indigenous workers. This was an Indigenous women they had asked experience of such stress. I was didn’t take up the offer to participate. It reminded of the arrogance of white would be said as I have heard before, privilege in that they would assume that “Indigenous people didn’t participate”, we would be members of the review rather than “the terms of the review panel without payment and that we made it difficult for Indigenous people to would perform the type of Aborigine participate”. To talk in these terms that they wanted (Smith 1999). maintains the comfort of the white Moreover, they also assumed that people in their belonging within perhaps we would be happy to be Indigenous Studies because they were, placed in the position of “other” and or are, “only trying to…”. This type of may be even in some way we might statement and others of “goodwill” and have even been grateful for their “benevolence” also assist in masking the benevolence. This is in opposition to non- power differentials (Hage 1998; Riggs Indigenous academics from that 2004) and deny the truth of Indigenous university and others who repeatedly, poverty and dispossession and non- confidently and comfortably ask for Indigenous privilege. It seemed that monies for consulting with community even having been through the higher groups, including Indigenous groups, education system and earning our when applying for research funds to respective pieces of paper, we were not undertake research in specific being valued in the same way as the Indigenous areas. In addition to this, other people on the panel. I have no
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doubts that the non-Indigenous people within it are reproducing imperial on the panel were all supported and attitudes and processes which congratulated for participating in and marginalise and exclude us whilst undertaking the review of the proclaiming they want to include and Indigenous Studies curriculum. The involve us. In the Academy, this can be university and that particular faculty a common occurrence. Universities are could tick off that job from its task list for not the safe places we would like to the year and move on. We knew we think they are (Mihesuah and Wilson risked being seen as making trouble and 2004; Monture-Angus 1995; Walker 2003). being too political, too critical and Taiaiake Alfred (2004: 88) states that maybe even too personal (White and “they are not even so special or different Sakiestewa 2003). Since this time we in any meaningful way from other have both heard information about institutions; they are microcosms of the ourselves and the review from people larger societal struggle”. As an within that university who had nothing to Indigenous woman and academic I do with the review and who should not know I need to face the difficult have known anything about it at all. questions around obligations and None of the information has been responsibilities to other Indigenous flattering. We heard that we were peoples and our struggle for freedom presented as complainers and the from oppression and exploitation at problem, just as Indigenous people are every point of academic engagement. I generally presented as the problem, also know that it takes a lot of energy to rather than the social or structural issues challenge and fight the status quo and and the power and hierarchy sometimes it is a lot easier to just accept associated with the academy (Smith it because of the level of emotional, 1999). Lampert (2003: 24), in discussing physical and spiritual damage we may her experiences as a non-Indigenous incur. In this article I have shown how we academic working in Indigenous can reaffirm and act from our education, argues that Indigenous Indigenous epistemological and Studies is generally regarded as a “Black ontological foundations and how we issue rather than a White issue; about can challenge and offer resistance to ‘them’ rather than ‘us’. It’s often taken the colonial forces that consistently try to for granted that I am the good guy, or silence us or make us with what that it is even good guys and bad guys”. Mihesuah (2004: 44) calls “window In this case, we were positioned as the dressing”. That is, they want us but not “bad Indigenous women”. our opinions. In the process of working through this article and articulating the Conclusion practices within this particular tertiary education institution, I have moved from the position of object to subject. I have Audre Lorde (1984: 44) states that “it is been able to gain a form of liberated not difference that immobilises us, but voice (hooks 1989: 9) and demonstrated silence. And there are so many silences the multi-faceted forms of domination to be broken”. In breaking the silence on and control that continue to subjugate my experience I have attempted to Indigenous peoples within universities. highlight racism, social and cultural Furthermore, I have shown how domination, control and white privilege “goodwill” invitations can be as they intersect and are enacted within underpinned by racism, white race an Australian university. I have privilege and racialised subjectivity demonstrated how hard it can be to which results in Indigenous peoples engage with the Academy when those
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being further marginalised, denigrated and exploited. I have sought to References challenge the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty (Moreton- Alfred, T. 2004. Warrior Scholarship; Robinson 2004b) that continues to Seeing the University as a Ground of subjugate Indigenous peoples. I Contention, in D. A. Mihesuah and A. encourage others to do the same. C. Wilson (eds.) Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship Author Note and Empowering Communities , Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Dr Bronwyn Fredericks is a NHMRC Post- 88-99. Doctoral Research Fellow with Monash Brady, W. 1997. ‘Indigenous Australian University, the Queensland Aboriginal Education and Globalisation’, and Islander Health Council (QAIHC) International Review of Education , and the Victorian Aboriginal Community 43(5-6), 413-422. Controlled Health Organisation Croft, P. J. 2003. ‘ART Song: the Soul (VACCHO). She is additionally a Visiting Beneath my Skin’, PhD thesis, Fellow with the Indigenous Studies Queensland College of Art, Griffith Research Network, Queensland University, Brisbane. University of Technology (QUT). Deloria, V., Jr. 2004. Marginal and Submarginal, in D. A. Mihesuah and Acknowledgments A. C. Wilson (eds.) Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities , Acknowledgement is offered to the Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Department of Epidemiology and 16-30. Preventive Medicine, Monash University; Fredericks, B. 2003. ‘Talking about the Indigenous Studies Research Women’s Health: Aboriginal Network (ISRN), Queensland University of Women’s Perceptions and Technology; the Queensland Aboriginal Experiences of Health, Well-being, and Islander Health Council (QAIHC); Identity, Body and Health Services’, and the Victorian Aboriginal Community PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, Health Controlled Health Organisation and Sciences, Central Queensland (VACCHO) for supporting my research; University, Rockhampton. and the NHMRC for funding my Galvan, R. F. 2003. ‘Working in John Research Fellowship. Sincere thanks go Wayne Country: Racist and Sexist to Pamela Croft for supporting me to Termination at a Pacific Northwest write about our shared experience, University’, American Indian Aileen Moreton-Robinson for her Quarterly , 27(1/2), 189-196. intellectual critique and on-going Gareau, M. M. 2003. ‘Colonization within encouragement and Vicki Grieves for the University System’, American feedback on an earlier draft. Indian Quarterly , 27(1/2), 196-200.
Grieves, V. 2008. ‘The “Battlefields”: Identity, Authenticity and Aboriginal Knowledges in Australia’, in H. Minde (ed.) Indigenous Peoples: Self- determination, Knowledge and Indigeneity , Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers, 287-311.
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Gunstone, A. 2008. Australian Indigenous Journal of Australian Studies , 76, 203- Studies and Australian Universities, in 214. A. Gunstone (ed.) History, Politics Mihesuah, D. A. 2003. ‘Activism and and Knowledge: Essays in Australian Apathy: The Prices We Pay for Both’, Indigenous Studies , North Melbourne: American Indian Quarterly , 27(1/2), Australian Scholarly Publishing, xxi- 325-333. xxvi. ——2004. Academic Gatekeepers, in D. Hage, G. 1998. White Nation: Fantasies A. Mihesuah and A. C. Wilson (eds.) of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Indigenizing the Academy Society , Annadale: Pluto Press. Transforming Scholarship and Hart, V. 2003. ‘Teaching Black and Empowering Communities , Lincoln: Teaching Back’, Social Alternatives , University of Nebraska Press, 31-47. 22(3), 12-16. Mihesuah, D. A. and Wilson, A. C. (eds.) Henderson, J. S. Y. 2000. Challenges of 2004. Indigenizing the Academy Respecting Indigenous Worldviews in Transforming Scholarship and Eurocentric Education, in R. Neil (ed.) Empowering Communities , Lincoln: Voice of the Drum: Indigenous University of Nebraska Press. Education and Culture , Brandon, Miranda, D. A. 2003. ‘What’s Wrong with Manitoba: Kingfisher Publications, 59- a Little Fancy? Storytelling from the 80. (Still) Ivory Tower’, American Indian hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Quarterly , 27(1/2), 333-349. Education as the Practice of Monture-Angus, P. 1995. Thunder in my Freedom , London: Routledge. Soul: A Mohawk Woman Speaks , ——1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Thinking Black , Boston: South End Moreton-Robinson, A. 2000. Talkin' Up to Press. the White Woman: Indigenous Huggins, J. 1989. Sister Girl , St. Lucia: Women and Feminism , St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. University of Queensland Press. Khan, S. 2005. ‘Reconfiguring the Native ——2004a. Whiteness, Epistemology and Informant: Positionality in the Global Indigenous Representation, in A. Age’, Signs , 30(4), 2017-35. Moreton-Robinson (ed.) Whitening Kuokkanen, R. 2003. ‘Toward a New Race , Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Relation of Hospitality in the Press, 70-88. Academy’, American Indian ——2004b. ‘The Possessive Logic of Quarterly , 27(1/2), 267-296. Patriarchal White Sovereignty: The ——2007. Reshaping the University: High Court and the Yorta Yorta Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes, Decision’, borderlands e-journal , and the Logic of the Gift , 3(2), 1-9, Vancouver: UBC Press.
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ACRAWSA Journal , 1, 21-29, Research Towards Indigenous
i For details see [email protected] and www.isrn.qut.edu.au.
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WHITENESS, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES
ANDREW GUNSTONE
Abstract In this article, I explore a number of practices of whiteness within Australian universities and the impact of these In this article, I explore the impact of practices upon Indigenous peoples. I whiteness within Australian universities discuss these practices of whiteness as upon Indigenous peoples. I examine they operate across a wide range of several practices of whiteness in areas interrelated University areas, namely such as governance, policies, cultural governance, policies, cultural awareness courses, employment, awareness courses, employment, research, curriculum and student research, curriculum and student support. I argue that these practices of support. These areas have been whiteness substantially restrict the ability constantly identified over the past of universities to genuinely address the twenty years by government reports and educational needs of Indigenous academics as being of critical students, staff and community members. importance in enabling Australian universities to more appropriately
address the educational needs of Indigenous peoples (See DEET 1993; Whiteness involves the marginalisation, IEHAC 2006; MCEETYA 1995; Yunupingu discrimination and oppression of non- 1994; Battiste and Henderson 2000; white groups and individuals and the Bourke 1996; Nakata 1995; Phillips 2005; privileging of white groups and West 1995). Many of these practices of individuals. “Although whiteness is a whiteness, both individual and complex and fragmented identity, all institutional, have either been observed white people in Australia benefit from by me, or communicated to me by racial privilege … all receive unearned university students and staff, over the social benefits as the inheritors of a past decade of my employment at racially based system of wealth and Indigenous Studies Centres at several privilege” (McKay 2004: 4. See also Australian universities. I argue in this Moreton-Robinson 2004; Nicoll 2004). In paper that Australian universities have Australian universities, as in all other largely been unsuccessful in addressing institutions in this country, systemic these, and other, practices of whiteness individual and institutional practices of and have consequently substantially whiteness are prevalent and impact failed to genuinely address the significantly upon Indigenous peoples, educational needs of Indigenous whether as students, staff or community peoples. Further, I discuss various members. “Whiteness confers both strategies that Universities could dominance and privilege; it is implement that could significantly assist embedded in Australia’s institutions and in reducing these practices of whiteness. in the social practices of everyday life” (Moreton-Robinson 1998: 11; Moreton- Most universities have comprehensively Robinson 2006: 388). failed to address issues of Indigenous governance. In 2007, a survey I
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conducted of twelve universities perpetuate stereotypes, telling students (Gunstone 2008) found that universities that Indigenous children will not look had very few identified Indigenous them in the eye and that Indigenous positions on key University committees. people are not punctual. These No university had an identified position academics also often hold simplistic on their Council, only seven had an views on cultural differences in learning, identified position on their Academic such as that Indigenous cultures lack Board, and just four had an identified mathematical understandings (Nakata position on their Human Research Ethics 2003: 9). White staff have also advised Committees (Gunstone 2008: 104). students not to study Indigenous Studies Additionally, while I have observed a unless they wanted to work in the few university committees with Northern Territory, “where the Aborigines Indigenous members, overwhelmingly live”. White academics generally fail to these members have been elected as acknowledge Indigenous cultural issues individuals by university staff, rather than regarding student assessment. These being appointed as representatives of academics also largely assume that Indigenous Studies Centres. The Indigenous students will be experts in all consequence of this has been that even matters concerning Indigenous Studies. these university committees do not However, they also fail to recognise and maintain Indigenous representation as value the broad Indigenous knowledge the membership is based on individuals of Indigenous students (Nakata, Nakata rather than on institutions. and Chin 2008: 138).
Universities need to recognise this Often the most substantial attacks on disempowerment of Indigenous peoples Indigenous cultural safety come from and genuinely address issues of power “well-meaning” white university staff and and governance to more appropriately students. One example of this occurred meet Indigenous educational needs when a white academic requested, and aspirations (IHAEC 2006: 25; within a large class setting, for any Whatman and Duncan 2005: 120-123). Indigenous students to identify Indigenous people need to be much themselves and then interrogated the more involved in university governance. students about their Indigeneity. Another This involvement of Indigenous staff, example occurred when, again in a students and communities can large class setting, a white academic significantly improve a number of key identified an Indigenous student, and areas, such as curriculum development, asked them to stand up so the class access and retention of Indigenous could acknowledge the student. In the students, university-Indigenous same class, an Indigenous student of fair collaborative research and, more complexion was not identified by the broadly, Indigenous self-determination. academic as being Indigenous. Both The level of this Indigenous involvement academics later claimed that they were and engagement in university trying to “encourage” the Indigenous governance, though, needs to be students. determined by Indigenous peoples themselves. These examples clearly illustrate that universities have largely not prioritised There are many examples of ignorant the need to address issues of individual and racist views towards Indigenous and institutional racism. There are two peoples held by white university staff key ways in which universities could and students. White academics often address racism, through implementing
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anti-racist policies and procedures and and students to develop appropriate through implementing anti-racist anti-racist training. Overwhelmingly, the training. training offered to staff and students focuses on exploring non-white cultures Universities have largely failed to and experiences and ignores or implement anti-racist policies and marginalises the impact of practices of procedures. In my 2007 survey on whiteness within universities. The training Australian universities (Gunstone 2008) I also largely fails to interrogate complex analysed the Strategic Plans of the concepts such as “culture”, “power”, twelve institutions, which outline their key “language” and “identity” (See Delpit policies, priorities and strategies, such as 1993: 122; Henze and Vanett 1993: 119- developing internationalisation and 127). Universities also generally fail to securing funding. None of the twelve make the training compulsory which surveyed universities outlined in their often results in the training “preaching to Strategic Plans the importance of anti- the converted” rather than to ignorant racist policies and procedures to and apathetic staff and students. I have address individual and institutional been involved in the organising of anti- racism. Over many years in working at racist training and the impact of this Indigenous Studies Centres, I have seen training, despite excellent content, is that the absence of these policies and substantially diluted because university procedures have made it much more management have not made the difficult for Indigenous staff, students and training compulsory. This practice sharply community members to ensure that contrasts with universities often requiring universities genuinely address their staff to attend other forms of training experiences of institutional and relating to issues such as Occupational individual racism. Heath and Safety and Staff Inductions.
Universities need to ensure that they Genuine and appropriate anti-racist have effective policies and procedures training for university staff and students, to address issues of individual and that addresses individual and institutional racism. One significant way institutional racism, requires a much in which this can be done is for broader focus than simply exploring non- universities to firstly, implement, and white cultures. Rather, the training widely advertise, policies that condemn should also analyse the dominant white all forms of racism, and secondly, culture, and the racism, power and develop institutional procedures to practices of whiteness that permeate address any instances of racism. These throughout the structures and institutions anti-racist policies and procedures are of that dominant culture (Cowlishaw most effective when they acknowledge 2004; Pease 2004: 125; Phillips 2005: 15- their own origins, explore injustices in 19). To emphasise this focus, Fredericks terms of “oppression” rather than (2007) argues training should be “disadvantage”, characterise non-white renamed from simply “cultural individuals and groups as “fighting” awareness courses” to explicit “anti- against oppression rather than racism courses”. “suffering” it, and focus more on “fighting oppression” than on “issues of Another key practice of whiteness that access and participation” (Moore 1995). universities have largely failed to address is the issue of Indigenous employment. Universities have also comprehensively Indigenous peoples are employed in failed to address the need for their staff significantly low numbers by universities,
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and the substantial majority of appropriate engagements with Indigenous people who are employed Indigenous peoples, organisations and at universities are employed within the communities regarding research. Indigenous Centres and Departments of Further, universities largely continue to the universities (IHEAC 2006: 24; Moreton- conduct research concerning Robinson 1999: 5). Further, many Indigenous issues without appropriately universities fail to acknowledge that negotiating with Indigenous peoples Aboriginality is a genuine employment and communities concerning the criteria for many academic and general research (Smith 2004: 129). I have staff positions. The impact of this failure observed many white academics by many universities to have genuine develop research projects concerning affirmative action employment Indigenous issues with a complete practices is that non-Indigenous people absence of negotiations with Indigenous are often appointed to academic and researchers concerning the project. general staff positions that should be Alternatively, I have also seen many reserved for Indigenous people. I have other white academics involve also observed numerous examples of Indigenous researchers in their research universities failing to support their project, predominantly to obtain Indigenous staff, such as not funding, and, upon obtaining funds, acknowledging the cultural and consequently largely marginalise the academic discipline knowledge of Indigenous researchers from further Indigenous staff in performance and involvement in the research project. promotion reviews and not recognising the substantial and invaluable Universities need to genuinely negotiate community involvement work of with Indigenous peoples, organisations Indigenous staff in Workloads policies. and communities regarding the appropriate level of Indigenous Indigenous employment at universities engagement with university research needs to be addressed through several concerning Indigenous knowledge and key strategies. These strategies are: first, issues. Possible engagements include: the overall numbers of Indigenous negotiating research concerning people employed within universities Indigenous peoples; utilising Indigenous needs to be increased; second, research methodologies, such as Indigenous people need to be Indigenous Standpoint Theory; employed in senior management roles; challenging non-Indigenous research and third, the range of employment methodologies; developing mechanisms roles of Indigenous staff employed at for assisting Indigenous researchers; universities needs to be broadened addressing the relationships between (IHEAC 2006: 24; Yunupingu 1994: 15). research and other issues such as Further, Universities need to genuinely governance, teaching, curriculum and support their Indigenous staff, employment; and promoting ethical particularly regarding cultural safety Indigenous research (Battiste and issues (Young 2004: 111; Moreton- Henderson 2000: 141-144; Foley 2008: Robinson 2007: 86). 128-132; Nakata 2006: 271-272; Moreton- Robinson 2003: 84). Research is another area in which universities are failing Indigenous Universities have also largely failed to peoples and communities. The majority implement curriculum that is embedded of universities do not recognise the with Indigenous knowledge and issues. importance of negotiating more This lack of Indigenous curriculum
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substantially restricts the relevance of Indigenous Centres, notwithstanding the universities for Indigenous peoples. lack of personnel and financial Rather, Indigenous peoples are often resources of the Centres, as an excuse confronted with numerous individual to abrogate their responsibilities to and institutional practices of whiteness Indigenous students. For instance, I have through “commonsense” curriculum that often observed that universities have largely excludes their cultural and funded awareness programs for academic knowledge. Further, over the marginalised groups, but have excluded past ten years, I have been involved Indigenous peoples from these and have observed numerous attempts programs, arguing this is the responsibility to implement Indigenous curriculum. of Indigenous Centres and thus ignoring These attempts are very often met with possible engagements with Indigenous substantial resistance from white Centres concerning the programs. academics who are often very Further, this approach enables “territorial” about their particular universities to then blame Indigenous teaching area (Nakata, Nakata and Centres for low Indigenous enrolments Chin 2008: 141). and completions (see Nakata 2004: 2).
Universities need to genuinely negotiate Universities need to provide substantial with Indigenous peoples concerning the academic, cultural and personal appropriate approach of Indigenous support to Indigenous students across all engagement with curriculum areas of the institutions (Craven et al development throughout the University. 2005: 26, 31; IHEAC 2006: 16-17, 20-21). One approach could be for compulsory Universities should also provide Indigenous curriculum to be significantly more funding to Indigenous implemented, under Indigenous Centres and Departments, who for too governance, across all disciplinary areas long have often had to rely upon of the university (Battiste and Henderson targeted Commonwealth Government 2000: 92-96; Lampert 2005: 94-96). The funding to continue their operations. few projects that have succeeded in Universities should recognise the recent years in implementing Indigenous significant work that these Indigenous curriculum in universities have all had Centres undertake. Mainly staffed and genuine Indigenous governance (see managed by Indigenous people, the Phillips 2004; Phillips and Whatman 2007). Centres have substantially assisted Universities also need to negotiate with Indigenous people, first in enabling Indigenous peoples concerning the Indigenous people to access university appropriate manner of assessing this courses, and second in providing curriculum (Christensen and Lilley 1997: academic, cultural and personal xiii). support to Indigenous students.
Universities have also failed to broadly A number of practices of whiteness address issues of academic and cultural within universities that significantly support for Indigenous students. Apart impact upon Indigenous people have from the overworked and under- been discussed in this article. These resourced Indigenous Centres and practises permeate throughout a Departments, nearly all other elements number of interrelated key areas of of the universities provide minimal universities. These areas are support for Indigenous students governance, policies, cultural (Anderson et al 1998: xv). Further, awareness courses, employment, universities often use the existence of research, curriculum and student
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support and have been identified for negotiate with Indigenous staff, students over two decades by numerous and communities concerning these government reports and academic practices of whiteness. Only through papers as being important areas for such a process can Australian universities to address the educational universities address the key areas such needs of Indigenous peoples. as governance, employment and research and ensure that universities for Many of the practices of whiteness the first time become genuinely discussed in this paper, both individual responsive to the educational and institutional, have occurred and aspirations of Indigenous peoples. been communicated to me during my employment at Indigenous Studies Author Note Centres at several Australian universities over the past decade. All these Dr Andrew Gunstone is a Senior Lecturer practices clearly illustrate the impact of in the Centre for Australian Indigenous whiteness upon Indigenous peoples. Studies in the School of Humanities, Indigenous staff, students and Communications and Social Sciences at communities are marginalised and Monash University. His research interests oppressed. Non-Indigenous staff and are in the politics of reconciliation and students are instead privileged and the contemporary and historical political advantaged. relationships between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous peoples in Australia. Further, some of the examples of individual practices have occurred References despite the instigator having genuinely supportive intentions. For instance, the academic who asked the Indigenous Anderson, L., Singh, M., Stehbens, C. and student to stand up in class thought they Ryerson, L. 1998. Equity issues: Every were helping to improve the self-esteem University’s Concern, Whose Business of the student. Thus, motivation seems to – An Exploration of Universities’ be a minor contribution to the Inclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ development of individual practices of Rights and Interests , Canberra: whiteness. Rather, these practices seem DEETYA. to have emanated from non-Indigenous Battiste, M. and Henderson, J. 2000. staff and students who were firstly, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge substantially ignorant of Indigenous and Heritage , Saskatchewan: Purich issues and the impact of whiteness and Publishing. secondly, hold outdated and incorrect Bourke, C. 1996. F actors Affecting views, such as cultural deprivation, Performance of Aboriginal and romanticism, learning styles and “two- Torres Strait Islander Students at worlds” learning. Australian Universities: A Case Study , Canberra: DEETYA. Overall in this article, I have argued that Christensen, P. and Lilley, I. 1997. The Australian universities have largely been Road Forward? Alternative unsuccessful in addressing these, and Assessment for Aboriginal and Torres other, practices of whiteness and have Strait Islander Students at the Tertiary consequently substantially failed to Level , Canberra: DEETYA. address the educational needs of Cowlishaw, G. 2004. Racial Positioning, Indigenous peoples. Further, I argued Privilege and Public Debate, in A. that universities need to consult and Moreton-Robinson (ed.) Whitening
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Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Criticism , Canberra: Aboriginal Council (IHEAC). 2006. Improving Studies Press, 59-74. Indigenous Outcomes and Craven, R., Tucker, A., Munns, G., Enhancing Indigenous Culture and Hinkley, J., Marsh. H. and Simpson, K. Knowledge in Australian Higher 2005. Indigenous Students’ Education , Canberra: Aspirations: Dreams, Perceptions and Commonwealth of Australia. Realities , Lampert, J. 2005. The Teaching that
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Criticism , Canberra: Aboriginal Criticism , Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 75-88. Studies Press, 119-132. ——2006. ‘Towards a New Research Phillips, G. 2004. Committee of Deans of Agenda? Foucault, Whiteness and Australian Medical Schools Indigenous Sovereignty’, Journal of Indigenous Health Curriculum Sociology , 42(4), 383-395. Framework , Sydney: CDAMS. ——2007. ‘Witnessing the Workings of Phillips, J. 2005. Indigenous Knowledge: White Possession in the Workplace: Making Space in the Australian Leesa’s Testimony’, Australian Centre, in J. Phillips and J. Lampert Feminist Law Journal , 26, 81-93. (eds.) Introductory Indigenous Nakata, M. 1995. ‘Aboriginal and Torres Studies in Education , Frenchs Forest: Strait Islander Youth: Cutting a Better Pearson Educational Australia, 11-26. Deal for Torres Strait Islanders’, Youth Phillip, J. and Whatman, S. 2007. Studies Australia , 14(4), 29-34. ‘Decolonising Pre-Service Teacher ——2003. ‘Some Thoughts on Literacy Education – Reform at Many Cultural Issues in Indigenous Contexts’, Interfaces’, in Conference Australian Journal on Indigenous Proceedings The World of Education , 31, 7-15. Educational Quality: 2007 AERA ——2004. ‘Ongoing Conversations about Annual Meeting , Chicago: AERA, 1- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 15. Research Agendas and Directions’, Smith, L. 2004. Decolonizing Australian Journal on Indigenous Methodologies: Research and Education , 33, 1-6. Indigenous Peoples , Dunedin, New ——2006. ‘Australian Indigenous Studies: Zealand: University of Otago Press. A Question of Discipline’, Australian West, E. 1995. Review of Aboriginal Journal of Anthropology , 17(3), 265- Education Strategies of Victorian 275. Higher Education Institutions 1994- Nakata, M., Nakata, V. and Chin, M. 1995 , Townsville: James Cook 2008. ‘Approaches to the Academic University. Preparation and Support of Whatman, S. and Duncan, P. 2005. Australian Indigenous Students for Community Participation in Tertiary Studies’, Australian Journal Indigenous Education: Learning from on Indigenous Education , 37S, 137- the Past, in Policy and Practice, in J. 145. Phillips and J. Lampert (eds.) Nicoll, F. 2004. Reconciliation in and out Introductory Indigenous Studies in of Perspective: White Knowing, Education , Frenchs Forest: Pearson Seeing, Curating and Being at Home Educational Australia, 117-38. in and Against Indigenous Young, S. 2004. Social Work Theory and Sovereignty, in A. Moreton-Robinson Practice: The Invisibility of Whiteness, (ed.) Whitening Race: Essays in in A. Moreton-Robinson (ed.) Social and Cultural Criticism , Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, Cultural Criticism , Canberra: 17-31. Aboriginal Studies Press, 104-118. Pease, B. 2004. Decentring White Men: Yunupingu, M. 1994. National Review of Critical Reflections on Masculinity Education for Aboriginal and Torres and White Studies, in A. Moreton- Strait Islander People , Canberra: Robinson (ed.) Whitening Race: Australian Government Publishing Essays in Social and Cultural Service.
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READING ALIEN LIPS: ACCENTUATING THE POSITIVE? AN ANALYSIS OF SOME POSITIVE MEDIA DEPICTIONS OF ASYLUM SEEKERS
RON HOENIG
Abstract Introduction The absence of the racial and cultural Other in mainstream media is noted by As they head off into the city for many scholars. In this article, a number another encounter with the of newspaper articles about asylum bureaucracy, they make a seekers in lip sewing episodes at weird mob, all shapes and sizes with no apparent dress code. Woomera in 2002 are examined using Some educated, some not. But critical discourse analysis and drawing somehow you just know they're on critical race and whiteness studies. going to fit in (Kremmer 2002a). While many news articles depict asylum seekers negatively, most of the selected Hatred for the other has always texts provide a positive depiction of been located, in the telling of asylum seekers. A combination of white history, in the wings, off discourse analysis and literary exegesis centre-stage, peripheral to the demonstrates how journalists draw on real life of a good white Australia (Rutherford 2000: 18). existing discourses in the cultural imaginary to shape their depictions of The contest of responses to those cultural and racial Others. The seeking asylum has been bubbling in the suggestion is made that different national consciousness and the media narratives and rhetorical formations are since long before the first boats bearing deployed not merely to depict the asylum seekers arrived in the mid-1970s. asylum seeker as an abject Other to be While it is all too easy to find news stories pitied or reviled, but also to construct in Australian print media which different versions of Jennifer Rutherford’s negatively position asylum seekers, there “good (white) Australian” reader. These are also reports which appear to constructions of the reader form a challenge this discourse of negativity. In subtext beneath the reporting of news this article I use critical discourse analysis and reveal the extent to which the influenced by Bell (1991, 1997, 1999), van representation of the Other involves Dijk (1991, 2000b, 2001) and others to white projections, desires and imaginings analyse some newspaper articles about of the cultural Other. Rather than lip sewing by asylum seekers at providing information about and insight Woomera Detention Centre in January into the cultural/racial Other, such texts 2002 which take a more sympathetic may be better understood as perspective on the asylum seekers. interventions in an ongoing discourse Taking a critical race and whiteness within the White “mainstream” about perspective, I suggest that in both Our national identity. “negative” and “positive” reporting, “othering” of asylum seekers takes place. Although some texts draw on an
ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2009
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openly exclusionist narrative and others whiteness theorisation to explore the draw on a liberal progressive human- larger context of racialised self-definition rights posture, the asylum seeker remains in which the Australian journalistic a shadowy and opaque alien figure. In project is positioned. Finally I look at both “negative” and “positive” three news articles in which the text representations of asylum seekers, takes a more positive stance towards media workers and the media system the asylum seekers and demonstrate the construct the asylum seeker as a raced ways in which these texts construct and other in contrast to an “invisible” good define both a different asylum seeker white Australian Self. i and, more importantly, a different Australian reader, but within the This article draws on my doctoral work dominant racial and cultural paradigm. examining the depiction of lip sewing by asylum seekers, particularly in the period Narratives of exclusion and inclusion: 2000-2002, in four Australian newspapers. barbarous parents and child removal In that study I have been concentrating on “hard news” articles in two broadsheet and two tabloid In January 2002, detainees at the newspapers in which lip sewing is Woomera Detention Centre, (or mentioned and which demonstrate a Woomera Immigration Reception and range of attitudes to the asylum seekers: Processing Centre, as it was formally known) who had been awaiting the • the Age (Fairfax, broadsheet, resolution of their request for asylum for Melbourne); many months, dramatised their plight • the Australian (Murdoch, using lip-sewing, a hunger strike and broadsheet, national); lying in graves they dug for themselves in • the Adelaide Advertiser the baking sun. Unlike the first Australian (Murdoch, tabloid, Adelaide, episode of lip sewing at the Curtin close to Woomera and Baxter), Detention Centre in Western Australia in and February 2000 (Debelle 2000; O'Brien • the Daily Telegraph (Murdoch, 2000; ‘Detainees sew lips in protest’ tabloid, Sydney, lowest socio- 2000), this event dominated the front economic demographic) pages of the nation’s newspapers for about a week. I have selected two news In this article, I draw examples from the articles to demonstrate how different coverage of lip-sewing at the Woomera racial narratives and racialised nation Detention Centre in January 2002. I am self-definitions drive the construction of seeking to explore how a textual analysis print articles. The first article, entitled of any newspaper article provides an “Children freed from Woomera insight into cultural narratives that are ‘barbarism’” (Ahwan 2002), appeared in processed in “factual” reporting and, in the News Limited Sydney tabloid the particular, how the structure and text of Daily Telegraph . The second report the news article manifest, maintain and entitled “Ruddock removes children” shape attitudes to racial, ethnic and (Taylor 2002) appeared in the Fairfax- religious others. In the first section below I owned Melbourne broadsheet the Age . demonstrate how a news article is Both news stories appeared on January shaped to construct a narrative and 24 2002, following a press conference in how two different news articles construct which Federal Immigration Minister Phillip different narratives out of the same Ruddock and South Australian Deputy event. I then provide a critical race and Premier and Human Services Minister Dean Brown accused asylum seekers of
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forcibly sewing the lips of children and removed as soon as possible promised to remove children from and placed in community foster harm’s way. care to stop them being coerced into protest actions by adult detainees, Mr Ruddock Children freed from Woomera said. Those being removed are ‘barbarism’ aged under 14, and Mr 1. EIGHT children are to be Ruddock said more may follow. removed from the Woomera 3. The move came on the eighth detention centre to protect day of the protest at the them from having their lips sewn troubled centre in outback together by protesting asylum South Australia. More than 30 seekers (Ahwan 2002). detainees at the Maribyrnong detention centre in Melbourne The “barbarism” of the (adult) asylum have begun a hunger strike in seekers is emphasised both in the solidarity (Taylor 2002). headline and the lead (Sentence 1, S1). The article frames the event as decent The Age is meticulous about its Australians, in the person of the minister attribution, distancing itself from the and authorities, taking action to “free” minister by using his name three times in children from the depredations of two paragraphs. It carefully avoids protesting asylum seekers. The report endorsing the minister’s claim that reinforces the distinction between the asylum seekers were sewing children’s “innocent” children and the lips. Instead, the reason for removing the “barbarous” asylum seekers by directly children is rendered in much more reporting that the children need to be abstract terms: “to prevent their rescued from the adults who are about involvement in hunger strikes and lip to sew their lips. It is worth noting the sewing” (S1). Moreover, S1 “de-othering” or normalisation of the depersonalises “their involvement in children, who were of course also hunger strikes and lip-sewing” so that the asylum seekers and detainees. A “bad contrast between adult and child parent” narrative about the asylum asylum seekers is not drawn as strongly seekers reinforces the way in which the as in the Daily Telegraph story, nor does government and the community (and, the story call on a good parent/bad by implication, the reader) takes on the parent dichotomy to the same extent. mantle of the rescuing “good parent”. The narratives of the two articles then The Age headline, “Ruddock removes diverge even further. In order to build children”, constructs the Federal the narrative of “us” rescuing the Government less as liberators or good children, the Daily Telegraph report parents than as “removers”: focuses in S3-5 on the background of lip sewing: Ruddock removes children 1. The Federal Government will 3. More than 200 detainees have remove at least five children staged a hunger strike at from the Woomera detention Woomera, including 50 who centre to prevent their have stitches in their lips. involvement in hunger strikes 4. Mr Ruddock said two children and lip-sewing, Immigration had their lips sewn together by Minister Philip Ruddock said adults, who said they would do yesterday. it again. One child is recovering 2. Five children without parents or in hospital after having stitches guardians at the centre will be removed.
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5. The action by immigration to see action taken and further authorities follows the poisoning investigation of the people that last night of seven Woomera carried out such offences,” he detainees who were rushed to said. (Ahwan 2002) hospital after drinking shampoo or detergent. The description of lip-sewing as
6. Detainees’ protests have also “barbaric” and “totally unacceptable spread to Melbourne's within our community” summons a Maribyrnong Detention Centre, where about 25 detainees were register of condemnation that would not last night refusing to eat or drink be as readily available to the Minister if (Ahwan 2002). those said to be undertaking the act were not racially and culturally other. It is now clear that it is Mr Ruddock who Thus, while there is no specific reference has accused asylum seekers of sewing in this particular article to the ethnic or the children’s lips. The next sentence (S4) religious background of these asylum appears to confirm and elaborate the seekers, the article is part of broader Minister’s claim and link it to the coverage that rehearses the opposition increasing number of asylum seekers of a criminalised and racialised other who have stitched their lips. S5 links back and a non-racialised, normalised to the lead (S1) “the (authorities’) “community” so the contrast between action”, although there is only a hazy link “their” barbaric act and “our” between the (self)-poisoning, the lip- community acts to further distance the sewing and the removal of the children reader, assumed to belong to a and a possible suggestion that there homogenised “our” community, from were children among the detainees the asylum seeker. who drank shampoo. In S7 we pick up on the rhetoric of “bad parenting” in the Just as sub-plots in narrative reflect and mention of “concern” by the South refract the main plot, so in news, sub- Australian State Government, which narratives are drawn in to serve a similar introduces Minister Brown’s use of the purpose (Bell 1991, 1999). In contrast to word “barbaric”: the Daily Telegraph ’s narrative of the rescuing of children from barbaric “bad 3. The decision to remove the parents”, the Age article develops a children followed growing counter narrative (starting at S3) of concern in the South Australian growing powerful support for the Government, which said some detainees’ protest at the “troubled” children had been victims of outback centre: ‘barbaric’ mutilation (Ahwan 2002). 3. The move came on the eighth day of the protest at the This is reinforced in S14 and S15: troubled centre in outback South Australia. More than 30 14. South Australian Human detainees at the Maribyrnong Services Minister Dean Brown detention centre in Melbourne said he was disgusted with the have begun a hunger strike in treatment of some children. solidarity. 15. “Any adult who inflicts that sort 4. It also came after Neville of pain and suffering and Roach, a key adviser to Mr treatment on a child I think is Ruddock, resigned this week in barbaric and totally protest at the government's unacceptable within our hardline stance on asylum community and [I] would want seekers.
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5. Mr Roach, chairman of the therefore supportive of the Minister’s Council for Multicultural attempt to save them. The Age story Australia and the Business constructs a “good Australian” reader Advisory Council on Migration, who is repelled by the barbarism of the said last night the government needed to process asylum treatment of the asylum seekers, claims more quickly to prevent suspicious of the government’s claims to protests by detainees. represent compassion in its hardline 6. The Woomera detainees say stance and uneasy about the regime of they are protesting over the mandatory detention. While the latter conditions at the centre and article presents a more positive view of visa processing delays (Taylor the plight of the asylum seekers, both 2002). use the asylum seeker as an opaque mirror reflecting a different “good The Age gives the resignation of the Australian” reader. For one, the lip sewer Minister’s key advisor on multicultural is a touchstone of “barbaric” radical issues, Neville Roach, strong news value, otherness. For the other, the lip-sewer is a placing it high in the story (S4). This, touchstone of “our” compassion together with the reference to the towards a despairing radical other. In Maribyrnong protest as “in solidarity” both cases, the asylum seekers remain (S3), helps to builds a textured story of a the object of attention – spoken about government under attack, as detailed in but unspeaking – the mirror in which the comments by refugee advocates later reader defines him or herself as part of in the article. The Daily Telegraph only an act of national self-definition. mentions the Roach resignation in a final paragraph, isolated from the article’s National identity and the Muslim dominant narrative of the government other rescuing asylum seeker children. The Age narrative suggests that ordinary decent Australians are not at ease with Scholars in a range of disciplines adopt “the hardline stance” of the a “relational” definition of national Government and that the government is identity, arguing that defining an other is increasingly embattled over the an integral part of constructing a Woomera situation. national identity. Nasser (2003) holds that: While the asylum seekers are the focus of attention, they are curiously passive. identities (gender, race, ethnic, They play no active role in the telling of national, etc.) do not stem from the narrative. The lip-sewing asylum an intrinsic essence rather they are constructed in difference seeker is marked as radically other. from others. The sense of who However, as an object of attention, the we are develops in relation to asylum seekers play a significant role in an excluded Other … In many what we might call the drama of the cases, the “Other” is reader’s cultural self-definition. They constructed as a negating and provide the cultural other against which differentiated collective from the text constructs an ideal audience the “We” (Nasser 2003: 1). and the reader a moral cultural self. The Daily Telegraph story of rescue Some Australian scholars and constructs the reader as a “good commentators (Anti-Discrimination Australian” repelled by the “barbarism” Board of New South Wales 2003; of the lip sewing and horrified by the Manning 2004; Poynting & Noble 2004; asylum seekers’ abuse of children and Poynting et al. 2004) attribute anti-
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asylum seeker media rhetoric to The Howard government skilfully utilised Islamophobia, defined by the anti-Muslim feeling in its anti-terrorist Runnymede Trust as the “dread or rhetoric to demonise asylum seekers in hatred of Islam [leading] to the fear and 2001, particularly in the post-September dislike of all Muslims, and discrimination 11 climate. Poynting, Noble, Tabar and against Muslims by excluding them from Collins commented: “We have seen the the economic, social, and public life of emergence of we might call ‘the Arab the nation” (1997). Some vituperative Other’ as the pre-eminent folk devil in political and media commentators contemporary Australia” (Poynting et al. appear to justify Said’s (1992) remark 2004). that: However the pervasive fear and hatred Malicious generalisations about in negative media constructions of Islam have become the last asylum seekers extends far wider than acceptable form of denigration the Muslim other and further back into of foreign culture in the West: Australian history. Racial antagonism has what is said about the Muslim mind or character or religion or traditionally focused on Indigenous culture as a whole cannot now Australians and immigrant Chinese and, be said on mainstream later, in the late twentieth century, Asian discussion about Africans, Jews, immigration (Gale 2004). Rutland (2003) Other Orientals and Asians found parallels between rhetoric (1992: xii). describing Muslim asylum seekers in the early twenty-first century and Jewish Certainly, themes “othering” Muslims refugees post-1945. Moreover, the anti- abound in the anti-terrorist and asylum seeker rhetoric of the late citizenship rhetoric of former Howard twentieth century initially targeted not government ministers. Former Prime Muslim but Vietnamese and Cambodian Minister John Howard (Duffy 2006), asylum seekers. Goodall and former Education Minister Brendan Jakubowicz (1994) show how media use Nelson (‘Minister Tells Muslims’ 2005), and of such rhetoric in depicting Cambodian former Treasurer Peter Costello (Gordon asylum seekers reinforced hegemonic & Topsfield 2006), for example, all views of white Australia: mobilised narratives of threat and distrust about Muslim communities by they allow “us” to say what focusing on Muslims’ supposed unique “we” are not: not them; we are inability and unwillingness to “integrate” not Asian, not refugees not with other Australians. In February, 2006, scared to the edge of insanity, for example, John Howard said of not driven to flee through exhaustion into the totally Australia’s Muslim community: unknown, lost, without location or place … we are clean there is a fragment which is uniformed, white, human, utterly antagonistic to our kind ordered, placed, our territory of society, and that is a difficulty neatly defined (1994: 73). … You can't find any equivalent in Italian, or Greek, or Lebanese, Critical race and whiteness studies is a or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no useful tool to examine and contest texts equivalent of raving on about across a range of xenophobic and jihad, but that is the major “othering” perspectives, including problem (Megalogenis 2006). Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and anti- Asian sentiment. Using this theoretical tool, media constructions of asylum
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seekers and their actions can be racialised others both within and outside deconstructed and contextualised. the nation-space have been a significant feature of the construction of What is whiteness? the culturally dominant conception of the Australian national identity (Gale 2004, 2006). Moreton-Robinson analyses Whiteness is a characteristic both of the white regime of power as driven by individuals as embodied subjects and of “the possessive logic of patriarchal white the economic, social, political, legal and sovereignty [which] naturalise[s] the cultural institutions in which power and nation as a white possession” (Moreton- territory is sought, maintained and Robinson 2004a: 1). Political, social, defended on the basis of the social economic and cultural domination has construct of race. A constitutive aspect been and is exercised with more or less of such a regime is the power to define, self-consciousness in order to maintain represent, include or exclude the other. white hegemony. The practical Whiteness is more about “the power to expression of white hegemony is racial include and exclude groups and and cultural privilege and the ability of individuals” (Frankenberg 1997: 13) than white people, purely because of racial phenotypic characteristics or the entrenched race privilege, to create practices of excluded groups. and shape institutions, such as the
media, which “circulat[e] a coherent set Historically, especially in settler colonies of meanings about white possession as such as Australia, South Africa and the part of common sense knowledge and United States, discourses of white racial socially produced conventions which dominance became a vital technology are in accord with, and operate to in the invasion of indigenous peoples maintain and strengthen, white cultural and the dispossession from their lands. hegemony” (Moreton-Robinson 2004a: Frankenberg states “the formation of 1). specifically white subject positions has in fact been key, at times cause and at As a regime of power, whiteness times as effect, to the socio-political operates by its epistemological processes inherent in taking land and dominance. For Moreton-Robinson, the making nations” (cited in Henderson ability of whiteness to define itself as the 2007: 19). Thus Schech and Haggis norm and the other not only as different, describe whiteness in the Australian but as threatening or perverse or context as “a terrain of structural transgressive gives whiteness its capacity advantage as well as a standpoint of to construct itself as an ontological and race privilege” (Schech & Haggis 2004: epistemological a priori . “[W]hiteness is 180). This spatial metaphor echoes the defined by what it is not (animal or specific idea of having and holding liminal) thereby staking an exclusive physical territory and developing a claim to the truly human” (Moreton- facilitating ideology of possession and Robinson 2004b: 77-78). Dyer (1997) governmentality. It can be seen as a focuses on de-mystifying white strategy of “owning” the nation, representations of the “other” by described by Ghassan Hage as the right racialising white cultural producers, to “worry about the state of the nation demonstrating their racial privilege in the and to decide who the strangers are” power to define the other and naturalise (cited in Schech & Haggis 2004: 180). whiteness:
Hostile and unequal relationships white people create the between white Australians and dominant images in the world
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and don’t quite see that they people of another “race”, cultural thus construct the world in their background, or religion. Rather, it own image; white people set acknowledges the social, political, standards of humanity by which cultural and institutional reality of race they are bound to succeed and others bound to fail (Dyer 1997: privilege and white dominance in 9). Australia’s culture and examines the impact of that institutional reality on the Beneficiaries of white racial privilege way in which news narratives are have been able to racialise a diversity of constructed. I argue that this structural, others, but naming whiteness places all ontological racism is a significant factor Australians – including researchers such in both negative and positive as myself and media workers – in the representations of asylum seekers in the system of racial privilege. “To speak of Australian print media. whiteness … recognise[s] that all subjects are raced and gendered. Speaking for the Other Concentrating on whiteness obstructs the potential for people to stand outside Journalists structure their reporting of racism” (Wadham 2003: 25). around the main narrative of conflict between specific and easily identifiable The whiteness of the media social actors (Bell 1991, 1999). Silencing asylum seekers by depriving them of Media workers and the media system publicity was a matter of policy for both operating within a white regime of the government and the detention cultural power construct the asylum centre operators (Kremmer & Banham seeker as a raced body in contrast with 2002). But it was also the result of an “invisible” and normalised white institutional ways in which non-white Australian Self. Textual markers of minorities tend to be under-represented religious, racial or cultural otherness in the media as an out-group (see, for define the asylum seeker as “other”, and example, Teo 2000; van Dijk, Teun A. equally construct the journalist – and the 2000a & 2000b; Garcia 2002; Anti- reader – as belonging to the category of Discrimination Board of New South Wales “not-other”. As Elder, Ellis and Pratt 2003; Dreher 2003). Despite some comment, citing Widders and Noble exceptions I will discuss below, asylum (1993): seekers were effectively “de-voiced” (Teo 2000: 41). The effect of discursively positioning non-white people in Many news stories therefore focus on this way is that “their” inclusion what might be seen as surrogate in the nation – in both real and conflicts. For example, a number of the metaphorical terms – is then stories focus on conflicts between the restricted by the parameters of Howard government and the white “national will”; that is, representatives of civil society – they are included but only in opposition politicians, church leaders, the dominant group’s terms (2004: 210). doctors and lawyers, and refugee advocates in non-government The following analysis of news articles organisations. Thus, while asylum does not hinge on a psychological view seekers’ discontents are the of racism – whether or not an individual precipitating factor for the conflict, the media worker or organisation is “racist” most sharply articulated conflict is within in the sense of antipathetic towards “mainstream” white Australia about
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managing national identity through the to speak English (Kremmer & Banham appropriate treatment of asylum 2002). Kremmer’s commentary locates seekers. For example, in Rebecca Di his sympathies with regard to the asylum Girolamo’s story in the Australian of seekers. For example, he refers to the January 24 2002, “Pool visit fails to cool “torment of detention” (S15) and says desert”, the dominant voice is that of that “the ordeal has crushed Jalil's the refugee advocate, lawyer Paul hopes of freedom in Australia” in S16 Boylan. As a lawyer, Boylan is a (Kremmer 2002b). Kremmer is anxious to sufficiently “authorised” voice to help the reader towards a very positive represent the asylum seekers. In fact view of the experience that Aziz and Jalil when the journalist refers to the asylum describe, but when it comes to a more seekers as the lawyer’s “clients”, she journalistically credible “authoritative” elevates their status within the article. insight into the situation in Woomera, the They are now not defined only by their journalist is more or less forced to back outsider (racialised) status as up the asylum seeker’s voice with one of “detainees”, but as persons worthy to be “our” representatives – in this case, represented (by one of us). Australian Democrats “distressed” leader Natasha Stott Despoja: The muted voice of the asylum seekers 14. “There are clearly hundreds of lives on the line in there, people who are lying, some in sun, Articles sympathetic to asylum seekers some in shade, people who are and giving them ”voice” appeared in fainting regularly, according to publications at the time. In the Age , an reports to delegates and there article reported a surreptitious telephone are clearly people who have inflicted a degree of self-harm conversation with two of the asylum which we have seen. I was seekers entitled “Woomera strikers shocked” (Kremmer 2002b). accuse guards of beatings, duress and racism” (Kremmer 2002b). The two DiGirolamo’s article mentioned above asylum seekers referred to by also gives some “voice” to asylum pseudonyms “Aziz” and “Jalil” refute seekers. It begins with this lead: accusations of asylum seekers of sewing children’s lips, and indeed compare the 1. WHILE Woomera detention staff minister unfavourably to the Taliban: invited the media to film happy child detainees at the local When I came to Australia I swimming pool yesterday, the didn't know that Philip Ruddock mood remained tense inside was our enemy. I prefer the the desert compound Taliban, who only kill people. (DiGirolamo 2002). Here they torture you (Kremmer 2002b). Representing detention staff as involved in minor media manipulation decentres However, the asylum seekers’ authority their authority to make pronouncements to represent their concerns rests only in about the nature of the asylum seekers their own individual experience. Unlike and problematises the media politics the minister or even the refugee involved in representing the situation. advocates, they have no institutional The government and, more particularly, authority. They are described by their the detention centre management is place of origin, the length of time they revealed as one of a number of players have spent in Australia and their ability in the media construction of the asylum
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seekers and their actions. The phrase In general, however, articles tend to “happy child detainees” (S1) discursively focus on the politics of immigration opens up the fact that the children are detention, in which the fate of the indeed detainees (that is, racialised) detainees appears secondary. The and are being used as exotic “talent” in dominant white culture arrogates to a media show. Yet this opening allows a itself the sense of “owning” and defining very neat reversal to give the detainees the nation and takes upon itself the right and their children “voice”. The asylum to “worry” about the state of the nation seeker children (and their parents) are and to decide who the strangers are. later represented as wrongfooting From the perspective of the press, the attempts by the Woomera guards to news issues are about the white subject, control them. The “Iranian children”, no and the expression of, and the limits to, longer complicit smiling brown faces, white generosity. Elder, Ellis and Pratt manage, despite attempts by detention suggest that: centre management to foil communications with the media, to the management of non-white sneak a note out to reporters at the people in the white nation- swimming pool: space is ordered in terms of a relationship where white people assume that their place is at the 14. “Every day we are seeing the centre or core of the nation, people who are trying to kill defined in relation to both themselves and we are trying to internal non-white others and do this also because die is external non-white margins or better than staying here. Please periphery (2004: 209). help us. Nobody is listening to us. Please, please, please” (DiGirolamo 2002). They’re a weird mob
It might be objected that this reading Positive articles, too, reflect this discounts the extent to which the article management of national identity. For itself makes use of the “innocence” of example, Christopher Kremmer’s colour the detainee Iranian children to present piece “Asylum seekers encounter new a counter narrative to that being world outside fences” (Age , January 22, offered by the Woomera authorities. It is 2002) about asylum seekers’ first days of certainly extraordinarily affecting and liberation from Woomera turns on the effective that the note implores the theme of belonging and “fitting in” as reader and does so with just a hint of an an Australian. “accent”. However, the children’s ruse is also an indication of some intelligent The article begins with a metaphorical and deliberate organisation behind the re-birth moment: events. Too often, the asylum seekers are represented as barbaric and 1. They emerged yesterday into unthinking or merely abject and the blinding glare of an deserving of compassion. It is only rarely Adelaide summer’s day, a in the reporting of the Woomera events handful of Afghans, Iraqis and that we see indications of the intelligent Iranians, after being released on planning that was necessary to develop Wednesday from Woomera a successful campaign by asylum detention centre on three-year temporary protection visas seekers to achieve the resumption of (Kremmer 2002a). assessments for visas.
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Kremmer is a compassionate observer, use, then, of the expression “weird mob” inviting the reader to see the Australian in S17, his last paragraph, is surprising: world through the gaze of the asylum seeker. The polarities of difference are 17. As they head off into the city for marked in the contrast between another encounter with the “Adelaide” and the “Afghans, Iraqis and bureaucracy, they make a Iranians” (S1). Summarising the asylum weird mob, all shapes and sizes with no apparent dress code. seeker’s “voyage” into the welfare Some educated, some not. But bureaucracy as “the drip feed, just somehow you just know they’re enough to keep people going”, going to fit in (Kremmer 2002a). Kremmer provides an insight into the way “we” treat the asylum seekers. The The term may be an ironic reference to response of the “ordinary Australian” is the iconic book They’re a weird mob provided in comments, both harsh and (Culotta 1958) produced by Irish- kind, by “Brett Heath, 30, a long-term Australian John O’Grady under the nom guest from Port Pirie”, a regional de plume of Nino Culotta, a northern industrial city in South Australia. Kremmer Italian journalist. Culotta praises describes his “matey praise mixed with Australians as a “weird mob” into which dour reserve” as “very Australian”: it is right and appropriate that immigrants should assimilate. The words
9. “We can't have a flood of “they”, “them” and “their” are refugees breaking down the prominent in Kremmer’s article. The walls and getting into Australia. It'll put too much pressure on repetitions of the third person plural tend our infrastructure,” he says. stylistically to distance the asylum 10. But in the next breath he informs seekers from the reader. The sudden use us that “from what I've seen of the word “you” in the informal sense these people would make ideal to mean “I” or “one” draws the reader migrants. They're intelligent, into a semantic alliance with the well-dressed and unfailingly narrator in defining the group as an polite and considerate” acceptable other and assuring us that (Kremmer 2002a). they will “fit in”.
The discourse of appraisal and judgment bell hooks underlines the attachment of that permeates the text is not one way. white people to the normativity of Kremmer gives us brief glimpses of the whiteness. She cites the “deep asylum seekers also making judgments emotional investment in the myth of of their new land, the drunks and sameness even as their actions reflect garishness of the street, assessing the the primacy of whiteness as a sign of possibilities in their future. Constructing who they are and what they think” asylum seekers through a lens of (cited in Dyer 1997: 2). Kremmer’s domestic life, Kremmer portrays them as intention appears as advocacy. But in “ordinary”, cooking and eating, coping effect, he invites the reader into with money – the same as “us”. exercising the decision Prime Minister Howard proposed. The article offers Yet their marginality is manifest. They are “them” to “us” for compassion and confronted by a capricious and all- judgment. “We” too are deciding “who powerful “we” – an entire Australian comes here and the circumstances in nation – the bureaucracy, Woomera, which they come”. The decision the narrator and the reader – perhaps in Kremmer prefers may be different, but uneasy, unwilling alliance. Kremmer’s implicit in the context is a reinforcement
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of the white reader’s privileged position reader sees in the asylum seeker other is of being able to make the choice about what we/they desire and fear in national belonging. them/ourselves. Readers may construct them/ourselves as tough and unwilling In Kremmer’s article, asylum seekers to be “suckered” into offering succour to become exemplars in the national “barbarians” – generous to those who debate about the nature of an Australia deserve out generosity but firm in their produced by those positioned as being stand against those who would invade able to make those choices. While the “our” territory. Or readers may construct focus is on “sameness”, the significant them/ourselves as cosmopolitan and difference is overlooked. The question appalled at the bureaucratic insensitivity not posed is what will they “fit in” to and and ruthlessness of the government’s how. As “Third-World looking” stand. immigrants, they may be compelled to join us as what Hage describes as “the Only fleetingly is the voice of asylum tame and domesticated animal whose seekers heard in these texts. And never is will has been subjugated as the very that voice unmediated. Marginal even condition of belonging to the among the most marginal, the voice of domesticated space of the Australian the asylum seeker other plays a national will” (Hage 1996). Will they “fit secondary role in a mediated national in” in the sense that they too will conversation about ways of being become a minority on the margins like “good” Australians. The implicit definition the “internal non-white others and of this Australian reader lies within a external non-white margins or periphery” narrow range permitted in the (Elder, Ellis & Pratt 2004: 209)? hegemonic narrative. In fact, many actual readers – Indigenous, non-white, Conclusions culturally diverse, in other ways marginal – may find themselves interpellated by these texts only obliquely, as when a Taking a critical race and whiteness stranger hails us mistakenly as a friend. perspective, this article argues that a “Who, me?” For the hegemonic structural, ontological racism operates in narrative only prevails over multiple Australian culture, including its print silencings. The asylum seekers’ act in media. I have suggested that the figure sewing their lips was disruptive and of the asylum seeker functions as a unsettling not only because it symbolised device through which news texts the truth of the silencing they celebrate particular kinds of Australian- experienced, but also because it was a ness. In both the positive and the token of other equally violent silencings negative narratives, the opaque asylum necessary to maintain the dominant seeker reflects another character: the white song. constructed “good white Australian” reader reflected and refracted through Author Note these different constructions. The depictions of asylum seekers are an exchange of white projections and Ron Hoenig is a PhD student in journalism imaginings about the racialised other. and cultural studies at the University of These depictions give the imagined South Australia. His doctoral research white reader the opportunity to be focuses on the Australian print media’s reflected as compassionate and decent depiction of asylum seekers. Ron has a in either supporting or opposing the background in the arts and stance of the government. What the multiculturalism, is involved in interfaith
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activity and has worked as an editor Debelle, P 2000, 'Behind the Wire at and journalist in the South Australian Curtin', Age , 3 May, 3. education department. ‘Detainees Sew Lips in Protest’. 2000. Sunday Times , February 6, 305. Acknowledgments DiGirolamo, R. 2002. ‘Pool Visit Fails to Cool Desert Protest - THE REFUGEE HUNGER STRIKE’, Australian , January I would like to thank the organisers of the 24, 4. Re-orienting Whiteness Conference, and Dreher, T. 2003. ‘Speaking Up and especially the Post Graduate Symposium Talking Back: News Media for the opportunity to present the first Interventions in Sydney’s “Othered” version of this paper. In particular, I Communities’, Media International would like to thank Aileen Moreton- Australia incorporating Culture and Robinson for her sympathetic reading Policy , 109, 121-137. and even more sympathetic questioning Duffy, C. 2006. ‘PM Stands by Muslim and an anonymous referee who helped Integration Comments’, ABC News me to structure a sharper and I hope Online , more incisive final paper. I would also
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24 February, 3no2_2004/moreton_possessive.htm> 14 HOENIG: READING ALIEN LIPS How We See the Rest of the World , ——2000a. Ideologies, Racism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Discourse: Debates on Immigration Schech, S. & Haggis, J. 2004. Terrains of and Ethnic Issues, in J. ter Wal and M. Migrancy and Whiteness: How British Verkuyten (eds.) Comparative Migrants Locate Themselves in Perspectives on Racism , Aldershot: Australia, in A. Moreton-Robinson Ashgate, 91-115. (ed.) Whitening Race: Essays in ——2000b. New(s) Racism: A Discourse Social and Cultural Criticism , Analytical Approach, in S. Cottle Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, (ed.) ‘Race’, Racism and the Mass 176-191. Media , Milton Keynes: Open Taylor, K. 2002. ‘Ruddock Removes University Press, 33-49. Children’, Age , 24 January, 1. ——2004. ‘Knowledge and News’, Teo, P. 2000. ‘Racism in the News: A Revista Canaria e Estudios Ingleses , Critical Discourse Analysis of News 49, 71-86. Reporting in Two Australian Wadham, B. 2003. ‘What is Whiteness? newspapers’, Discourse and Society , Authenticity, Dominance, Identity’, 11(1), 7-49. Paper presented at the Placing van Dijk, T.A. 1991. Racism and the Press , Race and Localising Whiteness London: Routledge. Conference, Flinders University, Adelaide. Notes i I use the term “good (White) Australian” as Rutherford has to describe the way highly valued moral qualities in the (white) Australian sense of self – a fair go, egalitarianism, the democratic refusal of visible hierarchies, the cult of the battler, of everyman – have been “the constant accompaniment to acts of aggression in Australian history: the genocide, the White Australia policy, the Stolen Generation and now the desubjectivisation and incarceration of refugees”. Influenced by Lacan and Freud, Rutherford argues that “we cannot understand these acts of aggression and restore them to cultural memory unless we recognise the central role that morality plays in their perpetuation” (Rutherford, 2003). 15 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009 THE TAXONOMIC GAZE: LOOKING AT WHITENESS FROM EAST TO WEST VERA MACKIE Abstract returned to the ship singing paeans. I was the only one who celebrated the beauty of the In this article I consider representations slender bamboo-like figures of of whiteness which emanate from the Chinese women, and did outside the Euro-American centres. I not listen to their stories. It was argue that it is necessary to understand the same when we docked in how whiteness has been seen by non- Hong Kong. To them, the Malay and Indian women just seemed white observers, and that we need to be like sauvages. For me, however, sensitive to local taxonomies of they gave me a sense of difference which are not always aesthetiquement beauté (Fujita reducible to the white/non-white 1984: 57). i distinction which is hegemonic in the Euro-American centres. I consider the This account comes from Fujita [Foujita] works of some artists and writers from Tsuguharu’s essay on the “Women of the early twentieth century Japan who are World”, and provides a relatively rare sensitive to their positioning in example of a man from outside the international hierarchies and who Euro-American centres exercising a attempt to place themselves in a powerful gaze on the peoples of the position of power in these gendered, world. Foujita is an artist who travelled classed, ethnicised and racialised from Japan to Paris in the 1920s, where hierarchies through their deployment of he was also able to exercise the what I call the “taxonomic gaze”. I powerful gaze of a painter. ii The argue that the concept of whiteness passage above reflects a taxonomic needs to be historicised and attitude which places all of the peoples provincialised, and that the field of in the world in hierarchies of value, in this whiteness studies itself also needs to be case in gendered hierarchies of beauty. historicised. In this article I will explore manifestations of this attitude in the writings of selected Introduction cultural producers from Japan in the 1920s. However, in order to situate this In 1921, I left Japan and particular taxonomic gaze, we first need headed for France. The ship to locate this study within recent had hardly docked in Shanghai developments in the field of whiteness before my fellow passengers, studies. from curiosity to know a Western woman, went to visit the white- Provincialising Whiteness walled western building with the red light. There they were taken by the golden hair of the Polish In his pioneering book, White , Richard Jewish women and the Russian Dyer commented that the study of refugee women, enchanted by “race” had hitherto meant the study of the charm of blue eyes, and “any racial imagery other than that of ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2009 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE white people” (1997: 1). Dyer studies itself needs to be historicised and conceptualised his own project as being placed in its specific academic and about intellectual context in the (mainly) Anglophone Euro-American academy the racial imagery of white at the turn of the twenty-first century. people – not the images of other races in white cultural In reading texts which have been production, but the latter’s produced outside the Euro-American imagery of white people themselves. This is not done sphere where whiteness acts as a merely to fill a gap in the privileged signifier of difference, we can analytic literature, but because not assume that the concepts, there is something at stake in discourses and debates around looking at, or continuing to racialisation can simply be translated ignore, white racial imagery. As into another sphere. The dynamics of long as race is something only difference will be expressed in very applied to non-white peoples, specific terms in particular local as long as white people are not racially seen and named, contexts. For example, in South Asia, they/we function as a human there has apparently been a valuing of norm. Other people are raced, paler skin which was quite independent we are just people (Dyer 1997: of the encounter with Europe (Robb 1). 1995: 1–76). Or, in Japan, there is a form of white facial make-up which is Over a decade later, Dyer’s comments associated with specific professions or about the racialisation of white people theatrical performances, with nothing to probably seem quite self-evident. Dyer do with racialisation (Kazami 1997). first commented on representations of racialised others by those who spoke In specific contexts, racialised meanings from a dominant and unmarked may be attributed according to the position. He then extended this shape of facial features, the relative discussion to consider how these “white” presence or absence of body hair, people had represented themselves, specific bodily odours, or the proportions and produced their own “whiteness” in of the body, rather than just skin colour. opposition to a series of racialised These features interact with dress, others. It is also, however, necessary to adornment, deportment, the dressing of consider how those positioned outside hair, and the modification of bodies that sphere have critiqued the self- through such practices as shaving, representations of those positioned as piercing, or tattooing. Similarly, the “white”. (Lake 2007; hooks 1981; Gates semantic field encompassed by the 1981; Fujikawa 2005). A further signifier “white” cannot be expected to development might involve readings of translate neatly across languages. In how “whiteness” has appeared in the each language, the local equivalent of texts of those who have been positioned the colour “white” will have specific as “non-white”. We need to historicise associations and connotations. whiteness and to provincialise it: iii that is, to demonstrate that the concept of In this article, I consider some whiteness has a specific history in representations of whiteness from the particular localised cultural and social early decades of the twentieth century contexts, and that the concept cannot in Japan. By this time, intellectuals in easily be generalised beyond those Japan had been exposed to the contexts. Similarly, the field of whiteness ideologies of racial hierarchy which 2 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE emanated from Europe and the United colonial regimes” (Barlow 2004: 7; see States. These had particular relevance in also Barlow 1997: 1–20). Japan, which had faced the threat of colonisation by Europe and the United In this article I explore some cultural States. By the 1920s, the Japanese representations whereby artists and government had managed to writers trained in early-twentieth century renegotiate the unequal treaties with Japan gazed on whiteness and thereby the United States, Britain and other constituted their own gendered, European powers; had forged an classed, sexualised, racialised, and alliance with Britain; and had acquired ethnicised positionings in the taxonomies its own colonies in East Asia. In the First of difference in East Asia and beyond. World War, Japan had been allied with The three case studies involve male the Anglophone powers, but artists whose work ranged across the nevertheless was unsuccessful in its literary and the visual: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô campaign for a racial equality clause in (1886–1965), a novelist with an intense the Charter of the newly-formed League interest in visuality (See Lamarre 2005); of Nations. Japanese national identity Koide Narashige (1887–1931), an artist was always, then, defined with and essayist who collaborated with reference to both the Euro-American Tanizaki; and Fujita Tsuguharu (1886– powers and other Asian countries. These 1968), another painter who used the international geopolitical hierarchies essay form to reflect on his artistic were naturalised according to the practice. In the works of these artists, the discourses of racialisation, and themes of gender, visuality and ideologies of racial hierarchy were given racialisation intersect. Their works are local inflections in Japan (Morris-Suzuki characterised by what I call a 1998; Oguma 2002). As Dyer has “taxonomic gaze”, a gaze which commented, with respect to more classifies, categorises, and produces recent manifestations of hierarchical hierarchies. thought, race was “never not a factor, never not in play” (Dyer 1997: 1). Naomi, the Modern Girl In early twentieth century East Asia, Novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirô published an cultural representations were integrated essay some time after the Great Kantô into international circuits which Earthquake of 1923. In this essay Tanizaki referenced the circulation of signs, set out his hopes for the renewal of products, practices, finance and capital Tokyo, which included the rebuilding of which have been associated with the the physical infrastructure of the city, condition of “colonial modernity”. Tani and a vision for the wholesale Barlow has emphasised the renovation of Japanese culture, with a “interrelatedness of colonizing powers particular focus on the figure of the and colonial regimes” and has drawn Japanese woman. our attention to the “colonial commodities (e.g. opium, tea, labour), The change will be so great it will be reordered styles of governmentality, almost as if they belonged to a juridical norms (e.g. international laws different race. Their figures, the color and treaties), administrative innovations of their skin and of their eyes will (e.g. customs, extraterritoriality, treaty become like those of Western ports), and colonial trade in ideas that people, and even the Japanese characterize colonizers … as well as they speak will have the ring of a European language (Tanizaki 1934; trans. in Keene 1984: 751). 3 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE This faith in the power of culture to into the public spaces of the city, where transform the very bodies of the people they could be seen by others and return seems surprising to modern readers. the gaze (Conor 2002: 53–4; Conor 2004; Notwithstanding the scientific and see also Barlow 2006: 26–8). sociological debunking of the category of “race”, we are used to thinking of Naomi wears a bricolage of Japanese “race” as a property of bodies, kimono , western dress and Indian something which cannot easily be fabrics. Her style is reminiscent of the modified by culture. It is implicitly women described by the Modern Girl assumed that the meanings attached to Around the World Research Group, bodies are infinitely malleable, albeit women who “occupied the liminal within specific regimes of power, but space conjoining the indigenous and that the bodies themselves cannot so the imperial, the national and the easily be transformed. Tanizaki’s international”, and who “combined and statement, is, of course, the rhetorical reconfigured aesthetic elements drawn flourish of a novelist-turned-essayist, and from disparate national, colonial and does not stand up to excessive scrutiny. racial regimes to create a Nevertheless, when read in conjunction ‘cosmopolitan look’” (2005: 246). In a with his novel, Chijin no Ai (A Fool’s similar vein, Thomas Lamarre has Love , 1985[1925]), it does suggest an described such women in Tanizaki’s engagement with some more fluid and novels as “an overdetermined image of unstable discourses of racialisation. transgressive intercourse … a site where so many different tensions or A Fool’s Love focuses on a white-collar contradictions are condensed and salaried worker, Jôji, and his relationship materialized … a literal place of with the café waitress Naomi. Jôji intercourse between different races, marries Naomi in the expectation that cultures and nations” (2005: 135). she can be trained as a suitable companion, and he provides her with One of the attractions of Naomi is that lessons, in English conversation, singing she cannot be placed comfortably and social dancing. They live together in either inside or outside the category of the former studio of an artist and his Japanese. This starts with her very name. model. Naomi has been described as Although the name “Naomi” is well- the archetypal example of the moga , or formed as a given name for a Japanese “modern girl”. The moga , in turn, has woman, particularly when written in been seen as one of the symbols of Sino-Japanese characters, it is also a artistic modernism and of early twentieth common-enough name in the English- century Japanese modernity (Sato 2003, speaking world. This suggestion of passim; Mackie 2007; Mackie in press). In indeterminate linguistic genealogy is the first half of the twentieth century in emphasised in the narrator’s choice to disparate places around the world, write Naomi’s name in the katakana attention was focused on modern girls script reserved for foreign words rather like “Naomi”. They challenged than any of the other choices available mainstream representations of (Tanizaki 1984[1925]: 8). domesticity and femininity; were characterised by distinctive dress and Vernacular Taxonomies commodities; experimented with alternative romantic relationships Naomi is placed in a shifting hierarchy outside the sphere of the marital home shaped by class, gender and and the nuclear family; and ventured racialisation. There is a taxonomy of 4 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE different types of women in the novel, Her cheeks were red, her eyes from the most refined of middle-class large, and her lips thick, but the Japanese women, to the Russian oval outline of her face, with its countess and dance teacher, Madame long, thin nose, was in the pure Japanese style of the ukiyoe Shlemskaya. There is also a more prints. I pay close attention to localised taxonomy of women in the women’s faces, and I’d never theatres and dance halls of urban seen such an ill-assorted face as Tokyo. Naomi is a long way from the this. It occurred to me that the refined middle-class ladies and the woman was probably distressed “white countess” Madame Shlemskaya, by her Japanese face and had but may be placed precisely in a worked overtime to look like a hierarchical relationship with the other Westerner [ Seiyô-kusaku ]. She’d women in the dance halls. The actress, whitened [ o-shiroi ga nutte ari ] every bit of exposed skin until Kirako, for example, seems a charismatic she looked like she’d been and refined figure in the world of the dusted with rice flour, and dance hall, but as an actress, she would applied shiny, blue-green be beyond the pale for respectable pigment around her eyes. The middle-class families. Kirako’s beauty bright red on her cheeks was references elite consumer products, obviously rouge. Unfortunately, appropriate for a woman who is herself with that ribbon twisted around a commodity, a spectacle to be her head, she looked like a consumed by the patrons of the theatre. monster (Tanizaki 1986: 83-4). Kirako … gave the impression of a Naomi suffers, however, in comparison precious object that’s been with Madame Shlemskaya, who is scrupulously polished with the associated with the whiteness of fabrics highest art … when she sat down at such as georgette and precious stones the table and picked up her such as diamonds. cocktail glass, her hand, from the palm to the wrist, looked She had the grave dignity and wonderfully slender, so light it could firm features of a born barely support the weight of her aristocrat; and her dignity was softly draping sleeve … If they’d enhanced by her pale, limpid been flowers, Naomi would have complexion – so white [ sôhaku bloomed in a field, and Kirako o obita ] it was a little indoors. How thin, almost frightening. Seeing her transparent was that little nose on authoritative expression, her her firm, round face! Not even a tasteful clothes, and the jewels baby – only a doll made by the glittering on her breast and greatest master – could have such fingers, I found it hard to believe a delicate nose! Last of all, I she was as poor as I had been noticed her teeth; Naomi had told (Tanizaki 1986: 60-1). always been proud of hers but Kirako’s were rows of pearls A meeting between Madame (Tanizaki 1986: 92). Shlemskaya and Naomi allows for further comparisons and further refinement of Naomi can, however, look down on the taxonomy. another woman, Mâ-chan, who presents the spectacle of an unsuccessful Naomi flushed bright red and racialised masquerade, a monstrous and shook hands furtively without carnivalesque image of mismatched saying a word. I was even worse colours. when my turn came. To tell the truth, I couldn’t look at the 5 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE countess’s pale [ aojiroi ], novel about her parentage (Tanizaki sculptured face. Her hand 1986: 10). v Rather, her body shifts in glittered with countless tiny categorisation through her skilled diamonds as I touched it silently. manipulation of dress, deportment, I didn’t raise my eyes (Tanizaki 1986: 66). demeanour, gesture and cosmetics. After a trip to the beach, the narrator watches the progress of sunburn, suntan, The narrator’s comments on Madame peeling and finally once again the Shlemskaya’s body odour reflect paling of the skin as the effects of the commonly-held views of racialisation at sun wear off. Naomi’s appearance on this time. Non-Japanese bodies were the beach in her swimsuit causes a thought to have a distinctive smell, due lyrical reflection on the beauty of her to the consumption of animal products, body. The narrator expresses delight at such as milk, butter and meat. Indeed, the physical proportions of her body, the one epithet used to describe Europeans straightness of her limbs, the deportment and Americans was batâ-kusai , which she has learned from watching “smelling of butter”. In addition, the Hollywood movies, and the added aura application of perfume directly to the of the Hollywood-style swimsuit, body, rather than the use of incense to purchased on the Ginza, the place most perfume clothing, was a cultural closely associated with the gendered practice which distinguished Japanese and commodified modernity of the and non-Japanese (Adachi 2006: 19-38). modern girl: We can also see the closely linked attitudes of anxiety and fascination, fear my heart cried out, “Naomi, and desire, which are evoked by Naomi, my Mary Pickford! What iv whiteness in the novel. a fine, well-proportioned body you have. Your graceful arms! What’s more, [the countess’s] Your legs, straight and body had a certain sweet streamlined like a boy’s!” And I fragrance … I’m told that couldn’t help thinking of Mack Westerners do have strong Sennett’s lively “bathing body odor, but to me, the faint, beauties”, whom I’d seen in the sweet-sour combination of movies (Tanizaki 1986: 28). perfume and perspiration was not at all displeasing – to the contrary, I found it deeply The following passage not only suggests alluring. It made me think of the importance of deportment in lands across the sea I’d never racialised categorisations, but also a seen, of exquisite, exotic flower process of training to achieve specific gardens. forms of deportment. “This is the fragrance exuded by Apparently she studied the the countess’s white body [ shiroi actresses’ movements when we karada ]!” I told myself, went to the movies, because enraptured, as I inhaled the she was very good at imitating aroma greedily (Tanizaki 1986: them. In an instant she could 69). capture the mood and idiosyncrasies of an actress. The most interesting feature of the novel, Pickford laughs like this, she’d however, is the shifting racialisation of say; Pina Menicheli moves her eyes like this; Geraldine Farrar Naomi herself. She is said to look like does her hair up this way. someone of “mixed blood”, although Loosening her hair, she’d push it there is no specific question raised in the 6 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE into this shape and that non-Japanese customers in former (Tanizaki 1986: 37). treaty ports like Yokohama. Naomi can also be connected with the former At times, Naomi wears Japanese dress – treaty port of Yokohama through her kimono – with the particular form of consumption of imported goods. At white make-up which was applied at home, she dresses her body in exotic that time by women. This make-up ( o- imported fabrics, and their house is shiroi , or “white”) is sometimes translated decorated in bohemian style with as “powder”, but is, in fact, a paste. cheap Indian cotton and calico. Furthermore, the meaning of this white make-up shifts according to context. White Nights When Mâ-chan, above, wore such make-up with western dress, it was seen as an unsuccessful attempt to Most fascinating and challenging, masquerade as “white”. When Naomi however, is that Naomi’s very body is wears this make-up with her kimono , it transformed in the course of the novel. takes on different connotations, for this The narrator keeps a diary where he white make-up is perfectly appropriate records the transformations of her body with japanese dress. from adolescence to adulthood, as they share their life in the “culture house”.vi “Well? A good choice don’t The diary and photographs seem like a you think?” Dissolving white parody, or perhaps a vernacularisation, powder [o-shiroi ] in her hands, of the scientific and medical discourses [Naomi] patted it vigorously on whereby the truth of racial difference is her steaming shoulders and thought to be something that can be nape as she spoke. defined and captured through testing, To tell the truth, the soft flowing measuring and documentation material [of the kimono ] wasn’t (Anderson 2002: passim ). However, the very becoming on her full very transmutability of Naomi’s body shoulders, large hips, and provides a challenge to these discourses prominent bust. Muslin or of racialisation. common silk cloth gave her the exotic beauty of a Eurasian girl At 8 p.m. I bathed her in the [ainoko ], but a more formal washtub. She still has her tan kimono, like this one, only made from the beach. She’s very her look vulgar. And when she dark, except under the bathing wore a bold pattern, she looked suit. I’m dark, too, but Naomi like a chophouse woman in one has such a light complexion, the of those places in Yokohama contrast is sharper. Even when that cater to foreign sailors she has nothing on, you’d think (Tanizaki 1986: 80–1). she was wearing a suit. “You look like a Zebra,” I said. She It is rather Naomi’s classed positioning laughed. which is the source of incongruity. For a vulgar woman like Naomi to wear the About a month later, on kimono of a respectable woman results October 17, I wrote: in a dissonance which, nevertheless, has Her tan is fading and her skin racialised connotations. Here, racialised doesn’t peel any more. It’s even anxiety is a matter of contagion rather smoother and lovelier than than an essential property of the body. before (Tanizaki 1986: 33). There is an anxiety about Japanese women who provide sexual services to 7 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE In a pivotal scene, the narrator tatters, amid soiled, dusty quilts; contemplates Naomi’s sleeping body. and that drew it to me all the This is no longer the suntanned body of more … her face, too, radiant the bathing beauty, but a wholly new and kaleidoscopic by day, now wore a mysterious cast, a vision of whiteness. melancholy frown, like that of one who’s just swallowed bitter Taking care not to waken her, I medicine, or of one who’s been sat by her sleeping pillow, and strangled. I loved her sleeping stealthily gazed at her sleeping face … ”Her death-face would form … A book lay open at her be beautiful, too”, I often told nose … My eyes moved back myself (Tanizaki 1986: 120-121). viii and forth between the pure white Western paper [ junpaku na seiyôshi ] in the book and the Under Western Eyes whiteness [ shirosa ] of her breast (Tanizaki 1986: 120). Thus far I have explored the shifting, chimerical and chameleonic properties The reference to the whiteness of paper of the body of Naomi in the eyes of the is perhaps unsurprising for a literary figure narrator. The narrator’s view of the who grew up in a household of printers. shifting racial categorisation of Naomi’s The association with paper might also body suggests a fluid, non-essentialist suggest, however, the literary reference view of racialisation. There is, however, a points for Tanizaki’s explorations of limit to this fluidity. In the end, Naomi is a whiteness. vii The chimerical and Japanese woman. The narrator’s chameleonic nature of Naomi’s body relationship with Naomi is a way of reaches its ultimate expression in this managing his fascination with and fear scene. Naomi’s skin shifts from yellow of whiteness. (kiiroi ) to white ( shiroi ), but this whiteness has a distinctive quality. Naomi’s Though I had no sense for such whiteness is displaced from discourses of things, my tastes ran to the chic racialisation, but also problematises the and up-to-date, and I imitated association of whiteness with purity. Her the Western style in everything. whiteness is “wrapped in tatters, amid My readers already know so soiled, dusty quilts”, a necrophiliac much. If I’d had enough money whiteness associated with death and to do whatever I pleased, I melancholy, a paradoxical whiteness might have gone to live in the which is associated with the darkness of West and married a Western woman, but my circumstances night-time rather than the light of day. wouldn’t permit that, and I married Naomi, a Japanese Naomi’s skin looked yellow woman with a Western flavour. [kiiroku ] one day and white Even if I had been rich, I would [shiroku ] another; but it was have had no confidence in my extraordinary limpid when she looks. I’m only five feet two was fast asleep, or had just inches tall; I have a dark awakened, as though all the fat complexion, and my teeth are in her body had melted away. snaggly. I’d be forgetting my Night is usually associated with place if I hoped for a wife with darkness ; but to me, night the majestic physique of a always brought thoughts of the Westerner. A Japanese should whiteness [ shirosa ] of Naomi’s marry a Japanese, I concluded, skin. Unlike the bright, and Naomi came closest to shadowless whiteness of noon, it meeting my needs. I was was a whiteness wrapped in satisfied (Tanizaki 1986: 67). 8 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE For most of the novel, the narrator and woman, the answer would be protagonist, Jôji, has been the bearer of no. They would, after all, be the gaze, casting his powerful walking out with a broad-faced taxonomic eye over a series of women, Japanese woman (Koide 1987 [1926]: 9). and placing them in a strict hierarchy according to racialised standards of Koide’s essay is populated by waitresses, beauty. In a scene reminiscent of John models, and inaccessible European Berger’s (1977) discussion of women who women. He also reflects on the spaces constantly imagine themselves under which are the most suitable settings for the gaze of a man, Jôji imagines himself the depiction of the nude. In a similar under the gaze of a Western woman. In fashion to Tanizaki’s fictional musings, the taxonomy of difference, his Koide finds Western-style rooms to be masculine gaze cannot quite meet the superior to Japanese-style rooms for this ix European gaze on equal terms. He is purpose: conscious of his height, his skin colour, and his teeth. in Western art, there are paintings of women connected The Taxonomic Gaze with various natural scenes from everyday life: bathing scenes, seated women, scenes of The character of Jôji in A Fool’s Love is women at their toilette, and so constantly classifying women into on. In Japan, however, even if categories according to class, one attempts to find motifs of according to racialised gradations and nudity in everyday life, it’s rather according to physical beauty (Tanizaki difficult. Even if one were to find 1984[1925]: 92; 102; 105–6; 127–8; 142). In such a scene, it would be the site of things which one would his essays, too, Tanizaki repeatedly hesitate to introduce. For reflected on the different kinds of example, if one were to paint a beauty to be found in women of scene of a woman standing by different countries. x Tanizaki’s close a bed and translate it into a contemporary, the artist Koide Japanese context, it would not Narashige, also reflected on different be a very pleasing composition kinds of beauty in his essay “Rafu … Beds look right in Western- Mandan” (Idle Thoughts on the Nude style rooms. There’s nothing Woman, 1987[1926]: 9–14). xi Koide, like uncomfortable about the sight. Often, beds are more of a Tanizaki, has a taxonomic gaze, and decorative element in such constantly makes connections between rooms. In Japan, there is the act of painting a woman, and something suggestive about taking such a woman as a lover. seeing a bed in broad daylight (Koide 1987 [1926]: 8–9). Japanese women do not have beautiful bodies, and no matter Koide’s essay is symptomatic of some what you say, everyone agrees prevalent attitudes in the art world of that only a Western woman will early twentieth century Japan. He do for a nude; moreover, when you look at the shape of the clearly makes connections between women who appear in “Westernised” spaces, artistic spaces, Japanese oil paintings, you just and sexualised spaces, in a manner want to laugh at their lack of similar to the logic of Tanizaki’s novels. shape. But if you were to ask the He goes on to describe the “dressing” of one laughing whether he had artist’s studios with Indian cloth and made love to a Western Western furniture, in a manner similar to 9 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE Tanizaki’s novel. These scenes suggest Paris. Foujita lived in the Paris of the international dissemination of the Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, bohemian style (Koide 1987 [1926]: 9; Amedeo Modigliani and Chaim Soutine, Tanizaki 1984 [1925]: 30; Nicholson 2003: Man Ray and Jean Cocteau, Colette passim ). and Kiki de Montparnasse. It was the town of bohemians, writers, artists and Koide can be placed in a lineage of models, new women, modern girls and artists who engaged with European garçonnes .xii styles of painting. By the time Koide was writing, the art world in Japan was Foujita has become known for a polarised into two styles known as particular technique for rendering white ‘Nihonga ’ (Japanese-style painting) and skin. Although using oil paints, he ‘Yôga ’ (Western style painting). From the adapted techniques from Japanese 1890s, artists in Japan travelled to Paris brush painting to achieve a profound, to experience the art schools of milky whiteness in his paintings. He first Montmartre and Montparnasse (Bryson covered the canvas in a special white 2003: 101–118). Those who could not paint of his own recipe, then produced travel to Paris studied with college art outlines with a fine, dark brush, before teachers who had returned from Europe. finally filling in with paint (Birnbaum 2006: They learned the practices of drawing 5–6; 96–98). While drawing on the and painting from live models, the techniques of Japanese brush painting, practices which are referred to in Foujita also achieved effects which had Tanizaki’s novelistic references to studios not been attempted by his forebears in and art schools. They also learned a Japan. series of gendered, classed and racialised power relations. I suddenly realised one day that there are very few paintings of Tanizaki’s novel suggests that the nudes in Japan. In the paintings constitution of racialised difference is not of Harunobu or Utamaro, there are merely glimpses of part of an inherent property of bodies. Rather, an arm or a small area around racialisation involves the reading of the knee. I realized that they bodies for evidence provided by dress, conveyed the sensation of skin deportment, gesture, cosmetics, only in those places. For the first adornment and a whole range of time I decided to try and embodied practices. Racialised represent that most beautiful of positionings are constituted through a materials – human skin (Fujita series of gazes between actors in the 1984, trans. Birnbaum 2006: 6). modern scene, embedded in complex As an artist in Paris, Foujita could literally relations of power amid the circulation gaze on the women of the world, and, of signs, symbols, bodies, commodities, through his paintings, make the finance and capital. spectacle of these women available to Gazing on Whiteness in the other viewers. His paintings have come to be hung in major international Metropolis galleries, and thus could be said to express a gaze of power, contributing to While Tanizaki and Koide were gazing on the artistic culture of Paris and the world. and classifying various types of women In focusing on the beauty of “human in the urban areas of Japan, Fujita skin”, however, he was touching on one [Foujita] Tsuguharu took his brush, paints of the privileged signifiers of racialised and inks to the centre of the visual arts – difference. It is also, of course, important 10 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE to note that it was the skin of the One is called Lutteurs (Fighters, 1928) woman’s body which most interested and the other takes the form of two him, thus placing him in the position of Compositions : Composition au lion powerful masculine observer. A similar (Composition with Lion) and positioning has been described with Composition au chien (Composition with reference to Foujita’s predecessors. Dog, 1928). Both wall-sized paintings are composed of a series of carefully It is through a focus on the arranged naked male and female bodies of women rather than bodies, some in repose, some men that proximity to and embracing, and some in combat. In the intimacy with the West are Compositions , the human bodies are evoked. Such a high degree of interspersed with animals. What is assimilation into European visuality cannot have been easy interesting about the male and female for any of the Meiji artists to bodies is the gradation of colour. achieve. Yet in a sense there Generally, the female bodies are paler was always a place carved out than the male bodies, unless they are for them in advance, by virtue of specifically racialised as Indian or the fact that the European visual African. The figures in the murals are regime they were embarked on largely divorced from a specific place entering was centered squarely and time, and thus the use of colour to on the masculine subject of delineate gendered and racialised vision – one had only, so to speak, to step into his shoes differences is all the more striking. (Bryson 2003:108). In Foujita’s essays, the impulse to classify One of Foujita’s celebrated paintings of and categorise appears, just as strongly whiteness is “Nude with Jouy Fabric” as in the writings of Tanizaki and Koide. from 1922, a portrait of Kiki de In one essay, on “Women and Cats”, he Montparnasse reclining on a pale describes the experience of having brocade fabric. xiii Foujita’s third wife, been a judge at a cat show in Paris. In and one of his models, was Lucie fact, the essay has little mention of Badoud. He called her “Youki” (Snow) in women at all, but the title prompts the honour of her milky white skin. In this act reader to wonder what analogies are of naming, he demonstrates a being drawn between cats and women. fascination with whiteness, but also He explains at the end of the essay that assimilates whiteness into his own cultural when he did not have access to a sphere by giving her a Japanese name. woman as model, he would draw and Foujita and Youki were photographed paint cats. Indeed, Foujita became lounging in his studio, both wearing famous for paintings which feature cats, Japanese kimono . His painting, “Youki, which finally became equivalent to the Goddess of the Snow” was exhibited at artist’s signature (Fujita 2005: 54–56). the Salon d’Automne in 1924 (Birnbaum 118–126; Klüver and Martin 1989: 100– In the abovementioned essay on the 101). “Women of the World”, Foujita recounts his experiences with women from various Skin colour also took on gendered countries. Travel, it seems, provided meanings in Foujita’s paintings. In the Foujita and other tourists with an excuse 1920s, Foujita completed two massive to purchase the sexual services of and rather fanciful murals. They have women from all over the world. Let us only recently been restored and put on take another look at Foujita’s account. public display (Satô et al 2008: 70–89). 11 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE In 1921, I left Japan and curiosity. He provided judo headed for France. The ship demonstrations; performed Japanese had hardly docked in Shanghai folk songs and dances; and dressed in before my fellow passengers, idiosyncratic costumes of his own design from curiosity to know a Western woman, went to visit the white- and fabrication (Birnbaum 2006: 63–71; walled western building with the 95; 128–129). Phyllis Birnbaum has red light. There they were taken commented on the popular view of by the golden hair of the Polish Foujita, that “he was simply seen as a Jewish women and the Russian Japanese artist without nuances, refugee women, enchanted by reaching toward caricature, always the charm of blue eyes, and effervescent and sociable, with endless returned to the ship singing silly costumes at the ready” (2006: x). paeans. I was the only one who While it is true that Foujita often played celebrated the beauty of the slender bamboo-like figures of on this exoticism and was a tireless self- the Chinese women, and did promoter and manipulator of his own not listen to their stories. It was image, a somewhat more sophisticated the same when we docked in picture emerges from his writings (Fujita Hong Kong. To them, the Malay 1984). His essays reveal someone who and Indian women just seemed was disciplined in his work habits, like sauvages. For me, however, thoughtful about his art, and able to they gave me a sense of conjure a picture in words just as skilfully aesthetiquement beauté (Fujita as he does with his brush on canvas or 1984: 57). silk. Foujita displays none of the anxiety about European women which we can Conclusion discern in the writings of Tanizaki and Koide. He places himself in a position of All of these case studies demonstrate power which allows him to categorise that those who grew up in the cultural the women of the world. He appears to milieu of early twentieth century Japan privilege women from Asia, his own part had been exposed to hierarchical of the world. However, he displays his notions of “race”. European racial access to European cultural capital taxonomies interacted with local through the sprinkling of French words taxonomies which depended on much through his text. He goes on in other more than just skin colour. Bodies were essays to provide anecdotes of the “read”, not only for physical differences various women he came to know in the (skin colour, hair colour, body size and bohemian circles of Paris. xiv While in proportion, body hair, bodily odours) but Paris, Foujita was able to access the also for clues based on deportment, privileges of the male artist, and exercise dress, gestures, posture and voice which a gaze of power on the women who could be used to make judgments posed as models for himself and other about class, gender, ethnicity, racialised artists. positioning and sexuality. Local taxonomies interacted with, but were Nevertheless, Foujita himself was also not identical to, Eurocentric subject to the taxonomic gaze, and categorisations. Writers and artists could not always transcend his explored these racialised taxonomies positioning as an exotic “oriental”. In and at times were able to subvert them. English language accounts of the artistic These racialised hierarchies also world of early twentieth century Paris, he interacted with gender in interesting comes across as something of a ways. These male artists could exercise a 12 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE dominating, masculine gaze on the ——2004. The Question of Women in women of their own and other countries. Chinese Feminism , Durham: Duke However, in the racialising gazes which University Press. emanated from Europe, the Japanese ——2006. ‘History and the Border’, male was often positioned as exotic Journal of Women’s History , 18(2), 26- “other”, an otherness which sometimes 8. trumped his ability to exercise a powerful Berger, J. 1977. Ways of Seeing , gendered gaze. Harmondsworth: Pelican. Birnbaum, P. 2006. Beauty in a Line: A Author Note Life of Foujita – The Artist Caught between East and West , New York: Faber and Faber. Vera Mackie is Australian Research Bryson, N. 2003. Westernizing Bodies: Council Australian Professorial Fellow in Women, Art, Power in Meiji Yôga, in Historical Studies at the University of J. S. Mostow, N. Bryson and M. Melbourne, where she is researching the Graybill (eds.) Gender and Power in Cultural History of the Body in Modern the Japanese Visual Field , Honolulu: Japan and the Politics of Visual Culture University of Hawai’i Press, 101–18. in Modern Japan. Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Acknowledgments Historical Difference , Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Research for this article was conducted Conor, L. 2002. ‘The City Girl: Appearing as part of an ARC-funded research in the Modern Scene’, Lilith , 11, 53- project on the Cultural History of the 72. Body in Modern Japan. I would like to ——2004. The Spectacular Modern thank the anonymous reviewer and the Woman: Feminine Visibility in the editors for comments which have 1920s , Bloomington: Indiana. informed the revision of this article. Dyer, R. 1997. White , London: Routledge. Thanks also to Tomoko Aoyama, Adrian Fujikawa, T. (ed.) 2005. Hakujin to wa Carton and Toshiko Ellis for advice and Nanika? Howaitonesu Sutadiizu support. Nyûmon [What is ‘White’? Introduction to Whiteness Studies]. References Tokyo: Kensui Shobô. Fujita, T. 1984. Sekai no Onna [Women of the World], in Bura Ippon, Pari no Adachi, M. 2006. ‘Shashi to Modan Yokogao – Fujita Tsuguharu Essê Sen Gâru: Shiseidô to Kôiri Sekken’ [One Arm, Profile of Paris, Selected [Luxury Goods and the Modern Girl: Essays of Fujita Tsuguharu], ed. K. Shiseidô and Perfumed Soap], Jendâ Fumito, Tokyo: Kôdansha. Kenkyû 9,19–38. ——2005. Onna to Neko [Women and Anderson, W. 2002. The Cultivation of Cats], Bura Ippon, Pari no Yokogao – Whiteness: Science, Health and Fujita Tsuguharu Essê Sen [One Arm, Racial Destiny in Australia , Carlton: Profile of Paris, Selected Essays of Melbourne University Press. Fujita Tsuguharu], ed. K. Fumito, Barlow, T. E. 1997. Introduction: On Tokyo: Kôdansha Bunko, 54–56. ‘Colonial Modernity’, in T. E. Barlow Gates, H. L. Jr. (ed.) 1992. “Race”, (ed.) Formations of Colonial Writing and Difference , Chicago: Modernity in East Asia , Durham: Duke University of Chicago Press. University Press, 1–20. 13 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE Hamilton, A. 1990. 'Fear and Desire: Perspectives on the Construction of Aborigines, Asians and the National an Identity , Melbourne: RMIT Imaginary', Australian Cultural Publishing. History , 9, 14-35. ——in press. Shanghai Dancers: Gender, hooks, b. 1981. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Coloniality and the Modern Girl, in D. Women and Feminism , Boston: South Ghosh and B. Leigh (eds.) End Press. 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The New Japanese Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Woman: Modernity, Media and Cinema and ‘Oriental’ Aesthetics , Women in Interwar Japan , Durham: Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Duke University Press. Studies, University of Michigan. Satô, Y. et al. (eds.) 2008. Léonard Kawabata, Yasunari. 1972 [1952] Foujita Ten , Sapporo: Hokkaidô Yukiguni , [Snow Country] Tokyo: Shimbun Press. Iwanami. Selz, J. 1981. Foujita , trans. S. Jennings, Mackie, V. 2007. The Moga as Racialised New York: Crown Publishers. Category in 1920s and 1930s Japan, Tanizaki J. 2005 [1917]. ‘Ningyo no in L. Boucher, J. Carey and K. Nageki’ [The Mermaid’s Lament], Ellinghaus (eds.) Historicising Chûô Kôron [Central Review]. in T. Whiteness: Transnational Lamarre, Shadows on the Screen: 14 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and ——2005 [1931]. ‘Ren’ai oyobi Shikijô’ ‘Oriental’ Aesthetics , Ann Arbor: [Love and Sexual Desire], Fujin Kôron Center for Japanese Studies, [Women’s Review], in T. Lamarre, University of Michigan, 34–53. Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Tanizaki, J. 1985 [1925]. Chijin no Ai [A Jun’ichirô on Cinema and ‘Oriental’ Fool’s Love], Tokyo: Chûô Kôron Aesthetics , Ann Arbor: Center for Shinsha. Japanese Studies, University of ——2005 [1922]. ‘Onna no Kao’[A Michigan, 319–55. Woman’s Face], Fujin Kôron ——1934. ‘Tokyo o Omou’ [Thinking of [Women’s Review], in T. Lamarre, Tokyo], Chûô Kôron [Central Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Review], January–April. Jun’ichirô on Cinema and ‘Oriental’ ——1947 [1928–30]. Manji , Tokyo: Chûô Aesthetics , Ann Arbor: Center for Kôronsha. Japanese Studies, University of ——1986. Naomi , trans. A. H. Chambers, Michigan, 264–5. Tokyo: Tuttle. function as a sexualised space in Tanizaki’s Notes novel, Manji (1947[1926–8]) vii In another work, Ningyo no Nageki (A Mermaid’s Lament) for example, Tanizaki tells the fantastical story of a white mermaid i Translations my own unless indicated figure which clearly draws on European otherwise. In this passage, the italicised mythology and fairy tales. See Tanizaki 1917, words appear in the original passage in Sino- trans. in Lamarre 2005: 45–6. Japanese characters, with a French reading viii See also Tanizaki’s (1917) story, Ningyo no provided alongside. I have tried to convey Nageki (A Mermaid’s Lament), where the this in the translation with the use of French mermaid’s skin “was of such whiteness that it words in italics. As in the original, the French recalled the glow of moonlight” (trans. in words may not integrate smoothly into the Lamarre 2005: 45–46). Readers of Kawabata grammar of the sentence. Yasunari’s (1972[1952]) novel Yukiguni (Snow ii Foujita’s family name was variously spelt as Country) may also think back to the white “Fujita” or “Foujita”, and his given name was nights of Tanizaki’s novel. The opening sometimes read as “Tsuguharu” and sentence of Snow Country is: “The train sometimes “Tsuguji”. He also adopted the emerged from the long tunnel into Snow name “Léonard”. As he is most well-known in Country. The depth of the night turned European languages as “Foujita”, I will use white” (1972: 5, my translation). this spelling hereafter, except where citing ix See also the anxiety about comparisons Japanese language sources. On Foujita’s life, between Japanese men and European men see Birnbaum, 2006. expressed in Tanizaki’s essay “On Love and iii Here, I am drawing on Dipesh Sexual Desire”: “Questioning the prostitutes in Chakrabarty’s (2000) discussion of the ports open to foreigners in the Yokohama “provincialising” Europe. and Kobe areas supports this fact; according iv Hamilton (1990: 14–35) has characterized to these women, relatively few Japanese this structure of feeling, when faced with have such appetites, in comparison with racialised difference, as “fear and desire”. Westerners” (Tanizaki 1931; trans. in Lamarre v Tanizaki uses the word, “ Ainoko ”, which 2005: 333). refers to someone of mixed parentage, and x See, for example, Tanizaki Jun’ichirô’s in the novel is written with Sino-Japanese essays, “Tokyo o Omou” (Thinking of Tokyo, characters which specifically mean “mixed- 1934); “Onna no Kao” (A Woman’s Face, blood-child”. 1922, trans. Lamarre 2005: 264); and “Ren’ai vi On the “culture house” ( bunka jûtaku ), see oyobi Shikijô” (Love and Sexual Desire, 1931, Sand 2005. The artist’s studio figures as a trans. Lamarre 2005: 331; 345). particularly sexualised space in the popular culture of the time, and performs a similar 15 MACKIE: THE TAXONOMIC GAZE xi Koide provided illustrations and book design for one of Tanizaki’s novels (see Koide Ryûtarô 2006). xii See Foujita’s ink and watercolour drawing of a woman doing the Charleston, from the album “Le Journal de Youki”, reproduced in Selz (1981: 19). xiii Kiki de Montparnasse was one of the names by which Alice Prin (1901–1953) was known. She was a painter, actor and artist’s model, who appears in many of Man Ray’s photographs, and is featured in the surrealist film, Ballet Mécanique (see Klüver and Martin 1996). xiv See also Foujita’s (1929) essay in the Paris- Montparnasse Review (trans. Selz 1981: 21). 16 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009 BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT: WHAT IS AN EFFECTIVE PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR WORKING WITH INDIGENOUS LEARNERS? SUSAN MLCEK Abstract what is knowledge, who has it, and what can be done with it. An interesting comparison can be made to the way This article presents a discussion of ideas that practitioners embrace non-English about whiteness behaviours that are speaking background (NESB) or present in curriculum delivery. While culturally and linguistically diverse culturally appropriate curriculum (CALD) students by reinforcing identity purports to address both content and development and demonstrating delivery considerations relevant to knowledge through sharing aspects of Indigenous learners, there are planes of culture such as food, dress and habits, engagement that encapsulate white with the way that Indigenous learners subjectivities which are both visible and are included, or not, in curriculum invisible, and represent just one studies. The indulgent practice shown to chronology of whiteness. That is, the first group could also be seen to be consciously and unconsciously culturally competent because of the patterned behaviours of delivering implicit and explicit respect shown for curriculum, no matter what the discipline identifying and celebrating cultural area, have the potential to produce difference. Given the whiteness accessibility and achievement, but do behaviours within such practice, they also reproduce inequalities? One however, which pedagogical view put forward as part of this framework is most effective for discussion is that whiteness is the erasure Indigenous learners? of inequality because it presents as the norm in many adult education teaching Introduction situations; quite often manifested as indulgent practice, but one that also reinforces the hegemony of normativity. In regards to effective pedagogies, Paulo Freire (1972: 66) suggests that Current research directions about “authentic education” should not ignore effective pedagogies that relate to the concrete, existential and real-life Indigenous learners now espouse the present situations of learners who term “culturally competent”. Like participate in education programmes. “culturally appropriate”, the inclusive As an educational practitioner, I know element behind the concept “culturally that these learners come with anxieties, competent” practice is designed to hopes, expectations, and sometimes address the divide between hopelessness on several different levels, acceptance that Indigenous learners and to deliver curriculum in a “banking already have knowledge of how they style” that provides only a one-way want to learn, and the exclusion of these construction of knowledge is to ignore same learners for not knowing how they the diversity of students’ ability to “ought to learn”. Tensions arise around influence, mediate, and engage with ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2009 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT the world around them. Unwittingly, into one; into an epistemic image there are many educators who ignore whereby educational practitioners meaningful dialogue that results in constantly move through revolving doors critical reflection, and instead continue to try to bypass the limit-situations of their to encourage passivity amongst learner positions by engaging in limit-acts that recipients to accept the programmes transcend boundaries of “nothingness” the former have planned and to possibilities of “being more” (Vieira organised, because that appears to be Pinto, cited in Freire 1972: 71). The task is their exclusive right, and not necessarily not overwhelming but at times what learners want or think important to inculcated with “normalised” behaviours their own lives. Providing access and of mediocrity that serve to maintain the equity for learners, or seeking to include “whiteness as goodness” visibility (hooks them in facets of programmes, is the 1997: 169). This recurring image, kind of “universal” practice that plays however, can be one that represents into the hands of the “culturally power, domination, and imposition competent” rhetoric that actually through benevolence. denies the recognition and acceptance of cultural diversity amongst different To unpack those ideas further, in the ethnic groups. abstract this article is referring to “cultural positionings” – about how A part of the above rhetoric is whiteness is performed by people – embedded within a multiculturalism whereby whiteness is revealed to be discourse. Through a discursive “universal”. It is difficult to express the theoretical lens, whiteness theory forces powerlessness I personally still feel when I this discourse to name its social look back at my own part in construction and recognition of the perpetrating a voice of silence in inclusiveness of people from diverse relation to the powerlessness of others. In languages and backgrounds. And while this respect, the problem is not about also a social construction, “whiteness”, the colour “white”, but, from a whiteness on the other hand, is made more theoretical perspective, that being complex through layers of recognition of “white” is about position, power, and another kind; recognition of control. I am referring to my time as a acknowledgement. That is, whiteness is literacy and language teacher in an about all that is normalised, taken for access education division at a local granted and therefore invisible, technical and further education institute privileged and therefore depending on in Australia. I realise now, after years of the devaluation of non-whites critical reflection on practice that being (Thompson 2001), and therefore natural. an Indigenous teacher with knowledge of my own Maori people’s dispossession My ideas form a personal/professional and that of others, brings no guarantee collage about whiteness behaviours that of exposing the inadequacies of impact curriculum delivery that not only curriculum. Critical race theory (Dudziak seeks to enable “cultural competence”, 1995; Hayman 1998) provides a potential but also facilitate ongoing oppression lens through which to view certain and powerlessness, for both the educational practices as coming not recipient and quite often the facilitator just from individual acts of supremacy or as well. Layers of a picture tableau take prejudice, but as an endemic part of the discussion from the personal situation life, deeply ingrained in the education to the professional, and then back to system through historical consciousness the personal, so that three stories evolve and ideological choices about race 2 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT (Parker & Lynn 2002), and also about the fractions, then how easy must it be to tendencies of educational institutions to reinforce the dominant discourse? There reproduce the dominant role in is no doubt that from an early age we knowledge promulgation (Nakata 2001: are influenced by “social practices that 100). maintain cultural dispositions within groups” (Moran 2004: 1). Martin Nakata Whiteness-as-privilege operates at the (1995: 40-61) realises that Indigenous crossroads of a variety of social people are captives of certain encounters that include spaces for a discourses, particularly where certain celebration of race, ethnicity and knowledge assumptions make gender; all markers of identity. In continuous claims about the prefacing the next part of my personal inadequacies facing Indigenous narrative, I take on board the correlation learners. Unfortunately these that Westcott makes regarding assumptions give rise to at best whiteness studies: “(1) the relationship privileged indulgent, or at worst between rhetorical form and negligent practices of engagement introspective utterance and (ii) the towards Indigenous learners. Privilege is political implications of enacting the manifested through ideology and personal as a gesture of atonement or performative processes that can identify even reconciliation” (2004: 1). To this as “indulgent practice”, and these ideas end, I feel I must first note my own racial require some further exposition. situatedness. Looking back on my years as a student of a Maori native school in The obvious question then, is: what are New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s, I whiteness behaviours, and how are they can reflect on the situation of constantly explained as “moments of indulgence”? trying to identify as Indigenous – as These behaviours are embedded within Maori-Indigenous – as if I must justify a curriculum through particular worldviews place within society today; within my that are encapsulated in the values, profession, my work, with colleagues, structures and narratives about and no matter their ethnicity. Aileen whiteness. Certain qualities survive from Moreton-Robinson (2000: 87) suggests colonialist and imperialist domination – that “whiteness reduces the Indigenous notably ideas about intelligence, other to being a function, and a means, resilience and virtuous activity, and of knowing and defining itself through being privileged, self-restrained, and representations”. So the journey of “critically reflective” on the outside – but definition for me has been never-ending seem removed from the underlying and serves to highlight the reification of tensions implicit in practice. These whiteness discourse that is perpetuated qualities provide different nuances of in “normalising” language even today. visibility depending on the socially When I attended the New Zealand semiotic context of a particular situation, Maori primary school – some fifty years but the invisible nature of practice is the ago – I was constantly trying to justify my extent to which these qualities provide “Maori-ness” to my darker-coloured first an ongoing visible expression of cousins. “But I’m more than a quarter- indulgence-as-superiority, or even more caste”, I would say, “and if I’m quarter, bluntly, competence-as-racism. then I’m Maori”. “No you’re not!”, they Benevolent behaviours from would retort back. If primary school kids practitioners can take the form of at that age could articulate denial and allowing students to share cultural exclusion through doing the crude practices such as food, clothing, and life calculations of race-marker-as-blood- stories. With some groups of CALD 3 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT students, the educational practitioner always privilege the ruling class and its with a perfect command of the English needs, in particular the type of language and management of the knowledge that it needs or is inclined to Western-orientated curriculum is promote. powerfully positioned to uphold the dominant discourse of equity, access, Whiteness can be understood through participation and human rights. In other multiple lenses including domination, ways, these same behaviours exclude race, and privilege, but the white class the role of white Australia as the source that dominates does not impose itself of exclusion of Indigenous voice to upon wholly passive communities. Our protest against uninformed lifeworld – an environment that involves appropriation of symbols, language, the familiar, everyday practices around rituals, songs and dance of Indigenous us – is more complex than being just learners’ communities. To do so – that is, diverse. That is, there is more allow too much of a strong Indigenous consideration and understanding voice – could result in the “cultural required of the layers within relationships, power of Indigeneity” challenging rather than a call for just a flexible “mainstream society’s inherent pedagogical approach to teaching whiteness” (Gargett 2005). curriculum. Educators, like other members of society, are continually In further regard to whiteness being colonised through economic and behaviours, in any class society, only the politico-administrative interruptions that ruling class can be truly said to have lead to what Jürgen Habermas refers to privilege and there is little doubt that as a sociocultural crisis or legitimation even in these contemporary times, we crisis (Gregory 2000: 131; Habermas continue to live in a classed society. In 1987). In particular, in relation to the way the study of identity development, education programmes are delivered, privileged white identity develops from a the involvement of governments in position of domination whilst culturally mediation and managing our social diverse individuals, such as those from systems has allowed the prevalence of CALD communities, develop their ever-changing cultural models of identity from a position of oppression engagement, as well as unfamiliar (Sue 2006: 92; Sue and Sue 2003: 214). bureaucratization practices, to drive Those who rule or govern determine the changes in the profession (Gregory conditions under which everyone exists, 2000). The resulting dilemma is that while even in educational institutions. governments may have approached Institutionalising such social relations concerns about education from a maintain and expand control over mainly instrumental angle, the wealth, power, and knowledge legitimation crisis for practitioners management. The ruling class structures continues to include situations that are these relations in such a way that the not just technical matters to be decided survival of the exploited classes depends on a purely rational basis, but ones that upon their continued participation in the require a measure of “moral-practice reproduction of these relationships , thus consciousness” to produce favourable guaranteeing the continuation of outcomes for individuals and classed societies. Therefore, through communities (Gregory 2000). Producing hegemonic processes, it can be said these outcomes requires a hefty dose of that the dominant class structures social leadership as well as management skills relationships in such a way that the and wisdom, but unless an educational continued reproduction of society will practitioner is in an autonomous position 4 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT of being able to make decisions about Damien Riggs’ (2004b) indication that all program development and delivery, non-Indigenous people are implicated content and modes of delivery quite in practices of oppression and that the often follow the ensuing dominant task is to develop ways of exploring this discourse. complicity leads me to my professional story. I currently teach social work and Implicit in the above ideas, therefore, is human services curriculum and have just the ever-increasing “colonisation” of the spent the last semester lecturing in issues lifeworld through the rationalisation of of social policy. I spoke about the systems (Habermas 1987). This idea of visibility and absence of “self- colonisation is contained in the determination” for indigenous people in regionalisation dimension of time-space social policy design and routinisation that presents another implementation, and the history of how means to articulate the way that social self-determination was put into policy- life is channelled into and out of the site making with the Whitlam government of education program delivery. When and then deleted through the Howard “whiteness” is identified as the erasure of government’s term. For one third-year inequality (Derrida 2002, 1976) because Indigenous student, the “penny finally it presents as the norm, the history of dropped” – as an Indigenous patient class struggle – and the exploited trying advocate for one of the rural hospitals to give order back to their lives – and she just could not work out how the social conditions under which they Indigenous people were still being have existed is largely ignored. For disadvantaged; they were no longer example, in examining meanings of empowered to make decisions for whiteness, we need to look at the themselves, but under the circumstances of their construction, as “benevolence of whiteness”, they were well as critique how certain knowledges given opportunities to “become are presented and taught as though empowered”. If Indigenous learners can they do not have an epistemological tell the difference between connection to whiteness. “determination” and “empowerment”, then why the persistence by In relation to the subjectivity of the actor governments, to maintain a position of in his or her own construct, we often whiteness indulgence? hear that in contemporary societies like ours today, both black and white The above idea of language use in people think that racism no longer exists. Australian social policy shows a model of This notion is a form of mythical engagement that mimics the whiteness “erasure”, whereby feelings of rhetoric of inclusivity, diversity, and inadequacy are being constantly pluralism, answering the vague platitude reinforced, and where whiteness is a of trying to achieve “the means to an construct or identity that is almost end rather than the end in itself” impossible to separate from racial (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity dominance (Frankenberg 1997: 9). Commission a, 1998). The Australian Again, from the foundations of critical Government’s response to Indigenous race theory comes the maxim that policy is stark and imbued with racism: “racism is pervasive” (Watson 2005: 4), “Government policy does not and that race may be a social construct acknowledge the applicability to but it has material effects on real people Indigenous people of the right to self- (McDonald 2003). determination. In 1997 the government actively rejected self-determination as 5 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT the basis of Indigenous policy” (Human practices and believing that one is Rights and Equal Opportunity doing good work in furthering the Commission b, 2002). Riggs (2004b: 5) progress and well-being of “others”. suggests a need to not only provide “an explanation of what whiteness is, or The narratives of “white good” however, what it ‘looks like’, but rather that we are situated in discourses of need to focus on how whiteness is benevolence (Riggs 2004a: 4), and as practised and to what end”. In this such can also be understood as sites for ongoing practice of curtailing the operation and management of Indigenous communities’ right to self- whiteness because they are “implicitly determination, there are just too many aimed at managing the agency of spaces for assimilationist thought, those people positioned as the forgetfulness, and/or indulgence. racialised other”. Furthermore, behaviours of good are also enacted Rethinking suitable pedagogical from a deep sense of moral obligation frameworks for working with that when we engage with Indigenous Indigenous learners students, for example, we act from a position of thinking we know what is best for them rather than acknowledging At the very outset of rethinking how we that our benign benevolence comes construct useful and relevant from the “anxiety of whiteness” (Riggs pedagogical frameworks for any of our and Augostinos 2004) accompanied by learners, adopting a postcolonial the need to belong, to validate, and to perspective helps to name and maintain a useful position in Australian challenge the legacies of colonialism society. These good and useful acts and their continuation through neo- appear to be removed from the anti- colonial practices. That is, one person’s racist discourse surrounding whiteness humanitarian objective could quite well privilege because they endeavour to be another’s impression of neo- address oppression and colonialism (Samson 1998). This disempowerment. But they actually help postcolonial perspective therefore to shape the hegemony of whiteness just investigates the assumptions underlying because they are implicated in systems discourses of Eurocentrism as well as of oppression. That is, this type of “whiteness”, and explores approaches hegemony represents “white blindness” for constructing alternatives (Hickling- (Hickling-Hudson and Ahlquist 2003) to Hudson and Ahlquist 2003: 4). During the difference race makes in people’s these explorations, the notion of lives and how the phenomenon has a whiteness-as-invisible is quite often powerful effect on teaching and juxtaposed with whiteness-as- learning situations within our education hypervisible as “either a preferred or institutions. For example, it prevents threatened status” (Thompson 2001: 1). practitioners from engaging in learning That is, when we feel we are losing about how practice that comes from a control of parts of a curriculum, for foundation of privilege impacts personal example how different literacies are and institutional racism. marked and delivered, we also feel that our privilege will somehow be Given those whiteness behaviours undermined. For any practitioner like implicit in benevolent and indulgent me, who has worked with CALD and practice, which pedagogical framework Indigenous students for a number of is most effective for Indigenous learners? years, it is very easy to become involved Considerations for appropriate in eschewing the above kinds of 6 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT curriculum for Indigenous learners range maintain a difference, is that research from needing to place Indigenous goes hand-in-hand with ways of standpoints at the centre of Indigenised learning. Durie (2005) posits ideas about curriculum (Carey 2008), to recognising Indigenous knowledge: Indigenous culture as a positive resource (Durie 2006). There are institutional While it is often valued because Indigenous educational strategies that of its traditional qualities, the are constructed within a cultural perception of indigenous knowledge and culture as competence pedagogical framework applicable only to the distant designed to enhance the development past ignores the thrust for of student graduate attributes and to development that is part of the prepare students for active citizenship indigenous journey. Arising from and engagement in reconciliation and the creative potential of the achievement of social justice for indigenous knowledge is the Indigenous Australians (for example see prospect that it can be applied Charles Sturt University 2009). They are to modern times in parallel with strategies that are explicit about the other knowledge systems (2005: 304). need to “Indigenise curriculum”; to make it more “culturally appropriate” Further considerations related to a and in doing so, to develop “cultural suitable pedagogical framework for competence”. In many cases they have Indigenous learners are those that also become codified instruments within include the underlying principles of institutional policy implementation. In “learning and research at the interface” the delivery of such considerations, and which relate to mutual respect, shared regardless of whether the focus is a benefits, human dignity and discovery vocational or general academic one, (Durie 2005: 307). Durie’s ideas continue Indigenous researchers and practitioners to inform the binary of Indigenous ask for an awareness of the learning and research at the “interface” transformative effects of Indigenous by expanding students’ educational knowledge(s), and the support not only experiences and the dimensions of their of a “post-colonial” dialogue, but an understanding whilst ensuring cultural “anti-colonial” dialogue (Langton 2005) safety, as well as capacity building. to preserve Indigenous ways of knowing against pressures from other narrow Addressing racism and inequity directions. All too often, Indigenous people have been pushed to the margins of education (Hickling-Hudson In regard to whiteness behaviours, there and Ahlquist 2003) that has continued are three recognised dimensions to the from an historical legacy of reproduction of racialised inequality. assimilationist and racist acts of Ruth Frankenberg sees these links as the oppression to a continued “revolving socio-cultural terrain of whiteness door-type” engagement. And all too constituting a “location of structural often, they have been forced to make advantage”, a particular white do with pedagogical crumbs that have standpoint that privileges a white their genesis in a lack of appropriate worldview or perspective of self, society recognition of how to employ different and other, and a “set of cultural teaching strategies (Groome 1994; practices that are usually unmarked and Groome and Hamilton 1995; Spring unnamed” (1993: 1). In order to avert 2001). The call from Indigenous racism and inequity, the question of educators, who want to make or critiquing practice becomes more not 7 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT just of repositioning one’s sense of revealed, as well as prejudices and subjectivity to that of the other, but it is, potentially negative racialisation of as bell hooks says, “about decolonising different groups (McDonald 2003). one’s mind and imagination” (1997: 178). Teaching ought to be a In “reorienting whiteness”, I make a case deconstructing process (Derrida 1985; to social work students for the 1976), as well as a recognition process reorientation of worldviews, and in so that acknowledges exemplary doing, I re-enforce my own pedagogical practice with different epistemological stance. By comparing a ethnic groups as well as Indigenous western/whiteness worldview to that of students. Helen McDonald (2003) notes an Indigenous worldview, I am actually the diversity of Indigenous groups to resituating “whiteness”, after orientation contribute to determining exemplary to the western/whiteness worldview, and pedagogical engagement by providing then re-orientation to the Indigenous a stunning variety of backgrounds and worldview that is more in keeping with experiences, as well as layers of identity the idea of “cultural perpetuity” from which to plan relevant educational (Blackstock 2008). Cindy Blackstock programs that are more meaningful for suggests using questions related to Indigenous communities. Additionally, comparing worldviews that privilege the following observations about individualism (the more universal comparing western worldviews with western/whiteness view) or collectivism Aboriginal and Indigenous worldviews (the more Aboriginal/Indigenous view) in provide a new basis for “re-orienting order to determine the kinds of whiteness” behaviours that inform not behaviours and systems that each view only professional but personal behaviour generates. She also uses and compares as well. the self-actualisation motivational model made popular and famous by Abraham A personal encounter with the work of Maslow – Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Cindy Blackstock, a Canadian First to a First Nation’s model whereby the Nations social worker, provides further hierarchy is “turned on its head”. Instead confirmation of how to raise social work of the individual rising through at least students’ awareness of different five stages of motivation to reach the behaviours required for the work that is level of “self-actualisation”, the done with culturally diverse Indigenous worldview shows self- communities. The process starts with actualisation as the beginning of culturally appropriate curriculum questioning who am I, where do I come content that affirms students’ lives and from, what is my community, who are cultural experiences, recognises their the elders I can go to for help, what is values, and incorporates their cultural the knowledge I need to survive? In heritage, behaviours and knowledge. In striving for “cultural perpetuity” at the tandem with drawing on knowledge top of the Indigenous worldview model, from students’ own life experiences, they the individual-with-community helps are also introduced to the notion of develop “community actualisation” and dialogic praxis (Ife 2008) and intentional an expansive concept of time plus engagement to reflect on their views multiple dimensions of reality, but most and actions to bring about positive importantly, an identity that whiteness change in communities. This is done to privilege has too often tried to devalue reiterate hooks’ idea (1997: 178), that the experience may also be a “decolonising” one whereby biases are 8 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT Awanuiarangi in New Zealand. Conclusion Currently, she lectures in social work and human services at CSU, and is heavily committed to providing learning Indulgent and benevolent practice opportunities to Indigenous learners. Her serves little purpose for meaningful research areas include: Indigenous engagement with Indigenous learners. student support; foundational studies; Neither is this practice effective for CALD social work and human services, and students, despite the best intentions of rural community welfare service delivery. wanting to celebrate cultural difference. Qualifications include: PhD, MComm, This latter idea is premised on a universal MA (Communication & Cultural Studies), theme of inclusion and access that is at & BAdEd. times included commendably, on several different levels, into the discourse Acknowledgments on multiculturalism, but often used unknowingly to promote whiteness behaviours that at best demonstrate I would like to acknowledge the support indulgent practice, and at worst of my colleagues at the School of racialisation of people to maintain their Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty marginalised status. Practitioners cannot of Arts, Charles Sturt University. practise “unknowingly”, otherwise they perpetuate racist behaviours. They References require attention to a more participatory model that recognises the life Blackstock, C. 2008. ‘The Breath of Life: A experiences of individuals, but also the First Nations Alternative to Western knowledge of individuals-with- Social Theories’, Seminar, University communities to effect a more culturally of New South Wales, appropriate and effective pedagogical 9 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT ian%20Indigenous%20content%20an Lucia, Australia: University of d%20pedagogies%20into%20psychol Queensland Press. ogy%20education/Workshops%20an Groome, H. & Hamilton, A. 1995. d%20conferences%20- Meeting the Educational Needs of %20Psychology%20and%20Indigeno Aboriginal Adolescents: us%20Australians/2008%20Conferenc Commissioned Report No. 35, e%20Proceedings.pdf>, accessed 12 Canberra: National Board of August 2009. 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Durie, M. 2005. ‘Indigenous Knowledge McCarthy, Cambridge: Polity Press. within a Global Knowledge System’, Harslett, M., Harrison, B., Godfrey, J., Higher Education Policy , 18, 301-312. Partington, G. & Richer, K. 2000. ——2006. ‘Measuring Maori Wellbeing’, ‘Teacher Perceptions of the New Zealand Treasury Guest Lecture Characteristics of Effective Teachers Series 2006, New Zealand Treasury, of Aboriginal Middle School Wellington. Students’, Australian Journal of Frankenberg, R, 1993. White Woman, Teacher Education , 25(1), 37-45. Race Matters: The Social Hayman, R. L. Jr, 1998. ‘Race and Construction of Whiteness , London: Reason: The Assault on Critical Race Routledge. Theory and the Truth About Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the Inequality’, National Black Law Oppressed , London: Penguin Books. Journal , 16(1), 1-26. Gargett, A. 2005. ‘A Critical Media Hickling-Hudson, A. & Ahlquist, R. 2003. Analysis of the Redfern Riot’, ‘Contesting the Curriculum in the Indigenous Law Bulletin (ILB 18), Schooling of Indigenous Children in 6(10), 8-11. Australia and the USA: From Gregory, D. 2000. Critical Theory, in R. J. Eurocentrism to Culturally Powerful Johnston, D. Gregory, G. Pratt and Pedagogies’, Comparative M. Watts (eds.), The Dictionary of Education Review , 47(1), 64-89. Human Geography , 4 th ed., hooks, bell. 1997. Representing Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing, 129- Whiteness in the Black Imagination, 133. in R. Frankenberg (ed.) Displacing Groome, H. 1994. Education: The Search Whiteness: Essays in Social and for Relevance, in C. Bourke, E. Cultural Criticism , Durham, NC: Duke Bourke, and B. Edwards (eds.) University Press, 165-79. Aboriginal Australia: An Introductory Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Reader in Aboriginal Studies , St. Commission a. N.d. ‘Self- determination’, Submission to the 10 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT United Nations Committee on Them’, Ngoonjook: Journal of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Australian Indigenous Issues , 11, 40- 11 MLCEK: BEING CULTURALLY COMPETENT OR CULTURALLY INDULGENT Thompson, A. 2001. ‘Summary of Watson, N. 2005. ‘Racism in Legal Whiteness Theory’, Whiteness in Education Special – Indigenous Cross-Race Classroom Relationships, People in Legal Education: Staring Department of Education Culture Into a Mirror Without Reflection’, and Society Unit, University of Utah, Indigenous Law Bulletin (ILB 1) 6(8), 4- 12 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009 “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF”: WHITENESS AS A CATEGORY OF ANALYSIS FOR THE REVEREND FRANCIS TUCKFIELD SAM RITCHIE Abstract 2007: vii) that whiteness studies needs to be included among other approaches to understanding “race”. At that In 1840, the Reverend Francis Tuckfield conference, the convenors Jane Carey, (1808-1865) wrote to his supervisors in Leigh Boucher and Katherine Ellinghaus London lamenting that because of (2007: xv) proposed that “the pastoralism, “a serious loss has been construction of a racial other requires a sustained by the natives ... [their] territory concept of a racial self”. The presence is not only invaded; but their game is of whiteness in the initial period of driven back, their ... valuable roots European settlement in the Port Phillip eaten by the White man’s sheep and district of New South Wales (1835-1845) is their deprivations, abuses and miseries explored in this article, with specific are daily increasing.” Earlier in the same reference to the evangelical missionary letter, however, he had celebrated that Francis Tuckfield, his concepts of “454,260 head of sheep ... are already whiteness, and his sense of racial self. For grazing” in Port Phillip. Three years later, much of the nineteenth century, Tuckfield became a pastoralist himself. European concepts of “race” were Recent historiography on missionary relatively undefined and fluid; European endeavour in Australia has used the concepts of “the other”, however, were writings of Tuckfield to assess “failure”, the forerunner of more concrete notions “life”, and “education” on mission of “race”. stations. In this article I evaluate whiteness as a category of analysis for Calling for a distinction between Tuckfield, in particular as a window into “analytically invoked” and “empirically the apparent contradiction between his specified” whiteness, Leigh Boucher humanitarian beliefs and his views on (2007: 21 & 14) has argued for “some the necessity, inevitability and benefit of historical specificity” in the study of pastoralism. To the evangelical Tuckfield, racial difference in the initial four whiteness entailed a settled, cultivation- decades of European settlement in Port based and thus “civilised” existence. Phillip (later Victoria). Furthermore, Moreover, his notions of whiteness were Boucher (2005; quoted in McLisky 2007: formed in contrast to the “wandering 410) has concluded that the defining of habits” of “savage barbarity” which the settler-colonial self permeated defined the “blackness” of those to depictions of race in nineteenth-century whom his missionary endeavour was European observations of life in Victoria. targeted. In her 2006 Historicising Whiteness conference paper, “All of one blood?”, Claire McLisky applied Boucher’s arguments to her discussion of the This article has arisen as a response to missionary Daniel Matthews, who the call from the 2006 Historicising worked on the Maloga Mission during Whiteness conference (Carey et. al. the period 1874-1888. McLisky (2007: 410) ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2009 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” argues that Matthews’ principal insight into what it meant to be white in category of self-identification was the understanding of an evangelical Christian virtue rather than race. missionary in the Port Phillip district in a Matthews contrasted this category of period which historian Richard Broome Christian virtue with the categories of (2005: 54) has labelled “one of the “the suffering and sunken blacks” and fastest land occupations in the history of “wicked white men”. This conforms to empires”. Boucher’s argument that in the early nineteenth century whiteness was Francis Lee Tuckfield was born in inferred rather than explicit; a Germoe, Cornwall, in the southwest of consciousness of racial difference did England in 1808 and spent his early exist during this period, however, it was working life as a miner and seasonal an underlying one. fisherman. ii At the age of seventeen Tuckfield converted to Wesleyan Francis Tuckfield arrived in the Port Phillip Methodist Christianity and following a district of New South Wales as a period of active local preaching, he was missionary to the Aboriginal peoples of accepted as a candidate for the the area in 1838. He ministered to the ministry. In November 1837, having Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip until attended the Theological Institute at 1850, when the Bunting Dale mission Hoxton, London for two years, Tuckfield station was closed. Tuckfield departed England bound for Australia to subsequently ministered to several commence his role as missionary to the churches in Victoria, New South Wales, Aboriginal peoples of the Port Phillip and Tasmania before being appointed district. After spending over three to the Wesleyan Methodist church in months at Hobart Town planning the Portland, Victoria in 1864. On 21 October mission with the Reverend Joseph Orton, 1865, Tuckfield died aged fifty-seven, the Chairman of the Van Diemen’s Land having contracted pneumonia and district of the Wesleyan Methodist bronchitis while officiating at the funeral Church in Australia, Tuckfield arrived in of a young child at the Portland Port Phillip in July 1838. By late-1838 cemetery a few days earlier. Through an Tuckfield had selected an area for the examination of Tuckfield’s observations mission station on the Barwon River, during the first three years of the Bunting approximately fifty-five kilometres south- Dale mission (1839-1841) – as recorded in west of Geelong. The station was named his personal journals, his official letters to “Bunting Dale” in honour of the zealous his Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS) Wesleyan Methodist Jabez Bunting, the supervisors in London, and his private “chief architect” of the WMS (Piggin letters to his parents in Cornwall – 1980: 19) and Tuckfield’s London whiteness in nineteenth-century south- supervisor. The object of the mission – eastern Australia is explored in this which began proper in mid-August 1839 article. At the time the Bunting Dale – was “to induce the natives to mission was established, the Port Phillip abandon their erratic habits and settle district had only very recently been near the Mission Establishment in order settled by Europeans; the Batman that we may teach them the arts of Treaties, which signalled the beginning civilized life, and that by the blessing of of European settlement in the district, Almighty God they may become ... had been signed only four years acquainted with the doctrines and previous. i An examination of whiteness duties and privileges of our most holy as a category of analysis for Tuckfield religion” (Cannon 1982: 148). In other thus provides us with an interesting words, Tuckfield sought to “civilise” and 2 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” Christianise the Aboriginal peoples of Tuckfield, furthermore, labelled the Port Phillip. European “convict shepherds & stockmen” as “the outcasts of England” Tuckfield’s concern for the Aboriginal in his official letters. In his journal he peoples of Port Phillip was evident identified Europeans living in the district before his arrival in the district. Less than most often as “Whites”, although a week after sailing out of sight of his occasionally he labelled them native Cornwall, Tuckfield (23 November “Europeans”. This use of the coloured 1837: 18) reported in his journal that he terms “blacks” (always lowercase) and “felt much liberty last night in praying for “Whites” (always capitalised) perhaps the natives of New South Wales”. He indicates Tuckfield’s adoption of the expressed both interest in those he language of other Europeans in the intended to convert, and the personal colony. Tuckfield’s use of the language gain he believed he experienced of colour, however, also encompassed through his desire to “save” the his notion of “the other”, which was heathen. Tuckfield’s choice of language derived from his expanding knowledge here is also significant. Prior to arriving in of the local Aboriginal peoples’ belief the colony, and thus prior to having met system and ways of life, and how these any Aborigines, Tuckfield referred to were in stark contrast to his own those among whom he was soon to live convictions. iv as “natives”. Tuckfield’s usage of the term “White” is In the early period following the perhaps unusual in the context of Port establishment of the mission Tuckfield Phillip in the first half of the nineteenth continued to refer to the Aboriginal century. Leigh Boucher (2007: 19) has peoples of Port Phillip as “natives”, both noted that in the “various writings and in his official letters to his WMS supervisors speeches” of his subject Thomas in London and in his letters to his parents. McCombie, “there is an almost In his letters to the WMS Tuckfield also complete absence of the designation labelled the Aboriginal peoples of the ‘white’” and that “[m]oving between district “the comparatively unknown ‘Britisher’, ‘Englishman’, ‘settler’, tribes of this extensive territory”, ‘colonist’, ‘man’, and ‘mankind’, the “savages”, “untutored barbarians”, “half racial specificity of the coloniser starved barbarians”, “rude barbarians”, population [of nineteenth century “the aboriginal race”, “aborigines”, Victoria] was surprisingly vague”. “wild hordes”, “heathen”, and Thomas McCombie, a Scotsman from occasionally “blacks”. In his private Aberdeenshire, arrived in Port Phillip in journals and in his letters to his April 1841. During his time in Port Phillip, contemporaries located within Australia, McCombie worked as a journalist and however, the term Tuckfield most later as a politician after initially having frequently used when describing the been a squatter (Farrow 1974). In the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip during writings of McCombie and his this period, was “blacks”. iii contemporaries, Boucher (2007: 17) argues, “the category of whiteness itself In his letters to the WMS during the early had little purchase”. While Francis period of the mission Tuckfield most Tuckfield too used a variety of labels for often referred to Europeans who had the European population of the district, emigrated to Port Phillip as “Whites”, he differed from McCombie and while he occasionally referred to them Boucher’s other case studies in that he as “civilised man” and “Europeans”. often used the term “Whites” when 3 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” discussing the coloniser population. company when there are so many Claire McLisky’s study of the missionary blacks” (15 January 1840: 111). The Daniel Matthews shows that, although blackness of the Aboriginal peoples of whiteness had not yet emerged as a Port Phillip was, for Tuckfield, associated category of analysis in the late with savagery, barbarism and a nineteenth century, Matthews regularly potential threat to the safety of his used the term “white” to describe men family; the presence of whites, on the of European descent whom he believed other hand, encompassed security. were responsible for the degeneration of Aboriginal peoples. Matthews never It is important to note that Tuckfield labelled himself or his family as “white”; described himself not only by the he used the term in the context of coloured term “White”, but also in the expressing disapproval of others (McLisky gendered term “White man”. 2007: 410). Francis Tuckfield, on the other Furthermore, when describing his relief at hand, perceived himself and other the arrival of two additional white men Europeans living in the district as on the station, Tuckfield indicates that “Whites”. protection and safety are part of his understanding of whiteness and Tuckfield’s sense of identity as a “White masculinity. Tuckfield’s concern as a man” was formed by his perceptions of “White man” included a fear of leaving the relationship between blackness, his family among the Aboriginal peoples savagery and danger. One month after who frequented the mission station; he founding Bunting Dale, Tuckfield left the feared those whom he was in the colony station to sit his ordination examinations to Christianise. This is a reflection of what and attend the Wesleyan Methodist he understood to be his required role as District Meeting in Hobart Town. He a husband and a father – his duty to lamented in his journal: “I left my dear protect his family. It also signals his belief family to day [sic] on the Mission Station that women and children were surrounded by the natives and only two vulnerable and thus needed Whites and a female for the district protecting. v Meeting. This seems, to be one of the trials of a Missionary to be obliged to Tuckfield, furthermore, saw paternalism leave his family in an unprotected state” as common between the Aboriginal (Tuckfield 18 September 1839: 81). Four peoples of Australia and Europeans; he months later Tuckfield recorded in his perceived his notion of his own role as a journal his concern at there being “no husband and father as a duty to protect White man on the Station but myself” (10 his family to be present in Aboriginal January 1840: 107). Three days following gender relations. Tuckfield noted that that he reported that he had “spent the often when Aboriginal men approached day in teaching the blacks” and what they perceived might be a concluded that “Mrs. T. & myself feel it dangerous situation they left their rather lonesome to be left in this distant women and children behind, away from part of the World among Savages who the perceived danger in an effort to scarcely know anything of the value of protect their families (e.g., Tuckfield 14 human life” (13 January 1840: 109). Later December 1839: 94; 12 December 1840: that week, after announcing that “[t]he 178-79). The Christianisation and dray has just arrived and another man “civilisation” Tuckfield sought to convert with [the overseer] Williamson”, he the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip to, wrote: “[w]e are three Whites now which however, was based on a particular is a very great relief to our minds to have form of domestic and familial 4 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” arrangements. Tuckfield, therefore, also “civilisation” were defined in opposition perceived Aboriginal women to be to the perceived “savagery” of the subjugated in a way which European Aboriginal peoples of the district. women were not. When an Aboriginal Roediger (1999: 21) has also argued that man named Karn Karn built a European- in the United States, “[s]ettler ideology style house on the mission station, held that ... ‘lazy Indians’ were failing to several other Aboriginal men also ‘husband’ or ‘subdue’ the resources expressed interest in building on the God had provided them and thus station. They told Tuckfield, however, should forfeit those resources. Work and that “as they have three wives each Whiteness”, Roediger concludes, “joined they should require a larger house than in the argument for dispossession”. Karn Karn”. Tuckfield “told them, they Again this holds true for the European might have as large houses as they were invasion of the Port Phillip district and disposed to build; but if they intended to wider Australia, where it was argued imitate the White man in one thing they that because the Aboriginal peoples of should in another viz in the disposal of the area failed to use the land which two of their wives out of the three ” (11 they occupied, they had no ownership May 1841: 226; original italics). The of nor right to the land. Tuckfield’s Aboriginal men in turn informed the concepts of whiteness were constructed missionary that as it was appropriate for in opposition to his understandings of the Europeans to strive to own a number of blackness of the Aboriginal peoples to horses and bullocks, so too was it proper whom he was in the colony to preach for Aboriginal men to have a number of the gospel. “[B]lacks”, he believed, were wives, because, the men said, “we have to be feared, while the presence of no other animals to do our work”. “Good “Whites” provided him with a sense of Lord”, Tuckfield later wrote, “when will security. Moreover, the “blacks” use of this day of oppression pass away” (cited the land which they occupied was in Le Griffon 2006: 169). “Civilisation” and perceived by Tuckfield to be Christianity – here amounting to “uncivilised”. monogamy and the appropriate use of domestic animals – would, Tuckfield Tuckfield was not only afraid of the believed, improve Aboriginal gender Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip, he was relations by making them resemble also afraid of their becoming extinct; he European ideals. believe the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip to be dying out. In 1840 Tuckfield In his pioneering work on whiteness reported to his London supervisors that it studies, The Wages of Whiteness , David was “not at all infrequent” for tribes who Roediger (1999) explored the definition regularly came and went from Bunting of “civilisation” in opposition to Dale to return to the station each time “savagery” during the European “fewer in number than they were when colonisation of North America. Roediger they left”, and lamented that the site of (1999: 22), who uses whiteness as a Bunting Dale was once the “haunt of a category within labour history, asserts small tribe but now with the exception of that “white” attitudes toward land use one family is depopulated” (Tuckfield 31 were influenced by perceptions of June [sic] 1840: 140-41, 155). Writing in Amerindians. This is also true of the 1842 to his Adelaide-based fellow European colonisation of Port Phillip – missionary the Reverend B.J. and across Australia more generally – Tiechelmann, Tuckfield noted that where European perceptions of Bunting Dale was “central for four tribes whiteness and its links with the privilege or rather the remnants of” those tribes, 5 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” as there were “not more than 260” intrusion has inflicted are daily surviving members (17 March 1842: 321- increasing” (Le Griffon 2006: 145). 322). Tuckfield, therefore, blamed “White man’s sheep” and their drovers for Tuckfield blamed pastoralism for causing causing much depopulation among the much depopulation among the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip. Aboriginal peoples of the Port Phillip district. While he acknowledged that Earlier in the same letter in which he had many Aboriginal deaths were caused by lamented the devastating effects inter-tribal fighting, Tuckfield blamed pastoralism was having on the what he perceived to be an increase in Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip, this on the “exterminating progress of Tuckfield had celebrated that Port the white man” – European Phillip’s “physical aspect is of the most encroachment into Aboriginal lands (Le favourable character”. This was, he Griffon 2006: 205). Not only did believed, because it “enjoys from its Europeans deny the Aboriginal peoples position a genial climate, and an access to their traditional lands, abundance of moisture” which had Tuckfield believed, but sheep – which allowed for: had been introduced by Europeans – ate food that traditionally sustained the 454,260 head of sheep and game animals which were vital to 35,000 head of cattle [to be] Aboriginal sustenance. This concern was already grazing on its fertile seemingly contradicted by his belief in plains … If this is the state of things, with in [sic] the the necessity, inevitability, and benefit of comparatively narrow limits of the introduction of pastoralism to Australia Felix & within the short Australia. Less than a year after the period of about three years, establishment of the mission station what a magnificent empire may Tuckfield wrote to his WMS supervisors in Australia yet become. Let the London lamenting the negative effects capabilities of her geographical of pastoralism. He reported that the position be judiciously improved “introduction of the numerous flocks”, and the ... influence of the had meant that “a serious loss has been Christian religion be diffused, and Australia may be a happy sustained by the natives”. “[W]ithout an home for millions of the family of equivalent being rendered”, Tuckfield man (31 June [sic] 1840: 129, continued, “there [sic] territory is not only 137-138). invaded; but their game is driven back, their ... valuable roots eaten by the Furthermore, upon learning that his White man’s sheep and their brother Joseph had emigrated to North deprivations, abuses and miseries are America in 1841, Tuckfield wrote “with daily increasing.” The “appalling result” surprise and regret” to his parents, of this “contest between the feebleness lamenting that Joseph had not instead of untutored barbarism, and the skill and moved to Australia, where “those who power of civilized man”, Tuckfield wish to better their circumstances very concluded, would be “the final and materially should emigrate” (25 March utter extinction of the aboriginal race” 1841: 204). vi Tuckfield’s humanitarian (Tuckfield 31 June [sic] 1840: 139-140). beliefs – expressed in his concern that “[T]he blood of the black man”, pastoralism was driving the Aboriginal Tuckfield continued later that year, is peoples of Port Phillip to extinction – “pouring forth and reeking up to heaven appear, therefore, to be inherently while the evils which the European contradicted by his belief in the 6 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” necessity, inevitability, and benefit of the introduction of “White man’s sheep”, Upon his arrival in Port Phillip Tuckfield and, by implication, white men. had immediately noticed the differences between the Aboriginal Tuckfield was concerned for the welfare peoples of the district and himself. of the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip; Tuckfield categorised the Aboriginal he was, after all, in the colony to “save” peoples’ traditional beliefs and lifestyle them. For Tuckfield – as for the vast as savage and marked their differences majority of nineteenth-century from himself and other Europeans with evangelical missionaries – “saving” the the term “blacks”, which he determined heathen involved “civilising” and to be a marker of barbarism and Christianising them. The nineteenth- danger. In opposition to this, Tuckfield century evangelical understanding of perceived and categorised himself and “civilising” is perhaps best defined as other Europeans residing in Australia as “Europeanising”. As the historian Richard “Whites”, a term which for Tuckfield Broome (1994: 32) has noted, “the encompassed civilisation and superiority. missionaries sought to make Europeans out of their black brethren”. A major Although Thomas McCombie did not aspect in Europeanising the Aboriginal use the term “white”, and the missionary peoples of Port Phillip was encouraging Daniel Matthews used the label only in them to replace their hunter-gatherer reference to Europeans whose lifestyle with the settled existence of behaviour he disapproved of, Francis Europeans. Pastoralism was intended to Tuckfield defined himself as a “White encourage this by enabling them to live man”. This examination of whiteness as a in a settled manner; allowing food to be category of analysis for Tuckfield does, provided for them without their having however, conform to Boucher and to travel in a nomadic fashion. Although McLisky’s findings that in southeast Tuckfield suggested that the Aboriginal Australia during the nineteenth-century, peoples of Port Phillip had managed “to the presence of whiteness as a racial subsist previous to our coming among category was inferred rather than them” and that it would therefore “be a explicit. Tuckfield’s notions of himself and disgrace to the British character, were others as “Whites” were constructed in our presence to doom them to opposition to his ideas about what starvation”, he considered “civilising” constituted blackness; whiteness, for and Christianising them to be the Tuckfield, encompassed the security of solution (31 June [sic] 1840: 143). his family and the markers of “civilised Pastoralism and “the Gospel”, Tuckfield man”, to which he endeavoured to raise believed, were “the means of raising the Aboriginal peoples of the Port Phillip these wild hordes to the rank of civilised district. In investigating the feasibility of man” (31 June [sic] 1840: 146). establishing a mission on the Goulburn Tuckfield’s notions of what it was to be River in 1842, Tuckfield had reported that white, then, included a belief that the he believed that pastoralism would privileged benefits of being “civilised” reduce the cost of the mission (Le Griffon were enabled by pastoralism. Although 2006: 205). Furthermore, in 1843 Tuckfield he thought that pastoralism was driving opened a subscription list to purchase the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip to sheep in order to help enable Bunting extinction, Tuckfield also believed that it Dale to be self-supporting. By 1844 he was pastoralism which could save them believed that Bunting Dale’s quantity of from extinction by enabling them to live sheep and wheat were large enough, in the “civilised” manner of whites. not only to allow the mission to become 7 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” self-supporting, but also to provide was presented, enabled by a Victoria enough surplus to assist other mission University of Wellington FHSS research stations. (Greenwood 1956: 15-16). grant. Tuckfield believed that the privilege of whiteness – civilisation – was to be References bestowed upon the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip by pastoralism. Attwood, B. 2009. Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History , Identifying, labelling, and exploring Melbourne: Miegunyah Press. Tuckfield’s concepts of what whiteness Boucher, L. 2007. ‘Whiteness’ before entailed has shown that these concepts ‘White Australia’?, in L. Boucher, J. were constructed in opposition to his Carey and K. Ellinghaus (eds.) ideas and experiences surrounding Historicising Whiteness: Transnational blackness. Exploring whiteness as a Perspectives on the Construction of category of analysis for Tuckfield has an Identity , Melbourne: RMIT strengthened our understanding of what Publishing, it meant to be white in the perceptions 8 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” res=I- ELHSS>, accessed 28 October Mission, 1874-88, in L. Boucher, J. 2008. Carey and K. Ellinghaus (eds.) Farrow, F. 1974. McCombie, Thomas Historicising Whiteness: Transnational (1819-1869), in Australian Dictionary Perspectives on the Construction of of Biography , < an Identity , Melbourne: RMIT http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/ Publishing, biogs/A050154b.htm>, accessed 5 Government Order authorising the Notes settlement of Port Phillip under the Crown Lands Regulations of New South Wales (Boys 1935: 51). ii Biographical information concerning i Private entrepreneurs such as Edward Henry Tuckfield found outside his letters and journals had been visiting shore across the Bass Strait has been sourced from Greenwood 1956, Le from Van Diemen’s Land from 1834. In May Griffon 2006 and McCallum 1967. 1835 John Batman arrived in the area. On 6 iii While Tuckfield’s journals were forwarded to June 1835 the first of the two Batman Treaties his WMS supervisors in London – as were most – which involved the lease of land around if not all nineteenth-century evangelical Melbourne and Geelong – were signed (Boys missionary journals – missionary journals often 1935: 39; Broome 2005: 11. See also Attwood contain a more personal and less filtered 2009). While the Batman Treaties were later account of events than do official letters and nullified, on 9 September 1836 New South reports. Wales Governor Sir Richard Bourke issued a 9 RITCHIE: “NO WHITE MAN ON THE STATION BUT MYSELF” iv Jessie Mitchell has explored the identifying and labelling of different populations in Australia during this period, noting that it is “possible that missionaries considered the division between ‘white’ and ‘black’ the most fundamental one on the Australian frontier” (Mitchell 2004: 224). v Angela Woollacott (2009: 11.1) has noted that “[i]n the settler colonies of the British Empire, frontier expansion added new tests and definitions of manliness”. In arguing that Englishness has been constructed as a national identity through the recognition of themselves in relation to others, Catherine Hall (1992: 205-254) has also explored whiteness and gender within nineteenth- century British missionary cultures – specifically within Baptist missionaries in Jamaica in the 1830s and 1840s. Masculinity and whiteness has further been explored by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds in their recent book Drawing the Global Colour Line (2008). vi Tuckfield also wrote to his older brother William seven months later encouraging him to move to Port Phillip (14 October 1841: 305, 314). Interestingly, Tuckfield actively discouraged his sister from emigrating to Australia unaccompanied because her doing so might have caused scandalous gossip (Greenwood 1956: 14). 10