Turning the Level of Civilisation Up A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHALLENGE
JULIANNE SCHULTZ
It is a great privilege to be invited How can knowledge of what Stephen to present this address, the 49th Academy Muecke calls the ‘cultural confederacy’ of Lecture—who would have thought when the interrelated communities, languages and theme was set a year ago that it would be just cultures of the First Australians shape us?1 so timely! Why don’t more of us know more about First, though, I would like to acknowledge this, and the lessons that can be drawn from the traditional owners of the land, the such survival? Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. It is How can we as moral citizens have been particularly fitting at a conference focussed on complicit, if not directly and personally, in the civilisations, that we pay tribute to the people historic attempts to wipe it out, but by not who are the custodians of what is arguably the succeeding in our lifetimes to find a respectful, oldest living civilisation on earth. meaningful and lasting settlement? This is not something to say glibly, but What lessons can we learn from these something to savour and interrogate. It is a successes and failures, in trying to find an statement that, quite frankly, when you think ethic for our times? about it, takes your breath away. 60,000 How can this inform the creation of a years is not geological time—that runs into distinctive, pluralist, best possible Australian the hundreds of millions of years—but it is civilisation? One that responds to the place long enough to have seen the physical nature and the people who call this land home in of this place profoundly change. For bays, a world that is confronting more than the beaches, cliffs to emerge and disappear and usual number of challenges. reappear again, and for people to have found These are, I am sure you would agree, a way to survive, struggle, make meaning and big questions to spin out of a few words of flourish together. Contrary to the perspective acknowledgement. But that is the business of those who arrived from the northern we are in: posing big questions that stretch hemisphere this was not barbarism in need of the brain. And little ones that add complexity civilisation, but a different way of being. on the path, we hope, to greater clarity. Trying What does it mean, to use the phrase the to understand how what happened before oldest living civilisation? shapes the now and influences the future, and ▲ Background photo by Alessandro What can we learn from those who hold its the challenge of making a future of our own Melis. Modified secrets, especially at a time when the planet is choosing. Simply seeking to define, so we can with overlay of facing at least one existential threat? see things better. Things that others might soundwave graphic. IMAGE: UNSPLASH
6 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 like to think are obvious—just common sense, democracies and authoritarianism. Meanwhile plain as the nose on your face. But there is our affluence, casual cruelty towards those with always more: history, context, language, science, less and calcifying institutions has not revealed economics, politics, philosophy, culture. our best selves. We have been responding defensively, rarely imagining or arguing for new ——— ways of being that might be more appropriate Earlier this year I took long service leave. for the twenty-first century. We have not learnt I was pleased to discover this was one of the the right lessons. enduring benefits of colonial society. A century So I interpreted the challenge Joy, ago travel ‘home’ would take many weeks and Bronwen Neil and Catriona Mackenzie gave so became a long-anticipated reward for an me to find a way of addressing Huntington’s extended period of work. Now that travel is final entreaty—to ‘identify elements of as simple as a click on a computer screen, the commonality’—from a somewhat unlikely flash of a credit card and a dash to the airport perspective. The world has problems, but as for a twelve- or twenty-hour flight, its rationale Huntington argued ‘different civilisations need has changed. to learn to co-exist with each other.’4 But, having done my time I took my So too in this great south land. How reward not long after agreeing to deliver might we draw on ancient, colonial, this address and drafting an abstract. It modern and contemporary traditions to is fair to say, I was still wondering what create a sustainable, hybrid civilisation that I would say. The starting point Joy Damousi respects people and place and provides a gave me was the reassessment, a couple of beacon to others? decades on, of Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash ——— of Civilizations’ thesis.2 You will recall that at the time this generated heated debate. So with this brief in my head I reached Huntington provocatively introduced the Singapore. On day one, decompressing by notion of passionately held difference into the pool, the Straits Times front page on a world that was supposed to have reached the 1st of June provocatively addressed my peak homogeneity, even the end of history. challenge: Has the West Lost It?5 Local grandee He disputed the notion that a universal Kishore Mahbubani argued that it was time civilisation was within reach and that cultural, for the West to seek to influence rather than religious, ethnic and political variation had dominate, to recognise that the rest of the been smudged into distinctions without world has taken advantage of the spirit of difference. Huntington quite wisely cautioned Western reasoning and been transformed— us not to be so hasty. Fault lines still existed at economically, socially and culturally. That with the ‘micro level’ over territory.3 At the ‘macro a little humility, a little more openness and level’ of military and economic power and the diplomacy, and less military might, a global enabling framework of institutions, politics, utopia may be within reach. values, culture and religion. He noted with a Then, because it was just day one of my long prescience that only became really clear to the service leave, I turned to The Australian. There rest of us on the 9th of September 2001, that on the front page was one of its ubiquitous cultural and religious differences were still real exclusives: ‘Fury as ANU dumps study of and defining. He was right, triumphalism was Western civilisation.’ Accompanying the report not only unattractive, but actually dangerous. was the full text of the ‘at a loss to understand’ Over the past two decades we have letter from the former Prime Minister John been distracted by wars and terrorism; by Howard, the chair of the Ramsay Centre which globalisation and technology; by the apparently had been in discussion with the university for impossible consequences of climate change; months. The somewhat menacing last line of while greedily eyeing the increasing affluence his letter made it clear that this was political, of the region, and watching the rise of illiberal not a normal commercial negotiation: ‘I intend
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 7 ► Collection of Just a little light reading. books. And a weeping IMAGE: JULIANNE SCHULTZ Aphrodite, a memento from the extraordinary Acropolis ► Head of a goddess, perhaps Museum, and its moving Aphrodite. Marble evocation of the history copy of a gold and of myth, civilisation, war, ivory statue of the classical period, ambition, plunder and 2nd c (EAM 244), restoration. Acropolis Museum, It seemed appropriate Greece. IMAGE: JULIANNE that in these testing times the Greek goddess of SCHULTZ love, beauty, pleasure and procreation should to release our correspondence.’ Signed with be crying. Never mind that what appears to be the flourish of a hand that had despatched her tears are the oxidation of what were once thousands of letters. bronze eyelashes. Line up, line up, I thought. This is just the There is a bit to cry about. sort of stoush they love. They will nurture it: Or laugh. ivory tower versus the real world, with News In October 2005 Stephen Colbert was just Corp the white knight demanding that the starting his eponymous show. It is somewhat ivory be honed a certain way. It will run and chilling to realise that this was when he came run. As you know it did, and still does. up with the word truthiness: it seems so now, as ——— you will see if you watch it on YouTube. It has taken a while to reach maturity and morphed Some weeks later in Greece, after an intense, into the even more menacing trumpiness. reading, museuming, sleeping, swimming, Truthiness captures the slippery world eating break I had a couple of dozen books inhabited by those unencumbered by books, or I didn’t need to lug around any longer. facts, context or complexity—for those who just A local shopkeeper packed them in a Corfu know with their heart rather than their heads— Beer box and I entrusted it to the somewhat where things can just feel truthful.6 idiosyncratic Greek postal service. I watched the postmaster, who had left his key at home ► Stephen Colbert discusses that day put the box and 50 euros on the front “truthiness” on the seat of his beat-up old car. He promised to debut episode of despatch them after the weekend. I had come The Colbert Report, CBS TV. to expect trust to beat process in austerity-torn IMAGE: CC BY-SA 3 Greece, but I wasn’t completely confident. But sure enough a couple of months later the Corfu Beer box arrived. Meanwhile I hung onto a handful of books as I toyed with ideas for this talk and other commitments. When I laid them out, I realised they were as good a snapshot of a civilisation-defining moment as any. There are three worrying tomes about the collapse of democracy, guides to lessons from a fascist past, explorations of the long tail of war and geopolitical uncertainty, and a romp through Who would have thought that a little more the imminent threat of cyber catastrophe. than a decade later the White House would Looking at it now, it seems that all that is be occupied by a man who makes the Colbert missing is the IPCC volume on climate change, character seem almost reasonable. Quaintly but at the time that was still a work in progress. charming. Trumpiness captures something
8 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 even more sinister, statements that don’t even have to feel truthful, apparently ignorant rough-hewn words, weaponised for effect. Whatever comes out of his mouth—alarmingly frequently words that sound as though they emanated from the crib sheet of a propaganda handbook.7 In defining these words Colbert provided a helpful predictor for a president who according to the Washington Post last week, had made 6,420 false or misleading comments in 649 days.8 That is industrial-scale deception— small lies told over and over, medium sized lies that have become a new global lingua franca and big lies that take even his most ardent David Rowe captured this brilliantly with ▲ Fake News supporters by surprise and sometimes force his Australian Financial Review illustration IMAGE: PIXEL2013, a retraction or denial—sort of. But only after CC0.10, UNIVERSAL, of President Trump failing to note the PIXABAY they have already infiltrated the virtual world significance of Armistice in France.11 and got a life of their own. This is not normal. It is not the way we ——— have come to expect even a tainted public So how did it come to this? sphere, distorted by the commercialisation of It is easy to feel that the world is going to public attention, to operate. The president’s hell in a handbasket—the news of catastrophe mantra of fake news is as he has admitted a and disaster, an inflammatory US president, deliberate and determined effort to undermine the distortion of social media, global instability confidence in what remains of a rigorous of superpower realignment, the palpable threat public sphere and professional journalism of climate change, the rise of authoritarian that takes itself seriously. In the unregulated, leaders—and that is for starters. ‘more insidious’ domain of the internet this is particularly dangerous.9 Such industrial scale deception is at If truth is irrelevant to discourse, trust odds with the norms that characterise any flourishing civilisation. If truth is is not merely dented it is destroyed. irrelevant to discourse, trust is not merely Other norms of acceptable behaviour dented it is destroyed. Other norms of acceptable behaviour cannot be far away. cannot be far away. What is happening now, goes well beyond spin or hollow speech. The New York Times Freedom House,12 the Washington-based correspondent Roger Cohen describes it as NGO, has been monitoring global freedom ‘corrosive, corrupting and contagious’.10 since 1941, when a very different US President In the shrunken global village this has articulated an expansive ethic that has largely dangerous implications everywhere, for public prevailed in ‘kin countries’ and beyond.13 With and personal behaviour. If the so called, ‘leader WW2 in full, murderous, destructive fury, of the free world’ can talk the way he does, President Roosevelt declared that as human without regard to fact or feeling, the level of beings, all people were entitled to freedom of civilisation is turned down everywhere he is speech and expression, freedom to worship heard. What we are witnessing is behaviour their god in their own way, freedom from contrary to the long-established moral core of want and freedom from fear. At the time it a civilised society, arguably giving succour to was ambitious rhetoric, demonstrably at odds evil, and deliberately destroying trust.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 9 with the wartime experience. But it provided developed world, for most of human existence guiding principles for a different future. most people died around 30. Global extreme Last month in a very different context, poverty has declined to 9.6 percent of the Freedom House reported that around the world world’s population; still limiting the lives of political and civil rights had sunk to their too many, but 200 years ago, 90 percent lived lowest level for a decade. in extreme poverty. In just the last 30 years, For the twelfth year in a row, democratic the proportion of the global population living setbacks outnumbered gains. Democracy is in with such deprivation has declined by 75 crisis. Values are under assault and retreat in percent. Equally unappreciated is the fact that country after country. Young people are losing 90 percent of the world’s population under the faith in politics. Trust has been eroded by age of 25 can read and write, including girls. For commerce and the calcification of institutions. most of the history of Europe, no more than Millions of people are living without the rights 15 percent of the people could read and write, we take for granted as a measure of civil, mostly men. liberal, democratic society. Even nations that So despite the truthiness feeling that things like to pride themselves on a deep democratic are going wrong, a lot is going right, for a lot history are slipping on the scale, as trust in of people, in a lot of countries. But this is a institutions is eroded and checks and balances moment at risk of being squandered. slip out of equilibrium and technology remakes ——— the way things are done. This is most notable in the United States which fell to 86 out of Which invites the question of what is at stake, 100, and United Kingdom which slipped to 94. how might the level of civilisation here be Australia and NZ scored 98, with the virtuous turned up, by whom, and to what end. Scandinavians topping with perfect scores. This was a question addressed by Robert This trend line is a matter of real concern, Menzies when in 1959 as Prime Minister he because it is contrary to the previous trajectory. approved the formation of the Humanities Up until relatively recently enhanced civil and Council, the precursor of this Academy which political rights were what was expected, giving will be celebrating its 50th anniversary next comfort to those of us who ‘hope the arc of year. At the time, with the Cold War in full history bends towards greater emancipation, swing, and the memory of the hot war still equality and freedom’.14 smoking, Menzies declared the Humanities Taking a wider view of the state of the Council would provide ‘wisdom, a sense of globe provides a slightly more reassuring proportion, sanity of judgement, a faith in message, that that arc may still be bending the capacity of man to rise to higher mental the right way. But the tension between ► Robert Menzies ‘individual rights and popular will’ is fertile at the Parthenon, territory for authoritarian leaders and their 1955. shadow puppets. IMAGE: WITH PERMISSION FROM Survival deep in our epigenetics means THE ROBERT MENZIES COLLECTION, we dwell on the negative, alert to threats BAILLIEU LIBRARY, THE UNIVERSITY OF and dangers, ready to respond to fear. But, as MELBOURNE Steven Pinker and Kishore Mahbubani loudly proclaim, the bigger picture is not as bad as we might be inclined to think with one ear cocked to the latest news bulletin and an eye on the real Donald Trump’s twitter feed.15 The United Nations Human Development Index shows that as a species we are living longer and better.16 Worldwide life expectancy at birth is now 71 years, and 80 in the
10 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 and spiritual levels.’ He went on: ‘We live Civilisations flower and die. Some leave dangerously in the world of ideas, just as we artefacts, buildings and monuments that do in the world of international conflict. If we endure. Others leave stories, philosophies, are to escape this modern barbarism, humane language, knowledge and ways of being studies must come back into their own, not as that echo and resonate long after. Some the enemies of science, but as its guides and just disappear. Others grow and respond to philosophic friends.’17 interaction, adapting and changing as they go. Now we are more often likely to hear And we now know, many leave a measurable prominent politicians pillorying the trail in the polar ice as the recent discovery humanities as esoteric, truth-defying; and of the traces of lead from Ancient Rome from humanities scholars as ideologues in cohoots 1100 BCE revealed.20 with self-aggrandising scientists who are addressing the existential crisis of climate change for personal gain. To attack the For me civilisation is pluralist, university system at precisely the moment contestable, open, polite, robust; when it reaches more people, when its impact on the social, cultural and economic well-being buttressed by law, culture and of the nation has never been higher, seems institutions… perverse—a local example maybe of medium sized lies, madness even, from the zone of As Kenneth Clark reputedly said after truthiness. devoting his life to popularising the study Over the next few days you will be debating of civilisation, ‘I don’t know what it is, but with great erudition and insight the nuances I recognise it when I see it.’ of these questions, in your disciplines, in the context of contemporary life, and at the rich I like to think of it as a short hand for the interdisciplinary intersection where they way human beings coexist with each other, meet. As the debate triggered by the Ramsay the world they have created and the natural intervention has shown, there is a lot at stake. environment which makes it possible. While For all the noise in the press, the very fact that recognising the contestability of values, there are lots of different ways of approaching I like the positive humanity of Clive Bell’s the study of civilisations has not been notion of ‘reason sweetened by values’ and addressed except by snide, often ill-informed R. G. Collingwood’s ‘mental process toward or defensive comments about ‘relativism’. ideal social relationships of civility’.21 For me I am not a scholar of civilisations or a civilisation is pluralist, contestable, open, philosopher, so excuse me if I step on your polite, robust; buttressed by law, culture and toes—I am aware of some of the complexity of institutions and maintained by sustainable these debates. The need to define civilisation, economic and environmental conditions across and to allow the notion of civilisations, has time and place. preoccupied fine minds, and led to different ——— conclusions. Are there seven or eight civilisations, as Samuel Huntington suggested The past 70 or so years provide a petri dish of remained when he wrote his most famous how this can be made to work and how it can essay? 18 Or the 26 or 28, not including the go wrong. However, as Toynbee said with the civilisation of the first Australians, which prescience that comes from deep scholarship, Arnold Toynbee had identified a few decades and the Brainy Quotes website retails, sadly earlier in his monumental work. Some civilisations are more likely to die from suicide maintain that civilisations are shaped by than murder, because at the moment that is a religion, others by culture, cities, language, bit what it feels like. ideology, identity or as a response by human I am interested in the world as it has been beings to nature.19 shaped in the post-WW2 period. It seems to me
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 11 that that is a useful point to use to try to make here. Money was always in the ascendency, sense of the long run of success in the second but after these changes it really took over half of the twentieth century. It is also a useful and freedom of speech was hollowed out and starting point to reflect on its subsequent became a commercial commodity. The public erosion by money, rising inequality, regulatory sphere became contestable, more than ever failure and institutional distrust. The seeds of a place to buy attention, distract, entertain, the existential threat we are currently watching and chase niche markets rather than serve in slow motion can be found there. a society. It became detached from notions The title of this talk is drawn from a phrase of fairness and fact.23 It was one the first used by the US Hutchins Commission on dominos to fall as neoliberalism eroded the Freedom of the Press which commenced institutional framework that had contributed during the war years and reported not long to the rising standards of living, that Steven after.22 It urged the owners of the American Pinker likes to trumpet. It made Fox News media to accept a social responsibility in the possible. It also provided the environment in way they conducted their businesses. They which the information that fills Facebook and could turn the level of civilisation up or Google could flourish. In its early days social down, the report cautioned. Partly for fear of media posed as a community builder and a state regulation, partly because the palpable democratising tool. Remarkably quickly the evidence of the power of propaganda and FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix misuse of media power in the ashes of WW2, and Google) became corporate behemoths a socially responsible framework became the straddling the globe. As Jürgen Habermas norm in the age of the mass media. These days recently said, theirs is ‘the first media it would be called social license. revolution to primarily serve economic rather The regulatory device which put the than cultural ends’.24 Or as Carole Cadwalladr, steel in the backbone of US media’s social the Observer journalist whose dogged reporting responsibility, the Fairness Doctrine, was revealed the role of Cambridge Analytica and after a concerted campaign during the Reagan Facebook in distorting the Brexit vote, put it presidency, abolished in August 1987. It had more bluntly, a business model based on, ‘the provided the architecture: acknowledged monetisation of fear and hate’.25 the power of information, the importance of ——— truth, the need to present competing views, and provided a platform for increasing The barbarism of WW2 galvanised the creation professionalism in journalism. Importantly of civilising mechanisms and institutions. They it withstood legal challenges, infuriating its varied from country to country, with different opponents when the US Supreme Court found impacts,26 but the intention was generally to the doctrine did not contravene the first expand rights and enhance democracy. The amendment or impede freedom of speech. But Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which it was abolished at the behest of media owners will turn 70 on the 10th of December 2018, with a libertarian bent, and now when it is was the most remarkable global response: more needed than ever, and despite attempts to its 30 rights recognise and spell out ‘the revive it, is a dead letter. inherent dignity and equal and inalienable For my purposes, and given my interest in rights of all members of the human family’. the role of the media as a quasi-institution Its symbolic power exceeds its legal effect, as in the political system, it was a symbolic George Williams has written.27 It forms part moment. Its abolition was a real turning of customary international law and is seen as point. The next year Rush Limbaugh took to binding on all nations. It has been translated the American airwaves with unmoderated, into 500 languages. Australia has ratified two raging commentary and the era of shock jocks of the most important subsequent conventions was born. It triggered the cascade of media which grew under its umbrella to define deregulation in many countries including
12 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 political and civil, social, economic and cultural rights—so it is not without effect here. The Universal Declaration may well have faults and limits. Some regard it as ‘human rights imperialism’28 used by the West to run the world in ways that will protect and promote its interests. But when expansively applied, rather than as an embodiment of Western hegemony, it remains the best organising principle for civility that humanity has yet devised. Ask women in Asia, India and the Middle East, democrats in Turkey, Hungary and Poland, activists in China or journalists in Russia. ‘Without it’, as a Turkish born scholar recently wrote, ‘we have few conceptual tools to oppose populism, nationalism, chauvinism and isolationism’.29 Research. To mark this I was asked to present ▲ The author with Australians played an important role in an inaugural address which explored the role her family. the creation of the Declaration, but we have IMAGE: JULIANNE of the humanities in answering the question: been tardy about its application. Ours is the SCHULTZ what do we want to be when we grow up? only democratic nation which does not have This set me thinking about how my own a bill of rights—the only one. Rather like my experiences as a child growing up in a manse opening remarks about this being home to the had shaped my world view, sensitised me oldest living civilisation, this is something that to history and place. For the most formative demands pause for thought. It is something we years of my childhood I lived in the western need to address if we are to foster an ethic for district of Victoria, captured evocatively in the a distinctive hybrid Australian civilisation. paintings of Eugene von Guerard. At the time It is probably worth noting in passing that I lived there the western district it was one of some of the most strident opponents of an the wealthiest parts of the country: the wool Australian bill of rights30 are also somewhat boom meant that the farmers with the biggest perversely amongst the most vociferous spreads and fleeciest merinos would get huge promoters of a narrowly defined agenda to cheques for their production—at their peak study Western civilisation. It is easy in this these cheques could be up to a million pounds, environment to forget that the demographics tens of millions of dollars in today’s coin. are with those of us who see the arc of history My father was a minister, and the farmers bending up. Surveys show most Australians in his congregation were not the descendants would welcome a formalisation of rights. of the squatters with the massive spreads. How did it come to this? Why, as Frank Yet they still had enough land to ensure that Lowy recently asked, did we become so timid?31 throughout the 1960s the churchyard was full What are we afraid of? Surely a clear statement of lairy-coloured cars with big fins—gorgeous of rights and responsibilities is central to any petrol guzzling monsters parked under the attempt to define a civilisation and the way we cypress trees every Sunday. co-exist, respectfully, sustainably, creatively. This area was rich for a reason. The volcanic ——— plains had produced extraordinarily fertile soils. Millions of years after the last volcano After 15 years in the role, I recently stepped had erupted the residue of lava rocks, pock- away from day-to-day responsibilities as editor marked like aero chocolate bars, still littered of Griffith Review. While maintaining the role the country. Many had been formed into of publisher I have moved to a new position fences and foundations. It was windy, wet, in Griffith’s Centre for Social and Cultural
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 13 hilly and lush with lakes and streams—the favorite pastime was to ride along the roads Grampians looming on the horizon and and across paddocks to find the remnant sites long extinct volcanoes popping out of the of disused farms and houses, to pace out the plains. The descendants of the squatters had stone foundations, to pick what would now be substantial houses, and soldier settlers eked heritage plums and apples from the gnarled out an existence on plots of land that were fruit trees in long forgotten orchards, to walk too small, except in the very best of times, to around the rusty fences protecting crumbling produce enough to support a family, even in headstones, to imagine life for the settlers, that relatively poorer period when Australia’s the religious obsessives who set up the first economy was still primarily agricultural. intentional communities, scrapping tribes The pattern of life for a minister’s family whose different theological interpretations of was shaped by church, bible study, hymns the same text meant they could hardly bring and liturgies, and as insider outsiders, always themselves to talk to each other. watching, and knowing you were being ——— watched. As a result, we learnt the tools of the humanities early, textual analysis before What went missing was any sense of anyone semiotics, theology before fundamentalism, being there between the time the volcanoes history and geography when the Empire’s erupted and the arrival of the squatters in pink-coloured maps still prevailed, music as the 1830s. As I say, I was a curious child, I had performed in churches and by great orchestras, a feeling for the country, for the plants and human relations and morality from parables, wildlife, but despite being vaguely aware of psalms and creeds and the genealogical myths reserves closer to the coastal towns of Portland and stories in the Old and New Testaments. and Warnambool, I had absolutely no sense of It was an immersion in the humanities Aboriginal occupation, which is now posited to without even knowing that was what it was. have been in existence for 120,000 years,32 or of A world that would be hard to replicate today, the murderous battles they fought against the and one which my children found unutterably encroaching settlers. weird when we visited for the 150th As the daughter of the Lutheran church anniversary celebrations. I knew about Aboriginal missions in I was a curious child with the freedom to Hermannsburg and elsewhere in Central roam the country roads and lanes on my bike; Australia and the outer reaches of New to take the chance of riding on railway tracks South Wales and even Queensland. But I had that were rarely used by trains; to explore, absolutely no understanding that these fertile pick mushrooms, fruit and wild flowers, watch lands once known as Gariwerd had been the shearers and harvesters at work; and wonder preserve of the Jardwedjeli and Djab Wurrung about what had happened before. At the edge peoples for more than 20,000, that they had of the pine-enclosed hamlet where we lived, built sustainable settlements, trapped fish, which included two bluestone churches husbanded the land, caught kangaroo, yabbies (the older one repurposed as a classroom), and eels, and made cloaks from possum skins a memorial school and hall, manse, teacher’s to protect from the fierce winter chill. house, footy oval, timber belltower and car We now know much more: the richness of park, there was a cemetery where people had the Indigenous cultural heritage in this part been buried since 1861. of Victoria is what you would expect for such I probably spent more time than would fertile lands. As two great interdisciplinary be recommended for children today in that humanities scholars, Bill Gammage and graveyard, wondering about the many lives cut Bruce Pascoe, have demonstrated in recent short by the Spanish flu, about the children years in The Biggest Estate on Earth and Dark who died in infancy, the extended families Emu, this was known since earliest European in shared plots, and the old men and women settlement.33 Some of the uniqueness of the born in faraway places all buried there. But my local civilisation was captured by the artists,
14 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 the explorers, the anthropologists—those who Declaration of Rights marked its 20th asked the First Australians and those who anniversary. For a child this was just a given, looked, curious people deeply grounded in the enormity of its break with history invisible. the skills of the humanities. Of course, many Likewise, it took me a while to realise that just took. Australian studies was the local manifestation To paraphrase Henry Reynolds, why wasn’t of the decolonisation movement that was I told?34 shaking the world, as the British Empire gave I recall as a child of about ten going to the way to what was supposed to be the American South Australian Museum on North Terrace Century with the Soviet Union providing a in Adelaide with my grandparents who were dialectical counter point. conscientious members of the Lutheran There was a lot to be done, and the task community, there with a sense of obligation of making sense of a modern Australia, and to the church’s central Australian missions. understanding its human and physical past On this day we looked at the Aboriginal was an urgent project. It captured the attention collections, and that museum had and still of scholars, journalists, public servants and has an extraordinary collection of settlement as the exceptional sales figures for Donald artefacts. I recall seeing human remains and Horne’s Lucky Country had shown, the broader not knowing how to process them. On the way public, which put wind in the sails of the out we passed an Aboriginal man. He moved, politicians who heard this plea. So when and whether I jumped, took a step sideways I landed at the University of Queensland in or had some other reaction, I don’t recall, but I the mid-1970s I was able to construct a degree can feel the incident like it was yesterday and in Australian studies—in literature, politics, remember thinking: how can he be alive, we sociology and journalism (sadly timetable have just seen the exhibition, they are all dead. clashes precluded as much history as I They weren’t of course, a fact that has shaped should have done). I remain grateful for this political debate in this country with increasing opportunity, and for the scholars who had sharpness ever since. chipped away at creating a new field despite It took a while, but again the legacy of the widely held view that Australia was neither scholars—anthropologists, theologians, interesting nor important enough to devote linguists, archaeologists, historians and the much time to.35 increasingly important work of Indigenous My experience was a product of place scholars—meant that the once apparently and time. This meant I also benefited from blank slate of Australian history is now being the opening of new fields of humanities filled with human beings doing the things that inquiry, subject areas and approaches which human beings do—making meaning, families, pushed traditional disciplines into previously societies, systems for working with the land unchartered territory. If I had arrived at and climate. This knowledge is now widely St Lucia a decade later my undergraduate shared, and made the response of the Turnbull studies would have been shaped by post- government to the Uluru Statement from the modern theory and cultural studies; now Heart so inexcusably ignorant and shameful. it would be very hard to find systematic Australian studies courses in any discipline, ——— and certainly not as an interdisciplinary field. This experience of growing up in the 1960s and Reflecting on this I am reminded how we are then going to university in the 1970s meant often unwitting products of things beyond our that just as I was not consciously aware of the control. But if we remain open to possibility humanities education I was absorbing in the and change, new layers of meaning can be manse, I was also unwittingly absorbing new added. It is possible to see the world differently, interest in this place as Australian studies took to listen and learn to become more civilised. off. At the time this was just a given. I started This seemed to be missing in the high school the same year the Universal overwrought responses to the Ramsay
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 15 imbroglio. The most strident advocates of emerging as a real issue—while we should not Western civilisation seemed locked in a single be afraid to be grounded in our own traditions, world view, happy to talk about the virtues of we should not be bound by them.38 ‘a hybrid toughness, a capacity to adapt and This is an affluent and successful country— assimilate, to tolerate and include’ but unwilling one of the richest on the planet—but one too to listen or hear. Surely the point of freedom often beset by wilful blindness and remarkably of speech is not so much the talking, as the willing to tolerate casual cruelty. But it is our listening. With an informed and civil dialogue, creation: I think we can do a whole lot better. perspectives and views develop. Surely the It may be time to think again about how possibility of changing one’s mind comes from we can expansively deal with insights from exploring different traditions and letting them the rest of the world and from the oldest bump up against each other.36 living civilisation in thinking about this place. As we have seen in recent years, despite Climate change, digitisation and globalisation predictions to the contrary as recently as a few provide an urgent moment to re-interrogate years ago, the notion of the nation-state is far this place, its land, peoples, law, culture and from dead. America wants to be great again, institutions. As Roderick Ferguson, president Britain wants to be master of its own destiny, of the US American Studies Association, who China is reviving an empire, and on it goes. is leading the resurgence of a very different approach to American studies which aims to keep track of what America is, observed Climate change, digitisation and recently, in tragedy there is also the possibility of triumph.39 globalisation provide an urgent Perversely, it may be that the national moment to re-interrogate this place… interest test that the Minister for Education has proposed as a new overarching framework for Australian Research Council grants, to The question of who gets to define a nation solve an embarrassing political problem, is being discussed and often angrily debated could provide such an opportunity. I am not everywhere: shaped by money, religion, holding my breath on this. Australia and population, culture, technology, politics, Australians are inextricably linked to the rest expectations and an increasingly uneasy of the world, so an expansive interpretation relationship with nature. Richard Flanagan of this proposed test, might open up new observed, ‘The world is being undone. If we do fields—as we know, scholarly researchers not reimagine Australia we will be undone too.’37 will always push the boundaries. Some will We need to find a new way to do Australian also reveal transformative and sometimes studies. To revive an interdisciplinary approach uncomfortable truths. that ranges wide, not calcified by past practice. When I read the many books about the It needs to engage with the world as it is, was crisis in democracy in those kin countries we and might be. This is what we have tried to like to compare ourselves with, I am struck do this year in Griffith Review with a journey by the resilience and robustness of many of from the legacy of empire, to the urgent need the institutions we have nurtured over the to find a meaningful settlement with the past century. As Mike Pezzulo, the secretary First Australians, to an investigation of what of the Department of Home Affairs said last multiculturalism means now, to the cry for week, ‘Institutions anchor our polity and equality embedded in the outcome of the same ensure that power is legitimated and wielded sex marriage plebiscite last year. with consent’.40 Australia is a very different place to what We can be proud that our robust and it was even twenty years ago. The country independent electoral system is the envy of the politicians talk about is not the one that the world, our enduring system of compulsory most of us live in. The need to redefine is now voting makes the obligation to participate
16 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 in the political process clear, our judiciary As Mike Pezzulo said, ‘Rather than ignoring is appointed without undue political our institutions, or allowing them to corrode interference, executive government is checked through indifference, we should see them by a parliamentary system and an apolitical as sources of strength and stability, and we public service, security and police services are should rededicate ourselves to passing on monitored. While we may be uncomfortable their precious wisdom.’41 And, I would strongly about the perverting influence of money in advocate, questioning them and ensuring they politics we have not plumbed the depths of are fit for purpose. the distortions that are commonplace in the The lessons from abroad are clear—when US and, as were revealed in the Brexit vote, in trust is lost, when institutions do not actively the UK. rebuild and respond to changing times— But we are not immune to the global trends freedom is at risk. Every generation must carry and our institutions are not immune from this responsibility anew. The demographics the calcification. Indeed, like a hyper-sensitive show that a much more educated and child we soak up the tensions that surround us. informed Australian population now expects So we have seen a debasement of political more. They have absorbed the principles of debate, unstable leadership, reduced human rights and are perplexed when they transparency, increasing executive decision- are not meaningfully applied by a neutral making, policy paralysis, polarisation, eroding state guided by the rule of law, and regulated confidence in political parties, outsourcing of by self-correcting institutions. They expect to public services, a narrowing economic frame, participate and contribute, not simply to defer favoured access to the rich and powerful and to experts who seem to be self-serving. the whiff of corrupting money. ——— Our civil and non-government organisations and institutions have taken a battering In the late 1980s I was involved in a project as past practices and abuse have come to at the Research School of Social Sciences at light, the quasi-institution of the media has the ANU. It was called Reshaping Australian been undermined by commercial decisions, Institutions, and promised an opportunity technology and uncertainty of purpose, unions for the generational renewal which is so no longer have the capacity to represent central to producing enduring, reviving, what they once did, universities are under trustworthy institutions. I was a young attack, grappling with competing demands observer of academic politics as they played and expectations, the justice system is under out in Coombs and University House meeting intense economic and political strain, under- rooms. It quickly became clear that the resourced monitors of deregulation have reshaping reflected a rapidly changing political allowed bad practice to go unchecked, and and economic framework: the rise of what more than 200 years on we have not reached a we then called economic rationalism, but is settlement with the First Australians. now more commonly known by the moniker But there is little urgency in our debate. Our neoliberalism. Coombs as its name denotes relative affluence has inoculated us and made was the spiritual, and physical home, of the us complacent. This in turn has begat caution men who had played a major role in shaping and timidity; it has limited confidence, courage Australia’s post-war institutions. Their legacy and ambition. was up for grabs. The grand old men and the To address this, the time is right for us to researcher scholars who accompanied them take the lead in reevaluating the strengths fought hard to protect what they had helped and weakness of our institutions—to answer to create. On the other side were those who again what purpose do they serve. To ensure favoured a market-led approach, who believed that they are fit for purpose in a progressive, citizens were consumers who would, could sophisticated society, to ensure that they and should exercise rational choice in their help turn the level of civilisation up a notch. own interests.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 17 environment. People who did not want to pay tax, people who were threatened by the civil rights movement, people who thought that if the weak did not survive it was their own fault. They prevailed. What we are seeing now is this philosophy playing out in shocking ways in American politics, as those living with the gap between expectations and reality seek a bigger share of their American dream.
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Our political history and framing ethos are ▲ Professor It was at times a somewhat mystifying very different. We have a different founding Julianne Schultz environment—I thought maybe I had missed consensus and different challenges. There are faha delivering the 49th Academy something. I realise now it was one of those inspiring things in our past, and things we need Lecture in Sydney, periodic step changes that redefine the way to redress. But I am confident that we have the November 2018. things are seen, just as the rise of Australian capacity to face the past and create new and IMAGE: THE AUSTRALIAN studies had done a generation before. durable worlds that are pluralist, outwardly ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES This wasn’t abstract theory. In Coombs engaged, inclusive and place a collective value rational choice was personal. This became clear on liberal institutions that include and serve when despite protests, the rules of the tea room us all. changed. Gone was the free morning tea. When ‘Person by person the world does change’, we lined up we had to pay for the biscuits, as Tony Abbott wrote in his essay for Quadrant I recall, 5 cents for a Nice, 10 cents for Monte that marked the beginning of the end of Carlo and 15 cents for a Tim Tam. It was last the Ramsay program at ANU. In his final century, so there was still a tea lady, but users paragraph the former prime minister suggested were paying. that the ‘hundred bright young Australians’ Rational choice prevailed. who received the proposed scholarships There were a lot of enduring outcomes from ‘might change the world’, and begin ‘a much this project. But in a practical sense it ushered more invigorating long march through our in the dominance of economics as the lingua institutions!’43 franca of Australian public policy, something That makes me a little nervous. It sounds a that has survived fundamentally unchallenged bit like a fifth column, though I doubt that the ever since. It has delivered a lot, but as the level students would be willing fodder for such a of inequality and dissatisfaction shows, is no scheme. I suspect that if they were to embark longer sufficient. on such a long march, they like me would What happens in this country often shadows prefer an open, inclusive, contested, non- what happens elsewhere. Australians are gifted ideological journey, with civil and genuinely followers. Now thanks to the work of Nancy respectful discussion and debate. Grounded in McLean in Democracy in Chains, Jane Mayer in the unique nature of this place as home to the Dark Money and others who have plotted the oldest living civilisations, a product of British longer trajectory of this libertarian approach in colonialism, the creation of people from every the United States, I realise this change of frame continent and our own imagining. was no accident.42 It was not inevitable, there This country has a lot going for it, but we were lessons to adopt, and others that maybe it seem stuck in neutral. We need to regain would have been better to reject. In the US this ambition. To foster a remarkable country, one was a product of a deliberate movement into which learns from the mistakes of the past and the world of ideas. It was driven and funded displaces complacent caution to imagine and by those who opposed the framework of rights create an even more robust, inclusive, generous, and freedoms that emerged in the post-war rights-based democratic order that will work
18 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 well in the very different world of the twenty- 1. Stephen Muecke, ‘A fragile civilisation’, Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country, ed. by Ashley Hay and first century. It won’t come from politicians— Julianne Schultz (Melbourne: Text, 2019), pp. 53–70. it will, if history is a guide, be something that 2. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and is worked up on the ground, in our universities, the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and in our institutions, in our justice system, in Schuster, 1996). business, community groups and on social 3. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate’, in Foreign Affairs, 72 (1993), pp. 22–28. media. As it takes shape, the politicians will 4. Huntington, ‘The Debate’, p. 24. follow and carry it forward. 5. Kishore Mahbubani, Has the West Lost It? There is a lot at stake, person by person we A Provocation (London: Allen Lane, 2018). can help to turn the level of civilisation up 6. The Colbert Report: The Very First Episode (Clips), in this place so that it becomes much more Comedy Central,
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 19 Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago 34. Henry Reynolds, Why Weren’t We Told? (Melbourne: Press, 1947). Penguin, 2000). 23. Jim Sleeper, ‘How Hollow Speech enables hostile 35. James Walter, ‘Australian Studies’, in Knowing speech and what to do about it’, Los Angeles Review of Ourselves and Others: The Humanities in Australia into Books, 25 October 2018. the 21st Century, prepared by a Reference Group for 24. Harbemas, in Borja Hermoso, ‘Jürgen Habermas’. the Australian Academy of the Humanities, April 1998, ii, 41–56. 25. Carole Cadwalladr, ‘If you’re on the side of democracy, Nick Clegg, why are you going to work 36. Julian Baggiani, How the World Thinks (London: for Facebook?’, Observer, 21 October 2018. Granta Books, 2018); extract published as ‘About time: why western philosophy can only teach us so 26. Seyla Benhabib, ‘Below the Asphalt Lies the Beach’, much’, Guardian, 25 September 2018. Boston Review, 9 October 2018; Sleeper, ‘How Hollow Speech enables hostile speech and what to do 37. Richard Flanagan, ‘Our Politics is a Dreadful Black about it’. Comedy’, National Press Club, April 2018. 27. George Williams and Daniel Reynolds, A Charter of 38. David Marr, My Country (Melbourne: Black Inc, Rights for Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2018), p. 17. 2018). 28. Huntington, ‘The Debate’, p. 17. 39. Sarah Mesle, ‘American Studies Takes Care: Interview with ASA President Roderick Ferguson’, 29. Benhabib, ‘Below the Asphalt’. Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 November 2018. 30. Janet Albrechtson, ‘Beware of rights that strip away 40. Michael Pezzullo, Secretary, Department of Home our freedoms’, Australian, 3 November 2018. Affairs, ‘Prosper the Commonwealth: The Public 31. Frank Lowy, The 2018 Lowy Lecture, 13 September Service and Nationhood’, Speech to the Institute of 2018
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