DIRK BALTZLY JOHN CLARK ALISON LEWIS
J. LEA BENESS AND JOY DAMOUSI ANN MCGRATH TOM HILLARD LOUISE EDWARDS ALEXIS WRIGHT CLINT BRACKNELL
11 / 2020
THE JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES
3 Editor’s Introduction GRAHAM TULLOCH
6 Being Humane—A Contested History The 50th Annual Academy Lecture JOY DAMOUSI
19 Maya Waabiny: Mobilising Song Archives to Nourish an Endangered Language The 9th Hancock Lecture CLINT BRACKNELL
28 The Humanities in Service of Empire DIRK BALTZLY
38 Multiple Modernities: An Art History of ‘The Asian Modern’ JOHN CLARK
47 Legacies of East German Communism: Thoughts From Germany During the Covid-19 Pandemic ALISON LEWIS
58 The Clash of Ideologies, Classes and Personalities in Rome of the Second Century bce The 21st Trendall Lecture J. LEA BENESS AND TOM HILLARD
69 Monumental Discovery Narratives and Deep History ANN McGRATH
81 Soldier Beauties and Sailor Sons in Republican China LOUISE EDWARDS
94 About Sending Letters—an excerpt from Carpentaria ALEXIS WRIGHT THE ACADEMY COUNCIL President Joy Damousi Honorary Secretary Elizabeth Minchin Welcome Treasurer It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 11th edition of the Richard Waterhouse Vice-Presidents Australian Academy of the Humanities’ flagship publication, Elizabeth Minchin Humanities Australia, edited by Graham Tulloch faha. Louise Edwards Editor For 50 years, the Academy has been dedicated to advancing Graham Tulloch scholarship and promoting understanding of the humanities International Secretary Louise Edwards across our education and research sectors, and in the broader Immediate Past President community. Founded by Royal Charter in 1969, the Academy John Fitzgerald now comprises over six hundred Fellows elected on the Ordinary Members Lesley Head basis of the excellence and impact of their scholarship. Our Duncan Ivison Jennifer Milam Fellows have been recognised nationally and internationally Julian Thomas for outstanding work in the disciplines of archaeology, art, Sean Ulm Asian and European studies, classical and modern literature, cultural and communication studies, language and linguistics, CONTACT DETAILS For further information about the Australian philosophy, musicology, the arts, history and religion. Academy of the Humanities, contact us: Email In a year that has been marked by unprecedented challenges, [email protected] including devastating bushfires, a global health crisis, and Web www.humanities.org.au threats to the livelihood of the humanities disciplines within Telephone the higher education sector, the humanities are needed (+61 2) 6125 9860 now more than ever. Humanities, arts and cultural research, with its deep understanding of human experience and EDITORIAL/PRODUCTION knowledge, makes a significant contribution to the way Academy Editor Graham Tulloch in which we not only make sense of these current crises Design and Layout by but also shows how we can work towards an improved, Gillian Cosgrove stronger, and more sustainable world in their wake. Editorial Support by Liz Bradtke This year’s issue of Humanities Australia once again Printing Canprint, Canberra features essays, reflections and fiction by our Fellows that Cover illustration showcase this kind of research in action. As in previous Joy Damousi’s family migrating to Australia in 1956 from Florina, Greece. Reproduced with years, it also features edited versions of several of our kind permission from Joy Damousi. key lectures including the annual Academy Lecture, the Trendall Lecture and the Hancock lecture, and we are © 2020 Australian Academy of the delighted to be able to provide a platform for readers to Humanities and individual contributors engage with these timely and compelling addresses. ISSN 1837–8064 I hope you will enjoy reading this 11th edition of Humanities Funding for the production of this publication has been provided by the Australian Government through Australia. It offers outstanding examples of the exemplary the Department of Education, Skills and Employment. research being undertaken in our disciplines. ¶ The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of JOY DAMOUSI fassa faha Education, Skills and Employment or the Australian Academy of the Humanities. President, Australian Academy The illustrations and certain identified inclusions of the Humanities, 2017– in the text are held under separate copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the respective copyright holders. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright holders for illustrative material in this journal. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher. Editor’s Introduction GRAHAM TULLOCH
This year, 2020, has been a tumultuous In her 2019 Academy Lecture, given in the year for the world to which Australia has year of the Academy’s 50th anniversary, Joy added its own particular troubles and Damousi addresses one of the key human concerns. We began the year with bushfires issues: the treatment of immigrants, in around the country and then encountered particular refugees and asylum seekers. the Covid-19 pandemic, with its immense Drawing on a long train of events, including threats to lives and livelihoods and with the her own family’s experiences, she explores creative and performing arts and universities the varying attitudes which have underlain being amongst the sectors hardest hit by the reception of a range of different refugee its economic consequences. Along the way groups in Australia, revealing just how much there have been heightening tensions in our ‘being humane’ has been a contested history. relations with China and renewed attention At the end she poses the question: ‘How to Indigenous disadvantage, highlighted by do we humanise the future then in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, while this past history and the present?’ However government funding proposals have provoked in answering that ‘the need to humanise questions about the place in our education refugees and their experience is paramount’, system of key disciplines in the humanities. she concludes that ‘none of this … can be done Human solutions are needed to address the without in parallel humanising the future immense challenges facing humanity and for Indigenous Australians’. Looking for a in this context the value and strength of more humane Australia we need to address the humanities in facing human issues has both issues. never been clearer. The articles in Humanities Clint Bracknell’s Hancock Lecture, the Australia have always, by their very nature, ninth in the series, given at the Academy addressed topics of relevance to this country, Symposium in November 2019, addresses but it so happens that a number of articles one key aspect of ‘humanising the future in this edition address issues that have been for Indigenous Australians’, the recovery particularly prominent over the course of the and revitalisation of Indigenous language. year, either through considering contemporary When Europeans arrived in Australia events or through the lens of other places and they encountered an incredibly rich and times. So we offer this issue ofHumanities diverse culture but they largely ignored or Australia as a particularly direct response to misunderstood it and all too often actively this troubled year in which it appears. attempted to destroy it. While this cultural
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 3 heritage has been all but lost in many cases, in reference also to Japan, the article illustrates other cases it does survive, ready to be revived something of the diversity, vitality and and reinvigorated by Indigenous memory and complexity of Asian responses to the notions of through linguistic research. As this lecture what constitutes modernism. shows, by considering the case of Noongar, In ‘Legacies of East German Communism: music is a hugely important instrument in this Thoughts from Germany during the COVID-19 recovery of human stories and human culture, Pandemic’ Alison Lewis addresses one of the especially when led by Indigenous people for most crucial questions which the pandemic Indigenous people. Community involvement has raised: how will the authorities and the in this program, along with the use of digital public handle restrictions imposed in an technology as a means of preservation and attempt to control the virus? She explains dissemination, has been crucial to its success. that, living in Berlin earlier this year, ‘On At a time when the value of traditional many occasions when confronted with rows humanities education has been called into of empty shelves in supermarkets and the question Dirk Baltzly comes at this issue from sight of queues outside them, I was reminded a very long historical perspective. By focusing of the fabled chronic shortages in the GDR.’ on the education system of the late Roman This leads her to the observation that ‘For empire with its emphasis on literary studies many locals, the public health crisis awakened and philosophy (which we recognise as key painful memories of being robbed of one’s disciplines in the humanities), he considers civil liberties—the right to associate and how far this kind of education served the freedom of movement.’ The article considers needs of imperial Roman government. the response to this situation, weaving the The late Roman empire with its (literally discussion around the story of a representative and metaphorically) Byzantine bureaucracy victim of Stasi oppression and how Germany is a far cry from present-day Australia, but has handled its memory of its communist it is precisely this distance which allows the past before concluding that the culture shift writer to stand back from our current situation Germany has undergone since the fall of the and speculate whether future historians German Democratic Republic has ensured ‘perhaps … will conclude that our needs would that, even under the stress of the COVID-19 have been better served by the inclusion of crisis, there has been no reversion to the more education in the humanities within authoritarianism of the past. the current curriculum, where the greatest Like Dirk Baltzly, Lea Beness and Tom emphasis is on STEM and business studies’. Hillard, in ‘The Clash of Ideologies, Class and We do not have the benefit of hindsight of Personalities in Second-Century Rome’, look our own time, but asking what that hindsight back to Rome, although in their case it is might be helps us look with different eyes on republican rather than imperial Rome, with our present-day issues. a setting in the turbulent era of the Gracchi John Clark’s article also takes a historical brothers. Here too we find reminders of the perspective but a much more recent one. continuities and discontinuties with the past. Looking at the ways recent Asian art has Politics in ancient Rome was very different in approached the idea of modernism he many ways to present-day politics, but there demonstrates the sheer diversity of responses. is also much that we can recognise as similar There is no single way in which modernism to our own world: social divisions, personality can be interpreted but, in the different politics, complex relations within the political political and social cultures which prevail elite, strictly legalistic interpretation of in Asian countries, artists have responded the constitution alongside disregard for it, in a multiplicity of ways which cannot be competing ideologies, populist rhetoric. Even nearly encapsulated in a single notion of from this very different world we can learn Asian Modernism. By drawing particularly on much that applies today even as we recognise examples from China and Thailand but with
4 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 some fundamental differences from politics as One Hundred Illustrated Beauties was reworked we ourselves experience it. to provide portraits of women appropriate to Ann McGrath in her article starts, like the new modern China. But while women were Alison Lewis, from very recent events and shown in exciting new modern roles in civilian controversies, in her case the destruction life, they were excluded from military roles: in of the Indigenous heritage site of Juukan the rare portrayal of women as soldiers they Gorge and the police protection of the statue were carefully coded as belonging only to the of James Cook in Hyde Park in the face of past and only to times of crisis. Similarly the attacks on it. However her discussion opens portrayal of modern Chinese women with their out to the broader question of the place the sons dressed in naval uniforms maintained notion of discovery plays in the understanding their gendered role as supporters of the citizen and misunderstanding of Australia and its soldiers, not soldiers themselves. All these history. She argues that historians have been representations were carefully calibrated to unable to escape from the mental confines celebrate but also demarcate the role of women of barriers in our history which have been in the new society. imposed by placing too much emphasis on Finally Alexis Wright offers a haunting the dates of ‘discoveries’ such as Cook’s 1770 passage from her novel Carpentaria which navigation of the eastern coast of Australia. draws on her own Waanyi heritage. In a year In particular, getting over such barriers to when Indigenous heritage has been under reach an appreciation of Indigenous history attack and calls for the preservation of the as history rather than as a non-historical sites of this heritage have once again come to prehistory has proved to be very difficult. the fore, it is also important to recognise how Nevertheless it is essential to do so if we are to Aboriginal culture continues to innovate and properly appreciate the full extent of Australia’s create not only in art but also in literature human history. and language. In a year when China’s relationship with Altogether then, the articles in this year’s Australia has been a constant topic of concern issue of Humanities Australia, whether their and commentary, Louise Edwards provides yet starting point is events and cultures of the past another kind of historical perspective, in this or those of this tumultuous year, address issues case through popular Chinese art of the early of continuing relevance and importance to the twentieth century. With increased impetus Australia of today. ¶ following the establishment of a republic in GRAHAM TULLOCH faha 1912, China moved from being a country where Editor, Australian Academy the civil bureaucracy looked down on the of the Humanities, 2016– military as inferior to one where the citizen- soldier became a key figure in the national consciousness, thus laying the foundations for the increasingly self-confident and militarily assertive China of today. In this period the portrayal of women in the traditional books of
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 5 Being A Contested History Humane
JOY DAMOUSI
First of all I would like to acknowledge and we continue to push and promote women the land on which we are meeting—the land and gender issues. of the Turrbal nation—and pay my respects to From its inception, the Academy has existed elders, past, present and emerging. to promote the pursuit of excellence and Before I begin this, the 50th Academy knowledge of the humanities. In 1969 this was Lecture, I will make some very brief interpreted as Western knowledge reflecting comments on our 50th Anniversary. I am how ‘knowledge’ was understood at that time: very fortunate to be the Academy President largely refracted through the prism of an in our anniversary year and the ambassador Oxbridge education. 50 years on, the Academy today for all the great work done by past recognises the fundamental contribution of Presidents, by past and current members of Indigenous knowledge to the advancement the secretariat and by previous and current of humanities research, the production of Fellows—all of whom have contributed to the knowledge, and to our understanding of success of the Academy. We pay homage the Australian life, then and now. This year I am founding fellows—three of whom are here delighted to say we are strengthening this tonight: Francis West, Alexander Cambitoglou recognition by inserting into our guidelines and Gerald Wilkes—who set us a daunting a provision that outstanding leadership and task 50 years ago in their vision to establish excellence by Indigenous researchers who an Academy that would foster and promote draw on Indigenous systems of knowledge, the humanities. innovation and practice be one of the central I want to particularly mention the three criteria for the identification of candidates women who took part in its founding—Flora for election. Bassett, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Ursula Hoff. I want to begin this lecture with a In 2019 I am only the third female President contemporary story from September of in the history of the Academy—a position this year to frame my discussion about previously held by Lesley Johnson and the contested notion of ‘being humane’ in Margaret Clunies-Ross. While the Academy Australia, past, present and future. has worked hard to achieve gender balance in A Sri Lankan family—father its Fellowship it is important that this is also Nadesalingham, known as Nades, and his wife, reflected in the leadership of the organisation. Kokilapathm, known as Priya, and their two There is more we can to do on gender equity, daughters, Kopika, aged four and Tharunicca, as is the case across the higher education aged two, were evicted from Australia because ▲ Montage using article figures. sector and more broadly in Australian society, their visas had expired (fig. 1). Priya and Nades
6 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 came to Australia separately by boat in 2012 penalties for entering illegally. The Refugees and 2013. They married and settled in Biloela, Convention recognises a right to enter a a rural town in Central Queensland in the country for the purposes of seeking asylum, Shire of Banana—yes, that name is true—with a regardless of how people arrive or whether they population of about 5,500 people in the town. hold valid travel or identity documents.6 They fled the civil war in Sri Lanka and say Not only does this case highlight where they are at risk of persecution if they return.1 Australia has breached its international The decision by Peter Dutton, the Minister commitments and these conventions, but it for Home Affairs, was swift, and they were raises three key issues that, I would argue, all deported on the grounds they were illegal relate to our theme this week of humanising immigrants. The Prime Minister, Scott the past, present, and future, and which form Morrison, believed that to act otherwise would the basis of my talk. be to inspire a new wave of people smugglers The first is the way in which the refugee from Sri Lanka. Later, Dutton called the question at the moment is not a moral problem children involved in this case ‘anchor babies’, a about humanity but a racialised and political racist term borrowed from the US referring to one. Currently, narratives that characterise children used by parents to gain illegal entry. the argument for the humane treatment of Their claims for asylum have been rejected. refugees as a moral issue are dismissed by Ministerial intervention was refused.2 The case governments as naïve, superficial, irresponsible. attracted national outcry. Local residents began Allowing empathy and ‘being humane’ to a campaign to bring the family back to Biloela. dictate terms, as Scott Morrison suggested The family were portrayed as integrated, in the case of Nades, Priya and their two ▼ Fig 1. The hard-working, much loved members of the daughters, is in his mind, aiding, encouraging Murugappan community. Even conservative voices such and promoting people smugglers; it will create family—father, as Alan Jones and Barnaby Joyce expressed havoc and cause the numbers attempting to Nadesalingham (known as support for the family. Other supporters said enter Australia to explode. According to this Nades), mother, they had lost ‘trust’ in the government; they view, to ‘humanise’ the ‘problem’ of refugees as Kokilapathm (known called for compassion and empathy. There a moral obligation to those fleeing appalling as Priya) and their two daughters, was a case, they pleaded, to be humane in the circumstances, is to be reckless. This position Kopika and government’s treatment of the family.3 has resulted in gross cruelty towards asylum Tharunicca. IMAGE: This case has drawn public attention to a seekers, unparalleled in the world. HOME TO BILO series of recent actions by the government. It reveals that Minister Dutton has used his ministerial discretion on 4,000 occasions. It reminds us too of Australia’s recent history of its attitude towards refugees. In 2013 Immigration Minister Scott Morrison instructed public servants to publicly refer to those seeking asylum in Australia by boat as ‘illegal’ arrivals.4 We know that according to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights of which Australia is a signatory, it is not illegal to seek asylum. Article 14(1) states that ‘everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’.5 We know that Article 31 of the UN 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Australia is again a signatory, states that it is legal to enter a country for the purposes of seeking asylum and that signatory states should not impose
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 7 The government would reply that it is being give a voice to First Peoples in the constitution. humane in preventing people smuggling by Until this is addressed, ‘being humane’ in boat who drown at sea, and this saves lives. Australia remains unresolved and a highly Negotiating humanitarian solutions with contested, even absurd concept. neighbouring countries and increasing the government’s humanitarian intake would end MORALITY AND HUMANITY the need to ‘stop the boats’. The more boats are Why should we care about the suffering of stopped, the more people remain in countries others, especially distant others who we don’t where they are persecuted, vulnerable to being know and have never met? There is nothing killed, or are killed in an effort to flee. inherent about doing so. Compassion has a Relatedly, my second point is that history: it is tenuous and deeply fragile. Australian governments in recent times have Susan Sontag puts it this way: ‘Compassion uncoupled principles of humanitarianism and is an unstable emotion. It needs to be internationalism from their policies, reflected translated into action, or it withers. The in the defiance of international protocols. We question is what to do with the feelings that have witnessed a hardening of attitudes seen have been aroused, the knowledge that has through breaching principles of international been communicated. If one feels that there law and treaties. It could be argued this is the is nothing ‘we’ can do … then one starts to get White Australia Policy with a new twenty- bored, cynical, apathetic.’7 first century inflection—the resurgence of Mobilising compassion and the morality of the mentality of ‘fortress Australia’—where being humane to the suffering of others has a Australia resists global citizenship, or as the long history. It has since the eighteenth century Prime Minister has put it recently, ‘negative been associated with charity, sentiment, and globalism’—opposing, in his terms, global neo-colonial paternalism. Humanitarians institutions interfering in the affairs and over the centuries have responded to their interests of a nation. emotions with pity in the eighteenth century, Third, the power of what it means to be compassion and sympathy in the nineteenth human is one of most effective ways in which century, and empathy in the twentieth century.8 to challenge representations and stereotypes Being ‘humane’ is a deeply problematic term of refugees. In the case of Priya and Nades, itself, and it has been retrieved at different Kopika and Tharunicca, they became the times in the past with different meanings. human face of refugees: their story caught I wish now to turn to these issues in the the public attention because they became context of Australian history. My comments humanised. The social media coverage, the are drawn in part from the research I and visual material, the photographs all captured my team have undertaken as part of my ARC a human story: the anguish, the pain, the Laureate Fellowship on the history of child trauma of being a refugee. refugees in Australia since the First World War. These three issues—a loss of a moral They are also propelled by aspects of my own compass; the disregard for international personal history. treaties and hardening of borders; and the The issue of refugees in Australia has not importance of recognising the human face of in recent times been seen as a moral problem, those dispossessed and displaced –highlight, that honours, respects and upholds the human I argue, the very contested nature of being rights of refugee children and refugees more humane in twenty-first-century Australia. broadly. This was not always the case. Importantly, these considerations are framed The question of morality, refugees and and underpinned by Australia’s history of humanitarianism has a history in Australia. settler colonialism. Throughout the twentieth century, there were My final conclusion is that white Australia activists who sought to challenge the White cannot move forward towards humanising the Australia Policy and, after international wars future without first recognising the need to and genocide, argued for a more lenient refugee
8 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 policy. This includes activism and support for enshrined ‘white’ migration into law, there was refugees from the Armenian Genocide, Spanish little or no assistance for Japanese, Chinese or and Greek civil wars, and the Second World Indian nationals to migrate to Australia.10 Even War, Korean war and Vietnam war. so, the highest number of settlers to arrive in An active humanitarian-internationalist any one year since the Second World War was tradition in Australia existed in relation to in 1969—our founding year—when 185,000 new child refugees in particular. This focused arrivals descended in Australia.11 especially on four groups of children: from The language of ‘morality’ and ‘being the Armenian Genocide; the Spanish Civil humane’ was used as the legacy of war War; the Second World War; and children continued to cast its shadow. In 1959, in the from the Greek Civil War. There emerged over decade before the Academy was established, this time important discussions around the Prime Minister Robert Menzies made two protection of the lives of children; the right significant announcements relating to the need of children to education; and the right to live to be ‘humane’. Menzies’s first comment made in a family, however defined. Humanitarian in 1959 was in the context of World Refugee campaigns—led largely by women—were Year 1959–60, announced by the United Nations sometimes in agreement with government as a year in which the plight of the world’s policy and practice, but very often they were refugees that remained after the war would not. The closeness of the relationship between be tackled. The aim was to clear the refugee the two waxed and waned. White Australia camps; by the end of the 1960s, for the first dominated but the moral aspect was one which time since the end of the war, all refugee camps was stressed by humanitarians working on in Europe were closed. Nations were asked to behalf of refugees. This is not a well-known provide material assistance. history, but one that is important to recognise In September 1959, Menzies enthusiastically as today’s discussions are just a part of a longer launched Australia’s unqualified support for resistance to government exclusionary policy.9 the UN programme: The question of being humane emerged The problem of refugees has been in a particular form in the aftermath of both melancholy and acute. There are the Second World War. Australian post- many thousands of refugees in Europe war policies are best described as ‘selective and these are added to every day. In humanitarianism’. Australia after 1945 the Middle East there are a million … embarked on a wide-scale migration policy refugees. From China have come which aimed but failed to attract substantial thousands of refugees of European numbers of white immigrants from Britain origin. In Hong Kong there are at least and Scandinavia. It had reluctantly allowed a million Chinese refugees.12 significant numbers of Southern Europeans from Greece, Italy and Germany to enter There was pride in the Australian tradition Australia, expanding the nation’s labour force of humanitarianism and internationalism as well as contributing to Australia’s increase that involved citizens and government in in population. Anti-Semitism remained a a combined effort: thread with the limits of humanitarianism It is to Australia’s credit that she has, in experienced by the Jewish community who fact, understood such matters very well. largely relied on their own communities to In one sense this, of course, is a problem provide a haven for Holocaust survivors. for Governments; in another, a problem From 1947, 170,000 Displaced Persons were for the Churches; but in the major accepted, the largest number of non-British sense it is a problem for private citizens immigrants to be allowed into the country who desire to make some humane up to that time. And while there was some contribution to its solution.13 relaxation of the White Australia Policy, which from the early twentieth century had
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 9 The government took the lead in providing The issue of developing a humane response a cash contribution of £50,000. to refugees arose again during the Vietnam War. In 1969 Australia was deeply mired in We, in Australia, have in earlier years this war. That year represented the height of brought over 200,000 refugees to our its involvement, most notably in Tet 1969—a shores. Our country is, on a population rerun of the notorious battle a year earlier—and basis, the leading country of refugee in the Battle of Binh Ba where Australians settlement. Living under good conditions fought, largely destroying the village of 3,000 and with complete freedom, we might people in their combat with communist North have had little reason to understand Vietnamese forces. By 1969 the anti-war protest the heart-breaking experience which and anti-conscription movement was also has been undergone by so many people escalating across the country, including here driven from their homes … The refugee in Brisbane.17 The growing interest in adopting problem is in that sense one of social Vietnamese child orphans from the war in and economic resettlement. In another the period from 1965 onwards points to a sense it is a moral problem.14 longstanding theme throughout the twentieth In noting that the ‘refugee problem’ was not century: the relentless and intense pressure only one of social and economic resettlement applied to governments by its citizens to bring but also a ‘moral problem’, Menzies urged refugee children into this country.18 With the Australians to work towards a humane fall of the South Vietnamese Government in contribution to its solution. Australia’s Saigon in April 1975 there was a new push to world reputation was at stake, he argued. evacuate Vietnamese children, which involved Furthermore, it would serve as ‘proof of the dramatic effort which took place through our instinctive national and individual the Babylift of 1975 involving the evacuation understanding and generosity’. Menzies of Vietnamese war orphans. Significantly, too, evoked a humanitarian response as an by then the Labor Whitlam government had obligation to assure freedoms and material life, formally ended the White Australia Policy.19 couched in terms of morality and empathy. But it was not until 1977, when the Minister He saw a role for ethics being brought to bear for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Michael on the issue of refugees.15 Mackellar, in the Liberal Fraser Government, It is important to note here that Menzies introduced a new national refugee policy, that also used the language of being humane in a series of strategies regarding the resettlement 1959 in his second comment when he called of those in humanitarian need emerged. Why? for the centrality of the humanities in public The question of scale made it impossible to do life, for ‘humane studies’ to ‘come back into otherwise: numbers leaving Vietnam by boat their own’ as an antidote to the rise of science reached 55,000 in May 1979 (fig. 2). and technology. In doing so, he assisted in Malcolm Fraser took an unprecedented supporting the groundwork and foundations number of Vietnamese as refugees and for the establishment of the Academy in immigrants in the face of fierce hostile public 1969, a decade later. By then, too, the massive opinion and Labor opposition. According to a expansion of the higher education sector was Morgan Gallup poll in 1979, 61% of Australians well underway. Five years after the findings wanted to limit the refugee intake and 28% of the Martin Report which argued for wanted to stop it. Refugees were processed by expansion and diversity within the tertiary Australian officials offshore, in holding centres sector, higher education had been transformed. in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, and then The humanities were central to it. In this flown to Australia. Children were among them context, the Australian Humanities Research in significant numbers.20 Council morphed into the Australian Academy During the 1980s and 1990s, further of the Humanities.16 humanitarian aid policies regarding refugees were extended under the Hawke and Keating
10 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 2. Two Vietnamese boats and refugees in Darwin Harbour. IMAGE: LIBRARY & ARCHIVES NT, JOHN ENGLAND COLLECTION, NTRS 1637, COPYPRINTS OF OFFICIAL DUTIES AS ADMINISTRATOR, ITEM 60
Labor governments. The 1980s saw increases all persons entering the country without a in the number of refugees and their children valid visa, while security and health checks from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle are undertaken and the legitimacy of their East, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, East Timor and remaining in Australia is established. Persons Latin America.21 arriving without visas were and continue A moral history of this immigration policy to be detained in Australian immigration after 1945 is thus a chequered one. It is certainly detention facilities. not a linear one of the march of progress. But The mandatory detention was established one point we can make, I would argue, is that by the Labor Keating Government with a 273- a clear sense that assisting refugees is a moral day limit on detention, following increasing question has been fundamentally lost in recent numbers of refugees from Vietnam, China, and times, generating an attitude which is inward Cambodia. Controls were tightened under the and retrogressive, hardening borders in ways subsequent Howard Government, including which are reminiscent of Australia at the under the Pacific Solution policy. The Pacific height of the White Australia policy. Solution was dismantled by the Rudd Government and partially restored under the UNCOUPLING HUMANITARIANISM Gillard Government in response to increased AND INTERNATIONALISM boat arrivals and reported deaths at sea.22 The uncoupling of any humanitarianism and In relation to children specifically there have internationalism from policy-making has been two significant reports which encapsulate earned rebuke to Australia from international the recent treatment of child refugees. Dr Sev organisations. In 2018, the UN Commission on Ozdowski, the Human Rights Commissioner Human Rights called on Australia to review its of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity domestic laws in a ruling that it had breached Commission, held an inquiry in 2004 into multiple international human rights laws. How mandatory detention of children who arrived has this happened? without a valid visa over the period from 1999 In 1992, there was a distinctive shift in to 2002. Australian immigration policy. This was The inquiry found that children detained the inclusion of mandatory detention of for long periods of time were at a high risk
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 11 of suffering mental illness. It also found as a way of deflecting these findings stands in that many basic rights outlined in the the face of Australia’s historical commitment Convention on the Rights of the Child were to UN principles—especially relating to child denied to children living in detention. The refugees—as evidenced by support from Evatt, key recommendations of the Inquiry were Menzies, Calwell, and the Fraser, Hawke and that children with their parents be released Keating governments. immediately into the community and that In more recent times, this commitment detention laws should be amended to comply to an international community has, I would with the Convention on the Rights of the suggest, been lost and Australia’s commitment Child. The inquiry found that the government’s to a global spirit has dissipated. refusal to implement these recommendations amounted to ‘cruel, inhumane and degrading DEHUMANISING AND HUMANISING treatment of those children in detention’.23 It is only by dehumanising or demonising Ten years after the Ozdowski report in refugees that populism can spread its anti- 2014 the President of the Human Rights immigration and its anti-refugee message. Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, launched In the words of the French philosopher a second inquiry into children in closed Emmanuel Lévinas, ‘the face is what forbids immigration detention. The purpose of this us to kill’. Face-to-face encounters, he argues, inquiry was to investigate the ways in which order and ordain us: naked and defenceless, life in immigration detention affected the the face, with or without words, signifies ‘Do health, well-being and development of children. not kill me’.27 Susan Sontag argued that with She found that, while the Howard government the saturation coverage of war, violence and was initially dismissive of findings in the 2004 displacement, violence becomes a normalised report, by mid-2005 it had in fact removed all state, and rather than create outrage it creates a asylum seeker children from detention centres. profound disengagement.28 Ten years on the situation had changed. But it can take the tragedy of one individual In August 2014 there were 869 children in to personalise the plight of millions of detention. This was a significant reduction refugees. This happened in September from the 2013 figures, but still in excess of the 2015 with the death of three-year-old Aylan figures in the early 2000s.24 Kurdi which shocked the world and drew Triggs’ recommendations included: that international attention to the vulnerability, an independent guardian be appointed for especially, of refugee children. The crisis of unaccompanied children seeking asylum refugee children has of course remained an in Australia; that children have access to ongoing issue ever since with an estimated government funded mental health support; 50 million refugee children currently in the that children be given education to meet the world—the worst crisis since the Second learning benchmarks appropriate for their age; World War.29 and that a royal commission be established to The invisibility of the face of refugees has examine the long-term impacts of detention on assisted all efforts to demonise. The twenty- the physical and mental health of children in first century was ushered in by vilification of immigration detention. The report concludes refugees and asylum seekers in 2001 in the so that ‘Successive governments have failed called Tampa, or children overboard, affair. The children in locking them in immigration then Prime Minister, John Howard, claimed detention for prolonged periods’.25 that refugees had thrown their children These reports were a devastating and overboard in order to be saved and claim sobering comment on the Abbott and later asylum in Australia. With an election campaign Turnbull Liberal governments and their refusal in train, this attack on refugees gained the to acknowledge these violations of children’s Coalition electoral advantage. A subsequent rights. Abbott’s belief that ‘Australians are sick Senate select inquiry found that such an event of being lectured to by the United Nations’,26 never happened while Howard’s defence was
12 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 that he was acting on the advice he was given. ◄ Fig 3. Cover of No Friend but the The accusations that refugees would act in Mountains: Writing this way fuelled the Border Protection Act and from Manus Prison by further policies and slogans to limit refugee Behrouz Boochani 30 (2018). intake. It was so easy to vilify in this context. IMAGE SOURCE: The power of the human face is of course PAN MACMILLAN AUSTRALIA not new, or even recent. The philosopher Hannah Arendt, one of the most famous refugees, who was stateless for 18 years, wrote in 1943 with great eloquence and power of what it was like to be a refugee. In this essay she presents the human experience of the refugee, giving the refugee a voice, agency, power. Above all, Arendt captures the anxiety and search for dignity:
We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in the world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings … In a friendly way 2013, made his way to Indonesia and was saved we were reminded that the new country on the seas attempting to reach Australia. He would become a new home; and after was flown to Manus Island where he spent six four weeks in France or six weeks in years in detention. He left Papua New Guinea America, we pretended to be Frenchmen in November 2019 and is now a resident of or Americans.31 New Zealand. Behrouz provides the human Refugees are expected to be silent, to face of the refugee: the greatest challenge to assimilate, to avoid any offense. In her essay current efforts to demonise asylum seekers.32 she argues that humans should be validated independently of the nation state. Humanising THE VIOLENCE OF ASSIMILATION refugees is a potent force, and one which For those who were able to migrate to makes this act subversive. In the period of Australia, either as refugees or as migrants, social media, mobile phones and Twitter—we there were other problems. Permission to enter can see more than ever before. The visual did not mean that once migrants arrived in distress of Nades and Priya—the apprehended Australia their story was necessarily a very family—was broadcast for all to see. The faces welcome one. The height of the period of of Kopika and Tharunicca became the defining assimilation in Australia for both migrants face of the protest: their anguish launched the and its Indigenous population was 1969. While community campaign. modern Australian was being forged, the point The voices of refugees challenge the of reference remained overwhelmingly British inhumanness of our treatment of asylum and white. Indigenous Australians were meant seekers. In his memoir No Friend but the to turn themselves into being ‘white’. Indeed Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison Behrouz assimilation was a form of overt racism and Boochani, the award winning journalist, has deep-seated hostility to the other, insisting given us a powerful story of his experience that difference be obliterated and repressed on Manus (fig. 3). An advocate of Kurdish in celebration at that time of a white, largely Independence in Iran, he fled the country in British identity. In the name of ‘being humane’
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 13 assimilationist ideals were promoted as the In order to rebuild one’s life one has to benchmark, but in fact they were used to justify be strong and an optimist. So we are very child removal from Indigenous communities optimistic … The less we are free to decide and the continued dispossession of land. who we are or live as we like, the more Becoming a ‘new Australian’ for migrants we try to put up a front, to hide the facts, meant shedding culture, identity and language and to play roles.33 from a previous life. At the time, assimilation This of course masked the trauma people was considered a humane response to brought as well; stories of migration come with the flood of stateless displaced persons or stories of violence which remain in families, an migrants fleeing Europe. But it was a violent experience familiar to me. one. Hannah Arendt has written of the sheer And here I seek your indulgence as I take exhaustion of assimilation; of the psychic a biographical turn for a moment. My parents energy required to assimilate; of the denial of arrived as post war migrants in the 1950s from self and experience, that it demands: Greece (fig. 4). I am eight years older than We did our best to prove to other people the Academy. 1969 was a very special year for that we were just ordinary immigrants. me, for in that year I first heard about the
▼ Fig 4. The We declared that we had departed of our Holocaust. I recall my mother Sophia talking author’s father (in own free will to countries of our choice … about how the Nazis would raid villages in glasses) migrating Yes, we were ‘immigrants’ or ‘newcomers’ Northern Greece and in her home town of to Australia in 1956 from Florina, Greece. who had left our country because, one Florina when she was just a little older than The author’s mother fine day, it no longer suited us to stay, I was. She talked about the survival strategies holds a handbag. or for purely economic reasons. We of civilians and of deprivation and violence. IMAGE SOURCE: JOY DAMOUSI wanted to rebuild our lives, that was all. Her narrative was of resilience and strength.
14 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Her most striking descriptions were (and other Australians, and how these have played still are) of how she witnessed the obliteration out in the late twentieth and early twenty-first of the Jewish community of the small town centuries. of Florina in 1943. She was 13. 295 Jewish The Academy was born two years after residents (as I later discovered) were tragically the 1967 referendum allowing Aboriginal deported. The Jewish population in the town Australians to be counted in the census and was decimated with 84% taken away, thus the Federal government to make laws in ending four centuries of harmonious co- relation to Aboriginal people.34 The referendum existence between my Greek ancestors and became the symbol of social and political our Jewish neighbours, dating back to the change in the 1960s and 1970s and the period Ottoman Empire. These scenes were terrifying after the referendum was one of advances and enduring in my mother’s memory. She and setbacks. The Whitlam Government was keen to pass on details of this witnessing legislated to positively discriminate in favour to her impressionable daughter growing up of Aboriginal people. It established schemes in assimilationist Australia, as she did not whereby Aboriginal people could obtain want them lost in the passage of time in her housing, loans, emergency accommodation own displacement after the war through her and tertiary education allowances. It also migration to faraway Australia in 1957. increased funding for the Aboriginal Legal Her story was told as a morality tale about Service enabling 25 offices to be established evil, with passionate political comment and throughout Australia. Immediately after with a very deep sense of melancholy and gaining office Whitlam established a Royal loss. In 1969, migrants were expected to leave Commission into Land Rights in the Northern these memories behind. Very little, if anything, Territory, the principal finding being that was taught in mainstream Australia about the Aboriginal people had inalienable title to land Holocaust. Memory, testimony, oral history in Aboriginal reserves. Whitlam actively sought were words of the future. But my mother, who to override the discriminatory practices of is illiterate, and I were not to know that our state governments.35 conversations were poised at the cusp of a In the 1992 Mabo judgement, the High moment in time—for only a few years later, Court established the existence of Native from the early 1970s, the memory oral history Title in Australian Common Law. The Keating boom would burst into the history profession Government enacted the Native Title Act and take writing the history of the Holocaust 1993 and successfully defended a High Court into dramatically new directions. challenge from the Queensland Government.36 I mention it here because hers was a In 1996, John Howard intervened in the narrative about speaking as a migrant and Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy with about her experience witnessing trauma, legislation that introduced an exception to the narratives which are obliterated in the project Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage of assimilation. It is also about the brutal Protection Act 1984, in order to allow the bridge experience of inhumanity. The personal power to proceed.37 Howard also steadfastly refused of this narrative was a reminder to me of how in 1998 to make a formal apology to Aboriginal dehumanising the other is an effective way of people for their children being forcibly justifying inhumanity. removed from their parents over several decades. It took another ten years before this HUMANITY AND INDIGENOUS happened when, in 2008, Prime Minister CLAIMS Kevin Rudd—in probably his finest moment— It was not only on questions of migration and delivered a formal apology to Australia’s refugees that issues relating to humanity came Indigenous Peoples for the ‘mistreatment to the fore in the second half of the twentieth of those who were Stolen Generations—this century. There was also the foundational blemished chapter in our nation’s history’.38 question of relations between Indigenous and In 2010 the Gillard Government established
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 15 an ‘expert panel’ to inquire into changing so enriched by its Vietnamese community. the federal constitution so that Australia’s They also feared it would threaten Australian Indigenous peoples would be recognised in it. values—but instead it enhanced them. Why This would require a new referendum and led not more support for refugees who have to the Uluru Statement from the Heart which been bombarded by their own government, was rejected by the Turnbull government.39 tortured, kidnapped, and massacred, who So this is a history of one step forward, have been in refugee camps for years waiting two steps back. The response here is a for an international response? As many have moral history which has been deeply observed, when adults and children continue inhumane, notwithstanding some of the take to roads, boats and trains in biblical advances for Indigenous Australians over the proportions with recent attacks, governments past few decades. only see fences, wire and police. But, as Michael Ignatieff has written, if compassion won’t ► Fig 5. Professor Joy Damousi move us perhaps fear and prudence might. delivering the We would not be surprised, he observes, if our Academy Lecture response especially towards children creates at the 50th Annual Symposium in ‘a generation with abiding hatred in its heart’ Brisbane and they ‘do not forgive us in our indifference’. IMAGE: T.J THOMSON Are moral causes more important than the perceived well-being of the state? This is an issue writ large in countries like Germany where Angela Merkel’s detractors say her impractical humanism put her country at risk CONCLUSION when in 2015 she allowed tens of thousands So where do we go from here? of refugees to migrate to Germany. But what First, our own leaders treat the refugee crises evidence is there that this has really turned out as someone else’s problem—Europe, Middle to be the case in the past four years? East, Africa, Asia—as if the issue belongs to How do we humanise the future in light someone else. As long as they do so they of this past history and the present? The need can justify little, or minimal, action. But of to humanise refugees and their experience is course it is a global problem, an international paramount. Refugees are not criminals; they problem, where political leadership from are like us. Moving beyond the nation state outside of Europe can help to alleviate the and upholding the demands of international crisis. Why don’t they? They fear a flood of treaties is essential. The national is currently refugees and there is relatively little pressure in tension with the international when the within their own countries to do so. But if nation can override the rights of people governments don’t help refugees, human such as refugees and Indigenous Australians. traffickers will, and as we have seen recently, Considering this as a moral problem, and not we continue to see the deadly outcomes of one just of political expediency, is key. allowing this to flourish. Second, there is a broader issue of the ULURU STATEMENT tension between moral causes and the But none of this, I would argue, can be done perceived well-being of the nation state. The without humanising the future for Indigenous history lesson of post-1945 is that Australia has Australians in parallel. It is on the Uluru in the past been able to rise to the occasion. Statement from the Heart that I end this talk. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, for instance, Until and unless the demands for a voice Australia received thousands of Vietnamese in the Constitution are met, any efforts to so-called boat people. Critics feared this would humanise the future will remain contingent. create a flood. It did, and how fortunate we The Uluru Statement says: ‘The Statement by have been that it did, as Australia has been First Peoples seeks constitutional reform to
16 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 about their stories: ‘before there can be ◄ Fig 6. Uluru Statement from justice there must be truth’. Truth-telling the Heart is a major theme in the Uluru Statement. IMAGE: HTTPS:// ULURUSTATEMENT. The recommendation of a truth and justice ORG/ commission is seen as a way for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities to confront the violent past and give a voice to Indigenous Australians of that past. It is also a way of providing a powerful human face to the experience of Indigenous Australians.43 And herein lies the challenge for us all in the next 50 years: humanising Australia by removing once and for all the stain and empower our people and take a rightful place in shame of the legacy of settler colonialism our own country’ (fig. 6). This of course only the and, of the white Australia policy as it beginning of the process of justice and self- continues in its contemporary guise in the determination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Islander communities. As Megan Davis has so These twin evils, which continue to cast a long eloquently put it: ‘Uluru is the beginning of the shadow today, will, I hope, be discussed by the process, the coming together after a struggle. And Academy President in 50 years as events of that, my friends, is the potential of the Uluru another time, another era, of how being Statement from the Heart. It was deliberately humane in Australia was a highly contested issued to the Australian people, not politicians, concept and is no longer. ¶ because it is we, as a united people, who can 40 unlock that potential in a referendum’. JOY DAMOUSI is one of The Referendum Council’s final report Australia’s most distinguished rejected the idea of symbolic constitutional historians and humanities thought leaders. She is the recognition of Indigenous peoples, and made President of the Australian three key recommendations for meaningful Academy of the Humanities, reform: the proposal of a constitutionally- and a Fellow of both the enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament, Australian Academy of a Makarrata—a Yolgnu word that means the Humanities and the ‘the settling of differences’, ‘peace-making’ Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Joy’s areas of research include Australian social and cultural and Treaty—and the creation of a truth and history, gender history and memory and the history of justice commission.41 emotions. Her current research project is a history of The call for truth-telling is especially child refugees, humanitarianism and internationalism important for those of us working in the from 1920, for which she was awarded an Australian Humanities. Megan Davis describes it thus: Research Council Laureate Fellowship. Key publications ‘the need for a truth-telling and remembering include The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia (1999), Living with emerged on the first day of the dialogues, when the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-war delegates were asked, if meaningful reform was Australia (2001), a collection of essays edited with achieved, what might it mean on the ground Robert Reynolds, History on the Couch: Essays in History in their communities. Delegates addressed and Psychoanalysis (2003), Freud in the Antipodes: this question by first explaining what had A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia (2005— happened to them, thus themselves performing winner of the Ernest Scott Prize), Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia 1840–1940 a truth-telling exercise to lay the foundation (2010) and Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: for a discussion about what meaningful reform Australia’s Greek Immigrants after World War II and the 42 might be able to achieve’. Greek Civil War (2015). Davis discussed the importance of learning the ‘truth’ about Aboriginal history;
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 17 1. The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Tamil family fighting 22. Janet Phillips and Harriet Spinks, ‘Boat Arrivals deportation to stay on Christmas Island two more in Australia since 1976’, Parliamentary Library: months’, 19 December 2019. Background Note (Canberra: Parliament of 2. The Guardian, ‘Peter Dutton says Biloela Tamil Australia, 2013), pp. 15–18. children are ‘anchor babies’ used to help case’, 23. A Last Resort? National Inquiry into Children in 12 September 2019. Immigration Detention (Sydney: Human Rights and 3. The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Barnaby Joyce says Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004), p. 850. Tamil family are good people and Biloela wants 24. The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children them to stay’, 31 August 2019. in Immigration Detention (Sydney: Australian Human 4. The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Minister wants boat Rights Commission, 2014), p. 17. people called illegals’, 20 October 2013. 25. The Forgotten Children, p. 20. 5. United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human 26. The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Tony Abbott: Rights
18 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Maya Waabiny MOBILISING SONG ARCHIVES TO NOURISH AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE CLINT BRACKNELL
INTRODUCTION characterisations of Australia as untouched Turrbal, Yagera, thank you for caring wilderness.1 This continent is an inherently for this land we meet on today. It is a big peopled landscape, Country with a capital responsibility and what I consider a very C—‘nourishing terrain’ as Deborah Bird human thing to do. When last here, for the Rose would put it—alive and intertwined AIATSIS research conference, I witnessed an with Aboriginal people and knowledge impassioned local performance to welcome systems.2 Our longstanding and very current attendees. In the old days, we visitors might environmental crisis can be understood have been expected to perform in response. as not just the fault of flawed science and Although a number of Aboriginal people were economics, but also a disconnection between there, many of us may not have had a song to culture and nature, between humans and share—at least not yet. landscapes.3 Although frequently overlooked I am Noongar, with a Noongar mother and in scientific research, factors supporting white Australian father. I have a Noongar wife human connection to the environment such and son. My ancestral Country is far from as story, language and song are key to people’s here, along the southern coast of Western everyday wellbeing.4 Our future is dependent Australia. Here in Brisbane, our endangered on Country. Things that most connect us Noongar language is strange and foreign. humans to Country—like language, story and I speak about it in the hope that the things we song—are crucial to our future. are doing in the southwest might be useful to people here and elsewhere. NOONGAR LANGUAGE AND SONG It is an honour to be invited to present More than 30,000 people identify as Noongar, as part of the Academy’s auspicious 50th making it one of Australia’s largest Aboriginal Symposium. This year’s theme ‘Humanising cultural groups, extending across an extensive the Future’ resonates with my interest in the rural and urban area in the southwest corner intersection between tradition and digital of Western Australia, including the capital technology. This lecture is held in honour city of Perth.5 The Aboriginal language of of Sir Keith Hancock, who contributed to this region is also known as Noongar.6 While the foundations of environmental history community-instigated language revival since studies in Australia. Although his biographer the 1980s has increased awareness of the Jim Davidson notes that Hancock ‘shared language and its various mutually intelligible the general ignorance of the extent of regional dialects, Australian census data ▲ Background montage using Aboriginal resistance’, he rightly critiqued indicates that less than 2% of Noongar article figures.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 19 people speak the Noongar language at home.7 importance of Noongar language to Noongar Historian Anna Haebich challenges the identity is even greater than suggested by commonly-held illusion that Aboriginal people the relatively small number of contemporary in Australia simply lost their culture, which, speakers, hence the need, now, for new she writes, ‘suggests a deliberate ignorance and methods of supporting language, cultural forgetting on the part of settler colonists that heritage, and community that can also be validated the many cruelties and injustices adapted to future changes in social, political of colonization’.8 Noongar were the first and economic contexts.14 population in Western Australia to face the full Support for Indigenous languages is vitally impact of British invasion and the subsequent important because they, as linguist Marianne consequences: dispossession, dislocation, Mithun states, ‘represent the distillation of racism and poverty.9 Pressures associated the thoughts and communication of a people with occupation and frontier violence in over their entire history’.15 According to the the nineteenth century and assimilation most recent United Nations Expert Group on and segregation policies throughout the Indigenous languages, Indigenous language twentieth century diminished Noongar loss is a global crisis, with one of the worst knowledge systems and what Hancock ‘hotspots’ being Australia—where Indigenous himself characterised as Indigenous ‘complex culture and languages are considered by the civilisation’.10 Australian Government’s Office for the Arts Despite challenges to its vitality, the to be ‘essential for Closing the Gap’ of health, Noongar language remains important to education and economic outcomes between Noongar people, motivating the Noongar Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.16 The community to pursue cultural sustainability United Nations (UN) has declared 2019 the Year agendas.11 Census statistics reveal a slowly of Indigenous Languages. According to the UN, growing community of speakers, or at least there are approximately 370 million Indigenous a growing identification with the language people around the world. Language is a crucial (fig. 1).12 This increase is a likely result of way for Indigenous people to express history Noongar language revitalisation efforts and culture—and the right to one’s language undertaken over the past three decades. is a crucial component of the UN declaration Michael Walsh notes similar gains made on the rights of Indigenous people. Yet the by Aboriginal language revival movements UN also reports that 40 per cent of the almost elsewhere in southern Australia.13 The 7,000 languages spoken around the world are
► Fig 1. Representation of the increase in Noongar speakers in Australia identifying Noongar speakers across Australian, Census records from 1996 to 2016 (ABS 2019). IMAGE: REDRAWN FROM AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS CHART
20 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 in real danger of disappearing. In Australia, an and Me, and formalised the longstanding ▲ Fig 2. estimated 120 Australian Indigenous languages efforts of people belonging to the Wirlomin Reconnecting story and language to are still spoken in some form, yet 90 per cent family clan from the south coast of Western Country at Point of these are considered critically endangered, Australia to maintain Noongar language Ann, Fitzgerald so there is a real risk that these languages will and culture. Other groups and organisations River National 17 Park with Roma cease to be spoken within our lifetime. are also working to sustain Noongar as a Yibiyung Winmar In the Noongar context, and, I imagine, spoken language. A Noongar Language Centre and Iris Woods. IMAGE: CLINT many similarly endangered language contexts, operates out of Perth and a small number of BRACKNELL community attitudes, language materials committed LOTE teachers provide Noongar and domains for language use are the most language education at Western Australian crucial considerations in projecting future primary schools including Moorditj Noongar language vitality. Over a relatively short Community College in Perth. Many Wirlomin space of time since the early 1970s, there has Noongar formally gather a few times each been a shift in Australia to a generally more year to share and build Noongar language, positive perspective on Aboriginal culture, stories and song, reconnecting fragmented with the public and institutional denigration elements of intangible cultural heritage and of Aboriginal languages and culture giving re-uniting them with Country. We choose to way to interest and even celebration. This is do this by starting with a small community due in part to pressure for broad public access of descendants of archival ‘informants’ and to ‘compelling constructions of Aboriginality’,18 language custodians, then progressively sharing as a result of increased academic curiosity with ever widening circles, employing the about Indigenous knowledge, the importance following staged process: of Indigenous languages as evidence for 1. Connecting archival language material Native Title, and emerging opportunities in with its home community of origin; the tourism and entertainment industries. However, despite these positive changes at 2. In community workshops—interpreting, a national level, very little time or space has enhancing and making decisions been provided for communities ourselves about this material as a dynamic group to claim, consolidate and enhance cultural including the descendants of archival heritage and knowledge. informants and contemporary language Wirlomin Noongar Language and custodians; Stories (Wirlomin) was established as an 3. Reconnecting story and language to incorporated organisation in 2010. It arose Country via visits to relevant sites; and from collaboration between senior Noongar Hazel Brown, Lomas Roberts, and their author nephew Kim Scott on the 2005 book Kayang
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 21 4. Sharing with the broader local are fundamental to positive health outcomes community, visiting schools and and identity.21 However, an estimated 98 per publishing books. cent of Aboriginal performance traditions are considered lost, and because these traditions Although sharing language and story with are primarily sung—that is, based in language— the broader public is empowering, the it is concerning that just an estimated 13 of actual process of developing the books in more than 200 Aboriginal languages maintain the community workshops is potentially fluent speakers across all generations.22 Much more useful to language revitalisation than Noongar singing in the twentieth century has publishing them. While we would read the been inhibited by colonisation, assimilation stories in the community workshops, reading polices, and an imposed emotional regime; from a page in a classroom-like setting was and until the early 1970s, it was imperative uncomfortable for some of us, and some for Noongar people to keep overt cultural senior people involved were interested in expressions such as song and language private, finding better ways to involve and inspire the in order to continue to access human rights.23 younger generation. The continued use and performance of Indigenous song and language are essential THE POWER OF SONG for their survival, in the communities and In language education, singing is well environments where they are most meaningful. established as an effective means of increasing Singing in the Noongar language has been key practice of pronunciation and memorisation of to the effectiveness ofWaabiny Time, Australia’s vocabulary and structure. The way a song gets only nationally broadcasted early childhood stuck in your head can even trigger involuntary television program featuring an Indigenous practice. Generally, participation in music is language. Gina Williams, Della Morrison identified as supporting social connection and other Noongar artists have also released and self-esteem.19 Apprentice-like processes of contemporary music featuring the language learning, practising and performing song can and participated in parallel youth education also have positive effects on social cohesion. programs. As ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon As evident in the relatively successful language explains, ‘persons sustain music and music revival contexts of Hawaii and New Zealand, sustains people’.24 song provides a medium for sustainable activities around performance competitions, WORKING WITH OLD SONGS tourism and formal education. Arising from my involvement with Wirlomin— building a website and helping with Indigenous people affirm that community workshops—I was tasked in 2012 by Roma Yibiyung Winmar and Iris Woods to traditional performances, languages help get together a repertoire of old Noongar and associated ways of knowing songs, which most of the senior people in our group remember hearing, but as a result of are fundamental to positive health child removal and assimilation policies, were outcomes and identity. denied the opportunity to learn. Investigating colonial accounts of Noongar performance A ten-year study of Indigenous over the course of a PhD program in music and Australians in Central Australia found that Indigenous studies at the University of Western ‘connectedness to culture, family and land, Australia, I was struck by how such accounts and opportunities for self-determination’ were predicated on general notions—as Yawuru can assist with significantly lower morbidity barrister and academic Michael Dodson noted and mortality rates.20 Indigenous people in his seminal Wentworth lecture of 1994—of affirm that traditional performances, Indigenous peoples as ‘remnants of a past languages and associated ways of knowing doomed to extinction’ and ‘innately obsolete’.25
22 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 but nevertheless provided valuable material Indeed, as Dodson asserts, particular qualities to be explored in the current ARC funded ascribed to Aboriginal people in colonial project ‘Mobilising song archives to nourish descriptions were largely dependent ‘on what an endangered language’ led by myself with the colonising culture wanted to say or think Professors Kim Scott and Linda Barwick. about itself’.26 Representations of Aboriginal In one poignant moment on von people and culture have often been constructed Brandenstein’s 1970 field recording, Charlie in comparison with the colonising culture to Dabb concludes the performance of a serve needs of the colony or nation state. particularly striking song with the statement: Colonial surveyor Sir George Grey ‘Boordawan boordoo ngany kwerl kwop. characterised Noongar song as ‘barbarous Kaadidjiny boordal nyoondookan’. It roughly and savage sounds’ and ‘discordant noise’.27 translates to ‘Sooner or later my name will He wrote that they were short, repetitive be well regarded. You will understand later’. and nevertheless, for a Noongar audience, Charlie Dabb’s niece Annie Dabb says that ‘lulling and harmonious in the extreme her uncle knew what we would be doing years […] producing much the same effect as the later, that he was foreseeing how we would singing of a nurse does upon a child’.28 Such bring the songs back. This paper was originally descriptions position Noongar song as inferior presented on her birthday and dedicated to to European music and infantilise Noongar her. Her insight reveals how Charlie Dabb used audiences. Implicitly, such descriptions seek to opportunities afforded by audio recording highlight colonial achievements of ‘progress’ technology of the day to continue the life of and superiority, inherently ascribing an his Noongar songs. Annie Dabb and her older alleged ‘moral and intellectual poverty’ which brother Henry Dabb serve as custodians for the reassures and comforts settler-colonists as songs of their uncle and father recorded by von ‘paragons of humanity, products of millennia Brandenstein. The first part of our project to of development’.29 Grey’s observation that some recirculate songs involved figuring out—with Noongar performances have ‘a very peculiar the advice of the Wirlomin cultural elders mystical character about them’ only begins to reference group—who could act in this capacity hint at the significance of Noongar song to to guide what happens with the interpretation, local knowledge systems, social cohesion and sharing and performance of the songs. the sophisticated maintenance of relationships The second part of the project involved between people and landscapes.30 community workshops with song custodians There are significant traces of Noongar song and Noongar language experts they appointed, in the archives. Mostly, these are descriptions particularly Roma Yibiyung Winmar and Iris of performances and written lyrics heard by Woods—two of the longest tenured Noongar non-musically minded colonial observers language teachers in the southwest region. between 1801 and 1930. From 1965 onwards, In many more remote parts of Australia, there are a handful of recorded examples of an Aboriginal song may be performed even Noongar song. Access to most of the more when the lexical meaning of its lyrics is not recent examples is restricted. One of the richest widely known. In our endangered language accessible sources for south coast Noongar situation, investigating what each of the song is C.G. von Brandenstein’s 1970 field archival songs was about was key to informing recording at Esperance with Noongar brothers decisions about how they should be shared Charlie and Sam Dabb. Linguist Doug Marmion and performed. Our expert group shared from AIATSIS let me know about unearthing biographical, geographical and linguistic von Brandenstein’s field notes in a remote information not present in the archive, thereby German anthropological museum a few years enhancing it and proving how incomplete and ago. Some songs are featured in the notes and disjointed the archives really are. This process on the audio recording. Both are imperfect was assisted by referring to a 45,000-entry sources and inconsistent with each other, dataset we compiled of historical and
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 23 ▲ Fig 3. Baboor contemporary Noongar word lists. Highlighting of these workshops, participants—many of illustration by Roma the difficulty in translating the songs, one song whom were closely connected to one of the Yibiyung Winmar was determined in the workshops to be about original singers in the archival recordings— IMAGE: REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION a man in the waves; and how waves can look listened to those few members who were FROM THE ARTIST ROMA YIBIYUNG like people. However, rather than explicitly confident enough to perform, and were asked WINMAR referencing waves, it suggests images of them to share their immediate emotional reactions. crashing and the water subsequently receding Overwhelmingly, the participants emphasised back to the ocean (fig. 3). the pride they felt in the existence of these songs, and spoke of feelings of nostalgia, and a SINGING OLD SONGS sense of connection to the original singers and As our small group began to move from to each other as a result of hearing the songs. interpreting to singing the old songs, guitars Younger participants in particular, who had and percussion sticks were brought in on not previously heard old Noongar songs, were the suggestion of song custodians to assist surprised at how fluent, aesthetically pleasing, with maintaining coordinated melody and and evocative the old songs were. rhythm. The emotional reconnection involved Participants would also describe the songs in singing the old songs was palpable. themselves as having an alluring quality and Workshops to facilitate singing old Noongar a heightened sense of ‘spiritual presence’. songs were held in Albany and Esperance They spoke of a ‘powerful resonance’ that in late 2018 and early 2019. At the beginning focused their attention while listening and
24 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 lingered long after the song had concluded. As the most effective and suitable solution for some participants admitted to being nervous recirculation. In addition to allowing control at the idea of singing one of the old songs, by the community over dissemination, the strategies were employed over each two-hour face-to-face nature of Bluetooth filesharing workshop to build confidence and capacity. meant that there was social interaction These included the annotation of lyric sheets occurring in ways similar to how a song with expressive cues, memorisation activities, may have been shared orally in the past. vocal breathing and warm-up exercises, call- Unfortunately, Apple’s proprietary technology and-response, and small-group practice. will not allow all smartphones to share files via Participants also gave their reflections at Bluetooth. Building on the relatively successful the end of each workshop. Although feeling community circulation of the karaoke tired and sometimes ‘winded’, they were videos, a desire for more instructive visual overwhelmingly relaxed and relieved, proudly representation of melody and the percussion sharing a sense of accomplishment. After that we added to the songs has led to the singing the songs, participants described development of animated graphic scores for feelings of confidence, joy, exhilaration, some of the songs. looseness, and the belief that they were After the carefully staged song recirculation growing stronger in their knowledge of process undertaken over the course of this Noongar language and connection to their project, select repertoire was shared publicly in culture, family and ancestors as a result. 2019. This included performances for NAIDOC Performing together left some of the more week in Katanning and Albany, the Regional enthusiastic participants feeling hungry for Mental Health Conference in Albany, plus an more. Even the most shy among us revealed impromptu performance on the foreshore in that through singing the songs, they let go of Esperance for an entire local primary school shame they had previously held in relation to after a morning spent singing with the Noongar speaking and singing Noongar language. rangers at the Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Annie Dabb and others involved emphasised Title Aboriginal Corporation headquarters. the key importance of reconnecting the songs As part of a performance protocol decided on with the places in which they were originally by the expert group, the performance of each performed. Diverse examples of recirculating song began with the acknowledgement of the archival Aboriginal song in the Kimberly region original singer in the archival recording and including those by Sally Treloyn and Rona the person or people responsible for the song Charles, in central Australia by Myf Turpin today. Singing these songs in public enabled and Rachel Perkins and at many other places, a kind of feral recirculation, whereby anyone illustrate the potential of recordings in music with a smartphone could film and upload sustainability but also the underlying need videos of the singing to social media sites. for dedicated time and appropriate places While the democratisation of technology that to practice and perform.31 In lieu of regular enables this kind of dissemination is certainly opportunities to sing and limited access to not detrimental to the aim of recirculation, at space, we have sought to leverage digital the conclusion of this project we have resolved technology to support song recirculation and to publish online resources with context and practice. This initially involved developing additional resources to support the sharing of karaoke videos based on some of the archival Noongar song. and more recent recordings of Noongar songs. Poverty amongst Noongar means that CONCLUSION despite widespread smartphones, internet How can we humans connect with each other access is not a given. Additionally, the staged and Country in the future? Regional process of sharing the songs—mandated by the Indigenous song traditions are certainly a big song custodian group—meant that Bluetooth part of the answer to that question. Nourishing peer-to-peer sharing of these videos would be community capacity to sing and speak in
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 25 1. Jim Davidson, A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2010), p. 466. 2. Deborah Bird Rose, Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of Landscape and Wilderness (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996). 3. Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); David W. Orr, Earth in Mind (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994); Aaron Allen, ‘Prospects and Problems for Ecomusicology in Confronting a Crisis of Culture’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 64.2 (2011), 414–19. 4. Margaret Robertson, Pam Nichols, Pierre Horwitz, Keith Bradby, and David Mackintosh, ‘Environmental Narratives and the Need for Multiple Perspectives to Restore Degraded Landscapes in Australia’, Ecosystem Health, 6.2 (2000), 119–33; Jason Corburn, ‘Community Knowledge in Environmental Health Science: ▲ Fig. 4. Clint endangered Indigenous languages may even Co-producing Policy Expertise’, Environmental Bracknell delivering enhance our ability to cope with known and as Science and Policy, 10.2 (2007), 150–61; Determinants the 9th Hancock Lecture at the yet unforeseen challenges we face as a of Indigenous Peoples’ Health in Canada, ed. by Margo Academy’s 50th species.32 The esoteric and evanescent nature Greenwood, Sarah de Leeuw, Nicole Marie Lindsay, Symposium, Charlotte Reading (Toronto: Canadian Scholars of Aboriginal song makes this work Press, 2015). Brisbane, 2019. 33 IMAGE: T.J. THOMSON complicated. Trauma associated with 5. ‘Settlement Agreement’, South West Aboriginal imposed assimilation policies and resultant Land and Sea Council
26 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Prospects, ed. by Lenore Grenoble and Lindsay 22. See Marmion, Obata and Troy. Whaley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 23. Anna Haebich, Broken Circles (Perth: Fremantle 1998) pp. 163–91. Press, 2001). 16. Richard Grounds, ‘Indigenous Perspectives and 24. Jeff Todd Titon, ‘Music and Sustainability: An Language Habitats’, United Nations International Ecological Viewpoint’, The World of Music, 51.1 (2009), Expert Group Meeting for Indigenous Languages 119–37 (p.122). (New York, 19–21 January 2016).
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 27 The Humanities in Service of Empire
DIRK BALTZLY
INTRODUCTION of paideia. Plato, however, was regarded as We live at a time in which many both a great writer and a great philosopher. people, and importantly many politicians, Every student would thus have encountered doubt the practical utility of studying the Plato’s dialogues in the pantheon of literary subjects in the Humanities. I wish to place greats. But philosophy was not merely a this scepticism about the value of the subject matter in the ancient world: it was Humanities in a historical context. The also a social role. Nearly every philosopher in Roman Empire in late antiquity was, in fact, the world of late antiquity was an educated largely run by people trained in studies that person, but not every educated person at least resemble a subset of our Humanities occupied the distinctive social role of the disciplines: literary studies and philosophy. philosopher. We will conclude by contrasting Was this wisdom or madness? two students of philosophy in the service of In what follows, I will first briefly describe empire. On the one hand, we have Themistius the elite education available to the people (317–390 CE), whose long career involved who administered the late Roman Empire, service to no fewer than six emperors. He particularly in the Greek-speaking eastern part wore the tribon or distinctive cloak of the from 200 to 600 CE. This course of education, philosopher and his role in the stratosphere called paideia, was available to those who of imperial politics essentially involved the could afford it and offered a way up the social shrewd deployment of that distinctive social ladder for both pagans and Christians who identity. On the other hand, we have John were not born into wealthy and powerful Lydus (490–?565), who was an educated man families. Next I will consider the ways in who studied philosophy but who nonetheless which paideia both lubricated the extensive did not identify as a philosopher. He was, in mechanisms of Roman imperial power and our terms, ‘upper middle management’ and also, sometimes, kept its citizens from being I will consider the ways in which paideia crushed under that mechanism. Throughout prepared him for that role. this tour of ancient education I will pay particular attention to the place of philosophy THE CONTENT OF PAIDEIA in the curriculum. The highly educated person in the eastern The bulk of the studies that went under half of the late Roman Empire could write the name of paideia involved rhetoric and and speak in ways that could scarcely be composition. As a result, the study of the texts grasped by the ordinary person in the street. ▲ Detail, fig. 2, p. 33. of the great writers formed a significant part His Greek would be ‘pure’—like that of the
28 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 1. Plato’s Academy, Roman mosaic of the 1st century BCE from Pompeii, Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Naples. IMAGE: UNIVERSAL PUBLIC DOMAIN DEDICATION, CC0 1.0
great Attic writers, Plato and Demosthenes. The journey to the ideal of the educated He could produce quotations from poets man began with the acquisition of basic and readily adapt a line from Homer to any literacy. Even the rudiments of literacy were situation in a creative and witty manner. His an advantage that few enjoyed. Estimates of learned and disciplined use of language was the literacy rate for the period range from mirrored in self-controlled and measured one-tenth to perhaps one-third who could physical movements. His refined aesthetic read or write the most basic of documents.2 sensibilities were continuous with his flawless In the second phase of education, the student social decorum. would go to the grammarian in order to This, at least, was the idealised goal and its gain a thorough grounding in the grammar, realisation could allegedly be seen by those vocabulary and style of a narrow range of with the requisite education. Thus Diomedes’ acknowledged ‘great authors’. The list of great Art of Grammar advises that: authors was remarkably consistent across schools and intensely conservative: Homer, We are recognised to be as much Demosthenes and Plato for students learning superior to the uneducated, who by the Greek; Virgil, Horace and Terence for students formlessness of their rusticity and the of Latin. Because ancient written texts did not disorder of their untrained speech wound clearly separate words, simply deciphering the and even maim the purity of language text and being able to recite it aloud was no guided by strict rule, and obscure the small achievement. ‘Reading’ meant ‘reading brilliance of its elegance, which is the aloud’ so techniques of memorisation were fruit of art, as they themselves seem a significant component of grammatical superior to beasts.1
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 29 education. The final part of the grammarian’s fragments of evidence that emerge from points course—judgement—does not seem to have further distant from where the court was been about literary or aesthetic judgement, located at any given time, the picture changes. but rather about the ethical appraisal of The very tips of the tentacles of imperial power characters and the drawing out of morals from would have been provincial governors. If we the poetic or prose works under consideration. focus on the way in which Roman citizens Finally, the student would be further educated in the provinces experienced the power of by a teacher of rhetoric in the composition the empire, it looks rather different from the and delivery of speeches. Included among impression we might get from narratives of the more advanced rhetorical exercises were imperial power centred on the court. argumentative speeches involving confirming The governors of the 104 provinces of the or refuting a position. But the positions that empire served relatively short terms, so they were thus debated were strikingly removed often did not have long to solidify their power from any practical reality. They might involve base. Moreover, the level of coercive force taking issue with Demosthenes’ praise of available to them was limited by the fact that Philip of Macedon hundreds of years after the armies of the empire were an independent the fact. So while this education cultivated command and often stationed on the frontiers. the skill of speaking before an audience—a Finally, a governor had a staff orofficium made genuinely useful asset in the context of the late up largely of locals. Imperial edicts that ran empire—the material through which that skill contrary to local tradition or sentiment or that was honed bore no connection whatsoever to would diminish the power of members of the the reality of the moment. With this striking officium were often quietly disregarded. The fact in mind, we turn now to the professional recalcitrance of provincial administrations uses of paideia. can be glimpsed in the manner in which the Athenian school of philosophy under Proclus PAIDEIA—POLITICAL LUBRICANT (d. 485 CE) seemed to be largely immune Peter Brown’s seminal book, Power and to prohibitions on pagan practices such as Persuasion, examined the role of paideia sacrifice. It simplywould not do for one of the in power relations in the eastern part of educational rain-makers in a relative backwater the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth like Athens to have his ability to attract centuries. Before turning to the question of students hampered by imperial interference. how paideia mediated those power relations, So how did imperial governors, who were in we should first consider just how complex reality not all that powerful, get anything at all the question of power was. The power of the done? In a word, they made friends with the emperor was, of course, immense and largely local notables. Or, more accurately, they entered unobstructed by any legal niceties. Yet, as into the economy of favours exchanged by Brown points out, the reach of that power was those who have friends in common, for in most limited by distance: cases both the governor and the local notables were ‘friends of the Muses’. That is to say, they Terrifyingly active and peremptory too were the beneficiaries of the elite education at the centre, the imperial system of in paideia. As fellow initiates to the literary government found itself becalmed ‘cult of the Muses’, they felt free to ask and to on a Sargasso Sea once it reached receive favours from one another.4 In some the provinces.3 cases, the exchange of these favours occurred The historians of the period, such as via the mutual performance for one another of Ammianus Marcellinus, focus their narratives the skills and sensibilities of the educated man. on the emperor and the court. So from our In the late 330s the proconsul for the region most prominent primary sources, we get a that included Athens arrested some students picture of the place where governmental and professors for public riot. The students of power was at its zenith. But if we attend to the competing teachers of rhetoric often fought
30 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 in the streets, like members of rival gangs, speak freely: philosophers. While most of those and this conduct was as much a part of the who had the training in rhetoric that formed culture of Athens as student pranks in one of the core of paideia would also have had a America’s college towns.5 The gifted rhetorician reasonable familiarity with some philosophical Prohaeresis gave the students’ defence texts, it was not merely reading Plato or speech in a showpiece of public declamation. Aristotle that made someone a philosopher The proconsul was able to ‘give way’ before the in the ancient world. Being a philosopher was flood of his eloquence, applauding Prohaeresis a recognised social role, with expectations ‘like a school boy’. Far from showing weakness, about dress, comportment and conduct. the proconsul’s response was exactly what A philosopher was expected to stand apart an educated and cultured man should do. from society—to renounce the quest for wealth, In demonstrating his own paideia in his power, and public office. The only paid public response, he booked reciprocal favours for role suitable for the genuine philosopher was the future—not only from the teachers, the in one of the very few publicly funded chairs students and their parents, but from all the in the subject. This role outside the so-called educated notables of Athens who witnessed his real world endowed the philosopher with the display of real or feigned admiration. Friends of privilege of parrhêsia or ‘frank speech’. It was the Muses are bound to look after one another. permissible for a philosopher to speak truth to power in much blunter terms than others PAIDEIA, PHILOSOPHY AND could. But this permission was contingent IMMUNITY on the philosopher’s willingness to exercise While in many instances the empire’s it even when it took courage, and to respond officials were relatively powerless away from appropriately when the unwritten rule to the epicentre of court, in other instances permit frank speech from philosophers inhabitants were subject to arbitrary and was not, in fact, honoured. The philosopher potentially brutal authority. So while paideia Hierocles came into conflict with Christian often functioned as a political lubricant, it also authorities in Constantinople and was flogged served as a sometimes-successful prophylactic and exiled for some offence that our source, against power largely unconstrained by law. It Damascius, does not relate. Hierocles’ response was thought to be contrary to the decorum of illustrates the attitude expected of the the educated man that he should have another possessor of distinctly philosophical paideia in educated man flogged or executed, even if it late antiquity: was in his power to do so.6 Because the law did As he flowed with blood, he gathered little to curb the anger of government officials some into the hollow of his hand and or to provide remedy for those upon whom it sprinkled it on the judge exclaiming: was visited, those who were ‘cultured’ regarded ‘There Cyclops, drink the wine now that such lapses as they did lapses into incorrect you have devoured the human flesh.’8 grammar: as poor form. One of the most dangerous things for The allusion to Homer’s Odyssey (ix. 347) anyone to do in the legal context of the late through which Hierocles rebukes his judge Roman Empire was to speak truth too plainly is precisely the kind of learned remark that to power. The language of educated men was a cultured man should be able to make. The indirect and allusive, as noted above. Like fact that he makes it immediately after a the contemporary language of management flogging demonstrates Hierocles’ philosophical bemoaned by Don Watson, it seems largely indifference to his body. We need not believe vacuous.7 Yet its very vacuity provided the that the anecdote is true in order to believe empty channels within complex networks of that this is how philosophers were expected patronage through which power flowed. to conduct themselves. There was, however, one clearly identifiable group who had an exemption and were able to
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 31 other speakers had already stressed. Moreover, PHILOSOPHY AND PAIDEIA AT WORK as a philosopher, he was bound to tell the truth. Thus far I have considered the way in which His (overwhelmingly positive!) assessment a reputation for paideia or for philosophy of Constantius’s character, however, was worked in the economy of power and provided in ways that revealed to the emperor authority in the late Roman Empire. But what the potential that Themistius had as an about the knowledge or skills imparted by the adornment for his court, for Themistius’s elite education? Did they actually equip people speech connected Constantius’s virtues to to govern? the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Certainly the Romans thought that it did. From the point of view of a Christian emperor If paideia also functioned for them as a marker whose power was in large measure reliant on of class that admitted one to the network of a wealthy, learned and powerful nobility who the learned, the learned themselves thought were still pagan, an attachment to a pagan that it was the reality—not the reputation— philosopher who could connect the legitimacy that mattered. Thus an edict issued in 357 by of his rule to such foundational figures in the the co-rulers Constantius and Julian, prior to tradition of paideia was attractive.10 In due Julian’s revolt, requires that even copyists and course, Constantius elevated Themistius to fiscal clerks should excel in ‘the liberal arts’. the rank of Senator. By this time Themistius Advancement was promised to those who was an established teacher of philosophy in were ‘so polished in the use of letters that Constantinople and the Emperor’s favour thus words proceed from him without the offense created a tension between the otherworldliness of imperfections.’9 thought to be requisite in a philosopher and Let us now consider the reality, not merely the reality of wealth and power resulting the reputation, of the value of literary studies from his privileged position. In his writings, and philosophy for the task of governing the Themistius stressed the need for philosophers late Roman Empire. We can consider this to communicate with a wide segment of the question in relation to the careers of two public for their moral edification, and as a imperial officials: Themistius (317–c. 390) and consequence of the need to connect to a wide John Lydus (490–c. 565). audience, a philosopher should avail himself Of these two, it was Themistius who of the resources of rhetoric. Constantius’s letter explicitly identified as a philosopher and did to the Senate, promoting Themistius to their so to the point of wearing the philosopher’s rank, explains this appointment in terms of cloak, the tribonion, to state dinners—a fashion the public benefit of philosophy in general statement roughly parallel to a trade union and the subject as it was taught by Themistius leader who has been made a peer continuing to in particular. wear overalls to the House of Lords. His initial While the only philosophical works by encounter with the first of the emperors he Themistius that have been preserved are served, Constantius II, came in 347 when he introductory texts on Aristotle, we may delivered an oration on the ‘love of humanity’ nonetheless infer from his orations and in praise of Constantius during the emperor’s letters something of his political philosophy visit to Ancyra. Exactly how the young and, by virtue of the citations that he uses Themistius came to have the opportunity in expressing it, the relation of that political to give a speech in front of the emperor and philosophy to his understanding of Plato’s his court is unclear, but he made the most of Republic.11 His understanding of Plato’s thesis the opportunity in ways that deployed the that philosophers should be rulers was symbolic connotations of the philosophical nuanced. The philosopher should in fact be identity. He boldly asserted that he had the an advisor to the ruler and the ruler becomes insight to praise Constantius on the basis of philosophical to the extent that he heeds the his true character—unlike the superficial praises advice of his philosopher counsellors (Orations of his noble descent and accomplishments that 8.107c–d). Nonetheless, the ruler or emperor is
32 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 superior to philosophy since he has a power, second only to the divine, to benefit human beings. Moreover, the king is superior even to the law, being a kind of living law (nomos empsychos) himself, and an emanation of God’s care for humankind (Orations, 5.64b). In his lengthy political career, Themistius served six different emperors. His service to the empire may be distilled into two important functions: that of publicist and advisor. He wrote speeches explaining and justifying a range of different imperial policies. Thus Themistius’s Third Oration, delivered in Rome, paves the way for the expansion of the senate of Constantinople by allaying ▲ Fig 2. The mosaic fears that the members of the Roman senate of Emperor Justinian 12 might be diminished in status. It also seems and his retinue, probable that he was not merely the passive Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy conduit through which these decisions were IMAGE: FLICKR, CC announced, but played a role in helping the BY-SA 2.0 various emperors decide what policies could ◄ plausibly be sold to the public. Fig 3. Basilica Cistern constructed There are several inconsistencies between by the Emperor Themistius’s characterisation of persons, Justinian in the 6th century, Istanbul issues and events in speeches delivered in the IMAGE: ADRIAN service of different emperors. This was not FARWELL, CC 3.0, UNPORTED LICENSE. merely Themistius blowing with the prevailing winds. Rather, his inconsistencies too can be seen to have a political role grounded in his philosophical views. None of the emperors whom Themistius served enjoyed a smooth transfer of power. As a consequence, each new regime had to establish itself by justifying the discontinuity with the previous regime. To that end subtle or not-so-subtle denunciations of alleged failures of the previous regime served a useful function.13 While it is possible to dismiss this simply as self-serving expediency on Themistius’s part, it nonetheless seems to be Alaşehir in Turkey). When he moved to consistent with his political philosophy, which Constantinople he had high hopes of securing stresses the overwhelming importance of the a position in the civil service by virtue of the ruler as the living law and a divine emanation paideia that his expensive education and innate of the gods’ love of humanity. talent had secured for him. While he waited for By contrast with Themistius, who rubbed an opening, he studied with the philosopher shoulders with a series of emperors, John Agapias who was, in turn, a pupil of the Lydus toiled in the engine room of the Roman famous Athenian Platonist, Proclus (d. 485). empire during the reign of Justinian I, who Thus, like Themistius, John Lydus rounded ruled 527–565 CE (fig. 2). Lydus excelled in his out his studies in rhetoric by training with a early studies in grammar and rhetoric in the philosopher. Unlike Themistius, John did not Lydian city of Philadelphia (contemporary adopt the full social identity of the philosopher.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 33 Thanks to the patronage of a fellow Lydian, hate his job. He retired in 552 at the highest Zoticus, John Lydus gained a position on rank possible within the legal department, the staff of the Praetorian Prefecture. This with the title of spectabilis or ‘respected’— was an important government office that roughly analogous to a knighthood. John’s had responsibility for both the judicial and bitterness in the Magistracies is thus not financial affairs of the empire. John belonged merely personal—he’s hardly been financially to the judicial side, where paideia was greatly ruined, after all—but rather is a bitterness valued in new employees. It was also a very born of the fact that an educated man like him lucrative department to work in. Advancement derives no particular preferment in John the was regularised and many of the services Cappadocian’s department simply by virtue of provided by the department involved fees paid the superiority that paideia bestows upon him. directly to officials in the Prefecture. Those John’s complaints throughout the Magistracies in advanced positions then shared these fees thus allow us to draw some lessons about how with their subordinates in ways dictated by the his education fitted him for service to the state. customs of the department. What appears to One thing that immediately leaps out from modern sensibilities to be rampant bribery and the pages of Magistracies is the complexity of corruption was simply the manner in which levels, titles, responsibilities, and customs of the imperial government operated. For the first the civil service. (The Byzantine bureaucracy 20 years of his career, John Lydus prospered was truly byzantine!) The capacity for and climbed the rungs as rapidly as the memorisation developed through the elite complex customs of the department permitted. education undoubtedly paid dividends for He also attracted the attention of the emperor John Lydus in this regard. Throughout the Justinian for his literary accomplishments and Magistracies, John heaps scorn on outsiders he was handsomely rewarded for the tactful and beginners who mispronounce technical history he wrote for Justinian of the emperor’s terms or mistake the functions of different inconclusive war against the Persians. offices. The service was also extremely hierarchical. Ignorant or deliberate affronts to the established pecking order are the subject What appears to modern sensibilities of withering criticism on John’s part. To keep to be rampant bribery and corruption all the subtle distinctions and levels in mind must have been a daunting task, but it is one was simply the manner in which the that John’s training in Platonic philosophy imperial government operated. prepared him for. We may reasonably assume that the form of Platonism that John learnt from Agapias was the system of Agapias’ own John Lydus’s luck, however, did not hold teacher, Proclus. The vast metaphysical edifice indefinitely. In 531 Justinian appointed John of Proclean Platonism comprises distinct the Cappadocian to head the Prefecture. but related sets of three or triads, extending The new head came from the finance side from the inexpressibly simple and single of the department, whose culture valued the divine source of all things, through ranks of accomplishments of paideia far more lightly subordinate gods (or intelligible causes) down than the legal branch did. His reorganisation to the dregs of reality in the world of things of the Prefecture denied Lydus and his we can see and touch. A Christianised version colleagues many of the honours and fees they of this Proclean edifice was produced in the had previously enjoyed. John Lydus’s book, late fifth or early sixth century and (falsely) The Magistracies of the Roman State, is both attributed to Dionysius the Aeropagite—the our best description of the detailed workings Athenian whom the Apostle Paul converted of the civil service in the age of Justinian and (Acts 17). Two of Pseudo-Dionysius’s works are also contains his bitter, carping criticism of the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical the reformer and the reforms that led him to Hierarchy. They provide a kind of road map of
34 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 angels, archangels and so on whose relations Late antique paideia has been condemned as are mirrored in the hierarchies of the church. both narrow in its scope,15 superficial,16 and Proclean Platonism, with its multiple levels fragmentary.17 As a training ground for writers, of divinity, thus provides a useful schema for paideia, in Robert A. Kaster’s words, ‘choked those whose success depends upon their ability the spirit of literature with its rules, then to navigate complex hierarchical organisations. hid the body under a rigid formalism’.18 As a Christopher Kelly’s study of the training ground for those who were to run an bureaucracy of the late Roman empire notes empire, it tended to focus attention on specific the tension between personal networks of problems, whilst ignoring the broader context patronage (like the fellow Lydian through in which they occurred.19 Because of paideia’s whom John secured his first position) and emphasis on elaborate, variegated and allusive the collective good of whole departments.14 composition styles, it led people to write laws Like separate divisions within a modern that were neither simple nor clearly stated.20 corporation, imperial departments competed with one another for business opportunities, prestige, and the attention of the chief A young civil servant raised and executive officer. Someone in John Lydus’s educated in Dalmatia (in the Balkans) position thus had to balance looking out for number one with looking out for the whole could easily find cultural common legal department in their ongoing struggle with ground with an official in his sixties the finance department. Once again, the spirit—if not the detail—of from Egypt through paideia Proclean philosophy would have placed this professional tension in wider, cosmic context. Some of this criticism is surely fair. But Proclus’s theoretical elaborations of relations the problems to which their educational and between different levels in his metaphysical cultural systems provided (admittedly partial) system proceeds through the reconciliation of solutions were not the same as ours. The opposites. Compared to the timeless eternality conservatism of paideia provided a common of the Platonic Forms, all souls count as language to the cultural elites that was shared ‘things that have come to be’. But compared not only across the vast distances involved in to the truly transient parade of visible and the empire, but also across its long duration. tangible material things, every soul counts A young civil servant raised and educated in as ungenerated. In the most general terms, Dalmatia (in the Balkans) could easily find the relation between any two distinct levels cultural common ground with an official in of Proclus’s metaphysical hierarchy that are his sixties from Egypt through paideia, while opposed (as the eternal and the transient are) ordinary people from those regions would is mediated by a level in which, somehow, share very little in common. Like Hellenism, opposites are reconciled (as the soul is both Romanisation often did not go deep and generated and ungenerated). For the purpose empire was in many ways a patchwork of of reconciling opposites through subtle cultures stitched together by the threads of a distinctions, the philosophy that John Lydus shared military culture and a common elite learned was an apt training ground for the literary–philosophical culture. Nor is it obvious challenges of the civil service. that clearly written laws that could be applied uniformly would have been a benefit for such WHOSE HUMANISTIC STUDIES? a disparate empire. The stylistically rococo WHOSE WORKPLACE? law codes afforded scope for law to be adapted The Romans clearly thought that paideia to local circumstances. Nor is it obvious that and philosophy provided good training for governance would have benefited much from service to the empire. A number of modern authorities trying to find a broader context historians suppose that they were very wrong. rather than dealing with the immediate
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 35 DIRK BALTZLY is Professor and Head of Philosophy & Gender Studies in the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania. His area of specialisation is ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, though he also does work in contemporary virtue ethics. Dirk completed his PhD in Philosophy at Ohio State University in 1992. Since then he has worked at King’s College, London (1992–94) and Monash University (1994–2013). He has been a visiting fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London (2000) and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2010–11). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (2008) in both the Philosophy and Classics sections.
▲ Fig 4. Students in resolution of specific problems considered 1. Diomedes, Ars Grammatica, in Grammatici Latini, auditorium largely in isolation. In many cases, the sought- ed. by H. Keil (Leipzig: 1857–80), ı, 299.19–23. Cited IMAGE: MIKAEL and translated in Robert Browning, ‘Education KRISTENSON, after context would have required a lifetime in the Roman Empire’, in The Cambridge Ancient UNSPLASH of study—a luxury afforded to contemporary History, Volume 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and historians, but denied to short-term provincial Successors, AD 425–600, ed. by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Michael Whitby (Cambridge: governors at the time. Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 858. With the benefit of hindsight, we can 2. Edward Watts, ‘Education: Speaking, Thinking, imagine forms of education that could Socializing’, in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, have been better for those who ruled and ed. by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 641, n. 11. administered the late Roman Empire. But 3. Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: with the benefit of hindsight, historians in Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of the future will similarly be able to imagine Wisconsin Press, 1992), p. 12. forms of education that would have been 4. Brown, p. 40. better for the globalised nation-states of the 5. Edward Jay Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, The Transformation of late twentieth and early twenty-first century. the Classical Heritage 41 (Berkeley: University of Perhaps they will conclude that our needs California Press, 2006). would have been better served by the inclusion 6. Compare Libanius, Epistles 994.2. of more education in the humanities within 7. Don Watson, Death Sentence: The Decay of Public the current curriculum, where the greatest Language (Sydney: Penguin Random House Australia, 2011). emphasis is on STEM and business studies. 8. Polymnia Athanassiadi, Damascius: The Philosophical The eastern half of the Roman Empire History—Text with Translation and Notes (Athens: endured for over 1,000 years and throughout Apamea Cultural Association, 1999), Fragment 45. this millennium its elite education remained 9. Theodosian Code, 14.1.1; quoted in Glanville Downey, ‘Education in the Christian Roman Empire: heavily weighted toward what we would now Christian and Pagan Theories under Constantine call the humanities. Will we do better? Only and His Successors’, Speculum 32.1 (1957), 60–61. time will tell. ¶ 10. Peter Heather and David Moncur, Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century—Select Orations of Themistius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001). 11. Michael Schramm, ‘Platonic Ethics and Politics in Themistius and Julian’, in Plato in the Third Sophistic, ed. by R. Fowler (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 131–43. 12. Heather and Moncur, p. 123. 13. Heather and Moncur, pp. 25–27
36 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 14. Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 103. 15. Downey, in the article cited above, observes that, given their political context, it would have been very practical for the Romans to know something of the Persians with whom they were so often at war. 16. Even though he was sympathetic to the ideal at which paideia aimed, Marrou had to concede that the traditional education ‘substituted for real knowledge a frivolous, superficial smattering of knowledge that was no more than a caricature of any genuine humanism.’ See Henri-Irénée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (New York: The New American Library, 1964), p. 300. 17. H.I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1958), p. 25. 18. Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antitquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 12. 19. Kaster, p. 13. 20. Ramsay MacMullen, ‘Roman Bureaucratese’, Traditio, 18 (1962), 364–72.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 37 MULTIPLE MODERNITIES An Art History of ‘The Asian Modern’
JOHN CLARK
The habitual definition of modernity experience of artists. The horror of war in Euramerican art was one of a stylistic destruction in Asia or the drip-feed trauma transcendence: modern and—going further of broken or irrelevant art education and and self-reflexively—modernist art was a privileging systems, such as one finds stylistic discourse whose questions and from Japan to Thailand in ways yet to be solutions went beyond the purposes of any examined in any depth, are a far more given or inherited pre-modern position. important set of questions for art objects and Modernity continually re-invented the ‘new’, their makers than all the most fluent and going beyond the teleology of the artistic elegant transmissions of Duchamp, naming and intellectual environment where its goals procedures, or display of yet-to-be finished first developed. Modernity was a discourse works. But just as significant might be the of antecedence and formal innovation which end of a privileged public (the audience of assumed the sovereignty of the discourse salons, art societies, or closely tied avant garde itself and of the discourse maker. But, looking groups), to be replaced by the numerically at many Asian contexts, these sorts of ends- much larger concatenations in search of oriented compulsions have been avoided broad representativeness or spectacles. because of different social contexts where These audiences can now include a complete the burden of inventing the new—the key horizontal cohort rather than, as in the teleological necessity of the Euramerican past, a vertically stratified class or interest- modern—does not apply. They are driven by fractionated series of mini-publics. many kinds of purposive invention other The replacement of a reciprocating than those of artistic style, such as their audience, able for itself to identify art works ability to reformulate the customary, to in a complex aesthetic discourse partially alienate elite mannerisms in favour of a constituted by them, itself finds a replacement different regime of images in the counter- in a spectacle-seeking mass and the propaganda effects of the avant garde, or even corresponding rise of small one-off contract to go into a various types of inner emigration groups. These can sometimes function seen under the oppressions of many regimes somewhat like an old-fashioned avant garde or in war-time situations. group linked by a manifesto, which looks at For art, a special situation exists by the art works as diagrams for an idea or a lifestyle 1990s with an end to the privileged material or its critique (figs 1 and 2), or the direct, art object and of the art object constituted sometimes brutally materialist embodiment of ▲ Detail, fig. 8, 1 p. 43. by this void as the result of the individual life values.
38 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 1. (upper left) Gu Dexin Plastic Pieces–287, 1983–85, burned plastic. IMAGE: JOHN CLARK
◄ Fig 2. (upper right) Gu Dexin 1998.11.07 installation at The Corruptionists, 1998, Beijing, pig brains. IMAGE: JOHN CLARK
◄ Fig 3. (lower left) Ai Weiwei Boomerang, 2006, Queensland Art Gallery. IMAGE: NATASHA HARTH APT V 2006, REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
◄ Fig 4. (lower right) Ai Weiwei, Chandelier with restored Han Dynasty lamps from the emperor, 2015, NGV International. This broadening at the top of the art world to those taking part in these circuits in a way IMAGE: NGV INTERNATIONAL, but lack of integrated specialisation at the which was ideologically or materially ruled REPRODUCED WITH bottom, with coteries still separated, almost out under colonialism, or under cold war PERMISSION. in headless detachment from the mass, has ideological clashes. Of course, the modality inevitably privileged the function of the for domination and forced transfer between interpreter/selector who stands as the sole different kinds of modernity may have changed figure able to integrate value systems with the but new forces and structures of influence works chosen for exhibition, usually by the and domination have entered, particularly in interpreter/selectors themselves. the rise of global exhibitions which almost In some ways whose mutual impact is by directly parallels the rise of global circuits of no means clear, the change in the function art production and sale (figs 3 and 4). of the curator—often called ‘independent’ Furthermore the burgeoning perception but in fact highly dependent on a close that there were other kinds of modernity and network of old museums, new biennial and modernism to be found across world art apart artists’ not-for-profit exhibition spaces—has from the Euramerican ones, may have skewed occurred together with changes in the units the way in which those kinds of modernity which constitute international society.2 These might be understood and rather narrowed units have increased in the range of national, them into regional groupings such as ‘Modern international, and transnational fields in Latin American Art’, ‘Modern African Art’, which they operate. Again the permeability and here, ‘Modern Asian Art’. In other words, of national boundaries due to the end of the over-concrete condensation of these explicit colonialism, the end of the cold war, different worlds of modernity in art due to the the interpenetration of trade, and the motility need to resist and perhaps convert habitual of air transport, have provided the contingent Euramerican interpretive discourses, may have context for art works, artists, and art mediators denuded understanding of the several kinds of to come into contact. But it has also provided modernity which are found within any one of a context where the differential structures of these broader collective categories. the modern, its multiplicities, can be apparent
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 39 ► Fig 5. Tokyo- Such over-concretisation may also have Berlin / Berlin-Tokyo, led interpretation away from understanding 2006, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. the particularity of issues and conceptual IMAGE: MORI ART languages across them. I am thinking how it MUSEUM would appear to have been only in the last ten or so years that the conceptualisation of time across different art discourses seems to have been taken up by art historians, despite many issues having already been foreshadowed in the 1930s and 1940s.3 Presumably one of the motors which drives the multiplicity of artistic traditions, which were significantly modernities is the kinds of time which they transformed by means of painting translations encapsulate, and if we are to step away from over the centuries, [and] is lost into avant- the Euramerican ideology, then we would gardes of colonial aftertaste’.5 expect the linearity and structuring of its The inheritance from the customary or temporal successions also to change. This pre-Modern history (often called ‘tradition’) may well, however, not be an intellectual shows as an issue of binary set ups—East/ issue as much as one of the conservatism West; Germany/Japan; Paris/Tokyo, Berlin/ of habitual art historical methodology, the Tokyo (fig. 5)—an interpretation which allows cultural narrowness of the range of its chosen for imperfect diffusion models based on styles art works, and probably indeed the restricted which never quite perfectly transfer to the site social training of some of its art historians. of reception. This can be seen in exhibitions like Asian Realism,6 and Asian Cubism,7 where suppressed hybrids are emplaced in stylistic genealogies which always originally ‘belonged’ If art history is to abandon to Europe. All the old tricks of privileging exceptionalism the question arises, Euramerican origination make us forget, as one must never cease to remind the audience, whose exceptionalism? to look for what is hidden beneath the overlaps. That is the presence of an incommensurable in-between, rather like a Lacanian vel.8 Much of that conservatism is also evident All of this un-seeing or non-seeing is still in what is considered as prior to modernity tightly institutionalised in the disciplines of and how it is linked through to the present, art history. including the notion of contemporary as some There are also a few additions to this litany higher plane of the modern. In art-historical of art historical tropes which can be made fact much that precedes the modern already from historiography. Let me just re-insert conditions how we construct it. Recent two issues I have mentioned elsewhere.9 If reconstructions of the actual interactions art history is to abandon exceptionalism the between art discourses in the past before question arises, whose exceptionalism? Many modernity, say in Mongol China, force the Asian art cultures have been on the oppressive art historian to interpret cultural flows and receiving end of Euramerican art historical binary relations between art discourses and understanding quite simply by insisting cultural domains as unstable and thus to that their models and art historical realities question the readability of the circulation of are different from Euramerica, and that objects and individuals and their identity.4 If Euramerican universalism is the exception. the Modern is multiple so are its pre-histories Denying exceptionalism per se is to ignore and post-histories. What seems to be ignored, cases where accepting it may be required perhaps lost, in the transnational is what because of local cultural authority. Musillo describes as ‘the local knowledge of
40 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Some anthropologists have even suggested from the earliest Asian modernities. Rirkrit in comparativism is no longer a defining conversation displays a smoothness without paradigm and should be replaced by ‘styles social friction, even if he often mentions hard of comparison’,10 due to a shift prompted by work and preparation for many of his staged a postcolonial requirement to engage the cooking events, as well as the need to maintain specificity of emergent cultural landscapes. So some variation on the comedic to distance the notion of multiple modernities, because himself from over-involvement with art works it is inevitably comparative may have to and their projection in exchange with the defer a kind of sovereignty to the emergent audience. Indeed he says he wants to stay away contexts from which these modernities arose. from art but takes as his analogy a reversal The paradigms can be established later for of Duchamp, the re-enlivening or re-binding comparative use at a secondary level. to the attracting halo of the ready-made—he wants to bring ‘art’ back into the ‘everyday’, its ARTISTS’ NOTIONS OF OPENNESS objects, its acts. AND RECIPROCAL RELATIONS His amateur affections are pottery and Before returning in conclusion to the issue fly-fishing: the one the pursuit of Japanese of circulation it might help to look at a tea masters, the latter of colonial aristocrats, remarkably frank and useful interview with a neither of which he mentions. But both involve contemporary artist which identifies, if also an aesthetic of non-involvement or detachment presents the problems of, multiplicity. I refer to and the tracing of marks on a pottery or watery the recent 2019 conversation between Rirkrit surface. His demeanour looks and sounds Thiravanija and Apinan Poshyananda which is like the transcendence through the everyday easily available online for public reference.11 one may, in a different field, associate with Rirkrit and Apinan met in 1988 when Apinan a recital pianist, say Alfred Brendel. But the was doing his doctoral research at Cornell and everyday egalitarianism he proposes and Rirkrit worked as an assistant in the Robert the reciprocality of exchange during food Longo studio. In the age of global motility, of ceremonies—the artist prepares and offers various forms of modernity emerging between food, the audience offers acceptance of the different cultural contexts, this small fact tells relation—contains no acknowledgement of us that modern Asian artists are very mobile, privilege. One can also think he might mistake may transcend their cultures of origin via the category of openness for the category extensive foreign travel and education, and of freedom and liberation, both of which may have friendships with other people from elsewhere have been ruthlessly exploited in their own art world of some longevity. Within their own interest by the rich and powerful. the modal space of modernity there is indeed Certainly his spoken discourse lacks a sense of for each artistic life a roughly 50 year history tragedy known or personally experienced, that for each contemporaneity. This also sets is of sacrifices made in the cause or resistance contemporaneity within a dependence on long against the status quo. He habitually deals term relationships mediated by foreign sites. with the everyday, but this is an openness now In art cultures establishing a notion of the normalised not the product of contestation modern in Asia, an ideational precursor which and pain. As a survival strategy in a bitter both reflects and is the occasion for modernity world Rirkrit’s non-attachment may work itself, the feature is present since the mid- as a psychological position for those able to nineteenth century. It indicates that the later distance themselves from attachment, but speed, cheapness, and relative frequency of most people don’t live in that world, do they? foreign travel (with, in Rirkrit’s case, triple But perhaps, more positively, Rirkrit points domicile in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai, to a modernity of ease—rajalila-asana—an as well as epistolary contact via physical post, unabsorbed and unattached effortlessness telegraph and recently internet) shows only found within some types of Asian modernity, a speeding-up of a process which was there (fig. 6) as much as the aesthetic of resistance
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 41 ► Fig 6. (left) Rirkrit Thiravanija, at Hirshhorn exhibition, Who's afraid of Red Yellow and Green?, 2019. IMAGE: SUPPLIED BY THE AUTHOR.
► Fig 7. (right) Vasan Sitthikhet, Buddha of Bangkok, 200 x 400 cms, 1992, [after Bloody May] as shown at APT I, 1993, Queensland Art Gallery. IMAGE: REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE ARTIST.
and expressionist excess also found in the work art which takes place in Kassel every five years) of Rirkrit’s compatriot, Vasan Sitthikhet (fig. 7). and certainly of the Venice Biennale from about 2003, the comparators have still been CIRCULATION AND MULTIPLE Euramerican, or the educational experiences MODERNITIES of Asian artists overseas, not, or only rarely, Turning finally to the problems of circulation, between Asian art cultures themselves. Indeed these involve inter-state and, within art the major exhibitions of Huang Yongping in cultures, inter-sectorial circulation, bilateral Paris and Cai Guo-Qiang in New York and or unilateral display between states, and Xu Bing in Taipei (fig. 8) are the first major curatorial selecting in and selecting out. All positioning of ‘Modern Masters’ between of these procedures are the domain of taste different Asian and Euramerican sites. and taste coteries, so appraisal is not a neutral Yet from around the late 1980s through assessment against some presumed gold into the early 1990s the modality of display standard of quality as much as a selectorial or between state or city actors, whether bilateral political choice. If indeed we allow that curators as in Paris-Tokyo or Tokyo-Berlin, has masked often think they know the gold standard they the conditions of multilateral display and the can deduce, experience, or enact between works fact that the flow of art works and appraisals is one not initially found by their variegated was mostly uni-directional. It is only from audiences. It seems that Asian modernities are the exhibitions in Fukuoka and Brisbane in based in one art culture first and then in links the early 1990s that the material presence or commonalities discovered for other cultures. of an Asian Modernity became evident in This is more the case the nearer we get to the international flows. But by that time, and 2000s when there are a plethora of museums despite the still frequent use of the term of contemporary art and art biennials or ‘independent curator’ the selection of art works triennials throughout Asia where these works for inclusion was implicitly institutional if can be brought into comparison. However, I now embodied in the multi-site virtual circuit would guess up until the most recent editions of Biennials in Asia. Linked by the flow of of documenta (an exhibition of contemporary works, artists, and art curators this circuit itself
42 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 8. Xu Bing Five Series of Repetitions— Field, 1987, woodblock print on paper 54.5 x 68.7 cms, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts retrospective, 2014. IMAGE: TAIPEI MUSEUM OF FINE ART
constituted a multivariant institution but one Art works, their makers, and their crossing multiple sites and state boundaries. distributors move around circuits where they Such multivalence eviscerated the local as the seem to gain value as a condition of moving. kernel or art production and conceptualisation. They take stored value as capital with them on Without a transnational presence, in reverse, such circuits since they appear to present the art could neither become fully national cultural capital of where they come from, but nor inter-national. The transnational was also a speculatory capital is generated because supposed to define practice everywhere. This of where they may be presumed to go, both situation placed inescapable pressure on the further in the circuit and thereby further in notion of an Asian modernity despite its clear added value. Switching takes place between the interpretive value since the 1930s. Modernity circulation of art and the producer as cultural was present only as either distributed or as capital and circulation of art and the artist as concentrated cores, and the core was shut off an occupier of a market site of opportunity from its branches of distribution. and for producing work. Given the investment in art educational and distributional systems, ◄ Fig 9. Jakarta art the careers of artists, the speculatory value of patrons and their art works as commodities and the decorated shoes, at an exhibition display of their consumers (fig. 9), we can in December, 2010. IMAGE: JOHN CLARK expect that Asian modernities are accompanied by rather specific structures which are not found in Euramerica or are only tangentially analogue to the Euramerican ones. Unfortunately these Asian circuits of circulation have yet to be studied in any depth
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 43 ► Fig 10. (upper left) Qin Warriors from Shanxi History Museum as exhibited at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, September. 2019. IMAGE: NUMTHONG SAETANG, REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
► Fig 11. (upper right) Cai Guo- Qiang Murmuration at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, September 2019. IMAGE: NUMTHONG SAETANG, REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
► Fig 12. (lower left) Womanifesto Workshop 2001. Courtesy Womanifesto Archive, Bangkok. IMAGE: WOMANIFESTO ARCHIVE, REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
► Fig 13. (lower right) Cover of Chiang Mai Social Installation book, Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98, David but we may expect there to be very specific and Teh and others, differentially modern structures there. 2018. It is probably too soon to speculate on IMAGE: AFTER ALL BOOKS, LONDON, fashions inside Asian art worlds which may REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION. bring about structures of modernity, especially the functions of art works as signs. But the notion that modernism in the world, like modernism in the studio, involves a shift from Warriors/ Cai Guo-Qiang [2019] (figs 10 and 11) fashion being a parasite on art, to art being a shows in Melbourne, we may be facing a new parasite on fashion, can be seen all over art phenomenon. That is the spectacularisation which functions as a simulacrum, or semiotic of mass taste has globalised out of different substitute for an actual art object, particularly types of modernity into a collective local, in Japan in the work of Morimura Yasumasa or that is a modern art which sits within a Nara Yoshitomo, for example. local culture with its own definitions of The generalised appeal of this work may modernity even as it corresponds to a newly be adduced from the number of their local globalised, transnational taste in spectacle, followers as seen across Biennials in Asia. mediated by modern mass-consumption now But here, like the massive audiences for the extended from goods to images and back Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei [2015/16] and Tomb again. Digitalisation has made the motility
44 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 of art works and actors turn back on the very local or kernel cultures they seem in the 2010s categories it had once used to distance itself to have to either rediscover a classicism from the everyday. available only to them, or a kitsch populism. To re-auratise the objects of daily life These situations were better in the 1990s (figs after they return from the newly sanctified 12 and 13), when artistic experimentation, status of ready-mades, à la Rirkrit, perhaps sometimes with the exhibition format itself, the various kinds of modernity need to break could continue between artists relatively up the concept or sensibility of ‘nowness’ autonomously from the mainstream art world, which implies a prior consent to ideological such as the Womanifesto exhibitions in conformity and reinforces the political Thailand,12 or the three iterations of Chiangmai parading of formal associations by a small social installation, 1992–1998.13 ¶ coterie of curators and like-minded artists across the globe. This re-auratisation is a JOHN CLARK is Professor deliberate occupation, if not usurpation, of the Emeritus of Asian Art History position hitherto occupied by the avant garde. at the University of Sydney where he retired 2013. Among For the Asian modernities which still his books are Modern Asian maintain a local as core there aren’t very many Art (Honolulu: University of choices. Ignorance and silence seem to be Hawai’i Press, 1998), Modernities increasingly unavailable except for those with of Chinese Art (Leiden: Brill, formalist concerns, those who wrap themselves 2010) and Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art in the with ‘tradition’, and some of those who deploy 1980s and 1990s (Sydney: Power Publications, 2010; Best Art Book Prize, Art Association of Australia and digital or other new technology. The whole New Zealand, 2011), and Modernities of Japanese Art structure of relations between different cognate (Leiden: Brill, 2012). In 2020 will appear The Asian modernities in Asia and the more distant, Modern (Preface by Patrick Flores), two volumes formerly hegemonic modernities such as those (Singapore: National Gallery of Singapore) and also of Euramerica, is becoming tighter and more Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials: 2001–2005, rigid. Artists can now acknowledge themselves (Preface by Charles Green) (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press). across different coteries conceived transnationally, but once they come back to
1. For a recent overall view of Gu Dexin’s work of non-parallel evolution, of nuptials between two see Abigail Ashford, ‘Gu Dexin’s Aliens and the reigns’: see Gilles Deleuze with Claire Parnet, Ambivalent Aesthetics of Cuteness’, Yishu: Journal of Dialogues II, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Contemporary Chinese Art, 18:5 (2019), 87–99. Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 2 [originally 2. For a first description of these units see my essay ‘An published in 1977; translation originally published Australian Creative Space: where is Australian-Asian 1987]. art now?’, in 2006/Contemporary Commonwealth/, ed. 5. Musillo, Tangible Whispers, p. 201. by Diane Waite (Melbourne: Australian Centre for 6. See Realism in Asian Art, ed. by Kim Inhye and the Moving Image & National Gallery of Victoria, Joyce Fan (Gyeonggi-do Gwacheon-si: The National 2006), pp. 26–33. Museum of Contemporary Art/Singapore: The 3. See Henri Focillon, La Vie des Formes (Paris: Presses National Art Gallery, 2010). Universitaires de France, 1943); George Kubler, The 7. Cubism in Asia: Unbound Dialogues, cur. and ed. by Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (New Tohru Matsumoto, Kenjin Miwa and Katsuo Suzuki Haven: Yale University Press, 1962); Keith Moxey, (Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art and The Visual Time: The Image in History (Durham, NC: Duke Japan Foundation, 2005). University Press, 2013). 8. Jacques Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts of 4. ‘The model of the nuptial between the two reigns Psychoanalysis, trans. by Alan Sheridan (London: [Venice and Tartaria] puts in doubt the stability, and Routledge, 1977), p. 211. thus the readability of the circulation of objects and 9. See John Clark, ‘Comparativism from Inside and individuals and their identity’: see Marco Musillo, Outside: Not only a Matter of Viewpoint’ [review Tangible Whispers, Neglected Encounters: Histories of of Comparativism in Art History, ed. by Jaś Elsner East–West Artistic Dialogues, 14th–20th Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2017)], Journal of (Milan: Mimesis International, 2018), p. 196. Musillo Art Historiography, 17 (2017), online, 14 pp. also cites Deleuze: ‘Becomings are not phenomena of imitation or assimilation, but of a double capture,
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 45 10. Susanne Küchler, ‘Comparativism in Anthropology: Big Questions and Scaled Comparison—an Illusive Dream?’, in Comparativism in Art History, ed. by Jaś Elsner (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 130–144 (p. 131). 11. Rirkrit Thiravanija’s conversation with Apinan Poshyananda of 25 September 2019 at the National Gallery of Singapore under the auspices of the Beyeler Foundation is to be found at
46 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Legacies of East German Communism THOUGHTS FROM GERMANY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
ALISON LEWIS
In 2020 I found myself in Berlin at the utterances, it was clear how much her own peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. I arrived just personal experience as an easterner framed as the first restrictions were announced and every decision. In one sentence on 18 March, I would be lying if I said I was not fearing she was explicit about her communist past: the worst. Would the Germans impose ‘For someone like me, for whom freedom of stricter isolation rules than, say, their French travel and movement has been a hard-fought or British neighbours, I asked myself. And right, restrictions can only be justified as an would they police them more rigorously? absolute necessity.’4 Would we even see the re-emergence of When I was not scouring shops for the authoritarianism—the ‘authoritarian stores of food that might see me through personality’ that Theodor Adorno and the a 14- or 28-day complete lockdown—if it Frankfurt School diagnosed while in US came to this—I took time out to observe exile and which undergirded National the city’s commemorations to mark the ▲ Title image: Montage using Socialism and the communist German 75th anniversary of the liberation of article figures and 1 Democratic Republic? Berlin by the Red Army in 1945. Far less archive files photo by On many occasions when confronted prominent, but noticeable nonetheless, were Anton P Daskalov, Shutterstock. with rows of empty shelves in supermarkets events to celebrate the 30th anniversary
and the sight of queues outside them, I was of the dissolution of the GDR and its ▼ Fig 1. Masks in reminded of the fabled chronic shortages in infamous secret police service, the Stasi or Berlin, July 2020 the GDR. For many locals, the public health Staatssicherheitsdienst. Immersed in this rich IMAGE: CARSTEN JS, FLICKR, CC0 1.0 crisis awakened painful memories of being memory culture of two dictatorships, I began UNIVERSAL robbed of one’s civil liberties—the right to associate and freedom of movement. In a powerful address to the nation on 18 March 2020, Angela Merkel implicitly acknowledged this history. She spoke about how ‘dramatic’ the changes to everyday life were and the need for ‘common sense and proportionality’ in the Corona restrictions.2 On other occasions, she referred to the pandemic as a ‘democratic challenge’ and expressed how deeply she regretted having to restrict ‘our existential rights and needs’.3 In all these
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 47 ► Fig 2. Reiner Kunze at a reading in 2012 IMAGE : WIKIMEDIA, CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 3.0 UNPORTED
to ponder some of the imponderables in my ambitious blueprints for complex covert fields of research. Would the Germans from operations that were designed to intervene the former East be better equipped to deal with proactively in people’s lives and shape them restrictions of civil liberties or would they have in specific ideological ways. In them the a lower tolerance for government crackdowns? security forces effectively ‘played God’ and And connected to this was the larger question arrogated to themselves powers to intimidate of whether they had done a better job at and harass. The measures were specifically dealing with their communist past than designed to sully reputations, ruin friendships their Nazi past? Were the Germans doubly and families, and even to destroy suspects’ guilty—namely, guilty of ignoring the crimes of health. What these show us is that the Stasi National Socialism as well as the injustices of was much more than just a ‘thought-police’; communism—as Ralph Giordano once accused it became in effect a massive bureaucratic them of being?5 Or were they so determined machine for curtailing undesirable political not to repeat the mistakes of ‘mastering’ the contingencies in the population. legacy of Nazism that they made a better fist of The first case study in my project was the confronting the wrongs of communism? East German dissident writer Reiner Kunze I was in Germany to take up a research (fig. 2). I planned to compare the Stasi’s fellowship at the intercultural research monstrous plans to destroy Kunze with institute, the Morphomata Center for Advanced his own account of his life. Was it possible Studies at the University of Cologne. I was that Kunze had been just as effective in risk studying one particularly chilling feature of the management as the Stasi had been? Had he Stasi files. The dossiers of Stasi victims, which been able to thwart some of these contingency are made up of endless biographical profiles plans, and if so how? And how could I find and informer reports, are punctuated at regular out? In the course of trying to answer these intervals by draconian departmental action questions, I realised that Kunze could also plans, often replete with innocuous sounding serve as a contained case study for my bigger labels such as Informationen or Maßnahmeplan question of how Germany has dealt with (action plan). These plans do far more than the burden of Cold War history. In many merely describe the victim or sketch out the ways he could count as representative of the contours of the life of a suspect. They contain
48 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 persecution of cultural producers and the intelligentsia.6 Kunze was my litmus test of how successfully, or otherwise, unified Germany has performed in righting the wrongs of the East German past. Kunze was born in 1933 in the Erzgebirge, in the same year that Hitler came to power, the son of a coal-miner and a seamstress. The postwar years were kind to him, and he was encouraged to finish high school and went on to study journalism at the Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig. Deeply grateful for the opportunity to gain an education, Kunze initially fell into line with the ideological expectations of the time. He was rewarded for his loyalty with a teaching appointment at the university in 1955 where he earned a reputation among his he published in a volume Die wunderbaren Jahre ▲ Fig 3. (left) Cover contemporaries for being an idealist.7 His (The Wonderful Years) in 1976 in the West, again of Die wunderbaren Jahre by Reiner career was on a steep upwards trajectory and with reluctant permission from the Office of Kunze he was made a member of the journalists’ and Copyright (Büro für Urheberrechte) (fig. 3). The IMAGE: PROSA writers’ unions. He published his first volume regime now decided to call Kunze’s bluff and FISCHER ▲ of poetry around this time, mostly politically issued threats to arrest him. Kunze, who did Fig 4. (right) Cover of Deckname 8 orthodox poems and love poetry. not know these were largely a bluff, promptly ‘Lyrik’ In 1956, around the time of the Soviet applied to emigrate. He and his family left for IMAGE: SACHBUCH FISCHER suppression of the popular uprising in West Germany over Easter 1977. Hungary, Kunze found himself under scrutiny We now know the entire back story to these for his liberal views, and after he spoke out events from Kunze’s Stasi dossier. Kunze’s file, publicly against the indoctrination of students, code-named ‘Lyrik’ or poetry, is voluminous. the Socialist Unity Party (SED) commenced It spans twelve folders and is 3,491 pages long. disciplinary action against him for counter- His file is thick, bulky in a physical sense but revolutionary activities. The Stasi began also thick in Clifford Geertz’s sense of ‘thick low-grade security checks on him. 1968 was description’, those rich layers of sedimented another watershed in Kunze’s vita. After the meaning-making and interpretation that Warsaw Pact troops marched into Prague anthropologists aim to produce. In many ways and suppressed the reform movement, he left the file provides one such ‘thick description’ of the party. From this point on, Kunze became social and intellectual life under communism.9 persona non grata and was placed under Stasi The last three months before Kunze’s exile surveillance. His next volume of poetry was fill two volumes and take up 300 pages. not published in the East, and yet, he received Above all the files afford us insights into the permission to publish it in the West. The Stasi precise objectives of the Operative Procedure nonetheless saw the volume, Sensitive Paths (Operativer Vorgang), which was launched after (Sensible Wege) (1969), as a serious danger. In the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. 1973 Kunze was finally permitted to publish The purpose was to investigate activities in another collection of poems in the GDR, relation to violations to Article 106, “Agitation during a brief phase of liberalisation. The Stasi against the State” (Staatsgefährdende Hetze) would have liked to arrest him but could not and Article 220 “Defamation of the State” because this volume had passed the requisite (Staatsverleumdung) of the Criminal Code.10 censorship authorities. Kunze became a Kunze decided to publish key excerpts from magnet for critical citizens and he collected his file in 1990 in a small book with the title true stories about injustices in the land, which Codename ‘Poetry’ (Deckname ‘Lyrik’) (fig. 4).11
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 49 critics, who feared declassifying the files would MASTERING THE COMMUNIST PAST AND TRUTH-TELLING lead to witch hunts and a rampant culture of denunciations. Germany’s radical approach In transitional justice studies, scholars speak was even decried by its Polish neighbours as of a number of central pillars in effecting masochistic.15 In truth, none of these fears transition from an authoritarian system of rule were justified. to a democratic one, including truth-seeking, After receiving a copy of his entire Stasi serving justice and achieving reconciliation.12 file, Kunze seriously contemplated destroying In some instances one mechanism is given all but the most important parts of it, not priority over the other, or one sacrificed for because it did not contain many painful truths the other, depending on local histories and but because of the ‘nasty slanderous remarks’ cultures.13 In the German case, it is fair to say informants had made about him.16 These were that it has been the search for the truth about too explosive to be made public, he thought, the SED regime’s human and civil rights abuses and he feared that the Stasi’s brutal character that has been given highest priority. In 1990 assassination of himself might be used against when the terms of East Germany’s accession him. ‘Something could stick,’ he explained in to the Federal Republic were debated and 1991.17 Kunze’s caution now seems exaggerated, negotiated, the most direct way to expose the even paranoid, especially in light of the truth about perpetrators was to secure the systematic way Germany has effected change archives of the regime, in particular those of and rooted out the Stasi and its Chekist, or the Staatssicherheit. While not all Stasi files secret police worldview. As we now know this could be rescued during the upheaval of the is not the case across all of the former Soviet revolution, today there remain, of the entire sphere in which recent nationalist projects 180 kilometres of Stasi files believed to have in Putin’s Russia have reclaimed the figure of existed, 111 km of them, which have been the secret police officer and re-stigmatised salvaged and secured for future generations. the dissident.18 A backlash of this kind has Germany was the first country in the thankfully been unthinkable in Germany. Eastern bloc to open the secret police For Kunze, the files reveal the massive extent archives without the usual embargos on of Stasi meddling in his life. He had suspected state secrets. At the end of 1991 the unified he was under observation but never dreamt German parliament moved swiftly to pass that it was on such a monumental scale. In his legislation regulating access to the secret file he found answers to many of life’s riddles police files, and, early in 1992, set up a federal and learned that the Stasi was behind all of the agency, Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen major setbacks in his career. Incidents he had des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen attributed to a cruel twist of fate or bad luck, he Deutschen Demokratischen Repblik, to oversee its was shocked to discover, were not the work of implementation. Where comprehensive records chance or contingency at all. He discovered, for of the old order exist, truth-finding through instance, which of his friends and associates the archives is universally seen as the most spied on him, and he found the Stasi’s detailed reliable and fail-safe method to ascertain who plans to demoralise and destroy him, and to was a victim, a perpetrator and a collaborator. trick him into leaving. In the excerpts Kunze In this sense, unified Germany has been has published from his Stasi file he is careful gifted a rare historical resource for effecting not to expose the identity of his informers, a radical break with its communist past. For with the notable exception of Manfred/Ibrahim this reason, Eastern bloc scholar Lavinia Böhme, alias IMS “August Drempker”, later Stan has called Germany, along with the renamed IMV “Paul Bonkarz.” (fig. 5). As one of Czech and Slovak Republics, a ‘leader’ among Kunze’s close confidants, Böhme wrote copious a number of ‘laggards’ in post-communist quantities of reports (Treffberichte) about Kunze democratisation.14 Despite this, Germany’s from 1970 to 1977. But when confronted by the uncompromising approach was not without its media about his collaboration in April 1990,
50 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Böhme strenuously denied all involvement the so-called Insiderkomitee, in which they ▲ Fig 5. with the Stasi.19 Eight months later he was continued to rattle the secret police sabre.21 Ibrahim Böhme IMAGE: ALCHETRON, still determined to challenge the ‘campaign In their own words, they claimed they want CC BY-SA to slander him’, maintaining he had only ‘an objective and critical evaluation’ of the wanted to mediate in Kunze’s affairs and never actions of Stasi officers and aimed to combat wittingly harmed him.20 He would fight for his the use of the Stasi as a ‘stick’ to disqualify all rehabilitation, which, as we shall see below, did left opposition.22 After 1999 they became less not transpire. active and disbanded as a working group in Kunze’s fears in 1990 of a public backlash 2008, but maintained a low-key web presence, were not realised. He did not destroy his which occasionally comments on Stasi- file and he has made much of it public. No related affairs.23 one seriously believes that those slanderous remarks embedded in his file that accused THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE him of treason, incitement against the state Post-communist countries have used myriad and of harbouring counter-revolutionary tools for delivering justice to the perpetrators views will resurface in public debates or even and recognition for the victims.24 In many in social media. What remains are, however, models adopted in the former Eastern bloc like at the end of any prolonged war, partisan justice was sought through a mixture of skirmishes, rear-guard actions taken by the methods, from access to the secret police few hardliners and diehards, who are mostly files through to truth commissions and operating undercover. As Anna Funder has administrative processes of lustration. For written in her essay for The Monthly, divested the victims justice is best achieved by calling of a public voice, around 100 former Stasi perpetrators to account. Where the truth about officers formed an organisation in 1992, crimes lies solely with the perpetrators, and
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 51 there are few records of crimes, countries in some areas such as Saxony, and more lenient have offered perpetrators amnesties, as in in others, such as Brandenburg. Poland and South Africa, in exchange for Using a mix of questionnaires, interviews confessing to the truth.25 Where there have and evidence from the Stasi Archives, all public been other ways of accessing the truth, such servants were screened or ‘Gaucked’ as people as opening the archives, countries have not referred to the vetting at the time. Joachim pursued amnesties, as in Germany. In the Gauck was the first Commissioner for the Stasi combined model used in Hungary and Poland, Archives (BStU) and while his offices were not perpetrators have been offered the opportunity responsible for vetting—which was done by to expose themselves on the basis of the state ministries—the final proof was provided contents of their files in return for a second by Gauck’s archive. In Saxony, for instance, the chance.26 Germany has explicitly chosen not Ministry for Culture drew up an exhaustive to take a more lenient approach to former blacklist of undesirable professions—from communists or Stasi officers. teachers of Marxist-Leninism, Stasi informants and collaborators to teachers holding positions in party organisations—and those were Germany’s difficulties in reckoning summarily dismissed.30 Others were allowed with the communist past have been to present their case at a hearing. In relation to the police force, vetting was less draconian due compounded by a much larger set of to high demand for staff. Membership of the problems resulting from the ideological communist party and some Stasi collaboration were found to be unavoidable.31 In the first divide of the Cold War. decade 1,687,501 easteners were vetted for tainted pasts. Of these, 6.3% were found to Justice in post-communist Germany have Stasi connections, and 3% lost their jobs has been pursued in the courts when high- because of them.32 ranking communists and border guards who These figures might not seem especially shot citizens attempting to flee were put impressive but to my mind they tell us on trial in the 1990s.27 The justice system two things. On the one hand they suggest has also dealt with a range of other crimes that the public service was less thoroughly and miscarriages of justices such as doping, infiltrated with Stasi informants than is electoral fraud, abuse in prison, Stasi crimes, commonly assumed. On the other hand, they corruption, abuse of office and espionage.28 show there was a certain degree of latitude But more effective than legal redress have and local discretion in vetting those tainted been processes of lustration or purification— by their communist affiliations. In my view, so named after the Latin lustratio (review and this flexibility is not necessarily a flaw of the ritual sacrifice) and the Czech wordlustrace process, since it meant that mitigating personal (inventory or registry).29 Since the 1990s the circumstances could be taken into account. term lustration has come into wide usage To return to the example of Kunze, we and denotes the blanket vetting of public can see how vetting played out with regard service employees and politicians along with to Ibrahim Böhme, who was tasked with the purging of old compromised communist surveilling Kunze for seven years. Böhme elites. Lustration was commenced in Germany was among the reformists in the civil rights almost instantly after unification, with state movement (Bürgerrechtsbewegung) who joined premiers announcing procedures to screen all the peaceful revolution of 1989. He founded East German employees in the public service, the eastern branch of the Social Democratic including teachers and lecturers across the Party (SPD). Popular and well-liked, Böhme whole education sector, the police, the military, was about to stand as the SPD candidate and the judiciary. The five new states adopted for Prime Minister (Ministerpräsident) in the a de-centralised approach, which was harsher first free elections in East Germany in March
52 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 1990. Just prior to the elections a former Stasi apologies at the individual or national level, officer claiming to be Böhme’s handler made the fostering of mutual understanding and allegations in the Spiegel that Böhme was a an agreement to co-operate as well as lasting Stasi informer. Other informers who tried constitutional change. For learning the truth to enter politics around the time—Lothar de about the scale of past injustice, the files are Maiziere, who won the East German elections preferable to testimony from the perpetrators— in 1990; Martin Kirchner, the Secretary however, the silence of the perpetrators, who General of the Christian Democratic Party; have not been willing to admit wrong-doing, and Wolfgang Schnur, a candidate for the has been costly. The lack of public catharsis Democratic Awakening party—were exposed and confessions has been especially frustrating around the same time. There was considerable for victims, and it has meant few have been collective will among East and West Germans able to forgive those who betrayed them. to name Stasi informants, even among the For Kunze, closure on the past, and some newly elected East German parliament. This reconciliation, has been made possible in was not a witch hunt but targeted purging that various ways. Since he was forced to leave the was justifiably a matter of national ‘hygiene’.33 GDR, as well as after 1990, he has been listened Since the media generally relied on hard to and his story made public in the media. His evidence from the files before denouncing writing, but also his courage and suffering, someone, the exposures had serious has been acknowledged through many prizes, consequences. What is especially interesting including the Georg Büchner Prize, the most from an Australian perspective, is the broad prestigious literary award in Germany. After consensus that exposed public figures should 1990, when he first returned to his hometown, resign. Ibrahim Böhme, however, continued to he was welcomed back by an older man, rebut the allegations until early in 1992 when, who it later transpired, had been one of his based on the conclusive evidence from Kunze’s informers. From the Stasi files Kunze now Stasi file, he was expelled from his party.34 knows this man only acquiesced to save the For Kunze access to the truth provided by career of his son. Kunze would, he has stated the files has been important for achieving in an interview, still gladly shake hands with some sense of justice. Victims need to know him. Not so with others he identified in his file that those who spied on them are no longer who spied out of spite, ideological conviction in a position to wield power over them. With or for some personal gain.36 Kunze has had no Böhme’s removal from office Kunze was interest in passing absolution on his informers able to feel that justice was served. Equally unless they show contrition or remorse. crucial for Kunze was the swift vetting of Kunze’s experience with Böhme is, from East German members of parliament, and the my knowledge of talking with victims, fairly media’s appetite for exposing the Stasi pasts typical. Whether out of a sense of pride, of those in public office. For those victims of stubbornness or shame, most informers have communism who have not been eligible for played down the extent of their involvement financial compensation measures such as with the Stasi or claimed they were unaware these nonetheless send a strong signal. of the potential consequences their informing could have. By and large, most have not had THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF the largesse to confess and not found the RECONCILIATION words to apologise to their victims. On an Equally critical in the transitional justice intersubjective level, reconciliation between process, although hard to achieve, is victims and perpetrators has been elusive.37 reconciliation, forgiveness and healing. Obstacles such as these have led Jennifer Understood as restoring trust between citizens, Yoder to observe that Germany had achieved reconciliation is perhaps the hardest to define ‘truth without reconciliation.’38 Germany’s of all the key categories of transitional justice.35 difficulties in reckoning with the communist It can take many social and political forms— past have been compounded by a much
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 53 larger set of problems resulting from the tell their story to tourists and school groups to ideological divide of the Cold War.39 Since ensure it is not forgotten. it was a partitioned country, only one half Reconciliation is always a long-term was directly affected by de-communisation. process.45 In truth we have seen the ideals Only easterners had to be screened for their of reconciliation inform Germany’s memory political affiliations, only easterners lost their politics consistently over the last three decades. jobs in the public service, had to retrain or Eyewitness accounts, for instance, have been take early retirement and only easterners lost included in many museum displays and there the country in which they were born.40 Today is a plethora of both locally and nationally it is still true that in the east Germans have funded foundations—The Federal Foundation smaller pensions,41 earn on average less, work for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship longer hours,42 and express lower levels of (Die Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED- satisfaction with democracy and the economic Diktatur), The German Federal Agency for situation.43 The rise of right-wing parties has Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische not surprisingly also been more pronounced in Bildung)—as well as subsidised private archives eastern Germany. such as the Robert-Havermann-Gesellschaft, In the long run intractable problems whose mission is to promote democracy of social injustice have complicated how and educate about the communist past. The Germany has dealt with older questions of Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung works with victim political justice in relation to communism. In associations and offers advice on rehabilitation social terms working towards reconciliation and compensation. This broad spectrum of between East and West has meant treading educational, memorial and support authorities a fine line between allowing easterners to is to my mind powerful testimony to participate in the rebuilding of their country Germany’s sustained and ongoing commitment and excluding those tainted by association to facing up to past injustices. with the communist past. Knowing what we By way of illustration, Kunze and his wife do now about the emergence of pronounced have set up a private foundation in their name eastern forms of identification, including in their house, which will become an exhibition nostalgia, or Ostalgie, it may well have been a and memorial space after their death and wise decision not to have insisted on blanket preserve their vast personal archives for future purges in the 90s. Had people with even minor generations. This alone is a clear sign that brushes with the secret police been barred Kunze’s fears of his Stasi file being used against from participating in some areas of public life, him have proved to be baseless. This is not to there may have been a greater backlash against say that life in exile in West Germany up until truth-seeking and justice mechanisms. reunification was without its challenges. With Reconciliation is notoriously difficult for the help of the Stasi the regime continued to countries who have experienced civil war and try and intimidate him. The Stasi launched healing can take generations. To be sure, in insidious disinformation campaigns and other Germany’s case reconciliation has occurred readily recognisable secret police operations mainly through mechanisms that are symbolic to silence him. Attempts were made to sully or localised, such as public acknowledgement his reputation in left circles and to spread of victims’ suffering and memorialisation.44 rumours about his wife.46 On one occasion the The many memorial sites and museums roots of a row of newly planted trees around around Germany are one way, for instance, in his house were cut off and the trees stuck back which the memory of persecution is kept alive, in the ground, and another time the roots were and eye-witnesses have become a central plank poisoned.47 One of Kunze’s famous poems in this commemoration culture. Many former about censorship drew on the metaphor of the inmates of Stasi prisons are now employed as forest and trees.48 Although this interference is tour guides in former prisons and are able to worrying in itself, if former Stasi officers were behind it, these incidents have been isolated.
54 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 They have not had any lasting impact on Kunze’s complete public rehabilitation. Confronting the legacies of the Cold War has moreover thrown up additional problems of social injustice and inequities between East and West that demand a different, possibly even contradictory set of responses. All post- unification governments have had a strong interest in inclusive governance and have been committed to holistic forms of reconciliation. Girelli has called this ‘thick reconciliation’: it aims to foster cooperation and a shared social vision rather than ‘thin reconciliation,’ which involves mere toleration and coexistence between antagonistic parties.49 The objective of ‘thick reconciliation’ has meant that Germany has made judicious use of the best resource for dismantling old power elites it has at its disposal, namely its security archives. Opening the files and screening of public servants has sent strong unequivocal messages to civil society and made a major contribution to restoring trust. The expressive and symbolic power of these is not to be underestimated. During my Berlin lockdown I had many occasions to observe whether eastern Germans were more or less tolerant of Covid-19 public For me the pandemic also shed instructive, ▲ Fig 6. Karl- health measures that curtailed their freedom. albeit impressionistic light on Germany’s Marx-Allee, Berlin, Germany I was curious, for instance, to listen to Angela police force. In some eastern regions the IMAGE: PAVEL Merkel’s comments on the restrictions and police were inundated by anonymous callers NEKORANEC, UNSPLASH her insinuation that one needed to be mindful reporting the cars of out-of-towners in breach of the fact that the East of the country of travel restrictions. Ironically, the police had only experienced 30 years of liberal laughed this off as unnecessary vigilantism. In democracy. In light of this, she emphasised fact, judging from the overall lenient attitude that the restrictions, which were ‘a challenge of the police I personally observed during the to democracy,’ ‘should be as short as possible’.50 lockdown, I would say that there are very few Differences in the response to them between hangovers from communist days in the police the eastern and western regions of Germany force. I regularly watched police vans drive were certainly apparent. In the Thuringian city through parks, past people sitting on benches of Jena, the mayor mandated mask-wearing or on lawns, some even drinking beer in small in public as early as 8 April, well before masks groups, but never once did I witness someone were required federally, and long before being questioned, admonished or fined.51 There the World Health Organisation conceded seems to be no evidence that authoritarianism they should be worn. A hangover from the or a lower threshold for the use of violence are authoritarianism of communist times? Or rife in the German police force today. a wise public health initiative that showed Since 1991 most former Eastern bloc solidarity and respect for others? It was most countries have followed Germany’s lead. certainly the latter. Indeed Jena’s success in Germany’s experience of dealing with the suppressing the virus went on to influence legacy of National Socialism has not offered German national policy on protective masks. any readymade templates for post-communist
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 55 memory work but it has provided lessons 1. Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brenswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian aplenty. It has moreover produced a collective Personality, with a new introduction by Peter E. consensus that Germany must not incur Gordon (London and New York: Verso, 1950/2019). further guilt by failing to reckon with its 2. ‘Fernsehansprache von Bundeskanzlerin Angela communist history. Mastering both the Nazi Merkel’, Die Bundesregierung.de., 18 March 2020.
56 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 18. Julie Fedor has written about how the KGB 34. See ‘Stasi: Moralische Verwüstung’, Der Spiegel, stage-managed recantations of Soviet dissident 2 April 1990. church leaders in the 1980s to neutralise dissident 35. Williams and Nagy, p. 6. discourse. More recently Russian nationalists have 36. Corino, p. 6. restigmatised dissidents as traitors, unless they have recanted. See Julie Fedor, ‘Soviet Narratives 37. Early attempts to facilitate between aggrieved of Redemption during the Second Cold War and victims of the Stasi and officers have been a dismal Beyond: The Case of Father Dmitrii Dudko,’ in Cold failure: See Katharina Gajdukowa, ‘Versöhnung War Spy Stories in Eastern Europe, ed. by Valentina im Idealismus: Bearbeitung von Opfer- und Glajar, Alison Lewis, and Corina M. Petrescu Tätertraumata in Begegnungsprojekten nach dem (Lincoln: Potomac Books, 2019), pp. 161–94. Ende der DDR’, Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie, 12.2–4 (2004), 307–21 (p. 307). 19. Kunze, p. 113. 38. In her analysis of the parliamentary truth 20. Corino, p. 7. commissions (Enquête Kommissionen zur Aufarbeitung 21. Anna Funder, ‘Stasiland now,’ The Monthly der SED-Diktatur) set up in Germany in 1992, (December 2019–January 2020), p. 29. Jennifer A. Yoder concludes that these mechanisms 22. See Christian Lannert, ‘Vorwärts und nicht vergessen’?: were ‘of marginal significance in the process of Die Vergangenheitspolitik der Partei DIE LINKE und building trust, consensus, and especially national ihrer Vorgängerin PDS (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), unity’ (p. 62). p. 51. 39. See Yoder, p. 61. 23. See
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 57 The Clash of Ideologies, Classes and Personalities in Rome of the Second Century bce
J. LEA BENESS AND TOM HILLARD
In early 133 bce, the noble-born Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, as Tribune of the Plebs (one of an annually-elected college of Ten, charged with the protection an hereditary altar, not one of all these of the otherwise socially disempowered) many Romans an ancestral tomb. They convened a contio, an informal assembly of fight and they die to support the wealth Roman citizens. The object was to outline and luxury of others, and though they and defend his political program: put simply, are styled masters of the world, they that an ancient legal cap on the amount of have not a single clod of earth that is public land that could be leased by squatters their own.1 be reinforced; and that the excess (determined This gem, even if it represents only the by a triumvirate, or Board of Three) be gist of Gracchus’s argument, reflects the ▲ Title image: compulsorily resumed and distributed to the Fraternal Hands dynamics in play. Firstly, the declaration was urban poor. A rare fragment of his oratory is clasped on a Land ideological, the underlying by-now-antique Redistribution Bill, preserved by the Greek philosopher Plutarch, philosophy being that, in the Republic, it detail of a bronze who wrote a Life of Tiberius Gracchus; if statue of the Gracchi, was inappropriate (and, indeed, ‘harmful’) faithfully transmitted, it conveys the passion Les Gracques, by that anyone should hold more land than Jean-Baptiste and resonance of his pitch. The thirty-year-old Claude Eugène could be cultivated by the possessor himself. Gracchus was regarded as one of the foremost Guillaume (1853), Gracchus’s claim was that he was led by what Musée d’Orsay, Paris. speakers of his day—and, Plutarch reports, was ‘equitable and right’, reminding those who REPRODUCED WITH employed an eloquence that could easily carry PERMISSION FROM needed reminding that ideology played an THE MUSÉE D’ORSAY, the day: 2 PARIS. essential role in Roman politics. The wild beasts that roam over Italy
► Fig 1. Double have—each of them a cave or lair to lurk Bronze Bust of the in; but those who fight and die for Italy Gracchan brothers, enjoy the common air and light, but by Eugène Guillaume (1853), now in the nothing else; without house or home Musée d’Orsay, they wander about with their wives Paris, acquired and children. And, when their generals for the Imperial Museums in 1853. exhort our soldiers to defend their IMAGE: REPRODUCED sepulchres and altars from the enemy, it WITH PERMISSION FROM THE MUSÉE is a lie; for not a man among them has D’ORSAY, PARIS.
58 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Meshed with this is the clear evidence of its luminaries dwelling within the houses the second dynamic: class conflict. Gracchus’s of Rome’s leading families.7 In modern land-owning opponents would defineaequitas scholarship, it used customarily to be thought differently;3 they would today have accused that Rome’s face was set against change, given him of ‘envy politics’. Plutarch, on the other the clear reverence for custom and the ‘ways hand (though ultimately no fan of the ruckus of the ancestors’. That is too simplistic; the that Gracchus’s program would bring about), Roman elite was living within a context of denounced the rapacity of ‘the rich’ and the profound transformation and it was a rapidly property-holders for the effective acquisition evolving situation. Tradition provided a guide, of vast tracts of land in the first place, and their but change was a fact of life.8 Those best placed greed in opposing the reform.4 Cicero puts the to affect (and effect) Roman pathways moved in ideological divide in a nutshell: a milieu requiring constant negotiation.
The law was attractive to the People: the ◄ Figs 2 & 3. Liberty fortunes of the poor seemed improved. via the Secret Ballot. This coin, minted The Optimates (sc. ‘the best people’) around 126 BCE, opposed it, because they saw discord commemorated a being excited, and also thought that secret ballot law passed in 137 BCE. the commonwealth would be robbed The obverse (top) of its champions (propugnatores) by the shows the head of eviction of the rich from their long- the goddess Roma 5 behind whom, established occupancies. to the left, can be seen a voting The wealthy, whose self-interests were clearly urn. The reverse at stake, would clothe their privileged status (bottom) shows the goddess Libertas in in claims of protecting the State, professing a triumphal chariot an ideological commitment to the status quo with galloping horses, with regard to governance. The image of the holding in her right hand, the pileus, or guardians of the res publica signified, in Cicero’s cap of liberty, such historical understanding of 133, the prevailing as was given to a (but precarious) dominance of the well-to-do manumitted slave as a symbol of the within the delicate balance of powers that individual’s new characterised the political system. Rome was freedom. not equipped with a constitution (and that IMAGE: REPRODUCED COURTESY OF THE point is of the essence in much that will follow AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR ANCIENT when we examine the role of individuals in From that fragment of Gracchus’s oratory, NUMISMATIC STUDIES, MACQUARIE a political crisis), but this does not mean that a third dynamic is also clear: his personality. UNIVERSITY, Romans were incapable of constitutionalist The speech was polemical. Painting the 07GR266/1. thought6—and the question of where political military rank-and-file as landless was authority ought to lie would increasingly designedly hyperbolic, aimed to accentuate a exercise the minds of Rome’s intellectual elite situation based upon the exploitation of the and the passions of its broader community many by the few.9 On the other side, Gracchus’s (Figs 2 and 3). Philosophical contemplation on opponents claimed that his aims were the this score took on a more nuanced edge in the discombobulation of the state, for which they second century with the increasingly direct would use the word seditio (or the excitation contact between Rome and the Hellenistic of discordia), and political opportunism. This world. As a result of the Republic’s imperial mutual demonisation would ensure—in this expansion, the intellectual pool from which context as in so many before and since—that Rome’s most influential men drew stretched the road to reform, for which concept the from the Greek cities of Campania to the Romans of this period lacked a direct word, cultural centres of Asia Minor and the Levant, would be a rocky one.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 59 Readings of the events of 133 have tended to fascination. The ‘republican experiment’, put the actions of Tiberius Gracchus front-and- as George Washington put it, may not have centre and, if negative, from the time of Cicero run its course.11 The paths for academic onwards, focus on Gracchus’s talented but enquiry are many, but our own approach is ‘flawed’ character. Lucius Annaeus Florus opens prosopographical; and we are firmly of the the second book of his Two-Book Epitome of All belief that the exercise—though all too often Roman Wars, drawn from the earlier Roman denigrated—has its place.12 It allows a focus historian Livy, by turning to Rome’s ruinous on individuals within their broader contexts.
▼ Fig 4. The seditiones, laying the responsibility squarely Prosopography, for those unfamiliar with Interconnectivity upon those tribunes who treacherously used it, can refer both to data collection and to of Rome’s Elite. the pretence of protecting the common people a historical methodology that features the This selective family tree of the Cornelii to further their own political ‘domination’: application of that data. The former consists Scipiones, Aemilii ‘Tiberius Gracchus ignited the first flame of of the compilation of all available information Paulli, Sempronii conflict.’10 The verdict is a familiar one in concerning every known individual within a Gracchi, Claudii Pulchri and Mucii our ancient sources, and in much modern certain period or defined group; the latter seeks Scaevolae reveals the scholarship. The year is thus cast as the to discern patterns and connections, often close kinship ties that beginning of the end. evoking (especially for Rome’s ‘Republican’ connected so many of the main players Gracchus did not, however, stand alone period) a model of political networks, inherited (emboldened) in the on the historical stage and the watershed alliances and inherited antagonisms—in drama of 133 BCE. event is better understood if recognised as far particular, casting families as the basis of IMAGE: THE STEMMA IS DRAWN more complex. factions concerned primarily with power BY J. L. BENESS & 13 T. HILLARD. THE The Roman ‘Republic’ (by which modern struggles rather than the conflict of ideas. COLLAGE UTILISES PORTRAIT BUSTS NOW scholarship designates a governmental system Prosopography thus populates the stage in a DISPLAYED IN THE and a period) has served as a site of inspiration way that reduces the isolated pedestalisation PALAZZO MASSIMO ALLE TERME, MUSEO in western political thought, whether as model of those deemed historically significant by NAZIONALE ROMANO, ROME. or anti-model; its failure remains of enduring some narratives, and the model produced
60 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 is a plausible one when applied to the ways We return to the question of Gracchus’s in which members of Rome’s social and personality. Florus begins his treatment with political elite sought advantage and pursued ‘by bloodline, bella figura, and eloquence, he was their interests. But the surviving evidence is easily princeps (that is, a/the leading man of his patchy (to put it mildly) and when the model generation), but …’. Such a catalogue (and the was used, in a circular fashion, to underwrite immediately following ‘but’) is characteristic further—often quite elaborate—speculation, of many ancient accounts. Persona was of great all too often without supporting evidence concern to the elite culture with which we are beyond the identification of homonymous here concerned. Cicero, following Panaetius individuals (as one-and-the-same or closely the Stoic philosopher (a close companion of related to one another) and the assumption Gracchus’s cousin Publius Cornelius Scipio of intergenerational continuities and family Aemilianus), asserts that we are equipped solidarity, the method was brought into grave by Nature (a natura), with, ‘as it were’, two disrepute. Moreover, many practitioners have personae: one, common to all, distinguishing used the excuse of material determining humankind from brutes, and another which treatment to focus effectively on the elite, endows individual qualities, talents, strengths with Sir Ronald Syme going so far as to assert and weaknesses. Thus is character produced.15 that ‘the writing of history does not well But, significantly, Cicero adds thatpersona accord with bare abstractions or with appeal might be shaped to the circumstances ‘which to the voiceless and anonymous.’14 Hence some chance or the moment imposes’ and/or the impression understandably persists that might be altered by an individual’s will. The prosopography (when applied to this period) Romans liked to see their leaders, rising to the focuses solely on factional politics and on the occasion, forged by the stress of circumstance. ‘deeds of illustrious men’ to the exclusion of Alongside persona, two parallel terms jostle the masses. for attention: facies and imago, the latter of A prosopographical analysis of the events particular relevance to the present enquiry. of 133 will demonstrate, we trust, that such ‘Face’ (facies) was all-important, together with an approach will not shroud the role of its concomitant: the threat of loss of face.16 the broader community (‘the voiceless and The ‘images’ (imagines) which the greats of anonymous’); nor will it affirm any notion the past had offered to the world haunted of the elite Roman family as the kernel of the present through the elite’s veneration of a political faction. Quite the opposite. (See the wax masks of their ancestors (fig. 5). The fig. 4 for the tangled web of relationships.) family’s imagines adorned their quasi-public It can, rather, illuminate the intersection vestibules, saluting the occupants as they set of ideological clashes, the class struggle forth in the morning and greeting them as they and personality-driven politics—and, with returned, emitting silent waves of exhortation regard to the last, may provide the data for and judgement. These embodiments of critiquing the actions of significant players, ancestral achievements fired thoughts of underlining the role of human agency and emulation, said the Roman historian Sallust. appropriately subjecting those players to It was not the waxen simulacrum, he insisted, judgmental scrutiny. It was the assertion of but the recall of past deeds thus triggered: the Roman historian Tacitus that it was the an inspiration and a burden. The weight historian’s duty to place on record good and of perceived obligation fell most heavily evil to be judged by posterity (Annals 3.65.1). on the scions of the ‘Great Houses.’ Sons Judgmentalism is not to postmodern taste, but were expected ‘to follow in (or step into) the the commission (broadening its purview to the footprints (vestigia) of their father’—to be their appraisal of competence and incompetence, father’s abiding image, both in manner and vision and its lack) has not been lifted and—if physically: imitatio patris.17 Recent scholarship informed and prudently exercised—is as much has emphasised the extent to which in need as ever. individual identities were heavily subject
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 61 ► Fig 5. (left) A Roman noble with the busts of his ancestors. A detail of a marble statue of the late 1st century BCE, the ‘Barberini Togato’, now in the Centrale Montemartini, Musei Capitolini, Rome. IMAGE: TOM HILLARD
► Fig 6. (right) Portrait Bust of a Roman senator. The bust, dating to the mid-1st century BCE, is now in the Palazzo Torlonia, Rome. IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
to social expectations and to specific family have been obsessed with the community’s traditions—and the cultural anthropologists assessment of his leadership of the Scipionic have thus (perhaps unintentionally) come clan and his worthiness more generally. close here to affirming the presumptions of He was jealous of even the respect paid his those prosopographers who believe that an elder brother, who had become, by adoption, individual’s actions were highly predictable grandson to the legendary Quintus Fabius according to inherited cues. There is much to Maximus, five times consul, censor, anddictator be said for this characterisation of the culture, in two military emergencies.18 Epitaphs found but an equal pressure lay with the injunction to within the precinct of Scipionic tombs echo match the magnitude of others’ achievements: the desideratum of equalling or surpassing the emulation rather than imitation was the aim. deeds of one’s own ancestors; eulogies often A competitive ethos can be seen in political, underlined that of being the ‘first’ or the ‘only’. professional and sporting elites across many Descendants competed as much with the past cultures, but Rome presents this aristocratic as with their peers. But the running was with spirit in a quintessential form. A public career, their peers, the nearer, the more intense. following an apprenticeship in combat (both Gracchus, more than twenty years younger forensic and military), was literally a racetrack than his cousin, was under similar pressure; by of honours: cursus honorum (the Romans the time he entered upon a senatorial career, chose the word honos/honor to designate he was well-connected, a decorated war hero, public position rather than the other word on recognised for his comeliness, his intellect and offer:officium , or duty). They measured their as a gifted orator: a leader (as we have seen) in achievement against that of others. his generation. But complacency was not the Gracchus’s cousin, Scipio Aemilianus, result. In 137, aged twenty-seven and at the very whose natural father had been twice consul, outset of his senatorial career, he spoke to foes a censor and twice triumphator (that is to say, abroad of the protection he needed against his awarded triumphal victory-parades through ‘enemies’—his competitors in Rome.19 He also the city, one of them an extraordinary three- accounted himself a grandson of Africanus day affair), and who was also by adoption, the and by his paternal lineage was also the son of grandson and heir of Scipio Africanus the one who had been twice consul, censor, twice famous vanquisher of Hannibal, is known to
62 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 triumphator. There were four grandsons of transformed the outlook of the Mediterranean Africanus. Who would prove the more worthy? world, it was itself transformed. The effects By 133, Aemilianus had set the bar high. of Rome’s international domination were Despite a dour character, he had become the debated in the Senate as both a practical darling of the people. With the support of a and moral issue. The unequal acquisition of broad sector of the community—and it shocked wealth flowing into Rome became the target his rivals that he was ready to employ the of legislation. This was an era of profound help of the lowly: ‘men who had lately been social, cultural, economic and demographic slaves, but frequenters of the forum and able transformation, of resistance to change and to force issues by their noisy presence’20—he its embrace.21 had readily countenanced the suspension of law and custom and been popularly elected, underage, to the consulship (in this he had Rome’s success on the world stage emulated his grandfather Africanus) and would ensure that as Rome transformed become the destroyer of Rome’s old enemy, Carthage. His place in the annals assured, he the outlook of the Mediterranean world, had utilised the same popular support to win a it was itself transformed. censorship. Subsequently, following a débâcle in Spain (when a Roman army supposedly Rome faced a number of interwoven besieging the Celtiberian city of Numantia problems, some posing existential threats. had virtually surrendered to the enemy), Archaeologists have queried the reality, but Aemilianus was commissioned with the task it was perceived at the time that the growth of reversing the communal shame, being of broad estates, latifundia (profit-farming awarded a second consulship—again requiring which took advantage of public lands that a suspension of the law. could be settled and leased from the State If as much evidence did not survive by way of a tithe on production and which at this point as it does, the conventional exploited the availability of foreign servile prosopographer might be led to make labour), had serious flow-on effects: the drift assumptions of a tightly-knit family unit that of peasantry off the land; the consequent would be quite misleading. Young Gracchus diminution of the pool from which Rome’s had made his military debut at Carthage armies were traditionally drawn; the growth (winning significant honour) by serving under of an unsupported urban population; and the his cousin who had also become his brother- transformation of Italy’s rural landscape.22 in-law; and, in 133, Gracchus’s younger brother Staples were increasingly imported from was serving under Aemilianus at Numantia. the provinces, undermining Rome’s self- But all was not well within the family; the sufficiency. Slave numbers rose exponentially. marriage between Aemilianus and Gracchus’s In the 130s the problems must have seemed sister was not a happy one and Gracchus’s critical: in 138, there was a major disruption to mother, reportedly, was in the habit of the annual military levy. The two consuls, as reproaching her sons because she was known military heads-of-state, rigorously enforcing as Scipio’s mother-in-law rather than the the military draft and disallowing exemptions mother of the Gracchi. demanded by the Tribunes, were—alarmingly— The analysis of Gracchus’s ultimate incarcerated by the latter. The public disruption motivation beckons (perhaps a vain exercise). was compounded by a grain shortage; rowdy His forceful personality would be characterised gatherings ensued. Within the same decade, a by those making a negative assessment as slave insurrection erupted in Sicily; multiple intemperate; urgent, by those well-disposed. cities were taken by the insurgents and it was Urgency was understandable. Rome’s success feared that the whole island (a major source on the world stage would ensure that as Rome of grain for Rome) would be overrun. Rebel
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 63 ► Fig 7. Map of slave revolts in the 130s. The flames represent the locations of outbreaks from which the contagion spread (roughly counter-clockwise from the left): Rome, Minturnae, Sinuessa, Agrigentum, Enna, Catana, Tauromenium, Messana, the mines of Athens, the island of Delos, and ‘Asia’. Inset: Bronze statue of Eunus, leader of the Sicilian rebellion, breaking his chains beneath the walls of the Castello di Lombardia in Enna, Sicily; created in 1959 by the Cascio numbers grew to the tens of thousands—and monuments and house walls, and, according Institute of Art. IMAGE: J. L. BENESS & one report puts the final staggering count at to Plutarch, this most kindled Gracchus’s T. HILLARD; THE MAP 200,000. Several Roman armies were defeated. energies.24 UTILISES AN IMAGE FROM GOOGLE The ‘contagion’ spread. Revolts blazed in Italy The expected opposition at first tried to EARTH. (and in Rome itself), on the slave-trading island obstruct the law (unsuccessfully)—and, then, of Delos, in the Athenian silver mines and, in in polemic and historiography, the lawgiver. 132, in Asia Minor (fig. 7). The (generally hostile) Latin sources refer to Little wonder if a sense of urgency obtruded. him as a flawed character, prone thereby to It will not seem unfamiliar: a problem of extreme behaviour. Plutarch, provides the most such magnitude that it called for immediate material for a psychoanalysis, highlighting— action, but seemingly so dauntingly large and apart from the patent need for reform and cutting across so many vested interests that the pressure of public clamour —his mother’s no one agency appeared capable of tackling it. cajolery, his competition with a contemporary Notably, Scipio’s closest friend, Gaius Laelius, rival who was overtaking him in the field of had attempted to rectify the problems (by public advocacy and the encouragement taken tackling land tenure). Pushback from the from his intellectual companions, the Stoic possessores, ‘powerful men’ (reports Plutarch), philosopher Blossius of Cumae and the Greek was predictable, and Laelius, fearing imminent rhetorician Diophanes of Mytilene, accounted disturbance, withdrew his proposals. In taking the most eloquent Greek speaker of the day. up the cudgels, Gracchus was, it is clear, (The last of those items, obviously spread by expressing anything but a unity of purpose his detractors, was clearly intended to suggest prompted by kinship. It was intended as an untoward ‘foreign’ influence.) There is nothing, expression of superior, and more courageous, however, in this characterisation of Gracchus statecraft. The law, he could argue, would which could not be applied to others in the help relieve Rome of surfeit population and competitive well-educated culture that he repopulate the Italian countryside with shared with his rivals, including the fact that smallhold peasants, men who might serve acute powers of persuasion and a capacity to in Rome’s citizen militia. The ideology was think outside the Roman square were now part straightforward—and ‘nostalgic’.23 The proposal and parcel of the more traditional engagement was ‘popular’; nor were the ‘voiceless and in public affairs that placed such a high anonymous’ without the means of expression. premium on primacy of achievement. Graffiti appeared on public buildings,
64 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 But there was something far more personal escalation of brinkmanship (on both sides), that distinguished Gracchus. culminating in Gracchus’s decision to stand His early career, showing so much potential, for tribunician office for a consecutive year. had faltered, badly. He had, four years prior, This was considered an egregious challenge been caught up in that infamous military to political custom, and opened Gracchus disaster at Numantia which threatened first to the charge of aiming at ‘kingship’.29 In his life and then his ongoing political and the meantime, Gracchus had secured the moral credibility. Although a junior officer, he passage of his agrarian bill by having a had brokered the pact that extracted 20,000 colleague deposed by plebeian vote, made Roman soldiers, together with attendants rousing speeches to the effect that the will of and camp-followers, from certain death or the People must prevail in politics, and had servitude. He could not, however, save them installed, again by popular vote, a triumviral from the humiliation of surrender, nor the commission to oversee the land reclamation Roman camp from plunder—and back in consisting of himself, his twenty-year-old Rome, as noted, the treaty was regarded as a brother and his father-in-law. The envelope disgrace. An ancient precedent was invoked was being pushed; the political process was whereby the commander—and all his officers— being transformed. should be handed over to the enemy. In the On the day that Gracchus was to be re- event, only the commander was despatched; elected to a ground-breaking second term Gracchus had been spared that initial peril for and in the face of this grave challenge to various reasons: the goodwill of the people, the political orthodoxy (a continuity in office that intervention of his cousin Scipio (perhaps as defied the principle of annuality), the Senate galling as helpful), and—one source adds—his held a crisis meeting on the Capitol hill, own eloquence.25 Gracchus could be painted close by the place of assembly. At this point, by those who wished him ill as having failed prosopography will reveal the benefits of a moral test—and perhaps he even felt that looking beyond the analysis of Gracchus’s mind heavily himself. The episode dogged him in when attempting a biopsy of this watershed the form of the Evil Eye (not a concept to be moment. Opposition in the senate had been dismissed lightly in that society). It was this led, for some time, by Publius Cornelius Scipio invidia, Cicero solemnly judged, that drove Nasica Serapio, described as vehement in all Gracchus in outrage (dolor) and fear (timor) to his doings and sharp in his speaking (i.e., a abandon the path of responsibility: the gravitas man marked by a certain violent intensity),30 patrum—the weighty dignity of the Fathers.26 another individual raised with expectations There is no need to elaborate that matter here; of civic leadership (his father having been it has been explored in a brilliant essay by consul twice, censor, and Pontifex Maximus, Edwin Judge,27 according to whom Gracchus, Chief Priest). Nasica had been elevated to his in his own mind, had failed ‘a supreme test father’s priestly position, the first man elected of conscience.’ Whether this was so, Gracchus to that post in absentia, and in that office he was clearly in haste to make good, and did not carried considerable moral authority via the face obstacles with equanimity. It was, indeed, multiple annual performances of Rome’s civic the assessment of Sallust, who favourably rituals, one of the means by which aristocratic regarded Gracchus as one whose concern was dominance was effectively imposed on the for winning ‘true’ glory in the confrontation general populace. There is more. He was one with ‘injustice’, that his lust for success led to of Rome’s largest holders of public land, so his an ‘insufficient moderation of spirit’haud ( satis self-interest was not in doubt.31 He was also moderatus animus).28 Sallust’s sympathy for the another grandson of Africanus, and speaking Gracchan program marks him out amongst as a senior member of the clan. He was Roman historians; his reservations about the determined that Gracchus be ‘stopped’. obtrusion of personality is, then, worth taking Nasica’s, however, was not the only seriously. The State witnessed an alarming authoritative voice in the senate. Amongst
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 65 others, the presiding consul, the man with the Since the consul by following the letter principal executive capacity (his colleague of the law is bringing it about that the was in Sicily fighting the slaves),would be Roman imperium together with all its heard, though he was accustomed to offering laws will collapse, I present myself in my his opinions in a more deliberative fashion, private capacity (privatus) as a leader at enjoying an outstanding reputation as an your disposal. expert in pontifical and civil law. Publius He then called upon those who would save Mucius Scaevola (who had given of his the State to follow him.34 On Rome’s Capitol expertise when Gracchus was framing his hill and in the place of assembly, Tiberius legislation and who was also part of the Gracchus and 200 (or 300) followers were extended kinship nexus that marked this clubbed to death by a largely senatorial lynch closely inter-related elite) was ideologically mob. Nasica’s aura, not least as Chief Priest, driven, but he was disinterest personified, carried weight—but, in his call-to-arms, he was his ideology being the conviction that in a explicit; this was not an act of the State—but critical situation the rule of law must prevail. in the State’s defence. He was (and the point Celebrated as a man of unswerving allegiance is reiterated in many later retellings) privatus. to its letter, he was preternaturally determined This was a moment that sealed Rome’s fate to see that the interpretation of the law was for the next century. He invoked the principle not bent to the needs of the moment; he would that necessity knows no law, a slogan that has take no action contrary to the law, nor exceed echoed through the centuries in ‘states-of- the legal powers of a consul.32 emergency’: Not kennt kein Gebot.35 The senators Nasica now reasserted himself, fatefully, his who followed Nasica were persuaded that irate temperament coming to the fore. He too necessity demanded action, unsanctioned by brought his own baggage to the crisis, his office or law. Nasica’s declaration makes this material interests in accord with an ideological crystal clear—and those who fell in with him distaste for any challenge to the authority concurred. This was the conscious creation of a of his class. In his early career, his contempt ‘space devoid of law, a zone of anomie.’36 for those whose living depended upon their Nasica, rather than Gracchus, forever calloused hands had cost him an election.33 changed the face of Roman politics, leaving He was, like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, an indelible mark. A new ‘custom’ had been contemptuous of ‘the general ignorance’ and enshrined: the concept of justifiable homicide ‘the multitudinous tongue.’ In 138, he had (on private initiative) in the interests of the been one of the consuls imprisoned by the State.37 Rome’s problems had not been solved, tribunes and in that same year had faced an but exacerbated—and in the aftermath of the angry crowd protesting privation (in the face bloodshed many considered the community of the grain shortage), and simply ordered to be irredeemably split into two.38 The silence, claiming that he, rather than the next generation faced a new set of choices complainants, knew what was good for the and consequences, the settings having been State. This, we are told, quietened the assembly, fundamentally altered. the plebs giving greater weight to his moral What has emerged from this authority (auctoritas) than the collective need. prosopographical exploration is twofold: The latter episode must have strengthened his firstly, a cumulative picture of a culture, self-certitude; the former, his antagonism to wherein are found the norms, the expected the tribunate. and the predictable, which attract the social Meeting Scaevola head on, Nasica came scientists and the cultural historians. From straight to the inadequacy of law. He rose in the scholarship of the latter flows a vivid the senate and protested that the consul’s portrayal of the Roman elite, its [ant]agonistic veneration of the statutes was, in fact, instincts and sense of duty. At the same time, threatening the survival of the State: the individual portraits prompt a recognition
66 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 of the unpredictability of human affairs, the the resonating phrase concerning inalienable rights would have read differently. ‘Life, Liberty and impact of the idiosyncratic and the role of Property (or Estate)’ was likely to have stood—as it human agency. This is the domain of the had done for John Locke—in place of ‘Life, Liberty political historian. ¶ and the Pursuit of Happiness’. 4. Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 8.2, 9.3. Acknowledgements 5. In Defence of Sestius, 103. We are grateful to the Australian Academy of the Humanities 6. See, e.g., Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and and the Australasian Society for Classical Studies for the Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from invitation to deliver an expanded version of this paper under the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Enlightenment the auspices of the Academy’s Twenty-First Arthur Dale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Trendall Lecture at the Fortieth ASCS Conference, held in 7. Two famous examples are found in Gracchus’s Armidale in 2019, and for the kind words of Emeritus circle (see below); two more in that of his cousin Professor Elizabeth Minchin on that occasion. We are in the Scipio Aemilianus: the philosopher Panaetius (see debt of the scholarship of so many, and cannot thank them all below) and the statesman Polybius. The latter is here (or even in the notes), but we would like to acknowledge well-known for formulating the notion of Rome’s ▼ how much of our work is inspired by that of Emeritus ‘mixed constitution’ which heavily impacted Fig 8. (left, note 12) The compilation Professor Edwin Judge and to put on record how much we Roman thought. of biographical have gained from members of Australia’s new generation of 8. Some might have taken solace in the tradition data has a long scholars, in particular Drs Evan Jewell and Lewis Webb. They, that Rome’s political system was not the work history, even in and others, will recognise where their work has touched our of a single founder but, rather, the product of modern scholarship. own. Finally, we both owe a special debt to the University of experiment and adaptability to circumstance; Bayle’s Dictionary, New England. Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 2.1.2 (verballing Cato). containing many In this regard, we are drawn to the arguments of detailed personal Claudia Moatti, Res publica: Histoire romaine de la profiles, and a model J. LEA BENESS AND TOM chose publique (Paris: Fayard, 2018); cf. ‘Historicité of critical source HILLARD are Associate et «altéronomie»: un autre regard sur la politique’, analysis, was first Professor and Honorary Politica Antica, 1 (2011), 107–18. published in 1697. Associate Professor, 9. For a painstaking treatment of the Marxist approach IMAGE: J. L. BENESS & respectively, in the Department more generally, see Geoffrey de Ste Croix, The Class T. HILLARD of Ancient History, Macquarie Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (Ithaca: Cornell University ▼ Fig 9. (right, note University. They are co- Press, 1981), pp. 31–111, especially, pp. 50, 68. 12) In this page from researchers on the Macquarie 10. Florus, Epitome, 2.1 (3.13).1–7, 2.2 (3.14).3. Bayle’s Dictionary, Dictionary of Roman Social a dozen lines and Political Biography Project 11. For Washington’s sentiments, Mortimer N.S. Sellers, demonstrate the ‘The Roman Republic and the French and American and co-directors of the Torone succinct coverage Revolutions’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Harbour Project, an underwater desirable in an Roman Republic, ed. by Harriet Flower (Cambridge: encyclopædia. The and geophysical investigation Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 347–64 rest of the page is of the paleo-environment of (p. 347). characteristically ancient Torone in the Chalkidike, 12. We are currently engaged in a long-term project: the devoted to discursive northern Greece. Macquarie Dictionary of Roman Social and Political footnotes that Biography—in particular, a preliminary volume underpin the covering the years from 168 to 111 bce. integrity of the concision in the 1. Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 9.4–5. text above and 2. ‘Equitable and right’: Florus, A Two-Book store pertinent Epitome of All Rome’s Wars, 2.2 (3.14).3. On the data. Marginalia ideology of limited land tenure, see T. Peter provide further Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People: Essays authority by way of on Late-Republican Politics and Literature (Oxford: source citations. In Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 41. On the role this entry, Bayle of ideology, see Wiseman, ‘Roman History and the is dealing with the Ideological Vacuum’, in Remembering, pp. 5–32. The relatively little known ‘vacuum’ to which he refers is that created by some Fannius, a Roman modern models. senator, student of Greek philosophy 3. See, e.g., Cicero on land owning and redistributions and historian of the in his treatise On Duties, 2.73: ‘It must be, first second century BCE. of all, the concern of one who will administer a Admittedly, Bayle commonwealth, that each will hold what is his muddles Fannius’ own and that there be no diminution by public act identity—but so did of the property of private citizens.’ If Cicero, rather 13. For the presumption that alliances played a greater Cicero. than Jefferson and his collaborators, had been role in political action than principle and that ‘the IMAGE: J. L. BENESS & writing America’s Declaration of Independence, T. HILLARD
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 67 family was the kernel of a Roman political faction’, 26. On the Response of the Soothsayers, 43. see Ronald Syme, Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford 27. ‘The Mind of Tiberius Gracchus’, delivered as a University Press, 1939), p. 157; cf. pp. 11–12. series of lectures between the 1960s and 1990s, is 14. Ronald Syme, Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford: based upon a set of notes made in the 1960s; it is Clarendon, 1986), preface and p. 13. available in abbreviated form in Engaging Rome 15. On Duties, 1.107–15. and Jerusalem. Historical Essays for our Time, edited by Stuart Piggin (North Melbourne: Australian 16. See Carlin A. Barton, Roman Honor: The Fire in the Scholarly Publishing, 2014), pp. 11–33. It was Bones (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University published without the full array of its scholarly of California Press, 2001), pp. 56–58; 65–67; 74–84; footnotes. It is our hope that it will one day appear 119–22 etc.; compare J.E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: with that weighty apparatus. On Gracchus’s crisis of The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: conscience, see esp. pp. 17–25. Clarendon, 1997), pp. 30–106 (esp. pp. 50–51). 28. The Jugurthine War, 41.10–42.3. 17. For the idiom, see, for example, Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 6.26. 29. The polemical ‘charge’ was of aiming at regnum (a politically-loaded word). Whether Gracchus’s 18. Firsthand testimony is found at Polybius, Histories, opponents really believed that this was his aim, they 31.23–24. were underlining the claim that his actions were 19. Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 6.2. fundamentally altering the political landscape. 20. Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 38.2–4. 30. Cicero, Brutus, 107 (vehemens and acer). 21. The diverse aspects of this transformation 31. Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 13.3. were adumbrated in the lecture, but cannot be 32. Scaevola was a master of both lex and consuetudo canvassed here. (law and custom); Cicero, On the Orator, 1.212. The 22. Appian, Civil Wars, 1.7; cf. Plutarch, Tiberius installation of a Dictator (usually undertaken in Gracchus, 8.1–4. Contemporary perceptions were of military emergencies) required meticulous ritual the essence; the ‘evidence’ could be seen by those which could not be effected in a day. travelling the grand arteries; Plutarch, Tiberius 33. Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta Memorabilia, 7.5.2 Gracchus, 8.7. (misidentifying the Nasica); cf. Cicero, In Defence of 23. Again, the phenomenon is not unfamiliar; when Plancius 51. social change accelerates or transforms a society 34. Valerius Maximus, 3.2.17. beyond a certain point, and the past ceases to provide the pattern for the present, it becomes, 35. The German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann- instead, a model for it, the call being for a return Hollweg offered the German formula, quoted here, to the ways of the ancestors. This rallying cry as a justification for the invasion of Belgium in often implies a fundamental transformation of World War I. Necessitas non habet legem is now, of the past (history rewritten) and can be ‘a mask for course, a maxim recognised in legal circles. innovation’; Eric Hobsbawm, On History (London: 36. We have been much influenced here by Giorgio Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), pp. 5, 13–14. We are Agamben, Stato di eccezione (Turin: Bollati inclined to think that this Roman attempt to turn Boringhieri, 2003), translated by Kevin Attell as State back the clock was not disingenuous. of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 24. Tiberius Gracchus, 8.7. 2005), pp. 4, 26–7, 50, and passim. 25. Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 5–7; cf. [Anonymous], 37. Its clearest articulation will be found in Cicero’s On Illustrious Men, 64; Quintilian, Institutes of Defence of Milo, 8. Oratory, 7.4.13. 38. Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 1.31.
68 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Monumental Discovery Narratives and Deep History
ANN McGRATH
MONUMENTAL HISTORIES latitudes seem incommensurable, unable to be ▲ Montage using accommodated inside history’s ambit.2 article figures. In the evening of 12 June 2020, in In recent years, however, leading historians the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, a have called for an expansion of their contingent of mounted police and other police discipline’s time-scale beyond the modern officers wearing protective face-masks formed and pre-modern.3 How did it come about that a circle to guard the statue of Captain Cook in a certain ‘regime of historicity’, in theorist Sydney’s Hyde Park (fig. 1). Weeks earlier, on Francois Hartog’s formulation as ‘a way of 24 May 2020, the Juukan caves in the Pilbara linking together past, present, and future’4 was region of Western Australia had been blasted so chronologically, geographically, and racially by mining giant Rio Tinto. This destroyed exclusive? Historians may need to rethink a site that contained evidence of 46,000 their discipline not only beyond the ‘pre’ of years of Aboriginal habitation in Australia. prehistory, but also beyond its monumental Although Cook did not set foot in Hyde discovery wall.5 Park during his brief visit in 1770, the police protection afforded the monument, erected ◄ Fig 1. Statue of Captain Cook 109 years later, stood in stark contrast to the surrounded by police, absence of any protection at Juukan Gorge. Hyde Park, Sydney. The former represented the lengths to which IMAGE: ELLY BAXTER the forces of the state would go to protect a cherished coloniser heritage. One history was familiar and state-endorsed, while Juukan was unknown by the wider public until its destruction, despite being classified as a heritage site and of ‘the highest archaeological significance’.1 So why this dichotomy? For one thing, ancient Indigenous pasts are either excluded from historical narratives or positioned as outside or before ‘history’ really began. In both academic and popular understandings of history, Australia’s deep human past has not been integrated into the telling of its national history. Its vast temporal and geographical
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 69 The cache of discovery narratives and reinterpreted story. On its high pedestal, continues to play a key role in obscuring, it stands as a signifier for a complex history if not entirely blocking off, the possibility of sailing technology, skill, and imperial land of deep Indigenous histories. Historians of takeovers that have been well-documented, oft Australia have tended to start their accounts written about, perpetuated and glorified. In in 1770, at the time of James Cook’s short 1810 Governor Macquarie had superimposed sojourn at Botany Bay, or in 1788, with the the name Hyde Park on the Eora lands after so convict colonisation that eventually followed. many of their people had died in a devastating These start dates constantly reinscribed the epidemic.7 This appellation represented significance of European arrivals as opposed hopeful importations of Englishness, with its to the exceptionally deep human history of contemporary notions of civilisation, class Indigenous Australia. Is it possible to displace and culture. Almost 70 years later, in Cook’s these ‘white man’ chronologies? It may be memorialisation, the colonial elites of New more difficult than we expect, for discovery South Wales chose their preferred imperial narratives have so long delineated territory beginnings, one less shameful than that of the and sovereignty that Australian historians adjacent convict barracks.8 have become entrapped by their boundary Funded by both community and government markers. This is not to suggest that European contributions, the inscriptions accompanying discovery of other places did not mark a the Hyde Park statue read: historical rupture, a turning point—a symbolic moment after which nothing could ever be the captain cook same. For Europe, much of the world would this statue was erected by public subscription no longer remain unknown. For Indigenous assisted by a grant from the people, colonialism presented a rupture of new south wales government great magnitude. But discovery was not a 1879 closing curtain; it should not block sight of * the many far earlier ruptures. Indigenous BORN Australians lived on the continent when it AT MARTON IN YORKSHIRE was joined to New Guinea, when the seas 1728 rose, the megafauna disappeared and the * climate dramatically changed. And nor did DISCOVERED THIS TERRITORY ‘Discovery’ mean that Indigenous sovereignty 1770 or Indigenous history ended. * In nations such as Australia, Canada, New KILLED AT OWHYHEE Zealand and the United States, the timeline 17799 of European discovery clearly served imperial and colonial ends. It became cemented Standing high above the general populace, the as a powerful device for history-telling. Cook figure holds a telescope in one hand, Although subjected to scrutiny by Indigenous with the other upstretched as if to reach activists and academic historians of various the skies. The statue speaks to the history backgrounds throughout the twentieth of British mercantilism and Enlightenment century, the global Black Lives Matter science, fundamental factors in the founding movement has awarded critiques of Cook-style of the British colony of New South Wales. Its monumentalism a much higher profile.6 Yet, elevation on a plinth suggests the supposedly contestations over the ‘discovery’ statues and superior notions of European or ‘western’ stories do little to dismantle their significance civilisation, including that of the voyage’s as historical boundary markers; rather, they stated purpose to measure the transit of Venus. may do the opposite. In the past year, many of the Juukan The Cook statue, situated in pride of place artefacts, a belt made of human hair and in Sydney’s Hyde Park, evokes a widely retold stone tools, perhaps associated with their
70 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 2. Statue of Captain Cook, Hyde Park, Sydney. IMAGE: FLICKR
▼ Fig 3. Plaque, Statue of Captain Cook, Hyde Park, Sydney. IMAGE: FLICKR
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 71 own star stories, were removed in advance to Indigenous deep history presents a a mining company’s storage area.10 In common challenge to the constitution of the modern with Cook’s statue, most news coverage of nation. It poses questions of what the full its destruction mention a date—but in this polity, including the Indigenous citizens of instance a 46,000-year-old date. This recent the nation, want the history and future of the chronological value, attributed by scientific nation to be. This presents a major challenge dating techniques, assisted in measuring its to the humanities in general and for the international heritage significance. The long discipline of history in particular. associations of the Puuti Kunti Karrama and If the ‘Australian nation’ is taken to mean Pinikura people with this region, and their all those who belong to today’s nation- long-held Indigenous stories are personal, state, Indigenous people rightly consider familial and enduring. To its owners, a themselves as part of that polity and its history. beginning date is not necessarily relevant.11 Indeed, they have been the most defining For the non-Indigenous public, the site and enduring element of it, both in their and its associated journey routes do not recent contributions and as custodians of the fit into a recognisable history-telling mode landscapes from which the modern nation in the western tradition. Most of history’s benefited. Beyond this, the duree of Australia’s chronologies derive from northern hemisphere Indigenous history is so lengthy that it makes benchmarks, and regardless, such a long little sense to overlook it in favour of such a expanse of human time is difficult for many to relatively short history. imagine. Just as Cook’s plaque alone does not Indigenous Australians have repeatedly tell that complex imperial history, adding a objected to the ‘white lie’ of Cook being plaque that announces ‘Juukan caves, c. 46,000- lauded as discoverer of Australia.13 This was 2020’ would certainly not enrich the story of an obvious denial not only of their existence, this site. but also of their authority over their custodial land. In 2020, Wiradjuri lawyer Teela Reid DEEP NARRATIVES got to the point: ‘Let’s be clear: Captain Cook The Uluru Statement from the Heart, the did not “discover” the continent known as outcome of an Australia-wide deliberation by Australia. This must be the starting point for Aboriginal representatives, called for a full dialogue concerning the relationship between telling of the Indigenous past. It pointed to an the Australian state and the many First Nations enduring history which could be accounted that have never ceded sovereignty.’ She added: for in multiple kinds of evidentiary proof: ‘speaking truth is a hard task when you live in ‘according to the reckoning of our culture, a country that denies the truth of its past’.14 from the Creation, according to the common Mythologising Cook aimed to make law from “time immemorial”, and according to Australian history a British one, serving science more than 60,000 years ago’. It stated imperial agendas and a triumphalist European how their spiritual ties with land over deep narrative of ‘white progress’ against murderous time cemented their sovereignty: Indigenous ‘savagery’. Cook’s memory, however, has long been contested. At the re-enactment This link is the basis of the ownership of the of his landing at Federation, in 1901, the largely soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never white colonial crowd at Botany Bay jeered been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists the actor playing the role of Captain Cook, with the sovereignty of the Crown. drowning out his words. Instead, they cheered How could it be otherwise? That the Aboriginal performers, who put on such an peoples possessed a land for sixty exciting show as warriors that the onlookers millennia and this sacred link disappears demanded an encore.15 In Indigenous stories from world history in merely the last two and songs that stretch around the country, and hundred years?12 in many critical artworks, Cook signifies an immoral figure. To the Gurindji, he travelled
72 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 the wrong way, and was greedy; in Australia’s According to the law of nations, a colony contemporary art, he is ‘Crook’, a pirate, a law- could be established in the following ways: breaker, a symbol of land theft, dispossession 1. By persuading the indigenous and genocide.16 Marking the 250th Anniversary inhabitants to submit themselves to of Cook’s arrival in Australia, a 2019 exhibition its overlordship; at the National Library of Australia and one in 2020 at the National Museum of 2. By purchasing from those inhabitants Australia presented a multi-perspectival view, the right to settle part or parts of it; including that of the Bama Aboriginal people 3. By unilateral possession, on the basis of first of Cooktown, where his Endeavour crew discovery and effective occupation.19 stopped for repairs.17 For many Aboriginal Australians and their allies, however, Cook The third, of ‘first discovery’, basically relied became a symbol of a cruel and oppressive upon a European man’s sighting of non- colonising regime, a mythologised figure European-occupied lands. This method did who epitomised the most heinous coloniser not require consent, a treaty or agreement rapaciousness and savagery. by Indigenous people. But discovery could not stand alone; it had to be followed DISCOVERY AND LAW OF by an ‘effective occupation’, a continuing EUROPEAN NATIONS colonisation. Consequently, early European We might well ask why discovery has been colonisations such as those of the North such a big deal, when people were clearly America’s Mayflower Pilgrims and Australia’s already living in Australia—a fact recorded First Fleet of convicts were commonly fused by the so-called discoverers themselves? Put with discovery as dual markers to signify simply, discovery underpinned the British right national beginnings. to declare sovereignty over the continent of The law of sovereignty also required certain Australia. The ‘law of nations’, upon which this ritual performances, with embodied and was based, has frequently been taken to be a material enactments. Written inscriptions and/ universal law, as if something agreed across or visual records were required as proof that ‘the world’. It was, in essence, an agreement the rituals had indeed been performed. Cook’s amongst certain European powers, who at journals, therefore, attested to making certain various points of history, used it as a basis inscriptions of dates and other details on for negotiating disputes between competing trees at Botany Bay, and to a flag-raising ritual empires. The laws emanated in part from purportedly performed on an island off Cape contests over papal rule, but they evolved to York that he not-too-subtly named ‘Possession serve later contests of imperial conquest and Island’. To assert authority over territories, expansion. In order to justify taking over the the evidence of such written records was lands of other peoples, Europeans argued almost as crucial as the act of locating these that they could bring a superior culture.18 places in the first instance. The authoritative Under such law, the notion of ‘civilisation’ nature of Cook’s logbooks confirmed that was awarded cultural and legal weight. he had carried out his Secret Instructions of It was associated with Christianity and ‘making Discoverys [sic] of Countries hitherto certain economies as the superior cultural unknown’. What they did not do, however, models. Hunting and gathering societies—no was to demonstrate that he had ‘take[n] matter how sophisticated their technologies Possession’ of such territories ‘with the Consent and techniques might be—were classed as of the Natives’.20 backward and uncivilised. European nations Reflecting the necessity of the coloniser including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Holland, France nation’s investment in continuing and England declared sovereignty over various performances of sovereignty, discovery ‘New Worlds’. narratives took on a political, legal and a historical authority all their own. Later
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 73 performances of imperial and colonial scholar Bede’s calculations and adoptions sovereignty included public memorialisation, of key dates that informed his Ecclesiastical flag-raising, toasts to the King or Queen, History of the English People, including his re-enactments of ‘discovery’ and ‘taking popularisation of dating from the birth of possession’, the erection of Captain Cook Christ (Anno Domini [A.D.] or year of Our statues, the naming of hotels and roads Lord). He is often referred to as ‘The Father and its inclusion as a ‘key fact’ in school of English History’.23 Despite today’s history textbooks. A Brisbane bridge was named for discipline showing increasing appreciation Captain Cook in 1972. The name of the current of and adeptness in the use of oral, visual, Prime Minister’s electorate near Botany Bay material objects and landscapes evidence, it honours Cook. In 2020, his government was still relies primarily upon text-based sources. to fund a replica Endeavour to sail around Although some of the earlier twentieth- Australia to mark the 250th anniversary of century historians were sceptical about the Cook’s short visit to Australia’s east coast. singularity of Captain Cook in Australian These moments fitted well with the wider history, they still gave discovery narratives semiotics of ‘discovery’, a key concept in pride of place. Before getting onto Cook, they western ontologies, including in scientific usually paid attention to Englishman William discourse, narratives of civilisation, innovation, Dampier’s earlier voyages, then to Dutch advancement and progress.21 navigators such as Dirk Hartog, Jan Carstenz and Abel Tasman. Next came the land-based THE HISTORY DISCIPLINE’S explorers such as Blaxland, Lawson and PERFORMANCES OF SOVEREIGNTY Wentworth, Mitchell, Sturt and Leichardt. History writing became a performance of Maps of their one-time journey routes featured sovereignty in itself. As did the libraries and prominently in history texts, whereas the archives upon which it relied. Early historical much-travelled Indigenous pathways and societies, libraries and state archives devoted songlines of deeper histories did not feature themselves to gathering explorer’s, early at all (figs 4 and 5). Some tried alternative coloniser’s and government accounts as key approaches such as foregrounding ‘the land’ documents of state. The Cook plaque, for and ‘the Aborigines’, but these sections read like example, contains a skeletal version of the ‘background’, unable to move along at the same kind of data upon which historians continue to pace as the plot-lines of the European explorers rely as verifiable facts—birth and death dates, and adventurers.24 named people and named places. Details were With a first chapter entitled ‘The Invasion supplied by various British parish and state of Australia’, W. K. Hancock’s Australia, a archives and Cook’s own logbook and journals. breakthrough national history which appeared Discovery stories were an ideal fit for history’s in 1930, tried to shed the popular adulation evidence criteria and research methodologies, of Cook’s ghost. Near the end of the book, he providing the required framings for its explains why: ‘Australia has been too much chronological narratives. The epistemologies of glorified by simple patriots, who imagine the history discipline thus served to reinforce that civilisation started with the voyages of the discovery timeline as its beginning point. Captain Cook’.25 Regardless, Hancock fell into The discipline of history had its beginnings discovery’s spectral framing: ‘Many nations in philology or the interpretation of ancient adventured for the discovery of Australia, texts, which concreted its approach as but the British peoples have alone possessed document-based. Its methodologies were her…’. 26 The white man reigned over the land, refined at the major academies of Germany, depicted as female and as fantastically ready England and other European centres of for the taking. With or without Cook, history learning, their teachers refining critical skills writing continued in the vein of gendered to tackle the histories of people who left forms conquest, where discovery delivered the ‘birth of writing.22 Prior to this, it was the monastic of civilisation’ on the continent. R. M. Crawford
74 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 commenced his history, also called Australia (1952) with a chapter on geography. He epitomised ‘Cook’s great voyage’ as ‘a splendid prelude to British settlement in the South Seas’, marred only by the ‘irksome’ convict problem.27 Crawford’s inclusion of a chapter on ‘Aborigines’ reflected the strengths of the contemporary anthropological discipline, but also its weaknesses, as Aboriginal society was portrayed as an unchanging culture positioned outside of modernity and therefore outside history. Colonial onslaughts, including expropriation of lands and resources, disease, ▲ Fig 4. (top left) neglect, and massacres received minimal or on Aboriginal Australians tellingly entitled A general chart no attention in such history books. The topic ‘The Days before History’. Similarly, Marjorie exhibiting the discoveries made by of Aboriginal Australia was considered the Barnard’s popular A History of Australia (1962), Captn. James Cook province of anthropologists; at the time, the started out with the necessary ‘Background’ in this and his two historians’ remit related to white Australia. before moving onto an action-filled chapter preceeding voyages, 29 with the tracks of Also overlooking the horrors of colonialism, entitled ‘Discovery’. In most twentieth- the ships under his school text books usually fostered glorious century accounts, occupying the ‘days before command by Lieutt. discovery narratives, reinforcing the notion history’, before ‘discovery’, was the most that Roberts of His Majesty's Royal Navy. that Aboriginal demise was inevitable, more Indigenous Australians could hope for. In IMAGE: NATIONAL so given that they were a people located the major histories that followed, by Douglas LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA outside historical time. In Dunlop and Pike’s Pike, Gordon Greenwood, Manning Clark and ▲ Figs 5 & 5a. school text, Australia: Colony to Nation (1960), others, the periodisation of discovery and/ (top & lower right) they presented dynamic tales of European or colonisation became a convention, with Exploration map of the Commonwealth discoverers and colonisers, of development and Aboriginal Australians given short shrift or of Australia: compiled progress. In an attempt to acknowledge the ignored altogether.30 by C.R. Long, M.A., Aboriginal presence, they devoted a chapter to Since the 1980s, Australian historians Inspector of Schools, Education Department, the topic, dividing their sub-section ‘Prehistoric have published much on Aboriginal history, Victoria, for use Australians’ into ‘Old Stone Age Tasmanians’ exploring how European colonisers invaded, with "Stories of and ‘New Stone Age Australians’.28 Basically, occupied and established hegemony. They have Australian exploration"; S. Yandasynde, del., Aboriginal Australians primarily belonged highlighted the ongoing nature of oppressive Melbourne. in a museum exhibit, with their one chapter colonial power relations, and produced studies IMAGE: NATIONAL LIBRARY AUSTRALIA
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 75 of massacres, labour exploitation, state policies Aborigines.’36 The capitalisation looks to have of forced migration and child removal. Yet been intentional. the field of ‘Aboriginal history’, my own work Ascertaining the first arrivals and routes included, still tended to commence with, and to Australia remains an important area of then focus upon the period after European research for archaeologists and associated arrival—from 1770 or 1788.31 Several historians specialists.37 Nonetheless, Indigenous first have been keen to integrate the story of the arrival stories lack the prerequisites for long duree of Indigenous Australia.32 But classification as discoveries. Certainly, it is ‘prehistory’ proved difficult to tackle. The first accepted that the first Australians found volume of the Oxford History of Australia was somewhere new and they occupied the to cover the pre-1788 period, but this volume land. However, this did not fit the mould never eventuated. The Cambridge Companion of an imperial discovery story. There were to Australian History engaged archaeologists no accessible individual names, specific to write the pre-1788 chapter.33 Archaeologists places and dates. No inscriptions in ink continue to deliver pathbreaking work providing a Gregorian/Bedian calendar date, which eludes historians, most of whom feel an author’s name or a geographical latitude unqualified to write about this expanding field. and a longitude—the kinds of prerequisites The disciplinary divide between history and that had made the white Australian arrivals archaeology, with its rigorous techniques for ‘historical’ moments. researching the deep past, is clearly an issue for In researching the deep Indigenous past, the future of deep history. however, certain archaeologists have relished Some earlier archaeologists tried to creating a new version of the European dismantle the imperial discovery narrative, discovery adventure. Rhys Jones, who with while at the same time falling prey to its John Mulvaney and others researched the c. romantic allure. In doing so, they created new 45,000-year-old ancient cremation, Mungo 1 archaeological discovery narratives in their or Lady Mungo in western New South Wales wake.34 John Mulvaney’s 1969 book, entitled a in the late 1960s, waxed lyrical about the lost Prehistory of Australia, was written in accessible romance of earlier discovery. Referring to the prose and had a big impact upon historians wonder of ‘lost lands’ via Gulliver’s Travels and and the wider public alike. Concurring with Atlantis, he lamented how it was no longer the view that the study of pre-literate societies possible to make such new discoveries on could not be ‘history’, its title ‘prehistory’ was the high seas. With mischievous flourish, intended to bring this time period and these he recalled the adventures of the French peoples into a parallel realm to other histories. navigator Baudin, whom he described as the The term had the unfortunate effect, however, ‘thick skinned matelot from Le Havre’, who of reinscribing the idea that the long duree had rounded the coast of ‘the half unknown of human experience took place outside real Terra Australis’.38 It was, of course, not ‘half time—effectively before European people unknown’ to local Indigenous nations, only made real History.35 In the case of Aboriginal ‘half unknown’ until the European discoverers Australians, it potentially reinforced the idea entered measurable time. that Indigenous Australians might occupy a zone of evolutionary stages, but not the REDISCOVERED HISTORIES dynamic change zones associated with other We have discussed how discovery-based history studies. Nonetheless, John Mulvaney narratives offer specific, dated beginning made an astounding intervention into the points that became a standard periodisation dominant national narrative. In his Prehistory for Australian history which reinforced book, he allowed Aboriginal people to replace coloniser hegemony. In her book Periodization Cook, proclaiming: ‘THE DISCOVERERS, and Sovereignty, mediaeval historian Kathleen explorers and colonists of the three million Davis considered the way historians organise square miles which are Australia, were its their analysis in themed chronological
76 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 chunks, arguing its efficacy in reinforcing Bay threw their continent into a story that and naturalising the social orderings of both potentially could find a place in both European past and present.39 For Europe, ‘The Age of history and modernity. Discovery’ was an epoch in itself, forming a As the doctrine of discovery was the legal prelude to ‘modern history’. This so-called Age basis of British sovereignty, it became the spanned the ocean journeys of the Spanish, conventional doctrine for writing the nation. Dutch, Portuguese and more—generally from Revered or mocked, because discovery became the fifteenth century to the seventeenth a set periodisation, histories that centred century—an epoch which omitted Cook’s around the idea of heroic ‘firsts’ by white men era, perhaps because Europe had already have been difficult to budge. Their ubiquity also ‘discovered’ and mapped most of the rest of the entrapped historians focused upon critiques world. Certainly, maritime journeys expanded of colonialism, for they too fell into discovery’s Europe’s known worlds, enabling them to dated certainties. broaden their knowledge, their imaginations, As long as discovery narratives remain their cultural influence and wealth, and above the focus of history contestations, their all, their dominions. Despite the horrors of significance will be reinforced and kidnappings, slavery, theft, and disease that significant sites like Juukan Gorge, with followed discovery, in the making of western its incommensurable history, will remain and world history, discovery was told as an unprotected. Such places may have much to appealing tale that heralded the arrival and teach people of the present, and arguably the beginning of a dynamic age.40 The prior lessons of deep time may be more relevant histories of the northern hemisphere were to the future than the monument to honour known as early modern and mediaeval, and Captain Cook. While historians need to the earlier periods beyond those were classed be cautious that they do not appropriate as Ancient History and classical studies (fig. 6). Indigenous history simply to deepen coloniser For Australianists, Cook’s visit to Botany identities, unless they grapple with the exceptionally deep human history of Australia, ◄ Fig 6. Ancient the nation—and the wider world—will be the History Syllabus. poorer for it. IMAGE: VCN BLIGHT, GOVERNMENT PRINTER, So what is preventing this from happening? 1961 For one thing, historians do not yet have the appropriate skills to research and decipher deep history. While archaeologists have well-developed fieldwork strategies, disciplinary boundaries appear difficult to cross. Historians and archaeologists both need to engage in transdisciplinary collaborations. Beyond that, they need to work in true partnership with Indigenous knowledge holders, and in doing so, to seriously consider Indigenous regimes of historicity and Indigenous modes of historical practice. In order to proceed with the study of deep time, history itself requires reconceptualisation. New kinds of human-centred periodisation will be required—not simply ones to do with stone tools or climate. Historians will need to develop new methodologies for using different kinds of evidence. Japanese historian of the Gurindji, Minoru Hokari, urged scholars to
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 77 include Indigenous accounts not only as myths It is important to note, however, that or legends, but as interpretative capital ‘h’ Indigenous Australians do not necessarily Histories. In order to understand Indigenous wish to be incorporated in western discovery histories, Hokari explained, one needed to pay narratives, for the discovery concept does attention—to geography, to the breeze touching not concur with their ontologies of human/ one’s skin, and to the earth, which lives and land relationships.44 The transient moment of speaks.41 Indigenous knowledge approaches discovery and the ephemeral journey routes of and cross-cultural ways of knowing offer explorers stand in contrast to the continuity the prospect of innovative directions for the of Indigenous journey routes—the enduring history discipline. thread of human travel by generations of women, men and children across vast landscapes, layered with Indigenous names The Indigenous archive resides bearing complex, connected and richly storied meanings. These were sustaining routes, not in text but in discrete where people shared deep stories of place, and physical landscapes … knowledge of food, water and medicines that sustained whole communities. Indigenous Australians knew these tracks for their creation The Indigenous archive resides not in and origin stories, as marriage routes, as text but in discrete physical landscapes—in connecting roads that united distant clans material evidence, rock art, language and in and language groups. They contained shelters, the epic narratives kept alive in aural and art sites, their ecologies sustained gatherings, visual performative traditions that in turn feasts, rituals, history stories and dances; they rejuvenate the spirits embodied in the land. were dotted with sites of birth and death. As explained by the Gay’wu group of women, Deep history should become a creative Indigenous history-telling practices follow a challenge to current thinking of what sacred or spiritual logic, with the principles constitutes history, how it can be researched, of song cycles propelling the past into the its role in the present, its role in moving the present, and along journey routes across narratives beyond imperial narratives of vast landscapes.42 Indigenous approaches discovery. Indigenous narratives recount their to temporality are non-linear,43 and place- journey routes through time with contrasting based. Plants and animals are historical ontologies of temporality—dubbed an actors, animated and storied. Great journey ‘everywhen.’45 If a truly collaborative enterprise stories travel along prescribed routes that with Indigenous knowledge holders, ‘deep follow where the sun sets and rises; these are history’ may serve as a potential decolonising narratives rich in ecological knowledge with move. The nation might thereby gain more an Indigenous law and a moral trajectory knowledge of the long era of Indigenous associated with an enduring sovereignty. occupation not as a static 65,000 years of These people saw the oceans around the ‘continuing culture’ but as one encompassing ancient continent of Sahul inundate the land; both continuity and change. To prevent they witnessed islands being formed, rivers discovery’s monumental features continuing changing course, bays forming, ecologies to block the view of deep time, historians need changing from savannah to rainforest, lands to appreciate indigenous interpretations of the covered in ice becoming grasslands, and deep past, and work with Indigenous leaders glaciers leaving behind huge granite boulders. to ensure future histories of nation align with They knew of volcanoes erupting. Over Indigenous sovereignty and inform reparative 65,000 years or more, Aboriginal Australians justice. To do so, the discipline’s parameters responded to many ruptures, many challenges. must be open to radical change. ¶
78 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 6. Julia Baird, ‘The toppling of statues is enriching ANN McGRATH is a historian not erasing our history…’, Sydney Morning Herald, of deep history, gender, 13 June 2020
1. Michael Slack, archaeologist who filed report for Rio 13. Larissa Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal Women and the White Tinto, cited in
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 79 Penguin, 1987); Antony Anghie, Imperialism, 34. Ann McGrath, ‘Lady Mungo and the New and Sovereignty and the Making of International Law Old Discovery Narrative’, in Unmasking Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology, ed. by Bonnie 2005). Effros and Guolong Lai (Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen 20. Secret Instructions to Captain Cook, 30 June 1768, Institute of Archaeology Press, 2018), pp. 227–56. Foundingdocs,
80 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 Soldier Beauties and Sailor Sons in Republican China
LOUISE EDWARDS
The creation of the new Republic of of beautiful women, China, Asia’s first republic, in 1912, required Shen and Ding presented more than just a reshuffling of political alluring images of new leaders. Artists, intellectuals, teachers and lifestyles, egalitarian journalists all participated in promoting new relationships, marvellous Republican values to the people who had technologies and public transitioned, rather suddenly, from subjects leisure activities. Their of an Emperor to citizens in a Republic. In readers were well-familiar the first decades after 1912, reformers of with the old-style beauties all professions promoted new ideas about of Qing dynasty artists like family structures, work relations, and Wu Youru (1850–1893) and educational systems in a wave of optimism Qiu Shouping (c. 1875), so their modernisation about the new political system. They sought of this genre was redolent with the broader to help ordinary Chinese embrace the project of making a modern version of opportunities presented in their changing Chinese culture. Ding and Shen drew pictures times and work to build a modern, globally- of housewives in modern, tiled kitchens engaged China and a revitalised Chinese preparing food for their husbands—a subtle culture. Chinese people, these reformers promotion of the nuclear family where reasoned, needed to be ‘woken up’ so that they conjugal bonds triumphed over parental would be able to participate in the building of control. They sketched images of young their new, modernising Republic.1 women attending schools, delivering speeches, Artists were at the forefront of this program and reading newspapers—a celebration of the to promote the values of a modern republic productive, informed and civically-engaged through their contributions to newspapers, citizen. The beautiful women that emerged magazines and advertisements. Shen Bochen from their ink brushstrokes drove cars, flew (1889–1919 or 1920?) and Ding Song (1891–1969), planes, rode in trains and, in their leisure- two of China’s most famous commercial time played tennis, ping-pong, golf, bowls and artists of these years, modernised a centuries- croquet. The pining, wistful and self-sacrificing old genre, the One Hundred Illustrated beauties that dominated the traditional Beauties, to provide a direct contrast with One Hundred Beauties genre were being the old imperial values by inviting ‘before transformed, while not entirely disappearing.3 ▲ and after’ comparisons of beauties ‘old and These old-style beauties were steeped in Background: 2 Detail, fig. 2, new’. Through the circulation of sketches literati culture and reflected Confucian values p. 82.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 81 and admired the ancient, the past and women state as the object of a good citizen’s devotion who largely stayed cloistered in boudoirs and through the careful placement of the maps and private gardens. flags of the Republic of China. Beautiful women In Citizens of Beauty: Drawing Democratic dedicated their evenings to sewing the national Dreams in Republican China, I discuss the flag (fig. 1), they taught their children to honour various facets of the modern values of the same (fig. 2) and to appreciate the borders citizenship Ding and Shen promoted in their of their new, sovereign nation as they looked at commercial art.4 Their modernisation of national maps (fig. 3). an imperial-era genre encouraged readers After I had completed Citizens of Beauty, to appreciate the importance of individual I realised that one key aspect of the modern action, the equality of citizens and the value nation-state—military service—was presented of civic rights and duties and the excitement in far less path-breaking forms. This article of the future. Previous hierarchies that had stands as an addendum, complicating the ► Fig 1. (right) Shen Bochen, Sewing privileged age over youth, men over women, picture of increasing openness that I describe the national flag of literati over the non-literati were dismantled in my book. While Ding and Shen do present the new Republic, in their images. With the new Republic, new women citizens as models of service to XXBMT, 1913. IMAGE: COURTESY OF responsibility for the nation was generalised the nation and as radical participants in a raft LAO SHANGHAI NÜZI FENGQING HUA: SHEN to ‘people of the nation’ (guomin) who were of new public roles, their depiction of women’s BOCHEN’S ‘XINXIN connected horizontally to others around them engagement with the military conformed BAIMEITU’ (DRAWINGS 5 OF THE STYLE OF as part of a new, Republican community. to age-old patterns of gender norms. Their WOMEN OF OLD SHANGHAI: SHEN Productive labour by ordinary people was revolutionary depiction of modern women in BOCHEN’S ‘BRAND NEW ONE HUNDRED presented as ‘beautiful’. Simply being out in strikingly modern modes as modern mothers, BEAUTIES’), ED. BY public for leisure, work or education became politicians, professionals, businesswomen and WU HAORAN (JI’NAN: QILU SHUSHE, 2010), ‘modern’. Speed and motion displaced quietude travellers is coupled with the more traditional P. 83. and stillness as desirably modern states. Ding notions of women’s roles in the Republican ▼ Fig 2. (left) Ding Song, Mother and Shen presented for their readers visions teaching her son of citizens-in-action to contrast with the about the flag on traditional, moral tales of imperial subjects National Day 1917, MGFQBMT, 1918. depicted in the old-style One Hundred IMAGE: COURTESY OF Beauties in collections by the late Qing artists, BAIMEITU WAIJI (ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES Qiu and Wu. OF THE REPUBLICAN In Ding’s and Shen’s art, the object of the MODE), (BEIJING: ZHONGGUO WENLIAN new citizen’s efforts was the new nation, the CHUBANSHE, 2004), P. 56. Republic of China. They promoted the nation-
82 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 to reconfiguring China’s broader culture ◄ Fig 3. Shen through the remaking of Chinese masculinity.6 Bochen, Mother and daughter looking at Renegotiating masculine gender norms was at the map of China, the heart of China’s military makeover as both XXBMT, 1913. Qing and Republican leaders promoted the IMAGE: COURTESY OF LAO SHANGHAI NÜZI martial values that had long been disdained FENGQING HUA: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘XINXIN by a Confucian literati elite. Valuing military BAIMEITU’ (DRAWINGS OF THE STYLE OF skills (shangwu) was central to their attempts WOMEN OF OLD to raise the status of soldiering.7 Despite this SHANGHAI: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘BRAND transformation in attitudes about masculinity NEW ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES’), ED. BY and war-making, China’s reform-oriented WU HAORAN (JI’NAN: QILU SHUSHE, 2010), commercial artists did not encourage any P. 46. change for women. How, then, did the One Hundred Beauties genre, with its focus on presenting new roles for women, engage with this modernisation of military culture? Why was it not as radical on this issue as it had been on a broad range of other sectors of society such as family, industry, schooling and leisure?
WOMEN’S MILITARY ROLES IN THE FORMATION OF THE REPUBLIC The battles to overthrow the Qing imperial military realm. Their vision was more government included women in many different conservative than both the reality of women’s military roles. Women formed armies that participation in the revolution that overthrew saw military action, worked in intelligence, the Qing and the narratives of heroic women bombing brigades and gun running. They warriors that populate China’s imperial past. were motivated to join the violence in order Our artists’ modern beauties were not designed to claim full citizenship rights—they wanted to encourage women readers to enlist. Yet, access to political power in the new Republic modernisation of the military was central to and sought to show their brothers that they the reformers’ campaigns to strengthen China were prepared to undertake all the duties of in both the late Qing and early Republic. citizenship by risking their lives in a military The Republic of China was forged out of arena. Leading anti-Qing intellectual Jin Tianhe the widespread desire to reclaim some form (1873–1947) advocated for equality between of military pride for China. The defeat of the men and women in politics as well as in ‘the Qing by the Europeans in the Opium Wars of navy and army’ in his 1903 manifesto, Women’s the mid 1800s was compounded by the rout Bell.8 Many women took up his call over of the Qing navy by the Japanese in 1895. The the following few years. Yet, one of the first once formidable Qing military was ineffectual, regulations issued by the new Republic was leaving the nation weak—its economy and to disband the women’s armies. The rationale social order was crumbling. The modernisation for the ruling was that men and women had of China’s military along western lines had separate spheres and bearing arms was not commenced during the second half of the ‘suitable for women’. The new government nineteenth century with German, Russian, explained that in order to maintain order British, American and Japanese advisors and among troops and to protect women, the arms dealers playing significant roles in its women’s armies were to disband immediately. restructuring. This multinational exchange, as Women wanting to serve the nation were Nicolas Schillinger has deftly demonstrated, invited to undertake activities that were more would make modernising the military integral suited to their sex—nursing and cooking.9
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 83 Moreover, within months the government had had been prepared to lose their lives as soldiers passed laws on dress that banned women from in order to claim a place as equal citizens. wearing men’s clothing. Delineating sex and Women like the revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin gender norms were central to the Republic’s (1875–1907) wore men’s clothing, organised political order and military uniforms were women’s schools and trained a woman’s army to overthrow the Qing.13 But their hopes were roundly dashed in 1912 when not only were The modernisation of Chinese martial women’s armies disbanded, but women’s suffrage claims were met with the patronising masculinity in the Republic depended rebuff ‘Come back when you have more upon keeping women out—that is, until education’ from the very men who they had fought alongside.14 times of crisis. Women and girls, in the modernising rhetoric of the Republic, needed to be fit and firmly coded menswear.10 These two rulings healthy in order to become good mothers show that there was considerable unease for their citizen-soldier sons. But they were about the presence of women in the modern not encouraged to become citizen-soldiers military forces of the Republic, even among the themselves. Among the hundreds of sketches reformers who overthrew the Qing. of women performing radical modern roles During the late Qing and early Republic in public drawn by Shen and Ding there governments needed to change people’s is a remarkable dearth of female citizen- attitudes to ideal masculinity to improve the soldiers. For our two otherwise-radical artists, status of soldiering. To this end, they promoted challenging Confucian gender norms as regards military values among young men and boys to the citizen-soldier programs was not on the through the new school curriculums. Women agenda. Even while the Republic was increasing also experienced these new programs with the prestige of the military and rebalancing the expansion of girls’ schools during the the value accorded wen (civil) and wu (martial) late Qing—alongside hygienic homemaking skills, it did not challenge Confucian notions classes, their teachers included physical of women’s roles in the military.15 The activities like those in the boys’ schools.11 They modernisation of Chinese martial masculinity participated in military drills and calisthenics, in the Republic depended upon keeping in many cases unbinding their feet to do so. women out—that is, until times of crisis. Then, They learned to shoot, march, and parade and a long-standing tradition of welcoming women practised military discipline as part of this into military roles is acceptable, for the brief modern education. window of community crisis. This form of Once the Republic was established, women gender parity is isolated to a ‘crisis femininity’ and girls also heard the public discussion zone in which women are actively invited about the intimate link between the rights of to take on military roles to shore up morale a citizen and his duty to undertake military by showing that ‘even the women are joining service within the project to build ‘citizen- up’. 16 Once these exceptional circumstances soldiers’ (jun guomin).12 Schillinger shows how disappear, women are expected to quit the the concept of citizen-soldier successfully battlefield and return to civilian, and ideally overturned centuries of Confucian rhetoric domestic, roles. in which ‘good men do not become soldiers’ The strength of these exceptional gender and where the civil bureaucracy had regarded roles within ‘crisis femininity’ means that it is itself as superior to the military. The social replete with stories of women warriors saving status the literati accrued over their military their emperors, families and communities. counterparts was being dismantled but not the For centuries women have grown up knowing link between masculinity and martial power. of the wonders of wives, like Liang Hongyu The women who joined the anti-Qing armies (d. 1135), who stepped up to beat the battle
84 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 drums for the troops under the command (c. 1763–1830) Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua yuan ▲ Fig 4. (left) of her husband—the famous General Han 1827) includes further powerful swordswomen Qiu Shouping’s Hua Mulan, QD- Shizhong—as they battled the Jurchen. Others who avenged fathers and brothers in myriad GJBMTY, 1887. 19 were warriors and commanders in their own magical adventures. IMAGE: RPT IN QIU SHOUPING AND DING right. The two most famous are both from These famous, but exceptional, women SONG, GUJIN BAIMEI non-Han ethnicities from China’s southern contained within a rubric of temporary gender TUYONG. GUJIN BAIMEI TUYONG (ODES AND 17 borderlands. Lady Xian of Qiao (522–602) was parity within ‘crisis femininity’ appeared PICTURES OF ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES a skilled political and military leader from the in dramas, operas, poems and paintings— PAST AND PRESENT), 18 (SHANGHAI: Yue people. Qin Liangyu (1574/75–1648) was including in the traditional One Hundred ZHONGHUA a celebrated Miao (Hmong) commander, who Beauties genre in works by Wu Youru and TUSHUGUAN, 1917), VOL. 1, P. 42. fought on behalf of the Ming Emperor. Their Qiu Shouping. Their role was to confirm status as non-Han women warriors further the Confucian hierarchies in which women ▲ Fig 5. (right) Wu reinforcing their distinction from the core of were exhorted to be dedicated first to fathers, Youru’s Lady Liang, GJBMT, 1895. Han Chinese culture. then on marriage to their husbands and in IMAGE: COURTESY OF Fictional women warriors appeared widowhood to their sons. Women’s adoption of GUJIN BAIMEITU (ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES throughout Chinese stories and drama. For military roles was firmly contained as service PAST AND PRESENT), (HONG KONG: NAM example, every Chinese knows of the gallant to the patriarchal family system and the SAN, 1977 [UNDER THE TITLE QINGDAI WUSHI Hua Mulan who appears in hundreds of traditional One Hundred Beauties collections HUAGAO]), P. 75. other poems and plays from the first poem reaffirmed these Confucian principles. written in her honour in 568. Mulan is famous Typical of these images are Qiu Shouping’s for disguising herself as a man for twelve Hua Mulan depicted alongside her horse as she years to replace her aging father and fighting leaves her home (fig. 4) and Wu Youru’s Lady courageously in the Emperor’s conscripted Liang who is striking the drums as she rallies forces in northern China. Other loyal daughters her husband’s troops to battle (fig. 5). emerged to meet audience demand for filial Wu Youru drew Lady Xian as she looks devotion such as Thirteenth Sister from Wen down from the ramparts of her castle alongside Kang’s (c. 1842–1851) Qing dynasty novel Heroic three soldiers. Sword in hand, her power Sons and Daughters (Er nü yingxiongzhuan), one and status are marked in the image by her of China’s first martial arts novels. Li Ruchen’s height relative to the shorter male soldiers
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 85 ▲ Fig 6. (upper left) (fig. 6). Her feminine modesty is maintained Wu Youru’s Lady by the long gown that covers her legs and Xian, GJBMT, 1895. feet. Similarly, Wu’s drawing of Qin Liangyu IMAGE: COURTESY OF GUJIN BAIMEITU (ONE has her seated powerfully in the foreground, HUNDRED BEAUTIES PAST AND PRESENT), noticeably larger than the male troops arrayed (HONG KONG: NAM SAN, 1977 [UNDER THE along the ramparts. As with almost all of the TITLE QINGDAI WUSHI images of women by Qiu and Wu, Qin Liangyu HUAGAO]), P. 73. is depicted with all limbs, including hands, ▲ Fig 7. (upper right) Wu Youru’s Qin draped in cloth to enhance her allure and Liangyu, GJBMT, virtue (fig. 7). 1895. The Republican inheritors of this genre, IMAGE: COURTESY OF GUJIN BAIMEITU (ONE Ding Song and Shen Bochen, drew hundreds of HUNDRED BEAUTIES PAST AND PRESENT), new women for their commercial illustrations, (HONG KONG: NAM SAN, 1977 [UNDER THE yet only three are depicted as wearing military- TITLE QINGDAI WUSHI style uniforms. None of these beauties could be HUAGAO]), P. 75. ► Fig8. (right) Shen confused with men, nor are they surrounded Bochen, Woman by male soldiers. In each of the three cases, encouraging the the artists explain their soldier beauties with Republican troops with her snare drum, historical references to the ‘exceptional women’ XXBMT, 1913. (qinü) of the past. For example, Shen Bochen’s IMAGE: COURTESY OF 1913 image of a woman drumming a snare LAO SHANGHAI NÜZI FENGQING HUA: SHEN drum has a long skirt, with a buttoned panel BOCHEN’S ‘XINXIN BAIMEITU’ (DRAWINGS that hints at the potential for riding a horse OF THE STYLE OF WOMEN OF OLD without diminishing its female-coded ‘skirt’. SHANGHAI: SHEN The flower in her hat and high-collared shirt BOCHEN’S ‘BRAND NEW ONE HUNDRED bring further feminine appeal to her form feminine charms. With a valiant fighter and BEAUTIES’), ED. BY WU HAORAN (JI’NAN: (fig. 8). He directly invokes Liang Hongyu’s a fast horse, there is no need for hatred, the QILU SHUSHE, 2010), P. 153. famous beating of the war drums in the text booming of the drum spurs you onto the alongside the image—reassuring the reader of battlefield.’ her containment within the ‘crisis femininity’ Ding Song provided two women soldiers for rubric of traditionally-authorised women modern readers to enjoy. One startling image is warriors. The text runs ‘Who says there is of a woman in a modern, western-style military nothing attractive about military drumming, uniform complete with trousers, jacket, cap when back in the day Hongyu flaunted her and leather boots. She holds her sword upright
86 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 as she guards the tents of the military camp. in traditional China were welcomed into Two of the new Republic’s five-coloured military roles in times of national, community national flags fly amidst the encampment. The or familial crisis; they were expected to exit accompanying text makes an explicit reference the military domain and leave it for men once to the Women’s Northern Attack Brigade that the wars were over. Shen and Ding encouraged ▼ Fig 9. (lower left) had helped overthrow the Qing dynasty. There women to take up new roles as students, Ding Song, Woman soldier guarding are references to the killing of the enemy but teachers, journalists and farmers so quitting Republican camp, these are balanced by romantic references to the battlefield did not mean returning only QD-GJBMTY, 1917. the feminine beauty of lips, face and delicate to conventional domestic roles as mothers, IMAGE: RPT IN QIU SHOUPING AND DING bearing (fig. 9). Ding’s second soldier beauty is daughters and wives. But, by not including large SONG, GUJIN BAIMEI TUYONG. GUJIN BAIMEI wrapped in a voluminous ankle-length cape, numbers of women as modern soldiers, among TUYONG (ODES AND PICTURES OF ONE with stars on the collar. Her hat has a dramatic the raft of radical images they published— HUNDRED BEAUTIES vertical plume and her leather heeled shoes they reinforced the idea that the modern PAST AND PRESENT), (SHANGHAI: are on strong feet in a wide stance. Her hands military was a man’s sphere. Women’s modern ZHONGHUA TUSHUGUAN, 1917), are hidden within the folds of the cape but Republican citizenship meant reassuring their VOL. 3, P. 2. are holding the long scabbard with her sword. readers at least about one aspect of gendered ▼ Fig 10. (lower She too has the five-coloured national flag social-life that hadn’t changed—good times, right) Ding Song, Woman soldier with and tents in the background (fig. 10). As with peaceful times, stable times meant women cape and sword, QD- his other military beauties, the text likens this did not have to become soldiers. As soldier- GJBMTY, 1917. modern beauty to a known ‘authorised’ woman beauties they could present an alluring vision IMAGE: RPT IN QIU SHOUPING AND DING warrior, this time Hua Mulan. of Chinese modernisation, but they were safely SONG, GUJIN BAIMEI TUYONG. GUJIN BAIMEI The dearth of women soldiers in the contained from the most radical challenges to TUYONG (ODES AND PICTURES OF ONE modern versions of the One Hundred the patriarchal gender order by references to HUNDRED BEAUTIES Beauties produced by two commercial artists the traditional ‘authorised women warriors’ PAST AND PRESENT), (SHANGHAI: committed to promoting new civic values for who appeared only at times of national crisis. ZHONGHUA TUSHUGUAN, 1917), the new Republic, tells us that just as women VOL. 3, P. 25.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 87 manufacturers of ready-made clothes emerged MODERN MOTHERS NURTURING SAILOR-SUITED SONS to meet the rising demand. The outfit became regarded as particularly suitable for young boys While the early Republican commercial artists, rather than youths.21 Shen and Ding, reflected for the most part, the The fashion spread around the world. unease about real women soldiers and their Japanese modernisers adopted the military- containment in the ‘crisis femininity’ mode, style uniform, both army and navy, for their they also reflected the era’s enthusiasm for new school system in the 1870s. Through the militarisation of the education system and the lead-up to the invasion of China and the childhood more generally. Modern beauties as Pacific War, school children were regarded as mothers were frequently depicted accompanied warriors in training and their school uniforms by a modern son wearing a western-style sailor were a pertinent reminder of this patriotic role. suit. His mother remained dressed in either the Male and female Japanese uniforms diverged skirt and top of the Han elite or the pants and in form, but both were and remain military in shirt of the younger woman fashionable at this inspiration.22 The sailor suit became a girls’ time. Within the vision of the modern nation school uniform only in the 1920s, a function state presented in commercial art, women it continues to serve today. It appears in were envisaged as mothers of citizen-soldiers anime, manga and pornography as a marker of through the clothing of their sons. youthful feminine charm.23 In this international context, then, it is The modern family produces fresh, not surprising that children in China also appeared in the sailor suit. Antonia Finnane new desires for modern military has noted that, as a result of the influence of action among even the youngest of Japan, in particular after that nation’s defeat of the Qing in 1895, from about 1900 ‘young their children. scholars inevitably began to look more and more like young soldiers’.24 School curriculum Leading late Qing reformer, Liang Qichao under the Qing included military drills and (1873–1929) linked women’s physical education physical education—the long scholars’ robe to the rise of a nation’s military strength (changpao) was entirely unsuitable for these through the capacity of strong and healthy modern educational activities—and this women to produce strong and healthy trend was amplified with the establishment of children.20 Modern motherhood and a revived the Republic.25 China were encapsulated in the militarisation Multiple visions of modern-style mothering of boy’s clothing and presented as desirable to present the male child in a western sailor suit. a mass readership through their appearance in One of Shen Bochen’s images has a woman Ding’s and Shen’s commercial art. holding the hand of a young boy as they The late Victorian enthusiasm for the sailor disembark from a small boat. He wears a black suit was part of the militarisation of childhood sailor suit with black beret. In his other tiny that became popular as Europe’s empires hand, he holds an oar (fig. 11). The text tells consolidated their hold over large swathes us of the toddler’s reluctance to return home of Asia and Africa through superior military since he constantly wants to play at being a clout. Naval clothing for children, according sailor. The modern family produces fresh, new to Clare Rose, emerged in the 1840s and 1850s desires for modern military action among when the British and German royal families even the youngest of their children. Toys for circulated images of various princes dressed children also took on a military dimension as in their respective nation’s naval uniforms. Shen Bochen’s sketch of a young mother with These sartorial choices marked the boys as her sailor-suited toddler. Guns, swords, maps, commanders-in-waiting. By 1865 middle-class ships are scattered on the floor—accessories families were emulating this fashion and unthinkable in Qing illustrations of children
88 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ▲ Fig 11. Shen Bochen, ► Fig 12. Shen Bochen, Woman and toddler Mother and son with playing naval games, military toys, XXBMT, 1913 XXBMT, 1913. IMAGE: XINXIN BAIMEITU (SHANGHAI: GUOXUE IMAGE: COURTESY OF LAO CHUBANSHE, 1913), N.P. SHANGHAI NÜZI FENGQING HUA: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘XINXIN BAIMEITU’ (DRAWINGS OF THE STYLE OF WOMEN OF OLD SHANGHAI: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘BRAND NEW ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES’), ED. BY WU HAORAN (JI’NAN: QILU SHUSHE, 2010), P. 178.
and their toys. A child-size Republican flag national flag hanging decoratively either side of lies on the floor reminding readers of the a celebratory wreath (fig. 12 above). The boy in desirable object for this early martial training modern martial style learns about his country’s (fig. 12).26 In the Qing period crickets as pets, national day. spinning tops, paint brushes, balls, shuttlecocks The sailor suit is rendered ‘Chinese’ in appeared, but never weapons of war or another of Ding’s images where he has a militarised technology. mother and her two children burning incense The link to the new nation is also clear for Mid-Autumn Festival. She wears the in Ding’s depictions of a sailor-suited boy long skirt and long shirt with a high collar, standing with his mother as she points at the typical of the Han elite, while her son stands
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 89 ► Fig 13. (left) Ding Song, Mid-Autumn Festival family, SHSZBMTY, 1916. IMAGE: COURTESY OF SHANGHAI SHIZHUANG TUYONG (ILLUSTRATIONS AND ODES ON SHANGHAI’S FASHION) (TAIPEI: GUANGWEN SHUJU, 1968), P. 55.
► Fig 14. (right) Ding Song, Boy, ball and dog, SHSZBMTY, 1916. IMAGE: COURTESY OF SHANGHAI SHIZHUANG TUYONG (ILLUSTRATIONS AND ODES ON SHANGHAI’S FASHION) (TAIPEI: GUANGWEN SHUJU, 1968), P. 59.
► Fig 15. Ding stance contrasts with the playfulness of the Song, Young boy dog’s anticipation (fig. 14). A similar contrast is pestering for a game, achieved in a picture of a young boy in a white SHSZBMTY, 1916. IMAGE: COURTESY sailor suit hanging off the hips of a fashionable OF SHANGHAI young girl, wearing Chinese pants and shirt. SHIZHUANG TUYONG (ILLUSTRATIONS AND She has just returned from school and is ODES ON SHANGHAI’S FASHION) (TAIPEI: pestered by the boy to play hide and seek GUANGWEN SHUJU, 1968), P. 79. despite the late hour. She looks over his head towards another equally fashionable girl who also sports western-style heeled shoes beneath her Chinese pants-suit (fig. 15). Occasionally, women are also dressed in sailor suits—but not girl children and always in a nautical setting. For example, Shen Bochen provides a remarkable image of a woman climbing out of a large ship down to a dinghy— she holds her weight as she climbs down the rope wearing a sailor suit, with bare legs and leather shoes (fig. 16). In another he provides readers with a back view of woman at the helm of a large ship wearing a hybrid costume: the behind in shorts and long socks with the wide long skirt and long shirt of the Han elite but white collar of the sailor suit evident from with the addition of the square bib-collar of the posterior view (fig. 13). Another from the the western sailor suit. She commands the ship same collection shows a boy, hands clasped and ponders the rough weather ahead hoping behind his back, similarly dressed, with a dog the ship will be safe (fig. 17). playing at his feet waiting for the ball that As with the sailor suits on children, their is being passed out the window to him by a appearance on women served to create a sense young woman. The firmness of his martial of tamed, foreign cross-dressing. Clare Rose
90 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 16. (left) Shen Bochen, Sailor-suited woman descending a rope, XXBMT, 1913. IMAGE: COURTESY OF LAO SHANGHAI NÜZI FENGQING HUA: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘XINXIN BAIMEITU’ (DRAWINGS OF THE STYLE OF WOMEN OF OLD SHANGHAI: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘BRAND NEW ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES’), ED. BY WU HAORAN (JI’NAN: QILU SHUSHE, 2010), P. 152.
◄ Fig 17. (right) Shen Bochen, Sailor- suited woman at the ship’s helm, XXBMT, 1913.
IMAGE: COURTESY OF LAO SHANGHAI NÜZI FENGQING HUA: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘XINXIN BAIMEITU’ (DRAWINGS OF THE STYLE OF WOMEN OF OLD SHANGHAI: SHEN BOCHEN’S ‘BRAND NEW ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIES’), ED. BY WU HAORAN (JI’NAN: QILU SHUSHE, 2010), P. 53. has noted that sailor tops were among the first lives in war relied in part on flattering them unisex garments in the late Victorian era and into believing this was some form of sex-based that they were primarily about a recreational privilege or skill unique to men. mode of patriotism and imperialism. Like the This early Republican reluctance to include authorised and contained women warriors of modern women as part of the modern military, the Confucian past, the sailor-suited modern would be soon be challenged by the failure beauty was no threat to men’s control of of the Republic to bring a lasting peace to national military force. They were site-specific, China. As warlords vied for control over recreational or decorative mimicry of the ideal territory and wealth, dreams of a peaceful martial male role. China with a modern society, delineated by gender nonetheless, faded. In the late 1920s CONCLUSION with the Nationalist Party’s battle to defeat The reform-minded artists Shen and Ding were the warlords and reunite a fractured China, committed to their new Republic and its hopes women were welcomed into the Nationalist to build a modern Chinese citizen capable Army, received specific training in separate of building a strong nation-state. Despite military colleges, and even wore the same their depiction of a remarkable array of new uniforms as men—with the exception that roles for women, and new egalitarian values they had the roman letter W sewn onto for all of the Republic’s new citizens, gender their left arm. Xie Bingying (1906–2000), parity in military service posed a threat to a Nationalist soldier who fought against the the idea of male physical superiority, strength warlords and the Japanese explained that one and martial prowess. Building a prestigious of the challenges she and her female comrades (manly) military meant keeping women out— faced was the joke that the W stood for Wife. persuading half the population to risk their Being taken seriously, avoiding having one’s
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 91 sexual morals questioned, were then and 1. John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture remain today a problem for women stepping and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). into male-coded spaces.27 ¶ 2. Other popular genres were also updated to suit the modern times and new gender roles in these years. Abbreviations and Sources for Illustrations See for example, Anne McLaren, ‘Selling Scandal GJBMT—Wu Youru, Gujin baimeitu (One hundred in the Republican Era: Folk Opera in Performance beauties past and present [1895]), (Shanghai: Wenruilou, and Print’, Chinoperl: Journal of Chinese Oral and 1908; Shanghai: Biyuanhui She, 1909, 1916; Hong Kong: Performing Literature, 38:1 (2019), 19–44. Nam San, 1977 [under the title Qingdai Wushi Huagao]; 3. Xiaorong Li, ‘Image, Word and Emotion: The Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1983; Changsha: Persistence of the Beautiful/Lovelorn Woman in the Hunan Meishu Chubanshe, 1998; Beijing: Zhongguo New-Style ‘Hundred Beauties’ Albums (1900–1920s),’ Yanshi Chubanshe, 2017). GJBMT was first published as The Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, 6:1 Shuo Guiyan (Beauties of the boudoirs) in 1895. (2019), 169–204. 4. Louise Edwards, Citizens of Beauty: Drawing MGFQBMT—Ding Song, Baimeitu waiji (One hundred Democratic Dreams in Republican China (Seattle: beauties of the republican mode), (Beijing: Zhongguo University of Washington Press, 2020). For Wenlian Chubanshe, 2004). Reprint of Ding Song discussion of the depiction of animals in this baimeitu waiji (Supplement to Ding Song’s one hundred genre see Louise Edwards, ‘Animals and Beauties: beauties), (Shanghai: Jiaotong Tushuguan, 1918). Zoomorphic Inscriptions of a Modern Gender Hierarchy’, Nannü: Men, Women and Gender in China, QD-GJBMTY—Qiu Shouping and Ding Song, Gujin 22:2 (2020). baimei tuyong. (Odes and pictures of one hundred beauties past and present). Qiu’s images are in vols. 1–2 5. Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education of 4 vols. (Shanghai: Zhonghua Tushuguan, 1917). First and Student Politics in South-eastern China, 1912–1949 published as Xinzeng baimeitu shuo (Newly enlarged (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Centre, illustrated one hundred beauties), 2 vols., (Shanghai: 2007). Jishan Shuju, 1887). Reprinted under the same title by 6. Nicolas Schillinger, The Body and Military Shanghai: Shanghai Shuju, n.d. Modern reprints of some Masculinity in Late Qing and Early Republican China of the images in Qiu Shouyan shinü tu (Qiu Shouyan’s (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), pp. 1–6. portraits of ladies), (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua 7. Louise Edwards and Lili Zhou ‘Gender and the Chubanshe, 1987). “Virtue of Violence”: Creating a New Vision of Political Engagement through the 1911 Revolution’, SSZBMTY—Ding Song, Shanghai shizhuang baimei tuyong Frontiers of History in China, 6:4 (2011), 423–62. (Illustrations and odes on one hundred fashionable 8. Jin Tianhe, ‘The Women’s Bell,’ in The Birth of Chinese beauties), ed. by Wang Jiaseng (Shanghai Tiannan Shuju, Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, ed. 1916). Also republished as Shanghai shizhuang tuyong by Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl and Dorothy Ko (New (Illustrations and odes on Shanghai’s fashion), (Taipei: York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 267. Guangwen Shuju, 1968). 9. ‘Lingjunbu jiesan nüzijun’ (Defence department XXBMT—Shen Bochen, Xinxin baimeitu (Brand new disbands women’s army’), Shuntian shibao, March 8 illustrated one hundred beauties), 2 vols (Shanghai: 1912, p. 4. See also ‘Quxiao nüzi beifadui’ (Abolition Guoxue Shushe, 1913). Modern reprints: Lao Shanghai nüzi of the women’s northern attack brigade), Dagong bao, fengqing hua: Shen Bochen’s ‘Xinxin baimeitu’ (Drawings of March 2 1912, p. 6. the style of women of old Shanghai: Shen Bochen’s 10. ‘Canyiyuan taolun fuzhi wenti’ (Parliament ‘Brand New One Hundred Beauties’), ed. by Wu Haoran discusses the question of clothing), Shenbao, (Ji’nan: Qilu Shushe, 2010). 19 August 1912, p. 2. 11. Yu Chien-ming, Yundongchang nei wai: Jindai huadong diqu de nüzi tiyu (1895–1937) (On and off the sports LOUISE EDWARDS is field: Women’s physical education in modern Scientia Professor of Chinese East China) (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindai History at the UNSW. Her yanjiusuo, 2009). research explores women in 12. Schillinger, The Body and Military Masculinity, p. 6 politics in China and Asia, 13. On Qiu Jin see Louise Edwards, Women Warriors gendered cultures of war in and Wartime Spies of China (Cambridge: Cambridge China, as well as Chinese University Press, 2016). literature and intellectual 14. Louise Edwards, Gender, Politics, Democracy: Women’s history. Louise was President of the Asian Studies Suffrage in China (Stanford: Stanford University Association of Australia and her former roles include Press, 2008). Professor of Modern China Studies at the University of 15. On the importance of wen and wu to Chinese Hong Kong, Director of the UTS China Research Centre masculinity see Kam Louie, Theorising Chinese and Convenor of the Australian Research Council’s Asia Masculinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Pacific Futures Research Network.
92 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 16. Louise Edwards, ‘Zhanzheng dui xiandai Zhongguo 21. Clare Rose, ‘What was Uniform about the Fin-de- funü canzheng yundong de yinxiang: “weijinüxing” Siècle Sailor Suit?’, Journal of Design History, 24:2 de wenti’ (The impact of war on women’s suffrage (2011), 107–108. Patterns for women’s sailor blouses in China: the problem of ‘crisis femininity’), in were also popular at this time reminding us that Bainian Zhongguo nüquan sichao yanjiu (Research in women are frequently rendered desirable by being one hundred years of Chinese feminist thought), fashioned as childlike. ed. by Wang Zheng and Chen Yan (Shanghai: Fudan 22. T. Namba, ‘School Uniform Reforms in Modern University Press, 2005), pp. 220–26. Japan’, in Fashion, Identity, and Power in Modern 17. On China’s minorities see Colin Mackerras, ‘Ethnic Asia, ed. by K. Pyun and A. Y. Wong (Cham: Palgrave minorities in China,’ in Ethnicity in Asia, ed. by Colin Macmillan, 2018), 91–113. Mackerras (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 15–47. 23. Sharon Kinsella, ‘What’s Behind the Fetishism of 18. For biographies see Lily Xiao Hong Lee and A.D. Japanese School Uniforms?’, Fashion Theory, 6:2 Stefanowska (eds), Biographical Dictionary of Chinese (2002), 217–18. Women: Antiquity Through Sui (New York: M. E. 24. Antonina Finnane, Changing Clothes in China Sharpe, 2007)—Hua Mulan, pp. 324–28; Lady Xian (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), pp. 76–77. of Qiao, pp. 353–56. See also Biographical Dictionary 25. The Japanese-inspired army uniform was adopted of Chinese Women: Tang Through Ming (New York: by China’s male political leaders from the mid 1920s ME Sharpe, 2014)—Qin Liangyu, pp. 316–320; Liang with the embrace of the ‘Sun Yat-sen suit’. This same Hongyu, pp. 238–239. suit, known in English as the ‘Mao suit’, was adopted 19. The current enthusiasm for martial arts films by both men and women as everyday wear between sustains this mass fascination with magical, the 1950s and 1980s as part of the militarisation of fighting women like Flying Snow, Moon, and society in the Maoist years. See Louise Edwards, Yu Shu Lien from blockbuster movies like Hero ‘Dressing for Power: Scholars’ Robes, School (2002) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Uniforms and Military Attire in China’, in The On the swordsmen in Hero see Louise Edwards, Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas, ed. by ‘Twenty-first Century Women Warriors: Variations Mina Roces and Louise Edwards (Brighton: Sussex on Traditional Themes’, in Global Chinese Cinema: Academic Press, 2007), pp. 42–64. The Culture and Politics of ‘Hero’, ed. by Gary 26. Note that this image comes from the Columbia D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley (London: University Press edition of Shen Bochen, Xinxin Routledge, 2010), pp. 65–77. Baimeitu (Shanghai: Guoxue chubanshe, 1913). 20. Liang Qichao, ‘On Women’s Education’, in The Birth 27. Edwards, Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of of Chinese Feminism. ed. by Liu, Karl, Ko, p. 195. China, p. 81.
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 93 About Sending Letters
ALEXIS WRIGHT
Destiny often visited the foot-walkers’ convoy during the night in dreams. EXCERPT FROM The men were saying they had seen Angel Day living in the worlds of their ALEXIS WRIGHT, dreams. They explained to the Fishman that they saw her whole life ahead of her. CARPENTARIA She lived for several years—decades if the truth must be told, yes. Yes, it was true, (GIRAMONDO, Angel now lived unhappily in a devilish place. She would never see the bright 2006), PP. 453–456. starry nights of the Gulf country again. They were painful dreams encompassing some mysterious, windy world, where dull silver strips of tarnished-looking fish glistened in salt under an overcast sky. Rows and rows of these snakelike fish hung on lines drawn over the land, which swayed to and fro with the breeze as far as the eye could behold. Through this grey country many sad children, some who looked like herself, others who looked like people she had never known, came and went. How did this happen? Praise for Angel Day fell easily from the lips now. She was a sensation who dreamt far above the heads of other people. People cried and shook their heads in sympathy to the Fishman. They paid their respects. You were never supposed to see the look of a deserted woman in those jarring eyes. They sang her praises to each other. She who looked like a lurid wish come true, who had once walked with hips swinging in Desperance. She was like a trophy for best-kept town, most beautiful, best presented, the biggest fruit of a blessed season. Certainly, certainly, it was the most painful memory. Yet a burning candle for her face stayed in the world of local memories. She disappeared into another world as simply as looking through a hollow log and having no idea where the porcupine went after just having seen him run through it. Poof! It was un-believable that a living creature could just disappear into thin air. In the end Angel was lost. Lost on the long road to nowhere. Mozzie Fishman, unable to leave his Dreaming road, never went after her. A spiritual man could not just go galivanting around the world when he had his business to attend to. It was natural that outside the sphere of their world she became hearsay in their lives. Some strange person amongst the zealots who never dreamed, claimed he received a letter in his mind, and took it at once to Mozzie Fishman. He read what was written. Angel Day, he read, now lives indifferently to her surroundings, alongside a fast-flowing tidal river in a cold country which was a mystery to him. The green-grey foul-smelling river, carried along severed heads
94 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 of domesticated animals, fruit crates from bustling marketplaces, rotting fruit ▲ The author in her and vegetables thrown into the river as waste, corpses of white people whose Waanyi homelands in the Gulf of lives had not been considered by anyone to be worth two bob, and the broken- Carpentaria. hearted wares of many centuries of a poor civilisation. It was plain to see, Angel IMAGE: ALEXIS WRIGHT Day had gone overseas. The letter read that Angel shares her home, an abandoned grey warehouse with a moss-covered grey-tiled roof, with others like herself who had lost trust in humankind. Sometimes on dull, grey cloudy days, thousands of grey pigeons assembled from nowhere, and choked for space on the roof. Since it rained all the time, there was rainwater leaking into the building through holes in the roof and gushing along rusty pipes and spilling out onto green slimy floors. In the night, it was no good. The warehouse people went to bed as soon as darkness fell. They slept almost on top of each other for warmth, huddling together under damp stacks of old, rotting clothes. Every day, Angel Day sneaks away, disappearing through the morning mist like a ghost, leaving very early before the others remove themselves from the tangle of clothes they had crawled into like rats. And in this fashion she goes to work. There, before dawn, she joins numerous others, too many to count, standing in lines like sticks of chalk along the wet marshes of the outgoing tide. Even Fishman acknowledged he could sometimes hear them, flicking their strange-looking lines of plastic rope along the waters. Fishman said he felt that close to Angel, he would turn blue with a cold he had never experienced before in his life. Time and again, he said he tried to ask her what she was doing there but she ignored him. Then, when some complete stranger came along and asked her the same question, she replied, ‘Fishing for snakes.’ Otherwise, she would have offered nothing. Words were the enemy of the twilight world where she lived. No one bothered speaking in her world, except to answer a stranger. Every day, Mozzie watched until Angel’s line resounded with the twang and thrashing about of waters which others, being more experienced snake catchers, were already making. Then, he watches her smile as the slippery snake, like an eel, starts to wind itself around the line and climb up towards her hand. Stealthily, she flicks the snake off the
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 1111 /· 2020 95 line into a wicker basket and closes the lid. Again and again, she flicks the line back into the emptying marshes, seemingly unaware she stood in freezing water. When the grey tide receded and the waters were still, Angel knew the snakes had gone far out to sea and it was safe for her to move. She wades through deep water to go home. She goes past a man with a transportable aquarium. He drives his truck with the aquarium that is so large it fills the back of the truck and is the height of the driver’s cabin. The water is full of grey fish. People pay the tall man to see the fish by throwing money into his upturned grey hat on the ground, but Angel looks for free. Once she reaches the warehouse, she sits in the sun until it fades away, just to put some warmth into her freezing body. Nearby, there are two intertwining trees outside the warehouse and all she thinks about is Fishman or Angel. Eenie, meenie, miney mo, whose dream? At the first sign of darkness, a hidden old owl hoots from some hole hidden in the branches. Angel runs away to hide while the frightening owl of the plains flies with luminous plumage. No one could even imagine a world with sea snakes flowing in tides, and freezing bodies asleep in damp caverns of clothes where glow-worms lived. But this was how he read the letter. It felt pretty special to be told any news of a lady like Angel Day although it was hard to imagine her new life. The zealots made up new stories to send to her. She could be like the owl who shone in the night if she slept in a damp place and became covered with phosphorescent larvae. Perhaps her cave in the mountain of clothes was once a palace, glowing with light. The Fishman exclaimed to anybody in the world that he never knew a woman called Angel Day, whoever she was. ‘Don’t send letters to Mr Fishman.’ Letters were only from whitefellas to other whitefellas. ‘And what am I?’ He was a blackfella. No one had any business addressing any darn letter to him, he said. ¶
ALEXIS WRIGHT is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria and The Swan Book, Wright has published three works of non-fiction:Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. Her books have been published widely overseas, including in China, the US, the UK, Italy, France and Poland. She holds the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne. Wright is the only author to win both the Miles Franklin Award (in 2007 for Carpentaria) and the Stella Prize (in 2018 for Tracker).
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