NUMBER 8, 2017
» CHRIS ANDREWS » IEN ANG » PETER ANSTEY
» JOY DAMOUSI » NICHOLAS EVANS » JOHN FITZGERALD
» JANE LYDON » PETER McNEIL
THE JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES THE ACADEMY COUNCIL President John Fitzgerald Honorary Secretary Elizabeth Minchin Welcome Honorary Treasurer It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Richard Waterhouse eighth issue of the Australian Academy of the Vice-Presidents Elizabeth Minchin Humanities’ flagship publication, Humanities Ian Lilley Australia, edited by Emeritus Professors Editor Graham Tulloch Elizabeth Webby am faha and Graham Tulloch International Secretary faha. This publication is one of the many ways Ian Lilley Immediate Past President in which our Academy supports excellence Lesley Johnson AM in the humanities and communicates their Ordinary Members value to the public. It showcases some of the Joy Damousi Bridget Griffen-Foley most exciting current work of humanities Jane Lydon Graham Oppy researchers throughout Australia. Graeme Turner For almost fifty years, the Academy has
CONTACT DETAILS been dedicated to advancing scholarship and For further information about the Australian promoting understanding of the humanities Academy of the Humanities, contact us: across our education and research sectors, Email [email protected] and in the broader community. Founded Web by Royal Charter in 1969, the Academy now www.humanities.org.au Telephone comprises close to six hundred Fellows elected (+61 2) 6125 9860 on the basis of the excellence and impact
EDITORIAL/PRODUCTION of their scholarship. Our Fellows have been Academy Editor recognised nationally and internationally Elizabeth Webby AM (2009–2016) Graham Tulloch (2016– ) for outstanding work in the disciplines of Designer archaeology, art, Asian and European studies, Gillian Cosgrove classical and modern literature, cultural and Printed by CanPrint, Canberra communication studies, language and linguistics, Cover illustration philosophy, musicology, history and religion. Detail, Ridiculous Taste or the Ladies Absurdity. Oil on canvas painted on the Humanities Australia draws on the ideas reverse of a possible signboard, 84 × 52 cm, and inspiration of its Fellows and others c. 1780. Kulturen, Lund, Sweden, KM 15580. in the community with an interest in the © 2017 Australian Academy of the Humanities and individual contributors humanities. It aims to demonstrate that an understanding of cultures and communities, ISSN 1837–8064 of how people experience the world and Funding for the production of this publication their place in it, have a major role to play in has been provided by the Australian Government through the Department of discussions about Australia and its future. Education. We hope you enjoy the selection of essays, The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department stories and poems presented here – a small taste of of Education or the Australian Academy of the the quality, range and depth of research currently Humanities. under way in the humanities in Australia. ¶ The illustrations and certain identified inclusions in the text are held under separate copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the respective JOHN FITZGERALD faha copyright holders. Every reasonable effort President, Australian Academy has been made to contact relevant copyright of the Humanities, 2014– holders for illustrative material in this journal. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia
04 ELIZABETH WEBBY & GRAHAM TULLOCH Editors’ Introduction
06 CHRIS ANDREWS Pacific Rim
08 JOHN FITZGERALD Academic Freedom and the Contemporary University: Lessons from China
23 IEN ANG Smart Engagement with Asia
34 NICHOLAS EVANS Ngûrrahmalkwonawoniyan: Listening Here
45 JANE LYDON Empathy and the Myall Creek Massacre: Images, Humanitarianism and Empire
57 PETER McNEIL Macaroni Men and Eighteenth-Century Fashion Culture: ‘The Vulgar Tongue’
72 JOY DAMOUSI Australian League of Nations Union and War Refugees: Internationalism and Humanitarianism, 1930–39
80 PETER ANSTEY A Very Principled Project
86 CHRIS ANDREWS Two Bridges
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) » ELIZABETH WEBBY & GRAHAM TULLOCH
Once again it is a pleasure to welcome readers the knowledge that the liberties we enjoy in the to a new issue of Humanities Australia and a academy play an important role in the life of the sample of the outstanding research and writing community at large.’ being carried out by Australian humanities The second day of the symposium was largely scholars. While the contributors to this issue devoted to highlighting three interdisciplinary come from a broad range of the disciplines reports produced under the Academy’s auspices represented in the Academy, including linguistics, as part of the Securing Australia’s Future (SAF) philosophy, the arts, history and Asian studies, program, a multidisciplinary research initiative some common themes have emerged, especially of the Australian Council of Learned Academies in relation to questions of human rights, both in (ACOLA), funded by the Australian Research the past and today. Council (ARC). We include here Ien Ang’s outline Those who attended the Academy’s 2016 of the report produced by the expert working symposium, ‘Asia Australia: Transnational group she chaired, Smart Engagement with Connections’, at the State Library Victoria, Asia: Leveraging Language, Research and Culture greatly appreciated the annual Academy Lecture (2015). As she notes, this report ‘was a unique given by our current President, John Fitzgerald. opportunity for humanities scholars to work We present an expanded version of his lecture together with other researchers — scientists and here, under the title ‘Academic Freedom and social scientists — on a topic of crucial importance the Contemporary University: Lessons from for Australia’s future prosperity and security, China’. Fitzgerald draws attention to the Western allowing them to conduct evidence-based research concept of academic freedom, noting that this and generate interdisciplinary findings to support ‘sits uneasily alongside the immense resources policy development.’ The report focuses on three invested in contemporary universities charged areas — ‘languages and linguistic competencies, with driving innovation, industry, and business research and research collaboration, and cultural in highly competitive national and international diplomacy and relations’ — highlighting problems markets.’ As a leading scholar of contemporary in all of them that urgently need addressing. China, he stresses in particular the limitations If Australians know less than is desirable of placed on academic freedom in China, arguing Asian languages and cultures, their knowledge that this has implications for Australian of Australia’s indigenous languages and cultures (above) universities as their links with China increase. is even smaller. Nicholas Evans draws attention Academy Secretariat, In concluding, he reiterates our ‘need to talk to this in discussing his current ARC Australian Canberra, Australia. about values’: ‘We have a duty to speak out about Laureate Fellowship project, ‘The Wellsprings of
PHOTO: AAH ARCHIVES contemporary risks to academic freedom, in Linguistic Diversity’. As he notes, over thousands
04 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) of years our ‘indigenous cultures developed a Humanitarian issues return in Joy Damousi’s diverse mosaic of over three hundred languages’, essay, ‘Australian League of Nations Union but, today, these languages are ‘invisible and and War Refugees: Internationalism and inaudible in the public sphere’. His essay gives Humanitarianism, 1930–39’, which focuses on the an account of some of the links between activities of local branches of this Union, formed language, culture and country as well as showing to promote the values and aims of the League of how indigenous cultures were fascinated by Nations, in response to the growing number of language, as seen in the metalinguistic terms, international refugees. As she argues, members practices and products they developed. While aimed ‘to foster within Australia an international deploring the loss of so many indigenous and humanitarian outlook towards the plight languages since 1788, he is optimistic about of war refugees during the interwar years’. In the ways in which new technologies are aiding doing so, they put pressure on the Australian language recording and retrieval. government ‘to change its international policy For those colonising Australia, indigenous and accept more refugees from Europe’, pushing linguistic achievements were certainly invisible; it ‘into a sphere of independent international many saw Aboriginal peoples as no better diplomacy and relations — one less governed by than animals and treated them accordingly. Imperial interests — a move which was required if In ‘Empathy and the Myall Creek Massacre: a more open immigration policy was to develop.’ Images, Humanitarianism and Empire’, Jane In ‘A Very Principled Project’, philosopher Lydon discusses reports of this 1838 massacre, Peter Anstey takes us back to the early modern looking in particular at an engraving by ‘Phiz’, period, ‘the age of the Scientific Revolution ‘Australian Aborigines Slaughtered by Convicts’, and the Enlightenment’, a time when ‘almost published in the 1841 edition of a highly popular everyone was talking about principles, arguing work, The Chronicles of Crime; or, The New for them, arguing from them, assuming them, Newgate Calendar. She notes the links between and using them.’ His essay draws on research humanitarian reactions to Myall Creek and the carried out from 2012 to 2016 for his ARC Future British antislavery movement, pointing out Fellowship project, ‘The Nature and Status of similarities between ‘Phiz’s’ representation of Principles in Early Modern Philosophy’, and the ‘upraised, shackled hands of the Aboriginal reminds us of how fundamental the notion of people’ and Josiah Wedgwood’s widely circulated principles is to a period that laid the foundations antislavery logo. Both, as she says, stress ‘the of our modern way of thinking. innocence and vulnerability of the victims — We are also delighted to include in this issue but also their passivity and need to be helped two new poems by one of our newer Fellows, by the white humanitarian.’ Chris Andrews, who is a widely published poet Today, when a striking image can achieve as well as an internationally-known researcher world-wide circulation in a matter of minutes, it and translator. ¶ is fascinating to see evidence of how such images circulated internationally in the eighteenth ELIZABETH WEBBY am faha and nineteenth centuries. Like the Wedgwood Editor, Australian Academy logo, an image satirising fashionable hairstyles of the Humanities, 2009–16 appeared in many different countries in different forms. This is only one of the insights to be found in Peter McNeil’s ‘Macaroni Men and Eighteenth- Century Fashion Culture: “The Vulgar Tongue”’. GRAHAM TULLOCH faha If you have ever been puzzled why the term Editor, Australian Academy ‘macaroni’ appears in the well-known rhyme of the Humanities, 2016– ‘Yankee Doodle’, McNeil provides the answer, as well as explaining the seeming incongruity of the same word being used for both a type of pasta and a mode of dress. He even finds an Australian link, since Sir Joseph Banks was apparently one of the ‘macaroni’ men.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 05 » CHRIS ANDREWS
(above) Shipping containers
PHOTO: CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY.
CHRIS ANDREWS faha teaches at Western Sydney University. He has published two books of poems: Cut Lunch (Indigo 2002) and Lime Green Chair (Waywiser 2012). He has also translated books of Latin American fiction, most recently César Aira’sEma, the Captive (New
Directions, 2016).
06 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Pacific Rim
To a lone tourist at a loose end in this city of funiculars a sprayed wall says: Lift your head Princess, your crown’s about to fall. There’s a dog asleep in a thicket of footsteps, a boarded-up Palace of Rubber, and a well-presented man who rides the microbuses tenaciously expounding the merits of a comb.
It’s the evening of the holiday, and the people, whether built for pain or giggles, crowd the foreshore to watch the gold sovereign drop into the slot and bring on the slow train of starlight. A bath toy famously lost at sea fetches up bleached and incognito. Lavish foam of the swash comes seething in over the ragged backwash foam.
There’s a stack of Hanjin containers painted a red that goes on glowing deep into dusk, an almost empty artspace in a disappearing jail, a fuchsia riot, a hummingbird’s precision sipping, and a mother of infant twins who used to be glad of her gift for deep sleep downloading a seismograph app for her smartphone.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 07 Academic Freedom and the Contemporary University
» JOHN FITZGERALD
INTRODUCTION administrators are aware of the war-like language that university administrators in China resort It’s time we started talking about values. In the to when they condemn the kind of free and Academy of the Humanities we need to be clear open critical inquiry that we take for granted in about what our values are and whether they still the humanities and social sciences in Australia. matter in order to recognise and respond to the Nor is it clear that Australian administrators are challenges they face in the present era. aware of the constraints under which humanities It is not immediately clear, for example, and social science disciplines operate in that that academic freedom carries the weight it country or of the performance appraisal systems once carried in our universities. The inherited used to police them. Western ideal of the solitary mendicant scholar, So it falls to the Academy to identify the free to roam without interference and speak values that we consider important, and to truth to the prelate and the prince, sits uneasily discover the values that others proclaim and alongside the immense resources invested practice in their national higher education in contemporary universities charged with systems, in order to stress-test our academic driving innovation, industry, and business in institutions to ensure they are sufficiently highly competitive national and international robust and resilient to uphold the values that we markets. Still, while the roles of universities are consider important when they deal with systems more diverse and the challenges to freedom erected on values different from our own. more diffuse in the twenty-first century, the In the case of China, we need to start talking Academy’s commitment to free and open critical about values in order to draw attention to what inquiry in the arts and humanities remains no it is that distinguishes the university sector from less important today than in the mid-twelfth other national players in the Australia-China century when the Constitutio Habita was drafted relationship. For some decades now, Australia’s in Bologna. relations with China have been conducted (above) The inherited values of the Academy are through an informal compact under which Montage using thrown into sharp relief by the rise of China each side agrees to leave its values at the door. image of statue of and the growing impact of an academic model Australians value freedom, equality and the Confucius (p. 16). in which freedom plays little part. Awareness rule of law. The Government of China values PATTERN VIA FREEPIK:
08 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) respect and to set aside the others’ professed Institutes in Australian universities.4 A lot of values in order to focus on shared interests in money is at stake. expanding trade and investment.1 Academic freedom is also at stake. Our Generally speaking, the agreement to set universities’ institutional arrangements with values aside for the sake of trade and investment universities in authoritarian states such as China presents few problems. Miners, farmers, place academic freedom at risk both as an ideal investors, lawyers, architects, tourism operators and as a set of institutional practices. In the and so on go about their business trading in past these risks were negligible. In transitional goods and services for mutual profit as they do moments such as the present, when China is with many other countries that do not share the asserting its values globally and the United States same values. And so it has always been. appears to be retreating into its shell, risks to Unlike mining companies or agribusinesses, the freedoms that we take for granted are real, however, universities deal in values and one of pressing, and substantial. their core values is academic freedom. China My argument is laid out in five parts: first, does not permit free and open critical inquiry touching on the meaning and the institutional in its higher education system. In fact China’s foundations of academic freedom; second, education and research systems are arms of considering the transformations that Australian government and the Government of China is universities have undergone as institutions openly hostile to the idea of academic freedom. over the past three decades and what these Australian universities are independent bodies mean for academic freedom; third, arguing that
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES THAT LEAVE THEIR VALUES AT THE DOOR ARGUABLY NEGLECT THEIR DUTIES AND PLACE THEIR REPUTATIONS AT RISK. that highlight academic freedom in their charters these institutional developments have reduced and their routine practices. These differences our capacity to identify and manage risks in are not trivial ones when university partners international engagements involving teaching from Australia and China come together and research with authoritarian states such as to transact agreements for mutual benefit. China; fourth, identifying the risks associated Academic freedom carries duties, including the with housing Confucius Institutes on Australian ‘duty to speak out for what one believes to be campuses; and, in conclusion, proposing a true’ and an accompanying recognition that it is number of mitigating strategies. fundamentally ‘wrong to remain silent’ in face of 2 assaults on freedom. Australian universities that THE MEANING AND INSTITUTIONAL leave their values at the door arguably neglect FOUNDATIONS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM their duties and place their reputations at risk. Australian university councils and executives Academic freedom is a variant of wider freedoms often transact business with China as if there associated with the liberal democratic order, were little to distinguish their dealings from including freedom of thought and expression, those involving agribusiness or the resources freedom of religious belief, and freedom of industry. The results have been impressive. assembly.5 The particular history of academic China accounts for more international freedom is bound up with the history of the students in Australia than any other country academy no less than with the genealogy in an industry that contributes twenty billion of freedom. From the self-governing studia dollars to national GDP each year.3 The erected on the model of corporate guilds, in People’s Republic is also partner to hundreds of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe, to the discrete research collaborations in the Science, twenty-first-century university fashioned on Technology, Engineering and Maths disciplines the commercial corporation, the practice of across Australia and is the focus of ten specialist academic freedom has been inseparable from the research centres and a dozen Confucius institutions in which it is embedded. There has
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 09 (right) Library shelving on a curved wall.
PHOTO: CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY.
never been a time when the corporate powers exhort their colleagues to shun silence and be of the university have not lived in tension with bold ‘in speaking truth’ in recognition that a the freedom of individual scholars to teach and freedom rarely exercised was a freedom readily to discover. As a corporate entity, the university surrendered.6 is both an enabling condition for freedom of In the tension between the corporate powers expression and discovery, and an institutional of the university and the freedom of scholars restraint on the exercise of that freedom. Within to speak truth to power we find the European this tension lies the dynamic value that we call origins of the two ‘levels of insulation’ that academic freedom. Ronald Dworkin associates with academic Similarly, institutional constraints on freedom in the contemporary university: the academic freedom are as old as the university. In insulation of the university from external medieval and early modern Europe, the exercise political authority and economic power, on of corporate discipline over scholarly fellows the one hand, and the insulation of teachers was considered essential for resolving quarrels and researchers from undue interference with local authorities in defence of university by university administrators on the other. autonomy, itself a condition of freedom. In Echoing findings of US Supreme Court rulings, early universities, historian Richard Hofstadter Dworkin argues that maintaining these two records, masters were expected to take oaths of structural barriers, or layers of insulation, not loyalty to their institution and to keep university only preserves academic freedom but serves secrets. Senior masters regulated and restricted freedom more broadly: ‘academic freedom plays the teaching and scholarship of their fellows an important ethical role not just in the lives of more often than ecclesiastical authorities ever the few people it protects, but in the life of the did. And many universities ‘adopted statutes and community more generally.’ It establishes and ordinances affecting almost every conceivable supports the ‘duty to speak out for what one facet of academic life, from trivial details of dress believes to be true’ and the associated ethical to the subjects and methods of lectures and belief that it is ‘wrong to remain silent.’ The disputations.’ Still, masters would periodically imperative to speak out on matters of scholarly
10 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) expertise, and to speak out particularly where enterprise university than the American higher freedom itself is at issue, nourishes respect education system. Writing only a few years ago, for wider freedoms in a liberal-democratic Ellen Schrecker remains hopeful that traditional community.7 academic freedoms would be maintained in Writing in the 1950s on the development of American higher education ‘by virtue of two academic freedom from twelfth-century Europe practices that protect the job security and to mid-twentieth-century America, Richard institutional authority of college and university Hofstadter associated its ideas and practices with teachers: tenure and faculty governance.’9 the struggles of the independent scholar in the These last remaining pillars of ‘traditional’ face of challenges from ecclesiastical and state academic freedom were long ago demolished authority. More recent scholarship has drawn in Australia, where universities moved from attention to a different set of challenges arising tenure, in the traditional sense, to enterprise from the corporatisation of the university itself. practices of workplace employment, and where Ellen Schrecker presents a sustained critique faculty governance is no longer practiced to any of the ‘assault on academic freedom’ presented meaningful degree. by the corporatisation of the university in In Australia, however, it is by no means our time: clear that the managerial university poses graver threats to traditional freedoms than the The academy has always had to fend off system that preceded it. In 1974, the Whitlam external challenges from politicians and government’s abolition of tuition fees made others who want to eliminate unpopular universities uniformly and wholly dependent professors or censor the curriculum. on Commonwealth funding for operating and Those pressures have not abated. But now capital expenditure for over a decade. I recall the nation’s colleges and universities are senior academics of the old school highlighting also confronting demands for so-called at that time the threats to academic freedom reforms that would substitute economic likely to flow from universities’ growing considerations of productivity and cost- dependence on government. The late Professor effectiveness for the traditional values of A.R. (‘Bertie’) Davis, Professor of Oriental enlightenment and individual growth.8 Studies at the University of Sydney, would rail Vice chancellors and presidents apply market in private conversation and protest in public principles to university management, they over the loss of university autonomy arising expand administrative budgets and introduce from his university’s financial dependence on business-friendly priorities into the life of the Commonwealth funding. He had little patience university, they expand the casual workforce, and with the Whitlam government but his concern they promote competition for resources among went deeper, to the longer-term systemic threats individual scholars and competition for status to an academic freedom that he associated with among institutions. Taken together, Schrecker institutional autonomy. argues, these incremental developments have A decade later, similar concerns about transformed the mission of the university, excessive dependence on the Commonwealth reduced its autonomy, and limited the time were aired among university vice chancellors, and inclination of individual academic faculty although in this case with less concern for to participate in collegial decisions bearing on academic freedom than for the state of their appointments, curricula, research, and peer university finances. From the mid-1970s to review which underpin the everyday practices of the late-1980s universities were made to feel academic freedom and independence. their dependence on Commonwealth funding Whether or not we credit these developments through a withering process of attrition — with limiting academic freedom, many of them known as ‘steady state’ funding — that reduced would be familiar to observers of Australia’s their budgets to a parlous state by the end of higher education system. Australia arguably that decade. Commonwealth funding failed moved earlier and more uniformly toward to keep pace with operating expenses. Capital adopting the corporate methods of the stock deteriorated as older buildings were
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 11 not maintained and new construction was other things, improved governance involved postponed for years. It is said that the University redefining the role of vice chancellor from of Sydney went without a new building for primus inter pares to CEO of the university almost two decades. enterprise, and led to reduced staff and Dependence on Commonwealth funding student representation and greater business made universities especially vulnerable to and government representation on governing managerial innovation. In the mid-1980s, the university councils.12 national economy was harnessed to the fortunes We live with the consequences of these of the world economy following tariff reductions reforms. Decision-making powers over and the floating of the dollar. Vice chancellors curricula and research have been transferred and university councils then anticipated further from participatory department and faculty shocks, including reductions in Commonwealth committees to line management. Academic funding and greater demands for accountability personnel policies have been redrafted to align to government agencies in relation to their the performance of individual academics with enrolments, the courses they offered, their staff overarching corporate missions — translating performance, and their financial accounting. corporate strategic goals into individual Peter Karmel at the Australian National academic targets covering research, education, University and David Pennington at the scholarship and engagement. On other fronts, University of Melbourne began to develop their university managers adjust their internal own internal change-agendas that anticipated reward and punishment mechanisms to lift key features of what was to be called the their university standings in global rankings, to Dawkins model. hold academics accountable for burnishing the In 1987 John Dawkins took advantage of the university’s brand in public correspondence, Commonwealth’s dominance of the system to and to encourage academic participation reduce dependence on Commonwealth funding in both formally-structured engagement and at the same time sharpen the tools of public with corporate end-users and international administration to reshape the provision of higher cooperation in research and teaching. In the education in Australia. With the introduction wake of these reforms, a team of American of the Unified National System, followed by researchers visiting Australia in the 1990s found a decade of institutional amalgamations and Australian universities were arguably ahead Quality Assurance rounds, virtually every of US universities in implementing market Australian university had come to embrace the mechanisms in support of research. Had they enterprise model of corporate governance.10 explored teaching programs, Stuart Macintyre After Dawkins, the Commonwealth remarks, they would have found that Australia’s government shifted from rowing the boat recrafting of university priorities, planning and to steering it, as the saying goes. The management around international student Commonwealth exchanged direct control for recruitment was no less advanced in its embrace a dashboard of buttons and levers through of the market.13 which to shape higher education and research. Whether the trend to corporate management In the early years these included rewards for of the enterprise university has, in itself, institutional amalgamations and for shifting compromised freedom of expression among student load from generalist degrees toward academic members of staff is for others to judge. skills development in areas identified by Here I would draw attention to one incidental government (IT, engineering, business, and so effect of corporatisation that surfaces at the on). The Commonwealth also reintroduced point where Australian universities align their fees as well as funding incentives for expanding strategies and partnerships with universities undergraduate enrolments along with incentives overseas that do not share respect for academic for linking competitive research funding with freedom or tolerate the wider liberties in national research priorities. 11 It made improved which this freedom is nested. The coincidental corporate governance a condition for university convergence of strategic planning styles and entry to the Unified National System. Among line-management methodologies in China and
12 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) has risen from under 1% to around 25% of the (far left) current age cohort, in a population one third Image of larger today than it was three decades ago. This Barbarossa with his sons Henry and achievement can be attributed in part to a model Frederick, from the of higher education that Simon Marginson has Constitutio Habita.
termed ‘The Confucian Model’, a term referring PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA to national university systems extending from WIKIPEDIA COMMONS. the People’s Republic of China to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, countries that have all been influenced by Confucian educational traditions. Each of these national systems converges with the others in an education system designed around four key elements:
• A strong central state shaping the structures, funding, and priorities of national higher education systems
• A trend to universal participation, driven by popular commitment embedded in cultural values
• The adoption of ‘one chance’ national competitive examination systems, the West masks the incommensurability and highlighting and reinforcing hierarchy, ultimately non-convertibility of the values of the discipline, meritocracy liberal university and the militant Leninist values • Accelerated public investment in underpinning the Chinese university system. education, research, and the attainment of When corporate managers do deals without ‘world-class’ status for universities.14 regard to values they place values at risk. As a rule, systems that hold higher education THE CASE OF CHINA and research accountable to the principles, goals, and needs of the national state are prone to My concern is not just with China. In universities state interference in their executive autonomy that manage off-shore programs or campuses in and academic discovery and innovation. 15 southeast Asia, for example, how many academic Nevertheless the degree of state interference staff feel free to come forward and acknowledge varies significantly from one nation to another. that colleagues are obliged to sign agreements to The Confucian hierarchical model of education refrain from publishing research outcomes that found in Singapore, Japan, and South Korea might offend the host government? How many makes provision for academic freedom line-managers pressure academic researchers commensurable with the greater or lesser who have not signed on to these agreements degrees of freedom tolerated in each country, to refrain from publishing material that might including freedom of expression and of the place their partner university agreements at risk? press, and freedom of religion and assembly. We could ask further questions, or ask similar China eschews such civic freedoms and shows questions of other countries. Here I propose to commensurably little respect for the principles ask questions about Australian universities and derived from those freedoms, including academic their relations with China. freedom. In the case of China, the convergence Domestically, higher education is one of of Confucian and Leninist models of strategic China’s many success stories. Over the past three management presents challenges for free and decades the national tertiary participation rate open critical inquiry of the highest order.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 13 The strategies through which the Chinese guidelines on academic staff performance Communist Party and Chinese Government appraisal issued in August 2016 include the guides and controls teaching, research and following criterion for performance appraisal publication in higher education are embedded (clause 10): not in the principles of civic life, East or West, 10. Strengthen assessment of discipline but in strategies for waging war. The old wartime in the classroom. By taking adherence United Front Department works to win the to the basic line of the Party as a basic loyalty of non-party elements including ethnic requirement for teaching, and adhering Chinese overseas and students studying abroad.16 to a correct educational orientation and China’s students overseas are exhorted, for strict discipline in University classroom example, to serve their country by helping to teaching, strengthen supervision of build scientific and technological capacity for teachers’ educational activities in the heightened military preparedness, not least to classroom and actual teaching practices. prepare to take by force islands and sea-lanes in The illegal spread of harmful ideas and the South China Seas currently held or contested expressions in the classroom will be dealt by other countries in the region.17 with severely according to regulation China’s battle strategy for higher education and law.19 is set out in formal state documents. The ruling State Council’s guidelines for higher education, The ‘harmful ideas and expressions’ to be issued in 2015, present the higher education banished from university classrooms were set sector as a ‘battlefield’ between China and its out in another Party communiqué issued in April enemies in the liberal West: 2013, and forwarded to university presidents and party secretaries as a prescribed list of ‘Seven Higher education is a forward battlefield Prohibitions’ governing university teaching and in ideological work, and shoulders the research. The seven topical areas banned from important tasks of studying, researching university classrooms, research seminars and and propagating Marxism, fostering publications all fall within the domain of the and carrying forward the Socialist core humanities and social sciences. They include value system, and providing talent constitutional democracy, civil society, economic guarantees and intelligent support for the liberalisation, freedom of the press, historical realization of the Chinese Dream of the critiques of the Communist Party, challenges great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. to socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Doing higher education propaganda and discussion of ‘universal values’ (local code ideology work well and strengthening for human rights and freedoms, including the construction of the higher education academic freedom).20 Not only are these topics ideological battlefields are strategic banned from the classroom and the seminar, projects… and have an extremely the Party communiqué banning them was important and profound significance designated a secret state document, partly out for consolidating the guiding position of habit, partly to avoid embarrassing overseas of Marxism in the ideological area and universities partnering with Chinese ones consolidating a common ideological basis that are compelled to comply with the ‘Seven for the united struggle of the entire Party, Prohibitions.’ A seventy-year-old journalist, Gao the entire country and all the people.18 Yu, was found guilty of leaking state secrets for At the institutional level, individual academics allegedly sharing the communiqué with a foreign are accountable to university and national journalist. She was sentenced to seven years in strategies through their university’s performance gaol, subsequently commuted to five years under appraisal system, as in Australia, although in house arrest in deference to her age. this case under explicit direction from the Finally, in December 2016 Xi Jinping Ministry of Education to measure compliance placed his presidential seal of approval on the with Communist Party ideology and policy in tightening of political controls over higher joining battle with ‘harmful ideas.’ The Ministry’s education in a widely-publicised speech
14 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) about placing ‘ideological work’ and ‘political pioneered locally by education theorists of work’ at the heart of university education the pre-Communist era, such as Cai Yuanpei and management. Among other things, he and Tao Xingzhi, and in others was embedded proclaimed that all science was based on deeply in their originating DNA as American Marx’s scientific socialism, and that the duty of missionary colleges. university managers and academics is to believe In most of China’s 2,400 universities, and inculcate the ‘scientific theory of Marxism’: however, serious scholars revert to practices once favoured by medieval European philosophers Proper management of higher education when faced with the ecclesiastical authority of requires perseverance in thoroughly the Roman Catholic Church. Some get on with implementing Party education policies their studies quietly, ignoring restrictions as guided by Marxism. It means persevering best they can without publishing or teaching without fail in making students appreciate anything that would directly challenge the throughout their lives, by grasping Marxist authorities. Others defer to the right of higher theoretical education, that the intellectual authorities to correct their errors and oversights foundation of science is the scientific when they publish their research findings. Some theory of Marxism…. All teachers and seek refuge in one of a number of less restrictive students must become firm believers in urban jurisdictions where a particular university the core values of socialism.
THE SEVEN TOPICAL AREAS BANNED FROM UNIVERSITY CLASSROOMS, RESEARCH SEMINARS AND PUBLICATIONS ALL FALL WITHIN THE DOMAIN OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES.
At the classroom level, no classes or disciplines president or local Party Secretary is known to were to be spared these explicit political provide protection from over-weening central interventions: authority — assuming, that is, they are permitted to transfer their personal ‘dossiers’ from one We must fully utilise the important jurisdiction to another, which is often forbidden. channel of the classroom by improving In a country where state and ideological and strengthening classes on the theory authority are one and the same, at every level of of thought work and political work… and government, interstitial spaces allowing scholarly integrate classes on thought work and refuge are relatively few compared with those in political work with other classes.21 medieval and early modern Europe. 23 Further, President Xi raised what he called the ‘basic question’ of who it was that could AUSTRALIA’S CHINA CHALLENGE be entrusted to bear the ‘sacred mission of engineering human souls’ as academic teachers, An iconic moment in recognising the and implied that academics were not only to independent scholar’s right to move between be monitored for compliance but selected for towns, cities and states in search of refuge appointment on the basis of prior demonstrated is the Constitutio Habita declaration of compliance with Party directives. Bologna University in the mid-twelfth century. Directives such as these, designed to The declaration is remembered today chiefly ‘strengthen management of the ideological because European university presidents cited battlefield’,22 are applied vigorously in all of the Constitutio Habita as precedent when they China’s higher education institutions apart met to sign a continental charter of academic from a handful of prestigious universities such principles, Magna Charta Universitatum, in as Peking and Tsinghua universities along with Bologna in 1988.24 The 1988 Charta was a Wuhan, Nankai, Nanjing, Sun Yatsen, Fudan forward-looking document laying out the and a number of other elite institutions. These ‘principles of academic freedom and institutional relatively exclusive universities preserve an autonomy as a guideline for good governance ethic of critical inquiry that was in some cases and self-understanding of universities in the
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 15 future.’25 In the following year the Charta helped of Nazism, Leninism, and Stalinism were a to guide and to govern mergers and transitions real and malevolent accompaniment of their among East European and West European personal and family lives.26 universities following the collapse of the And yet Australia is also part of China’s Berlin Wall. story. Since 1989 Australia has hosted a In higher education, Australia is part of this comparable number of intellectual refugees European story. Many will recall that Australian from Maoism and Leninism in China. universities were caught up in the struggle for Their reflections rarely make their way into freedom in Eastern Europe in the post-war public debate through mainstream journals period through their hosting of a number of and magazines. Their names are little known. prominent intellectual refuges from Nazism, Had they remained in China, they would Leninism and Stalinism. Richard Krygier, today be university professors, deans and Eugene Kamenka, Agnes Heller, Ferenc Fehér, presidents. In Australia they remain part-time
Hugo Wolfsohn, Henry Mayer, among others, tutors, lecturers and senior lecturers, usually lectured and published widely in Australia. in languages departments, with little prospect (above) They built and led centres and departments of of promotion unless they make themselves Statue of Confucius research and teaching in the humanities and useful by deploying their networks to open PHOTO: CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY. social sciences, and founded and contributed lucrative channels to the Chinese higher to journals, magazines, professional associations education market. and learned academies at a time of intellectual As China patriots, Chinese-Australian ferment arguably unparalleled in Australia. intellectuals wish China well. And yet they Martin Krygier reminded us a few years ago value the freedoms Australia has to offer more that, while for many Australians the Cold than career opportunities available in China. War was a ‘free-floating fantasy’ leavened by Threats to their friends, families and students parochial political concerns, for his father within China, and repeated injunctions to wage and other intellectual refugees the spectres ideological warfare against them for choosing
16 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) to live in the liberal West, form a malevolent the Australian and Chinese higher education accompaniment to their everyday lives. Many systems. Australian universities value academic look on in wonder as their university deans freedom, China’s do not. To host a Confucius and vice chancellors enter into deals with Institute is to exchange academic freedom for Chinese universities that imply the moral Communist Party authoritarianism, as if in a equivalence of the Chinese and Australian currency exchange, at equal value of one to one. higher education systems. After swapping values, Australian universities The entry of Confucius Institutes onto pursue collaborative research and education Australian campuses, twelve at last count, opportunities with Chinese institutions on a offers a pointed illustration of the challenges scale that far outstrips anything a Confucius the corporate university presents for academic Institute could possibly match. Their freedom in international engagements.27 innocuousness is then a measure of their Confucius Institutes appear on the whole success: the less conspicuous the Confucius harmless and inconspicuous agencies in the Institute, the greater its achievement as an Australian universities that host them. For this arbiter of values exchange. reason they are thought to be inconsequential. It would be shortsighted to overlook their HOW DID IT COME TO THIS? symbolic significance. Confucius Institutes breach fundamental principles of academic In most cases, Confucius Institutes were autonomy and freedom relating to curricula introduced onto Australian campuses as an and appointments. As a rule, host universities executive initiative with little involvement have no say in the selection of Chinese on the part of humanities academics familiar staff, who are subject to the guidelines and with the risks involved. Dr Jocelyn Chey, a restrictions on academics set out in the former colleague of Professor Bertie Davis documents noted above and are monitored at the University of Sydney, told ABC radio’s by the Communist Party Secretary of the Background Briefing program that a proposal overarching management office in Beijing, the going before the University’s Senate happened Hanban. Their curricula and teaching materials to fall into her hands while she was visiting are censored at the margins to pass the test the university in 2007. The proposal suggested of approved ‘battlefront’ scholarship. Their that university management was considering directors are expected to play a gate-keeping folding its Chinese programs into a new role to prevent the circulation of materials in Confucius Institute. Up to that point there had Australia that Chinese government authorities been little consultation with academic staff may deem offensive, including those touching who had the capacity to advise of the risks to on China’s territorial sovereignty, or the Seven academic freedom implied by this arrangement. Prohibitions, which are the bread and butter of In Dr Chey’s words, the proposal going to a liberal arts education. Any discussion of the Council challenged ‘the right of academics not limits on academic freedom that apply within just to teach but to research and to publish in China is off limits as well. areas where they are not under the guidance On the Australian side, accepting an or direction of anybody.’28 Even the watered- invitation to set up a Confucius Institute down version of a Confucius Institute that may be thought a gesture of good will on the was admitted onto campus after Dr Chey’s part of university executives wishing to do informal intervention would not have been business with China. To Chinese authorities, admitted under the shared management model Australian universities’ disregard for the of academic and executive responsibility for principles of academic freedom and autonomy university governance that applied when Bertie when allowing the establishment of these Davis ran the Oriental Studies Department at the Institutes marks a significant breach in the University of Sydney. battlefront with Western liberal values. On I do not propose returning to the age of the both sides, Confucius Institutes symbolise powerful patriarchal professoriat — nor to the the equivalence of the principles governing era of Oriental Studies — but I would suggest
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 17 that Australian universities need to recover WHAT IS TO BE DONE? the capacity to measure and manage risks in dealing with their counterparts in authoritarian Academic freedom is nested in wider forms of states. The convergence of strategic planning freedom but is fundamentally embedded in and corporate management styles on both institutions. Put to the test, the contemporary sides, I would suggest, blinds Australian Australian university does not appear well university executives to the incommensurability equipped to manage the risks that can arise of the values underpinning the two higher when it aligns its research, teaching and education systems. corporate missions with universities in other Some decades ago when Beijing was obsessed national systems that hold academic freedom in with national development and domestic affairs low regard. this may not have mattered. Even today, State Changes to higher education triggered by the Council injunctions and Education Ministry Dawkins reforms enhanced the autonomy of guidelines are intended for domestic application, institutions but placed enhanced autonomy in not application abroad. But the distinction the hands of an executive leadership inclined to between home and away is blurring as China place issues of revenue, status and performance follows its policy of ‘going abroad’, in effect ahead of traditional academic values. exporting its world view and values well beyond In particular, there appears to be little its borders, including to Australia.29 independent academic input into executive
THE DOMESTIC REPRESSION OF ACADEMIC EXPRESSION WHICH IS AN EVERY DAY EVENT IN CHINA IS NOW EXPORTED ALONG WITH CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES
Education is part of China’s going abroad decisions relating to China. When invited, strategy. On the pull side, the appeal of China’s independent academic input is often ignored ‘Confucian’ education model is growing among if it fails to match the higher corporate vision. countries in the region.30 On the push side, Faced with opportunities for aligning universities Chinese education specialists now call for with institutional partners and systems that do Australian universities that accept Chinese not value freedom, the current corporate model students to give greater weighting to the values is systematically inclined to go for alignment of the education system that produced them. 31 and set aside values once considered a liberal And China’s Ministry of Education has begun university’s greatest assets. to export the style of interventionist academic Some say that we should go along with it policing it routinely practices at home. In July all because China is changing, or in the words 2014 the Director of the Ministry’s Hanban of Bob Carr, formerly Australia’s Minister agency which manages Confucius Institutes for Foreign Affairs and now Director of the overseas, Madame Xu Lin, ordered that a page Australia-China Relations Institute at the be ripped out of the conference program of University of Technology, Sydney, China is the 20th Annual Conference of the European ‘becoming more like us’.33 This claim rests on slim Association of Chinese Studies, an independent evidence. China’s education system is geared to academic fellowship then convening in Portugal. ensuring precisely that China does not become Her staff removed the pages without consulting ‘more like us’ in the sense of embracing universal the academic conference organisers who put the values, human rights, constitutional government, program together. The domestic repression of civil society or freedom of religion, speech academic expression which is an everyday event and assembly. It certainly has no intention of in China is now exported along with Confucius embracing academic freedom. Not only are ideals Institutes.32 and institutions such as these banned in China; discussion of them is specifically outlawed on
18 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) China’s campuses and in institutes governed by China on Australian campuses. It is not China that is changing but Australia. The ABC has censored its own news programs for fear of offending Beijing. Chinese Communist Party propaganda bureau publications are delivered to the homes of subscribers to Fairfax newspapers each month. Sky News co-produces news and current affairs programs with CCTV in China where the outcomes of cooperation are censored before broadcasting. Australia’s Chinese-language media — print, radio, online and social media — are largely owned or dominated by arms of the Chinese Communist Party and government. Beijing monitors and restricts the freedom of Chinese Australians to practice religion by threatening to harm family members in China if they join this or that religious congregation. Our university executives invite onto our campuses institutions and China for drawing attention to what Chinese political representatives who profess to be at war authorities themselves were saying in Chinese.35 with our values, including academic freedom. Professor John In fact we do China a courtesy by reading and Fitzgerald One thing to be done is to call out this kind translating what Party and government agencies of behaviour in our universities. During her PHOTO: are saying in their own language and to their GLEN BRAITHWAITE visit to Australia in October this year, Anson own people. We extend a further courtesy when Chan, head of the Hong Kong public service we accept what they say as true statements of from 1993 to 2001, spelled out a lesson for intent. It is Australia’s political leaders, media Australia. ‘I don’t think Australians understand owners, business managers and university the sort of country they’re dealing with … By executives who do China a disservice by ignoring the time China’s infiltration of Australia is what Beijing is saying every day through its readily apparent, it will be too late.’ Despite government and media proclamations in favour Hong Kong reverting to Chinese sovereignty of their own ill-founded presuppositions. in 1997, she reminds us, the Communist Party More important, we do our Chinese colleagues remains an underground organisation in that in Australia and in China a disservice by not city. In the early years of Chinese sovereignty, accepting the obligation to speak up about it. Communist agents moved quietly into the city Second, we can deploy the tools and drivers to remould Hong Kong’s media, universities, that corporate universities themselves employ non-profit and government agencies in Beijing’s to enhance their status and promote their likeness. Within two decades they were openly services. One readily available set of tools intimidating journalists, kidnapping publishers, is competitive global rankings. The entry of and intervening in the appointment of senior Chinese universities into the top echelons university administrators. To Anson Chan, of published league tables, Oxford Professor Australia appears to sit now where Hong Kong Rana Mitter astutely observes, suggests that sat two decades ago. ‘Australia is a very open academic freedom no longer matters for society so it wouldn’t occur to most people, the university standing.36 It could equally be read designs of the one-party state. And it wouldn’t as an indictment of ranking systems that make have occurred to the people of Hong Kong until no provision in their measurement indicators we experienced it first hand.’34 for free and open critical inquiry in the Calling out abuses can itself invite abuse. On humanities and social sciences. This omission ABC national radio, Professor Bob Carr accused could be remedied by encouraging ranking humanities scholars of being vehemently anti-
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 19 agencies to introduce a minimal commitment Fifth, the external funding and appointment to academic freedom as a threshold for entry processes applying to Confucius Institutes give onto competitive league tables, and to devise a their host universities in Australia a direct stake workable measure of the exercise of academic in the management of China’s higher education freedom in each national system and university system. Every university hosting a Confucius that crosses the threshold. Global rankings could Institute should routinely ask its China- then drive reforms favouring freedom through appointed staff to report publicly on the terms the competitive market mechanisms that and conditions of their employment, including currently stifle them. the terms of their annual performance appraisals. A third course of action is to encourage Australian universities hosting Institutes should more Australian universities to sign on to also monitor the formal terms and conditions the 1988 Magna Charta Universitatum and under which State Council guidelines, Education encourage prospective Chinese partners to Ministry directives and institutional performance become signatories on the understanding appraisal mechanisms apply to visiting teachers that they will seek to abide by the principles and professors. governing the Charta, and submit to routine In bringing values more clearly into view, monitoring and reporting on matters relating moving them from the doorway and putting to academic freedom. To date four universities them on the table as it were, the aim should in China have signed — Peking, Nankai, Tongji, not be to impose them on others but to impose and Wuhan — and eight Australian universities them on ourselves — to remind ourselves of have done so. Australian universities could opt who we are and what we believe and where we to give preference to research and teaching draw the line. International engagements vital partnerships with universities that are prepared for the future development of higher education to sign the Charta. in Australia should not be allowed to place A fourth action concerns the influence at risk the values that mark the university as of external donors on shaping university an institution. appointments and research. Given the value In the Academy we need to talk about values. differences separating our national higher We have a duty to speak out about contemporary education systems, Australian universities risks to academic freedom in the knowledge dealing with China face unprecedented that the liberties we enjoy in the academy play pressures to meet the expectations of external an important role in the life of the community donors and partners wishing to shape their at large. And it is our duty to speak out in the research and teaching activities. Risks to knowledge that freedoms rarely exercised are academic freedom are magnified when freedoms readily surrendered. ¶ university executives place the prospect of *** promising opportunities, big money and long-term strategic partnerships with Chinese This article is an edited version of the annual entities ahead of academic values. One remedy Academy Lecture delivered in Melbourne on would be to invite an overarching body, such 15 November 2016 as part of the 47th Annual as Universities Australia, to develop and Symposium of the Australian Academy of the promote a best-practice guide for accepting Humanities, ‘Asia Australia: Transnational and managing donor funds. This would ensure Connections’. that the sources and origins of donations are clearly documented, that donors present minimal risk to the standing of the university, and that firewalls are erected separating donor engagement from the selection of academic staff and research and teaching projects.
20 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) 5. Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Soul of Higher PROFESSOR JOHN FITZGERALD Education (New York: The New Press, 2010); faha is President of the Daniel Little, ‘Academic freedom from Australian Academy of the Hofstadter to Dworkin’, Understanding Humanities. He is the Truby and Society Blogspot 20 July 2011
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 21 abroad-a-new-focus-of-ccps-united-front- 25. Observatory Magna Charta Universitatum work/> [accessed 31 October 2016].
22 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Smart Engagement with Asia
» IEN ANG
Smart Engagement with Asia: Leveraging technologically sophisticated. In the context Language, Research and Culture, published of international relations in today’s complex in 2015, was produced as part of the world, however, ‘smart engagement’ needs to Securing Australia’s Future (SAF) program, be conceived rather differently: in our report a multidisciplinary research initiative of the we define it as the slow and patient nurturing Australian Council of Learned Academies of long-term, sustainable, mutually beneficial (ACOLA), funded by the Australian Research relationships. In particular, smart engagement Council under the auspices of the Office of requires an outlook that goes beyond the pursuit the Chief Scientist.1 The report was a unique of purely transactional relationships for short- opportunity for humanities scholars to work term, self-interested gain. Rather than the together with other researchers — scientists one-way outward projection and promotion of and social scientists — on a topic of crucial Australia’s national interest, smart engagement importance for Australia’s future prosperity and focuses on the patient cultivation of genuine security, allowing them to conduct evidence- partnerships through mutually beneficial based research and generate interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration. findings to support policy development. For Smart engagement also requires nuanced three years from late 2012 an expert working knowledge and understanding of the complexity, group of representatives from all four of the diversity and intricate dynamics of the region we learned Academies, chaired by myself, met often too easily homogenise by using the short- regularly to scope the issues at hand, prepare and hand term ‘Asia’. Despite the rise of populist design the project, and debate the arguments nationalist sentiment in the West, the common and conclusions to be drawn from the research.2 wisdom in the countries of contemporary Asia is The report focuses on three areas of major that increased connectivity between societies — importance for Australia’s evolving relationship at physical, institutional and people-to-people with Asia: languages and linguistic competencies, levels — plays an important part in promoting research and research collaboration, and cultural growth, maintaining peace and safeguarding diplomacy and relations. stability in the region and beyond. At the same (above) There is no question that ‘smart engagement time, Asia, or what is now sometimes called the Fireworks at the with Asia’ is essential for securing Australia’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ region, is rapidly being reshaped 2008 Olympic Games opening future. But what is ‘smart’ engagement? The by the rising influence of the giant regional ceremony in Beijing. dominant meaning of the word ‘smart’ today powers, particularly China and, to a lesser PHOTO: CC0 1.0 associates it with being clever, quick, and extent, India. In this context, Australia has to UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 23 (far right) make sure that it does not get left out of the Copies of the intensifying web of transnational connections report at its launch and cross-border alignments being spun across in Melbourne at Footscray the region today. That there is still much work Community to do in this regard is evidenced by a recent Arts Centre on PriceWaterhouseCoopers report which found 5 Jun 2015. that a great majority of Australian businesses PHOTO: TEAGAN GLENANE (88%) have no experience of doing business in Asia at all, and that most of them have no intention of changing this aloof stance towards Asia because of a prevailing belief that engaging with Asia is ‘too hard’, that Asia is ‘too different’ and uncomfortably so.3 This indicates that there are many barriers to overcome for ‘smart engagement’ to occur, and that these barriers 12% of Australian parents see foreign language are not just economic or regulatory in nature, skills as an important priority for their children but linguistic, social and cultural. It is on these at secondary school. This is lower than for dimensions that the Smart Engagement with Asia parents in other Anglophone countries (Canada report concentrates its focus. 20%, US 23%, UK 28%). It would seem then that English monolingualism is more entrenched 6 LANGUAGES FOR SMART ENGAGEMENT in Australia than in other countries. However, evidence shows that monolingual English Language is a fundamental communication tool speakers are at a significant disadvantage when without which no social interaction (including engaging in a world where others tend to be the establishment of networks, linkages, and multilingual. collaborations) can take place. The importance Of course it is indisputable that English of language — and language differences — is has become an Asian language, as it is widely often underestimated, especially in a largely used across the region. In many region-wide monoglot, English-speaking country such as operations, such as international research Australia. According to the 2011 census 81% of collaboration or formal intergovernmental Australia’s citizens and residents communicate affairs, English is now accepted as the de only in English at home. This is despite the fact facto language of communication. Demand that Australia has a large migrant population for learning English as a Foreign Language from non-English speaking backgrounds. (EFL) is high in all countries in the region. While 53% of first generation Australians Yet proficiency levels are very uneven, with spoke a language other than English at home, only Singapore (where English is the official this dropped to 20% for second generation working language) and Malaysia demonstrating Australians, and plummeted to just 1.6% for high proficiency in English. In all other Asian third and subsequent generations.4 This process countries, relying only on English as a vehicle of linguistic assimilation is, according to Lo of communication is a distinct disadvantage. Bianco and Slaughter, the universal experience In highly competitive global economic spheres, of immigrant populations.5 multilingual people have a comparative Promoting Asian languages has been an advantage in increasingly global or cross-national educational policy goal since the 1990s, with companies and organisations. Multilingual mixed success. Many Australians believe that capabilities are of undeniable benefit for they do not need to learn other languages facilitating intercultural interactions and are because of the status of English as a global lingua considered essential in various professions franca, including throughout Asia. According such as engineering, medicine and tourism. to a global comparative study on the value of A 2014 survey found that only 51% of Chinese education conducted by the Hong Kong and visitors were satisfied with the availability of Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), only Chinese language facilities in Australia, and 37%
24 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) cited the ‘language barrier’ as a reason for not with Chinese or Japanese culture are recommending Australia as a destination.7 able to prevent these types of situations Moreover, multilingualism, or more and help collaborative work proceed specifically, learning a language other than more smoothly.9 English, also translates into broader ‘translingual’ In short, although English is the global skills by challenging students to cultivate a language par excellence, being monolingual worldview different to the one they inhabit in English will impede Australia’s ability to through English, and to be more appreciative engage more effectively with the region. To of the histories and cultures of the society paraphrase Joseph Lo Bianco, there are two whose language they are learning. For example, important linguistic disadvantages: the first is a recent survey of Australian attitudes towards not speaking English; the second is speaking Indonesia, commissioned by the Department only English. Consequently, smart engagement of Foreign Affairs and Trade, found that those with Asia requires breaking the ‘vicious circle who have studied the Indonesian language have of monolingualism’.10 In this regard, promoting a higher level of awareness and understanding foreign language education remains an essential of Indonesia, have more positive perceptions policy goal. It is not sufficient to rely solely of Indonesia, are more likely to think Australia on English in the expectation that others will and Indonesia have things in common, are adapt. The principle of reciprocity demands that more likely to consider Indonesia important Australians need to cultivate a preparedness to the Australian national interest, and are to recognise the inherently complex language more supportive of increased links between the diversity within the region and the capacity two countries.8
MULTILINGUALISM…TRANSLATES INTO BROADER ‘TRANSLINGUAL’ SKILLS BY CHALLENGING STUDENTS TO CULTIVATE A WORLDVIEW DIFFERENT TO THE ONE THEY INHABIT THROUGH ENGLISH.
Finally, the limits of English-only are evident and sensitivity to navigate this complexity. At even in contexts where English is the dominant the same time, although it is not necessary for international medium of communication, Australians to be fluent in Asian languages to such as in science and research. For example, engage with Asia, multilingual capability is of Montgomery has argued that effective research undeniable benefit to facilitate intercultural collaboration requires more than just a formal interactions and collaborations. lingua franca. As he observes:
The daily operations of research, from RESEARCH COLLABORATION AS SMART the role of the individual to the structure ENGAGEMENT of organizations, reflect the society Scientific research is increasingly a globally in which they occur. When it comes interconnected endeavour, with more to the actual work of collaboration, researchers around the world seeking therefore, mismatches of practice often opportunities to pursue their research interests happen. A global tongue can make these by collaborating both within and across situations both better and worse, since it national boundaries. In these circumstances, can disguise through seeming agreement international research collaboration represents a disconnect in expected behavior. a significant mode of institutional and people- This has often been observed in the case to-people connectivity between countries. of East Asian researchers, whose cultural When researchers work together across national ways of expressing doubt, agreement, and boundaries, they not only contribute to the criticism are often quite indirect and can global production of knowledge, they also play be easily misinterpreted when translated a part in sustaining a culture of cooperation that directly into English. Scientists familiar
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 25 contributes to more harmonious international disciplines in Asian countries, especially since relations. In this way, international research 2008.13 This suggests that as the countries of collaboration has a strong potential to be Asia are becoming more developed, research and a powerful form of smart engagement. scholarship in HASS is growing in importance, Asia is the most dynamic region for research although from a low base. This points to an investment and output today. Research and increased interest in the HASS disciplines in the development expenditure in the region exceeded region, in line with the global trend to embrace a that in North America for the first time in more rounded conception of knowledge, not just 2011. China is now the third largest producer in science and technology but also of society and of research articles, behind only the United culture, required to understand and tackle more States and the European Union bloc, and is on holistically the complex challenges of our time. course to overtake the United States before the While the issue of (poor) quality is still end of the current decade. Japan’s status as a an important one, with much professional global research power is in long-term decline, development needing to be done in the but it is still very strong. South Korea and research workforce, especially in smaller and India are also increasingly prominent regional less developed countries, the growth in the research powers.11 A recent article in Asian pool of researchers across the region enhances Scientist reports that, in 2007, Asia contributed the potential for research collaboration nearly one-third of the 5.8 million researchers with them. So what is the state of affairs in worldwide. The combined number of researchers international research collaboration within the in South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Singapore Asian region, and how engaged is Australia with rose from 16% in 2003 to 31% in 2007, driven Asia in this domain? mostly by China’s rapid growth in research and International research collaboration is usually development. In contrast, the number of US measured through international co-authorship and EU researchers declined from 51% to 49% of research publications. This is at best a very of the global total; Japan’s share dropped from partial measure, as international research 17% to 12%.12 It is also heartening to know that, collaboration can take many different forms and according to a recent UNESCO report, there has does not necessarily have to result in co-authored been a rapid increase in publication rates in the journal articles, especially in the humanities. In Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) the absence of alternative measures, however,
(right) Korean pop stars
PHOTO: ‘KOREAN POP STARS - IMG_2601’ BY SALI SASAKI
26 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) we had to rely on bibliometric data (such as exception: collaboration with China, which has those provided by Scopus) to gauge the rate risen exponentially in the past decade and a half. of international research collaboration. These Between 1997 and 2012 the rate of co-authored data show that, globally, there has indeed been publications with China has increased more than a marked rise in international collaboration on ten times.17 Only three other countries have seen scientific articles, with estimates ranging from similarly fast growth rates in co-authored papers 25% to 35% by the end of the first decade of this with China: the US, Taiwan and Singapore. century.14 Overall the main Asian countries Why is this? An important explanation can be tend to show less collaborative propensity than found in what we call the ‘Chinese diaspora researchers in North America, Europe and effect’. By this we mean that the exceptional
THE SHARP RISE OF AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COLLABORATION WITH CHINA CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO A VERY LARGE EXTENT TO THE ACTIVITIES OF RESEARCHERS OF CHINESE DESCENT WORKING IN AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTIONS.
Australasia. Nevertheless, the density of research growth in collaboration can be attributed to collaboration between countries in the region the contributions made by Chinese diasporic has increased strongly in the past decade. This researchers in these countries. suggests that intra-Asian research collaboration Anecdotal observations suggest that migrant is on the increase, though from a low base. The Chinese researchers have played a critical 1997 Asian financial crisis has propelled the role in driving Australia’s collaboration with countries of Northeast Asia and the Association China. Such observations can be backed by of South East Asian Nations countries to pursue quantitative evidence, derived from research on greater regional integration, and this has flowed co-authorships involving collaborations between into an intensification of research collaboration researchers from China and other countries. within the region.15 Australian researchers Such research is usually conducted by examining are among the most frequent international the surnames of the international collaborators, collaborators: about half of Australian scientific on the basis that Chinese surnames are highly articles involve an international co-author. Data recognisable. Research by Wang et al. suggests show, however, that Australian researchers are that Australian research collaboration with relatively less inclined to collaborate with Asian China is driven far more by Chinese diasporic co-authors than with co-authors based in the US, researchers than in other country: while as many Europe and New Zealand. As Thomas Barlow as 66% of Australia-China collaborations involve has observed, rather acerbically, Australian the work of an Australia-based co-author of collaboration with Japanese co-authors remains Chinese descent, this is the case for only 48% at almost the same level as collaboration with in the UK, 32% in Japan, and 28% in Germany.18 researchers in New Zealand, even though Japan This tendency is corroborated by an analysis by has thirteen times New Zealand’s publication Anderson and Stafford of the pattern of research output. By the same token, India’s scientific collaboration of one Australian university, the output is seven times larger and South Korea’s six University of Adelaide, with China. Of the top times larger than New Zealand’s, but—using the twenty most productive Adelaide researchers number of co-authored papers as the measure— who co-published with Chinese researchers Australian researchers seem to collaborate less between 2009 and 2013, fifteen were originally than half as often with Indians or South Koreans from China. Of the five non-Chinese, two were as with New Zealanders.16 ethnically Vietnamese, two British, and one Such quantitative data juggling suggests that Anglo-Australian.19 Australia’s pattern of international collaboration In other words, the sharp rise of Australian is heavily tilted towards other Western, especially research collaboration with China can be Anglophone, countries. But there is one huge attributed to a very large extent to the activities
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 27 of researchers of Chinese descent working in a lack of social connections and of intercultural Australian research institutions. In terms of capabilities plays a crucial role in the prevailing a broader research engagement with China, disconnect. The social and cultural dimensions then, Australia’s high reliance on Chinese of international collaboration require more diasporic researchers suggests that enhancing attention if we are to nurture smart research research links with China among non-Chinese engagement with Asia. Australian researchers requires major policy attention. The large contribution of Chinese CULTURAL RELATIONS AND diasporic researchers inflates the extent of SMART ENGAGEMENT collaborative links, and masks the fact that Australian researchers who are not of Chinese As we have pointed out in the Smart background are not as strongly engaged with Engagement report, the scale of cultural contact China as they could be. At the same time, it is between peoples across the world, including important to recognise the significant role played Asia, has increased massively since the beginning by Chinese diasporic researchers in bridging of the twenty-first century. It has been fuelled the cultural and linguistic divide between the by rapid economic development and the two countries. More research is also needed associated growth of new middle classes, the on the role of diasporic researchers from other rise of international travel and tourism, and Asian countries in maintaining connections the growth of communication technologies, with counterparts in their home countries. including social media. Globalisation is not
GLOBALISATION IS NOT JUST AN ECONOMIC PHENOMENON: IT ALSO HAS AN IMPORTANT CULTURAL DIMENSION.
The Smart Engagement with Asia project has just an economic phenomenon; it also has made a start by surveying not only Chinese, but an important cultural dimension, exposing also Indian diaspora researchers in Australia.20 different peoples and cultures to each other These diaspora researchers strongly argue on an unprecedented scale. As a consequence, that their linguistic skills and familiarity with culture and international relations are now their cultural heritage are of great benefit in strongly interdependent, where culture can play their collaborative activities with researchers both a positive and a negative role. A country’s in these countries. For many of them, existing cultural credentials are very important for its relationships (e.g. through postgraduate international reputation and standing, with the studies, former workplace relations or family or implication that shaping international cultural personal connections) have been fundamental to relations to serve the national interest is now an initiating collaboration. increasingly important policy challenge. This is From this it is reasonable to conclude that the field of cultural diplomacy.21 there is no quick solution to the challenge of A popular term to describe the objective of developing collaborative research networks: cultural diplomacy is ‘soft power’, defined by it takes time, dedication and patience. In this Joseph Nye as the ability to influence others regard, the most common official approach to obtain the outcomes one wants through to international engagement such as trade attraction rather than coercion or payment missions or research delegations, typically of (hard power).22 It is thought that soft power too short duration to enable in-depth mutual can enhance a country’s capacity to assert familiarisation, is unlikely to produce any international influence, and soft power can be concrete benefit without multiple return visits. attained by presenting an attractive image of Although institutional and resourcing barriers the national culture to foreign publics. In the are important reasons for the weak links of globalised and multipolar world of the twenty- Australian researchers with their Asian peers, first century, governments around the world
28 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) have shown increased interest in maximising propaganda not only fails to convince, but it can 24 their soft power through cultural and public undercut soft power’. (above) diplomacy initiatives. However, in the age of The notion of ‘soft power’ has recently Bollywood posters the Internet and mass international travel the become influential across Asia. Nations such as PHOTO: CC0 1.0 flow of information and images can no longer China and South Korea are investing heavily to UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY. be controlled by governments. Many other increase their global cultural recognition and actors play a part in the shaping of international hoping to convert it into strategic influence cultural relations, including independent in other areas. For example, China’s extensive cultural, media and educational institutions, public and cultural diplomacy program cultural non-government organisations includes Confucius Institutes to promote (including diaspora organisations), businesses, Chinese language and culture, a ‘Media Going private foundations and philanthropists, and Global’ strategy, educational exchanges, and individuals (e.g. artists, sportspeople). Moreover, programs of cultural festivals and performances international publics are more active than ever showcasing Chinese culture in cities around before in seeking out their own information and the world.25 Overall, however, an emphasis on in transnational peer-to-peer communications outward cultural projection and cultural export through social media and other means. predominates, with much less attention being In this context, analysts argue that cultural given to reciprocal cultural exchange. This diplomacy needs to focus less on simple, one- paradoxically can limit the soft power effects of way ‘projection’ and more on mutuality, cultural cultural and public diplomacy initiatives. exchange and cross-cultural understanding. Thus, data from several polls suggest that According to Nye, ‘effective public diplomacy international public opinion of China has is a two-way street that involves listening as not significantly improved despite its massive well as talking’.23 The lesson for governments investment in cultural and public diplomacy.26 is that if they want to pursue smart cultural A poll taken in Asia after the Beijing Olympics engagement they should refrain from the in 2008, presumably a soft-power triumph, too directive broadcasting of their national found that China’s charm offensive had been qualities: ‘Public diplomacy that degenerates into ineffective. Opinions of China’s influence have
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 29 overwhelmingly nationalistic objectives of most soft power schemes in the region. As Joseph Nye argues, ‘cooperative public diplomacy can … help take the edge off suspicions of narrow national motives’.30 Important lessons can be drawn for Australia in this regard. Former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Varghese, has famously made the observation that Australia is suffering a ‘soft power deficit’ in the region.31 Indeed, evidence suggests that the popular image of Australia in countries such as India and China is still dominated by its past embrace of the White Australia policy, or by stereotypical impressions of koalas or kangaroos. That is, Australia’s relationship with Asian countries is comparatively thin and instrumental, characterised by a major sense of cultural distance.32 remained predominantly negative not only in There is no quick fix for this deep cultural (above) the United States and Europe, but also in India, disconnect, which poses a big challenge Fig. 4. Professors Japan and South Korea. Nye argues that China to Australia’s cultural diplomacy effort. In Krishna Sen faha, is weak on soft power because the style of its David Walker faha particular, it is important that the focus here public diplomacy relies on the high-profile and Ien Ang faha should not be on the unilateral projection of discussing the grand gesture and does not allow an active a preferred soft power image, but, in more Smart Engagement participation in civil society.27 with Asia report reciprocal fashion, on building long-term, Similarly, while the Korean government has at the Australian sustained cultural relationships. Rather than Academy of the strongly relied on the popularity of Korean Wave one-way messaging, smart cultural engagement Humanities’ 2016 popular culture to increase its international Symposium. should emphasise mutuality and collaboration. cultural standing, anti-Korean Wave movements PHOTO: KYLIE BRASS Interestingly, as the Smart Engagement with have sprung up in Japan, Taiwan, China, Asia report details, in recent times a whole Singapore and other Asian countries, criticising range of cultural institutions, artist associations the cultural invasion of Korean pop culture as a and community groups have already risen to new form of cultural imperialism.28 the challenge by initiating cultural exchanges, Hall and Smith worry that the intensifying collaborative projects, and partnerships with struggle for soft power in Asia may lead to like-minded people across the region. Often, the deepening of distrust and the hardening though, these initiatives are small-scale, poorly of international hostilities in the region. resourced and lack broader recognition. Research Rather than alleviating national differences, conducted by Asialink in Victoria shows that it may accentuate them and even heighten such projects were largely self-funded, with only the competition for hard power.29 This is small contributions from government grants and a cautionary note, which poses important subsidies. In the arts sector, smaller organisations challenges to the cultural and public diplomacy and individual artists have shown themselves to strategies deployed in these countries, and their be more active in cultural exchange initiatives impact on regional prosperity and security. One and more willing to take risks than larger conclusion is that the race for soft power, when organisations which had to balance commercial conceived exclusively or predominantly as a returns and cultural exchange. The lessons competition for national cultural ascendancy, is learned from these experiences are, again, that not particularly helpful in improving the cultural successful engagement requires long-term relations between countries. commitment and substantial investment to Instead, smart regional engagement develop enduring relationships based on trust: requires more reciprocal approaches to one-off, ad hoc projects do not necessarily lead cultural diplomacy to counterbalance the
30 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) to sustainable relationships. In policy terms, CONCLUSION this has implications for the design of funding models, too often restrictively focused on short- The Smart Engagement with Asia project has term outputs and outcomes. However, while lack highlighted a structural disconnect between of funding was the most important challenge, Australia and Asia, despite increasingly strong 51% of respondents in the Asialink survey pragmatic and transactional relations, such as mentioned difficulties in cultural understanding through trade and tourism. This disconnect as a key challenge, as well as a lack of relevant manifests itself in a lack of interest in learning experience and relationships in Asia.33 Asian languages, the comparatively low level of In this context, the role of diaspora cultural research collaboration with Asian countries, and practitioners deserves a special mention. the fragmented nature of cultural connections Exploratory research by Fitzgerald and Chau with Asia. Underlying these issues are linguistic, shows there is extensive cultural exchange social and cultural divergences which require between Asian and Pacific Islands diasporas long-term and sustained commitment if they
AUSTRALIA’S CONNECTIVITY WITH ASIA CAN BE FACILITATED BY THE BRIDGING ROLE OF DIASPORAS IN BRINGING AUSTRALIANS AND ASIANS CLOSER TOGETHER. in Australia and their home nations and are to be overcome. This is not an easy message other diaspora locations. An example is the to sell to policy makers and politicians, who role of Indian diaspora professionals working are generally more interested in concrete in Australia in bringing Bollywood cinema measures with direct, calculable outcomes. productions to Australia since the 1990s. Nevertheless, it is hoped that a report such as Diaspora cultural practitioners based in Australia this can exert indirect influence by deepening demonstrate many of the key attributes of smart Australian discourse and thinking about its cultural engagement, including peer-to-peer changing place in the world in the coming trust, self-reliance, a focus on impact, a high decades. One important finding from the report degree of literacy in digital and traditional media, is that Australia’s connectivity with Asia can be autonomous organisations, and a commitment facilitated by the bridging role of diasporas in to building long-term relationships. They are bringing Australians and Asians closer together. generally less dependent on public funding, Australia has a comparative advantage in this they frequently engage business and private regard, given that it has a very significant donors, and they bring requisite capabilities, Asian migrant population. At the same time, understandings and networks to their work. relying only on Asian diasporas would not be a They are alert to emerging sensitivities among smart option. As Asia will play an increasingly Asian and Pacific Island communities and quick dominant role in global affairs in the coming to take advantage of emergent opportunities century, smart engagement with Asia will require for transnational engagements crossing ethnic a reoriented outlook for society as a whole. ¶ and national boundaries. They are contextually aware, generally well informed, and need little IEN ANG faha is Distinguished advocacy, training, or encouragement to engage Professor of Cultural Studies internationally. However, their activities receive at Western Sydney University, where she was the founding little media coverage or public acknowledgement Director of the Institute for in Australia.34 Greater recognition and Culture and Society. understanding of the ways in which these diasporas can contribute to Australia’s broader effort to engage with Asia, should therefore be an important priority.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 31 1. Ien Ang, Yasmin Tambiah and Phillip Mar, 10. Teresa Tinsley, Languages: The State of the Smart Engagement with Asia: Leveraging Nation. Summary Report (London: The British Language, Research and Culture (Melbourne: Academy, 2013)
32 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) 22. Joseph Nye, Soft Power: The Means To Success In 29. Hall and Smith. World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). 30. Nye, ‘Public Diplomacy’, p. 107. 23. Joseph Nye, ‘Public Diplomacy and Soft Power’, 31. Peter Varghese, ‘Building Australia’s Soft Power’, ANNALS of the American Academy of Political Bruce Allen Memorial Lecture. Soft Power and Social Science, 616, 1 (2008), 94–109. Advocacy and Research Centre, Macquarie 24. Nye, ‘Public Diplomacy’, p. 108. University, Sydney, 2013. 25. Ingrid d’Hooghe, ‘Into High Gear: China’s 32. Yudhisthir Raj Isar, Engaging Culturally with Public Diplomacy’, Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Many Asias: A Report for the Australian Council 3 (2008), 37–61; Z. Hu and D. Ji, ‘Ambiguities in of Learned Academies (ACOLA) Project on Asia Communicating with the World: The “Going- Literacy: Language and Beyond, 2014
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 33 ING ISraThEmNalkwona HwoEnRiyE r 1 nLgû an
» NICHOLAS EVANS
In the Dalabon language of Arnhem Land, which evinced great interest in language in the noun root malk can mean ‘place, country’, all its forms, leading to such ‘monuments to but also ‘season, weather’ as well as ‘place in the human intellect’ as the initiation language a system’, e.g. one’s ‘skin’ in the overarching Damin on Mornington Island that I will say system of kin relations, or the point on a net more about below. But, in contrast to our where the support sticks are fixed. The verb neighbour Aotearoa, these languages are all but root wonan basically means ‘hear, listen’ but is invisible, and inaudible, in the public sphere. regularly extended to other types of non-visual We are at last witnessing long-overdue moves perception, such as smelling, and to thought and to introduce the study of indigenous languages consideration more generally. Combined with into schools, though the states doing this — malk, it means ‘think about where to go, consider New South Wales leading the charge — are, what to do next’. The generous polysynthetic paradoxically, among those in which the effects nature of Dalabon — where polysynthetic denotes of centuries of linguistic dispossession have a type of language which can combine many taken the heaviest toll. elements together into a single verbal word to A common objection to the introduction express what would take a sentence in English — of indigenous languages in schools is their gives us the word ngûrrahmalkwonawoniyan. purported lack of utility — wouldn’t it be more I have chosen it to introduce this essay because useful to study Chinese, Japanese, Spanish etc.? of its ambiguity between ‘let’s listen, let’s attend These objections are simplistic. The human carefully to this country, to this path’ and ‘let’s brain has evolved to be multilingual and readily think about where to go next’. absorbs the learning of multiple languages. Australia is a paradoxically appropriate Multilingualism is certainly the default human place for the flowering of linguistic research condition in terms of current worldwide we have seen here in the last few decades: a demography, was arguably our primal human predominantly monolingual country with a state if we extrapolate from the small groups of deep multilingual past, located at the epicentre hunter-gatherers who are our best simulacrum of the world’s linguistic diversity among trading of early social organisation, and is part of the partners speaking languages of the most varied long tradition of humanist scholarship both (above) types. During its first forty to fifty millennia, in Europe and elsewhere. So there is no need Detail, recording the Kaytetye ‘Elder indigenous cultures developed a diverse mosaic to choose — each new language you learn Sister’ sand story of over three hundred languages in which high makes it easier to learn the next. Indeed, a case (p. 39). levels of multilingualism were the norm and can be made that a supple training in one or
34 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) more indigenous languages provides both the #1 Papua New Guinea, #2 Indonesia, #4 India, #5 N analytic sophistication and the hermeneutic Australia, #10 Philippines and #12 Vanuatu.2 The TENI G HER subtlety to reinforce the study of whatever other sheer linguistic prodigality on the island of New IS E language(s) one may study. A common and Guinea alone is comparable to that of Eurasia L wistfully-expressed view of the place of Latin as a whole, from Ireland to Japan, from Siberia in traditional school curricula — that it teaches to Sri Lanka — and this statement broadly the student how to think, how to parse, how to holds up whether one counts the number of be succinct — can be made with equal force for languages, the number of language families, or indigenous languages. Kayardild, the language the amount of ‘disparity’ in language structures. I wrestled with for my PhD, weighs in with Languages like Iau (in West Papua) with nine twenty cases to Latin’s six, the same freedom of tones sit cheek by jowl with others with no tones word order that classical poets could exploit, and at all, and the language with the largest sound a terseness that allows one to express something inventory in the western Pacific (Yélî-Dnye like ‘(watch out), lest it get away from the one on Rossel Island) is just a couple of hundred belonging to your opposite-sex sibling’ in a single kilometres from that with the smallest, Rotokas word, kularrinkarranmulanharranth. I’ve used on Bougainville Island. Kayardild as an example, but any reasonably This voluptuous linguistic landscape well-documented Australian language contains is one reason for the thriving linguistic enough grammatical complexities to wrinkle scene in Australia, which got started when a Latin master’s parsing brow for years. R.M.W. Dixon faha founded the Department of Linguistics in the (then) Faculties at the Australian National University, early in the (far left) 1970s. But I think that for many linguists Pluto Bentinck, working in Australia there are other more one of my Kayardild teachers. personal motives — a wish for a more Mornington Island, authentic view of who we are in this part 1982.
of the world, grounded in the intricate and PHOTO: NICHOLAS EVANS diverse cultural products of fifty millennia of human occupation and the mosaic of world-views these have elaborated. Add to this the fact that so many non- indigenous Australians grow up with an aching sense of unconnectedness to their land, stemming from the invisibility and inaudibility of Aboriginal culture and the peremptory way its insights were briskly But before returning to the topic of Australian swept aside by the British colonisation process. languages in all their cultural wealth, let’s back This makes linguistic research — and one day, up to my earlier phrase ‘epicentre of linguistic I hope, the broader cultural and educational diversity’. These words are not chosen lightly. awareness that grows from it — an opportunity Of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages, over a to create a type of culture that so far we have fifth are spoken in our region — some thousand failed to nourish in this country.3 on the island of New Guinea (both sides), 250– I spent a lot of my childhood in the bush 400 in Australia depending on the measure (and around Canberra, whether after school in the these are languages, not dialects — counting the bush behind Campbell or on long camping latter sends the figure much higher), over 130 in trips. Nonetheless, I am probably typical of Vanuatu (the world champion in Gross Linguistic non-indigenous Australians in the shallowness Product at close to one language per 2,000 of what I learned about my environment, and speakers). And among the world’s top dozen in the mismatch between my monoglot English countries measured by number of endemic upbringing and the inchoate feelings I held for languages, half are in our neighbourhood — my surrounds. In northern Australia, on the
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 35 other hand — a place where I have spent less the best way to track these grasshoppers time, and in a less formative period of life — down, and the lightning spirit, which starts to almost every plant and bird now bears a vivid manifest itself in the first monsoonal storms charge. Not only have I carefully been taught at the same time as the herbs are ready for their names, in Dalabon or Bininj Kun-wok or these grasshoppers to eat. At the time of the other local languages, but also their uses, what first lightning storms, Leichhardt’s grasshopper their flowering says about the availability of food is said to don its sumptuous orange and blue resources, and a whole rich panoply of myth. outfit and go looking for the lightning; local cave paintings depict lightning spirits with axes (right) on their heads representing the grasshopper’s Maggie Tukumba, my principal antennae. Howard Morphy fassa faha and Ian 5 Dalabon teacher. Keen have described the central place in Yolngu
PHOTO: SARAH CUTFIELD symbolic thought held by likan, a word which literally means ‘elbow’ but extends to mean ‘joint, connection’ — close to what would be called tropes in the Western tradition — and the way that ‘likan names’ are used, in contexts of art and ceremony, to indicate more allusive readings to the culturally knowledgeable. Elsewhere in Australia distinct biota will be referred to as ‘mates’ or ‘kin’ on the basis of a number of shared characteristics.6 These examples don’t just illustrate how learning an indigenous language brings with it a vast network of knowledge about the natural world. They also show the extent to The web of life, in languages like this, is mirrored which indigenous cultures were fascinated by in the web of words, from different verbs for the distinct hopping gait of every different macropod species, male, female and child, to retriplicated nouns for ecozones dominated by a particular plant (e.g. Kunwinjku mi-djoh-djo-djo ‘mixed scrub with wattle, acacia difficilis, dominant’ from an-djoh ‘acacia difficilis’). This is mingled with a rich affective lexicon for the sensations and emotions the landscape brings out — words such as, from Dalabon, karddulunghno ‘smell of first rains’, or from Iwaidja, angmarranguldin ‘change in environmental conditions, bringing back memories and inspire longings for an absent person or place through the recollection of the smell of the sea or of a dying bushfire as the wind turns.’ There is also the intriguing phenomenon of ‘sign metonymies’,4 which signal the fact that (far right) one natural phenomenon is a guide in space Alyurr: Leichhardt’s or time to the presence of the other — e.g. in grasshopper, herb Gun-djeihmi alyurr denotes the Leichhardt’s and lightning man. grasshopper (Petaside ephipigera), two herb PHOTOS: PETER COOKE (GRASSHOPPER); MURRAY species which it eats (Pityrodia jamesii and GARDE (LIGHTNING MAN). Cleome viscosa), and whose location is thus
36 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) language and developed a range of metalinguistic terms (like likan), practices and products. Few aspects of indigenous culture better illustrate the intellectual sophistication of indigenous Australian traditions than some of the special auxiliary linguistic systems they created.7 Many of these were linked to initiation rites — to make clear that the passage to adulthood was not just a matter of physical trials8 and self-discipline, but also of attaining a new understanding of how language articulates with the world. Take the problem of antonymy. Giving ‘up’ as the opposite of ‘down’ or ‘tall’ as the opposite of ‘short’ are trivial. But most semantic textbooks remain mute on the question of where antonymic oppositions stop — an errant omission in a world seeking to decompose all representation to binary code. What is the opposite of mother — father, or child? Or worse, of ‘red kangaroo’, or ‘countryman’, or ‘(s)he’? The antonym of ‘deaf’ is evident, but what about ‘see’? The special register known as Jiliwirri,9 learned by Warlpiri initiates, is as far as I know Damin is said to have been created by an the only case in the world’s intellectual history ancestor known as Kaltharr (Yellow Trevally fish), of a thoroughgoing investigation of antonymy (above) and has a rich inventory of sounds, supposed to applied to the entire lexicon. To speak it, you Popgun, one of the echo what ‘fish talk’ would sound like. In fact, must replace all lexical items (though not Demiinkurlda or its phoneme inventory is unique among the ‘Damin-possessors’. grammatical affixes other than pronouns) with world’s languages and employs types of sound PHOTO TAKEN AT THE their opposites. As the following example shows, not found anywhere else, such as the ‘ingressive MORNINGTON ISLAND to convey the proposition ‘I am sitting on the MISSION BY NORMAN lateral fricative’ (phonetically written ɬ↓ as in the NELSON IN 1936. ground’, you use a Jiliwirri utterance which word ɬ↓i ‘fish’), made like a Welsh ll (roughly thl) would translate literally into everyday Warlpiri but breathing in. There are also a range of click as ‘someone else is standing in the sky’. Jiliwirri sounds, like those found in Southern Africa. has been used to investigate antonymy in Because grammatical affixes are simply taken Warlpiri lexical semantics, including such non- over from everyday Lardil, it is only the lexical obvious issues as whether the perception verbs roots that display these special sounds, as can be ‘see’, ‘hear’ etc. have antonyms, and how one illustrated by the following sentence equivalents determines antonyms for natural species names from everyday Lardil (2a) and Damin (2b): Damin like ‘red kangaroo’. substitutes ŋ͡!aa for ngada, didi for ji- and ɬ↓ii for 1a. ngaju ka-rna walya-ngka nyina-mi yak-, but leaves the grammatical suffixes intact. I PRES-I ground-LOCATIVE sit-NONPAST 2a. Ngada ji-thur yak-ur ‘I am sitting on the ground.’ (ordinary Warlpiri) I eat-FUTURE fish-FUTURE.OBJECT 1b. kari ka-ø nguru-ngka karri-mi ‘I will eat fish.’ other PRES-(s)he sky-LOCATIVE stand-NONPAST 2b. ŋ͡!aa didi-thur ɬ↓i-ngkur ‘I am sitting on the ground.’ (Jiliwirri) However exotic its phonetics, it is the semantic Even more spectacular is a special initiation structure of Damin which represents a true tour- register known as Damin,10 which was taught to de-force in metalinguistic analysis. Since the Lardil men on Mornington Island as part of their time of Leibniz philosophers and semanticists initiation as warama (second degree initiates).11 in the Western intellectual tradition have been
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 37 seeking an ‘alphabet of human thought’ which attempts at semantic decomposition of verbal would allow all meanings to be decomposed predicates which linguistic philosophers began into a small stock of elements, a quest continued experimenting with in the 1960s. Thus the here in Australia through epic work by Anna Damin verb didi takes in, among many other Wierzbicka fassa faha and Cliff Goddard faha, correspondents, jitha ‘eat’, but also all actions and their students. Damin comes close to producing a physical change on their object, achieving this goal — out of nowhere in terms such as barrki ‘chop’, betha ‘bite’, bunbe ‘shoot’, of prior philosophical traditions, and without and kele ‘cut’. Another word diidi, which sounds drawing on any tools of written logical notation. similar but has a long vowel, includes all actions It maps the many thousand lexical items of of motion and caused motion, such as waa ‘go’, everyday Lardil onto around 200 words by jatha ‘enter’, murrwa ‘follow’, jidma ‘lift’, and a combination of highly abstract semantics, kirrkala ‘put’. Sometimes the motion is to be extended chains stringing together meaning understood metaphorically, such as a change in extensions,12 paraphrase, and supplementation possession (wutha ‘give’, wungi ‘steal’), a transfer by hand signs. of information (kangka ‘speak’), or the movement Thus in the above example, ŋ͡!aa does not of food from outside to inside the body (jitha simply correspond to ngada ‘I’. Rather, it can ‘eat’). The net effect is to produce a totally denote any group including ego. Now everyday indigenous analysis of the semantics of the entire Lardil has eight ways of translating English vocabulary into a small number of elements, and ‘we’ — given by the three-dimensional binary Hale justifiably refers to Damin as a ‘monument matrix of ‘inclusive’ (i.e. we, including you) vs to the human intellect’.13 Elsewhere he has drawn ‘exclusive’ (we, but not you), ‘dual’ (two) vs ‘plural’ attention to the fact that its association with (more than two) and ‘harmonic’ (referents in rituals outlawed by the missionaries in power on even-numbered generations with respect to Mornington Island meant that its transmission each other, such as siblings, or grandkin) vs was interrupted well before the transmission of ‘disharmonic’ (odd-numbered generations such everyday Lardil, as well as to the invisibility of as parent and child or great-grandkin). This this achievement to the outside world: exuberant semantic specificity in the everyday The destruction of this intellectual language is mapped onto the sober, highly treasure was carried out, for the most abstract Damin word ŋ͡!aa ‘I, we, here’, opposed part, by people who were not aware of to ŋ͡!uu ‘you, (s)he, they, there’. Integration with its existence, coming as they did from gesture is an important part of what makes a culture in which wealth is physical and communication possible in Damin — as well visible. Damin was not visible for them, as ‘there’, ŋ͡!uu can also mean ‘north’, ‘south’, and as far as they were concerned, the ‘east’ and ‘west’ in Damin. The distinction Lardil people had no wealth, apart from between these is indicated by pointing in the their land.14
ANY REASONABLY WELL-DOCUMENTED AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGE CONTAINS ENOUGH GRAMMATICAL COMPLEXITIES TO WRINKLE A LATIN MASTER’S PARSING BROW FOR YEARS.
appropriate direction while uttering the word — The digital era is opening many possibilities in the process giving a valuable insight into for linguistic research. As Maggie Tukumba how a type of language functions in which the once remarked to me in Dalabon, on seeing communicative load is more evenly distributed a video we had made of her husband, the between speech and gesture. late George Jangawanga singing a song-cycle, As another example of how Damin semantics kahnjuhdeknolodjihminj!, ‘new technology has works, the rich particularity of verbs in the arrived’.15 One effect is simply to make it possible everyday language are mapped onto highly to capture so much more of the life of any given general designators in Damin, reminiscent of language, and its speakers. With economical
38 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) (above, left) Recording the Kaytetye ‘Elder Sister’ sand story. Carol Thompson, Myfany Turpin and Tommy Thompson, near Artarre equipment — a good digital sound-recorder and by showing how the generic word ɬ↓i for ‘fish’ community, a video camera — we can now record hundreds would be accompanied by simultaneous gestures Northern Territory, of hours of speech, in ways that vividly bring that were different according to whether one July 2011. to life the speakers’ gestures, faces and other meant a parrotfish or a sole, for example. PHOTO: JENNY GREEN aspects of their verbal art. It is impossible to As another example of this speech-gesture (above, right) overstate the advantages of this accompanying integration, when I was working on Iwaidja Tommy Thompson visual record. For one thing, we ‘hear’ around I couldn’t help feeling a little bit disappointed narrates the ‘Elder 10% of speech with our eyes (google the ‘McGurk that it lacked certain structures I was used to Sister’ story, near Effect’ if this is news to you). This means that finding in other Australian languages. To express Artarre community, Northern Territory, even at the most basic level of transcription, the notion of instrument, for example, Kayardild July 2011. our accuracy is improved when we can see what has a rich set of case suffixes, whereas in Iwaidja VIDEO STILL: people are doing with their lips, tongue etc. you just plonk the word for the instrument next JENNY GREEN Then there is gesture. For most of human to the activity, e.g. ‘he.hunted fish bark.torch’ history, language has been multimodal, with for ‘he went out for fish using a bark torch’. It speech indissolubly wedded to gesture, until it was only when I looked at a video recording of was ‘reduced’ to writing. Languages, and the way an Iwaidja story that I became aware that the we use them for most of our lives, evolved in this speaker, Khaki Marrala, was making a holding multimodal crucible. I mentioned above how gesture above his head at the very moment of many of the words of Damin remain unclear in saying ‘bark torch’ — an enlightening example their meaning without gestural disambiguation. of how far spoken language and gesture can be There are no longer any Demiinkurlda (Damin- interwoven into a single expressive whole. possessors) left alive, so we are lucky that The rich possibilities of multimedia recording Ken Hale, linguist extraordinaire, recorded are finally putting the pieces of the scattered the language with such insight and phonetic communicative act back together again. I’d accuracy but, however great he was as a linguist, long been interested in what ‘multiple semiotic he was very much a product of his time in systems’ can tell us, for example by drawing focusing on the flow of sound alone. Two other on the sorts of symbolism discussed in Nancy investigators — artist and pilot Percy Tresize and Munn’s Walbiri Iconography, which puzzled me anthropologist David McKnight — made movie by presenting the same shared symbol in Warlpiri recordings of Damin which will allow us to truly sand-drawing (e.g. three straight lines for both penetrate the workings of this system (a project ‘rain’ and ‘track’) as I had encountered in the that has yet to be undertaken) — for example, mysterious Kayardild polysemy ‘foot, track, rain’
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 39 (right) Elizabeth Marrkilyi Ellis filmingmirlpa (sand story telling) with Jennifer Green and Inge Kral, Tjukurla, 2012.
PHOTO: INGE KRAL
for the word jara (seemingly based on the fact Inge Kral, Jenny Green and Jane Simpson has that, for trackers, rain erases the smudgy mess of begun to examine not just the verbal art of an old tracks and presents a fresh new surface). But accomplished Ngaanyatjarra storyteller like Ellis such work suffered, of technological necessity, herself, but also the way it is being transposed from being confined to static symbols rather into the modern technological setting by than the dynamics of actual use. One of the most teenage girls adapting traditional sand-drawing exciting lines of research here in recent years has techniques to touch screens. been Jenny Green’s16 research on story-telling New annotation software, like EUDICO traditions in Central Australia, which make use Linguistic Annotation (ELAN), also makes it of prepared ground, ‘story wires’ to mark the much easier to transcribe what you’ve recorded, ground and leaves and other props to represent by time-linking sound files, video files, and layers characters. Performances integrate gestures, of transcription in a linguist-friendly way. Just strokes with the story wire to sketch schematised a couple of decades ago, when we worked by characters and places on the ground, songs, and playing back audio-tapes, we were very much the vivid speech. Typically, Green captures this with victim of what we expected to hear — it’s natural two time-aligned video cameras, one mounted to bracket out the little unlearned bits that vertically above the emerging scene, and another you’re not ready to process yet, and just write focussed on the story teller’s speech and gestures. down the bits you recognise. Now, by offering a More recently, work by Lizzie Marrkilyi Ellis, visual sound-trace at the same time as you listen,
40 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) there’s nowhere to hide, and every bit of sound languages. For a language like Greek, the must be accounted for. Programs like ELAN Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, assembled in the are also revolutionising the way linguists make mid 1970s, offers around 50 million words. Not their discussions of language accountable to only does this exhibit a rich and varied range real data, by making it possible to search almost of genres and authors, it also contains enough instantly through a whole transcribed corpus, or linguistic mass, so to speak, that we can answer to link an example sentence to a sound file in a most questions about the language which we digital repository like PARADISEC (http://www. would like to ask. Compare this to the situation paradisec.org.au/) — a vital step in ensuring the with indigenous languages, or underdocumented verifiability of linguistic claims. languages from elsewhere in the world. For a This leads to another promising avenue for relatively well-documented Australian language, future research, the use of linked digital files we are usually lucky to have more than twenty or to build the equivalent of Talmudic or Koranic thirty hours of (currently) transcribed linguistic commentary, or of classical commentaries on material — and taking the rule of thumb of Chinese texts.17 The task of translating a text around 10,000 words per hour of corpus,18 this from an indigenous language is strewn with all is a mere 200–300,000 words. A resourceful the hermeneutic challenges familiar to classical and hard-working PhD student writing their philology, made even more difficult by the vast thesis on a previously undescribed language is gulf in cultural assumptions and the lack, in doing well to transcribe 8–10 hours of material, almost all cases, of recorded commentary or i.e. 80–100,000 words. The Australian language versions of the same text. But it is becoming with the largest corpus is probably Warlpiri, easier and easier to play back versions of key which has benefited from around sixty years of texts, interspersing commentary or alternative research by a star-studded cast, but even there
OVERVALUING TALKING (AND WRITING) AT THE EXPENSE OF LISTENING (AND READING) IS A DANGEROUS CULTURAL IMBALANCE THAT UNDERCUTS THE PATIENCE AND EMPATHY THAT GROWS FROM INTERPRETIVE PHILOLOGY. versions, whether from the original speaker or the total corpus is probably less than a million.19 another. Though we’re not there yet, we are on Figures like this demonstrate that our corpora the brink of developing software that will put for these languages occupy a very small piece of this interpretive quest in the hands of young shelf-space in Borges’ great library of Babel — indigenous scholars wanting to explore their a few slim volumes, as it were, and a handful oral traditions in more depth, one that captures of pamphlets. Yet time and again, during my the whole philological process of interpretive fieldwork in Australia and Papua New Guinea, dialogue with texts of the past, but now in oral I have been impressed by the vastness of what form. Here again I would stress the analogies people transmit, and create, in their languages. with how classical languages were studied. At this technological moment it is becoming Another of the objections to enshrining the feasible to record around 500 hours of linguistic study of indigenous languages in the school material in the course of a year or two’s curriculum is — ‘what’s the point of learning fieldwork, thanks to the miniaturisation, fidelity a language that there are so few people to talk and portability of our recording devices. But it to?’ But overvaluing talking (and writing), transcribing it is another matter — we encounter at the expense of listening (and reading), is a the dreaded ‘Transcription Bottleneck’, with its dangerous cultural imbalance that undercuts tyrannical ratio of 100 hours of transcription the patience and empathy that grow from time for a single hour of recorded material interpretive philology. (on average). We will only begin to bring our A final development of the digital era which knowledge of the languages of our region to I’d like to mention concerns our need to build the depth they merit when we can speed this larger corpora for small, underdocumented up. At present the massive powers of machine
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 41 learning, being developed apace by tech giants new lines of investigation we hope to open up like Google, can only work if trained on vast through ‘big data for small languages’. amounts of already-transcribed data, so they Less than twenty of the continent’s original can’t just be ported over to the study of small languages are now being transmitted to children, languages. We hit the Catch-22 that until we pointing to a further great loss on top of the have more transcribed data we can’t train the shocking losses we have already experienced. algorithms that would help us transcribe more With unprecedented interest in the humanistic data. But one of the initiatives of CoEDL — and scientific value of indigenous languages, our new Australian Research Council-funded and resources for recording and analysing Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of them that were unthinkable even a decade ago, Language — is to develop a Transcription preservation of what remains becomes urgent. Acceleration Program (TAP). This aims to Few challenges for the humanities in our part accelerate the process of transcription, through of the world are as exciting, or engage as deeply adept use of such methods as concentrating on with who we have been over fifty millennia, who the commonest collocations, sound-banking we have failed to be over two centuries, and hundreds of occurrences of these across who we might be in the time to come. ‘We’ can multiple speakers, and dynamically offering be translated into Dalabon by many different these to linguists transcribing texts in a way prefixes, according to whether it is exclusive or that allows the program to learn from the ‘false inclusive, dual or plural, and my uses of ‘we’ in positives’ and ‘false negatives’ it offers. Our goal the preceding sentence deliberately take in many is not to completely mechanise transcription — of these. In my title, I chose the inclusive plural which remains one of the most pleasurable form ngûrrah-. So: ngûrrahmalkwonawoniyan! and insight-generating experiences in the life I conclude by citing some further words from of the field linguist — but to shift the balance my teacher Maggie Tukumba, Kenbo yilah- between chore and discovery by taking care dulu- burlhkeyhwoyan, mak kaduluwanjingh, bah of the more predictable parts of this task with kadjahlng-ngongno kanh duluno, kanh drebuy greater efficiency. njelng yilaye-yenjdjung: ‘Then we’ll bring out the Through these examples I hope to have meaning of things, not just one idea, but all sorts shown how linguistics continues its role as of meanings, including the true subtleties of the most scientific of the humanities, and the what we say.’ ¶ most humanistic of the sciences, but with many new twists flowing from an ever-greater NICHOLAS (NICK) EVANS appreciation of the richness of indigenous faha fassa fba is a linguist languages on the one hand, and a quickening specialising in the languages of Australia (Kayardild, pace of technological advance on the other. Bininj Gun-wok, Dalabon, Within Australia we have been most fortunate Iwaidja) and Southern New to see growing recognition of the importance Guinea (Nen), as well as of linguistic study, most recently through the more general problems welcome decision of the Australian Research of documenting the Council to fund CoEDL. By bringing together world’s fragile linguistic patrimony. His theoretical linguists, psycholinguistics, anthropologists, interests include linguistic typology, semantics, anthropological linguistics, historical linguistics, computer scientists, evolutionary biologists and more generally the development of a theory and philosophers of language, we hope to of language-culture coevolution that places forge a new approach to language that does diversity at centre stage, a program advanced by justice to our extraordinarily diverse quarter his influential 2009 article (with Steve Levinson) of the logosphere.20 One that at the same time The Myth of Language Universals, published in melds the insights of traditional humanist Behavioral and Brain Sciences. scholarship — the hard-won understandings that He has written comprehensive reference grammars of previously undescribed Australian can only be obtained through years of sharing languages (Kayardild, 1995 and Bininj Gun- people’s lives through their language — with the wok, 2003), dictionaries of Kayardild (1992) and
42 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Dalabon (2004, with Francesca Merlan and Maggie and their indigenous teachers in his Politics of Tukumba), and edited or coedited ten books or Suffering (2011). special journal issues on a range of linguistic 4. See Nicholas Evans, ‘Sign Metonymies and the problems (language and archaeology, polysynthesis, Problem of Flora-Fauna Polysemy in Australian reciprocal constructions, insubordination). His Linguistics’, in Boundary Rider. Essays in Honour crossover book Dying Words: Endangered Languages of Geoffrey O’Grady, ed. by D. Tryon and and What They Have to Tell Us (2010) has been M. Walsh (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1997), translated into French, German, Japanese, Korean pp. 133–53. and Chinese. He has served as an interpreter and 5. Ian Keen, Knowledge and Secrecy in an anthropological consultant in several Aboriginal Aboriginal Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, native title claims, and written background 1994); Howard Morphy, Ancestral Connections (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). interpretations for a number of artists based on Mornington Island. Based at the Australian National 6. Athol Chase and John Von Sturmer, University, he holds an ARC Laureate Professorship ‘Anthropology and Botany: Turning over a New Leaf’ in Papers in Australian Linguistics No. 13; (Project: The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity) and Contributions to Australian Linguistics, ed. by directs CoEDL, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Bruce Rigsby and Peter Sutton (Canberra: Pacific Dynamics of Language. Linguistics, 1980). 7. I have been unable to source the phrase 1. I would like to thank Elizabeth Webby for her ‘intellectual aristocrats of the primitive kind invitation to contribute this piece, as world’, often attributed to Lévi-Strauss but well as thanking her and Graham Tulloch for without a traceable citation (see e.g. http:// various stylistic improvements to the text, as austhrutime.com/intellectual_aristocrats.htm). well as friends and colleagues who generously However, another quote of his applies well, contributed or tracked down the photographs with only slight modification: ‘les Australiens, used here: Peter Cooke, Murray Garde, Jenny arriérés sur le plan économique, occupent Green, Inge Kral, Paul Memmott and Sarah une place si avancée par rapport au reste de Cutfield, and David Nash and Mary Laughren l’humanité qu’il est nécessaire, pour comprendre for helping assemble some figures on the size les systèmes de règles élaborés par eux de of the Warlpiri corpus. Leanne Scott at CoEDL façon consciente et réfléchie, de faire appel au also helped me think through the form this formes les plus raffinées des mathématiques article might take. Most importantly I thank modernes.’ For ‘mathématiques modernes’, the speakers of indigenous languages who modern mathematics, I would substitute have offered me their friendship and generous ‘modern semantics’. This quotation is from instruction over many decades: too many Claude Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire (Paris: people to name here, but in addition to those Denoël Folios essais, 1952), pp. 48–9. I am mentioned in the text I especially would like to grateful to Ian Keen, Nic Petersen and Maïa thank Darwin and May Moodoonuthi and Sally Ponsonnet for helping me (fruitlessly, as it Gabori (Kayardild), Charlie Wardaga (Ilgar), Toby transpired) to track down the original quote, and Gangele and Eddy Hardy (Gun-djeihmi) and to Laurent Dousset for finding the substitute David Karlbuma, Peter Mandeberru and Alice given here. Boehm (Dalabon). 8. On Mornington Island, as over much of 2. For details see Ch. 1 of Nicholas Evans, Dying Australia, first-degree initiates are circumcised, Words: Endangered Languages and What They while second-degree initiates are subincised by Have to Tell Us (Maldon: Wiley Blackwell, 2010). making a cut along and through the underside of the penis as far as the urethra, a bit like 3. Of course there were exceptions, like Lieutenant preparing a Kransky sausage for pan-frying. William Dawes, the only member of the There are many anthropological theories First Fleet to make progress with the Sydney about the significance of this ritual, but the language, as so magnificently depicted in Kate Lardil themselves explain it simply by saying Grenville’s novel The Lieutenant (2008). But his that Kaltharr the Yellow Trevally ancestor was abiding friendships with his teacher Patyegarang himself subincised. I had the good fortune to and other indigenous people led to his have been circumcised at birth, and managed banishment. To commemorate the significance to talk my way out of undergoing the second of the Patyegarang/Dawes dyad as a symbol of trial by promising to obtain a second-degree the deeply transformative power of language initiation within my own culture (i.e. submitting learning, CoEDL has established the Patji- my PhD) within a time frame agreed upon with Dawes award to honour outstanding language senior Mornington men. The deadline worked. teachers — see http://www.dynamicsoflanguage. edu.au/education-and-outreach/dawes-award/. 9. Kenneth L. Hale, ‘Notes on a Walpiri Tradition Also relevant here is Peter Sutton’s thoughtful of Antonymy’, in Semantics, ed. by D.D. essay on friendships between anthropologists Steinberg and L.A. Jakobovits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 472–82.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 43 10. More properly transcribed as Demiin, literally 18. This figure is from Gary Simons, ‘The Rise of ‘that by means of which one asks’, i.e. ‘means Documentary Linguistics and a New Kind of of enquiry’, but I use the transcription Damin Corpus’ (Manila: 5th National Natural Language because of its wider currency in the literature. Symposium, De La Salle University, 2008), 11. Kenneth L. Hale and David Nash, ‘Damin and based on estimated speaking speeds of 100–200 Lardil Phonotactics’, in Boundary Rider: Essays words per minute; a less generous figure in Honour of Geoffrey O’Grady, ed. by Darrell of 4,000 words per hour of spoken corpus Tryon and Michael Walsh (Canberra: Pacific comes from the Chintang corpus. Balthasar Linguistics, 1997), pp. 247–59; David McKnight, Bickel and Fernando Zuñiga, ‘The “word” in People, Countries and the Rainbow Serpent polysynthetic languages: phonological and (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). syntactic challenges’, in The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis, ed. by Michael Fortescue, 12. Nicholas Evans, ‘Multiple Semiotic Systems, Marianne Mithun and Nicholas Evans (Oxford: Hyperpolysemy, and the Reconstruction of Oxford University Press, forthcoming) report Semantic Change in Australian Languages’ around a million orthographic words from 258 in Diachrony within Synchrony, ed. by Ünter hours of transcriptions. Kellerman and Michael Morrissey (Bern: Peter Lang Verlag, 1992), pp. 475–508. 19. I am grateful for David Nash and Mary Laughren for discussions of how much material we 13. Kenneth L. Hale, ‘The Logic of Damin Kinship have here. The estimate of under a million Terminology’ (Appendix by Ellen Woolford), words — probably 950,000 — is based on in Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia, there being around 100 hours of transcribed ed. by Jeffrey Heath, F. Merlan and A. Rumsey, material from Ken Hale’s work, and another Oceania Linguistic Monographs 24 (Oceania, 30 hours transcribed material produced inside University of Sydney, 1982), p. 32. the Warlpiri schools program (at 5,000 words/ 14. Kenneth L. Hale, ‘On Endangered Languages hr average, giving around 650,000 words), and the Importance of Linguistic Diversity’, in plus 142,000 words written/composed in Endangered Languages: Current Issues and Future Warlpiri, a further 136,000 for the Warlpiri Prospects, ed. by Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay Bible translation, and another 10,000 words of Whaley (Cambridge: Cambridge University further material, such as the bilingual ‘Warlpiri Press, 1998), pp. 192–216. Doors’ material and the bilingual texts in 15. Her coinage here is formed by wrapping the Peggy Rockman Napaljarri and Lee Cataldi, Dalabon affixal sequencekah-…-minj ‘it has Yimikirli, Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories: become’ around the imported words new (as Newly Recorded Stories from the Aboriginal Elders Dalabon njuh) and technology (as Dalabon of Central Australia (San Francisco: Harper deknolodjih; in both cases the h is a glottal stop Collins, 1994). Taken together this comprises as between the two parts of oh-oh!). 938,000 words; this could be expanded to a 16. Jennifer Green, Drawn From the Ground: Sound, million relatively straightforwardly by adding Sign and Inscription in Central Australian Sand transcriptions of the 5-minutes per day, 5-days Stories (Cambridge: Cambridge University per week ABC news in Warlpiri over the last Press, 2014). three years, and transcribing Warlpiri subtitles to a range of video material, but so far this is a 17. Nicholas Evans and Hans-Jürgen Sasse, task for the future. ‘Searching for Meaning in the Library of Babel: Field Semantics and Problems of Digital 20. The useful term logosphere was coined by the Archiving’, in Proceedings of the Paradisec American linguist Michael Krauss: just as the Workshop on Digital Archiving (2004), ed. by ‘biosphere’ is the totality of all species of life Linda Barwick and Jane Simpson. Online and all ecological links on earth, the logosphere publication available at http://www.paradisec. is the whole vast realm of the world’s words, org.au/EvansSasse_paper_rev1.pdf (also: http:// the languages that they build, and the links ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/1509). between them.
44 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) EMPATHY AND THE MYALL CREEK MASSACRE Images, Humanitarianism & Empire
» JANE LYDON
In my recent book, Photography, such teaching is premised upon the belief Humanitarianism, Empire, I set out to explore that fictional narratives, art, or music may how images have worked historically to create effectively convey another’s experience and empathy and mobilise social action.1 Many allow the observer an enlarged understanding scholars have examined the role images have of their plight. played in shaping ideas about race and difference, This belief has also played an important but I became interested in the broader array of part in accounts of the development of human emotional relationships and ideas they helped rights. For example, Lynn Hunt, in her ground- to define, and especially the ways in which they breaking history, Inventing Human Rights, argues may have helped to argue for humanitarian that the psychological foundations for human ideals and, ultimately, human rights. A key rights emerged during the revolutionary period question raised by this history is the way that of the late eighteenth century in America and images may prompt what eighteenth-century France, from a new humanitarian sentiment philosopher Adam Smith called ‘fellow feeling’, entailing forms of subjectivity characterised by today often glossed as empathy. Today, empathy sympathy and autonomy. ‘Sentimentalism’, the is generally considered to be a self-evident moral expectation that one should care about good. We try to teach our children empathy by others, was grounded in new means, such as encouraging them to imagine what it would the epistolary novel, to bring observers into be like to ‘walk in another’s shoes’. Empathy is proximity with the distant victims of suffering.3 seen to be an essential skill for medical students, In Hunt’s account, the idea of human rights that in particular, alongside technical knowledge, emerged during the eighteenth century was so as to establish trust, the foundation of a succeeded by a period of relative ‘silence’ during good doctor-patient relationship. Over the last the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, decade, a substantial body of research has argued which was finally broken at the conclusion of that more empathetic doctors can be linked to the Second World War.4 In this analysis, the ‘greater patient satisfaction, better outcomes, long ‘silence’ about rights was caused by the decreased physician burnout, and a lower risk emergence of nation states — so that debate of malpractice suits and errors’.2 Empathy is occurred within ‘specific national frameworks’ — considered a cognitive skill that can be taught, and by the challenge to a shared humanity posed rather than a personality trait, and so empathy by racial science.5 training is increasingly being incorporated into More recently, others have complicated (background) medical courses around the world. Frequently Hunt’s account by pointing to the proliferation Montage using article figures.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 45 of debates, processes and events entailing to circumstance, response or refusal in systems concepts of human rights across the nineteenth of circulation and exchange that Sara Ahmed and early twentieth centuries, within imperial terms ‘emotional economies’.12 Extending the and global contexts. This research has begun to focus on the function of emotion in written view the history of human rights as a process texts, I also explored the practices surrounding that developed dialogically between the Western viewing and using images, attending especially to metropole and the colonies, as debates about their affective content. Such practices constitute universal humanity were fought around race, humanitarian ‘objects of feeling’ — those toward slavery, colonialism and imperial rule. Rather whom we feel pity, anger or love.13 than a ‘silence’ about human rights, this period From the mid-eighteenth century a so-called witnessed a more complex series of engagements ‘cult of sensibility’ arose in Britain, stressing that shaped the emergence of a global category a set of values that regarded sensation as a of shared humanity, formed in negotiations over ‘moral and emotional capacity’, and that came the nature of empire and Britain’s role in the to associate sensibility with refined feeling, wider world.6 discrimination and taste as well as an intense This story reveals the close historical and sensitivity to the suffering of others.14 Adam intellectual relationship between human Smith’s landmark 1759 work, The Theory of rights and humanitarianism, distinct and Moral Sentiments, examined the human capacity
HUMANITARIANISM IS A TERM THAT PASSED INTO EVERY DAY USAGE AFTER 1800 AND REFERS TO A PHILOSOPHY OF ADVOCATING OR PRACTISING COMPASSIONATE ACTION.
sometimes incommensurable as these concepts for ‘pity or compassion, the emotion which we might be.7 Humanitarianism is a term that feel for the misery of others, when we either passed into everyday use after 1800 and refers see it, or are made to conceive it in a very to a philosophy of advocating or practising lively manner’.15 Smith argued that it is not just compassionate action.8 Eventually the suffering that ‘call[s] forth our fellow-feeling’, expansion and stabilisation of this category, but that with any ‘passion’ evinced from the and its extension to all humankind within object, ‘an analogous emotion springs up, at the a growing view of the human as a universal, thought of his situation, in the breast of every global category, produced the twentieth-century attentive spectator.’ Our joy for ‘those heroes of system of principles and law that we now term tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere ‘human rights’. as our grief for their distress, and our fellow- feeling with their misery is not more real than 16 FELLOW-FEELING with their happiness’. And he explained that while ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’ signify our fellow- As I have noted, many argue that this was feeling with the ‘sorrow of others’, by contrast enabled by new technologies of seeing and a ‘sympathy’ denoted ‘our fellow-feeling with any sense of empathy with and responsibility for passion whatever’.17 Smith’s broad conception the suffering of others.9 Such concern has taken of sympathy encompassed what during the the form of emotions defined variously over the twentieth century increasingly came to be called last three centuries as pity, sympathy, fellow- ‘empathy’, a term introduced into English only feeling, compassion and empathy.10 Scholarly in 1909 from the German ‘Einfühlung’ (or ‘feeling interest in emotions, sometimes termed the into’).18 In its earliest turn of the century usage, ‘affective turn’, has defined emotions, or ‘felt empathy referred to an aesthetic experience, judgements’, as embodied feelings experienced such as a reaction to a work of art, as well as a in the context of cultural values and principles.11 bodily response.19 During the twentieth century, Emotions may be collective, historically created empathy merged with and completely replaced and locally contingent, and respond dynamically the multidimensional concept of sympathy used by earlier observers.20
46 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Identifying the ultimate limit to such ‘fellow- towards the end of the eighteenth century that feeling’, Smith pointed out that ‘though our made slavery appear morally unacceptable to brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves many. This new cultural orientation emphasised are at our ease, our senses will never inform sympathy for suffering and revulsion from us of what he suffers’. The viewer is limited pain, uniting ethical witnessing with a moral by her own experience and remains unable to universalism and a notion of necessary action to truly enter into another person’s subjectivity; alleviate suffering.25 empathy can thus only be felt as an imaginative Humanitarian narratives were an integral identification. In the end, ‘it is the impressions of aspect of the culture of sentimentalism and our own senses only, not those of his, which our the growing moral expectation that one should imaginations copy’. Significantly, Smith grounded care about others. Thomas W. Laqueur’s classic moral conduct in the experience of seeing essay, ‘Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian and being seen; he considered sympathetic Narrative’, argued that the humanitarian identification with others a natural response to narrative ‘relies on the personal body, not only as viewing their experiences, prompted by an inner the locus of pain but also as the common bond spectator, ‘the man within’. between those who suffer and those who would Twenty-first century neuroscience has help’: detailed accounts of the suffering body corroborated Smith’s notion of sympathy — or, elicited ‘sympathetic passions’ that could move as we now term it, empathy — as a process of a person from feeling to action.26 In addition, mirroring the mental activities or experiences of in many contexts humanitarians successfully another person based on the observation of his deployed graphic scenes of distress as a powerful bodily activities or facial expressions.21 The term prompt to sympathy, expressing through visual ‘mirror neuron’ refers to the significant overlap means the liberal political philosophy of rights between ‘neural areas of excitation’ aroused by and, some argue, contributing to the abolition of our own experience as well as our observation slavery throughout the empire with the Slavery of someone else’s.22 Our consciousness of this Abolition Act of 1833.27 According to this view, relationship — our bodily observation and such images create an empathetic imaginative awareness of our simultaneous separateness identification with those unlike ‘us’ that expands and identification — is central. Smith wrote, the category of humanity itself.28 ‘We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavor to imagine what HUMANITARIAN IMAGES IN effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. COLONIAL AUSTRALIA This is the only looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, So what evidence do we have for the work scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct.’23 of these emotional images and narratives in Smith’s recognition of our innate disposition for colonial Australia? How did colonial experience motor mimicry anticipated a mode of sympathy, contribute to global debates about universal moral appeal and campaign for reform designed humanity and rights? One landmark scandal that to confront viewers with the plight of suffering polarised observers across the British Empire victims in order to prompt empathy. took place during a decade that marked the By the end of the eighteenth century, the height of metropolitan antislavery sentiment, cult of sensibility, along with its stereotype, yet was also a time of intense frontier violence ‘the Man of Feeling’, had become the object in south-eastern Australia. Following the of parody and satire, suggesting its decline. horrifying Myall Creek Massacre of June 1838, However, a culture of ‘sentimentalism’ emerged humanitarians in New South Wales and Britain from this emotional regime, infused with a attempted to arouse compassion for the victims new power by evangelical Protestantism, to using affective antislavery strategies. But become a key element of nineteenth-century colonists had become increasingly agitated by philanthropy and humanitarianism.24 The rise of violent clashes with Aboriginal people, and many ‘humanitarianism’ has been closely linked to the argued for their extermination. antislavery movement and a shift in perception
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 47 In recent years new research has begun to also traced the imbrication of humanitarian (above) reveal how ‘slavery’ was invoked in the settler ideals and the apparatus of colonial government, View across Myall colony of Australia, seemingly so distant from challenging simple oppositions between Creek. the Atlantic slave trade and its canonical forms moral and political, philanthropic and colonial PHOTO: of subjection and exploitation.29 The British interests.33 IAIN DAVIDSON faha campaign that culminated in 1833 accumulated 1836 had been a particularly bloody year in tremendous cultural, moral, and affective New South Wales, as Aboriginal people of the power, and was subsequently adopted for northern plains came under intense siege from many different social causes throughout the squatters and convicts moving out into their nineteenth century.30 Following the abolition country. The public climate of fear and anger in of slavery, the movement’s leaders sought to the colony was exacerbated in October by news redirect popular interest from abolition to the of the murder and ill-treatment of survivors empire’s Indigenous peoples, as exemplified by from the wreck of the Stirling Castle on Fraser the 1835–6 ‘Select Committee on Aborigines’ Island in Queensland, and that of the Charles inquiry (Aborigines Select Committee). This Eaton in Torres Strait. Earlier, the Oldham applied the language of antislavery to British had been wrecked in 1832 in the Pacific, with settlers and sought to define principles that only seven surviving a massacre to become would uphold the rights of Indigenous people enslaved.34 Framed as horror stories, in which across the empire. In particular, a range Indigenous people figured as savage cannibals, of diverse relations between colonists and these accounts prompted vengeful responses Indigenous peoples, including forced indenture, from colonists, with many urging extermination. trafficking and prostitution, were characterised Such nightmares were given weight by ‘scientific’ by humanitarians and Indigenous people as arguments concerning the supposed essential slavery.31 Such analogies reveal how metropolitan racial difference of Aboriginal people, considered ideas about humanity, freedom, and ultimately by some contemporaries to represent an human rights, have been tested against colonial ‘intermediate stage’ of human development.35 In experience, whilst domestic Australian interests this way the evangelical language of brotherhood were adjudicated by imperial humanitarianism, and a shared humanity was severely challenged in a dialogue that was global in scope.32 However, by popular views of Indigenous people as recent work on imperial humanitarianism has primitive savages.
48 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) THE LIMITS OF EMPATHY? (far left) Smoking ceremony, Mistrust, however, has always surrounded such Myall Creek. representations and the emotions they seek to PHOTO: IAIN DAVIDSON faha excite.39 As considerable recent scholarship has argued, it is clear that the emotions – such as empathy and compassion — aroused by such narratives and imagery do not always lead to reform or progress, but may in fact maintain inequalities and foster division.40 Wariness about empathy stems from three chief problems: feeling is not necessarily linked to action, so that these emotions may simply reinforce the status quo; representations of suffering may obscure the other’s subjectivity, distancing and diminishing their humanity; and third, and most unsettling, as Lauren Berlant suggests, perhaps ‘compassion and coldness are not opposite at all but are two sides of a bargain that the subjects of modernity have struck with structural inequality’.41 Such doubts have led some to conclude that humanitarianism itself relies upon a notion of the human that is partial, limited and In late September 1838 Sydney newspapers exclusive.42 began to publish ‘most horrible accounts’ of For these reasons, events at Myall Creek, in which eleven stockmen visual theorists murdered around thirty-three Weraerai people, exploring the predominantly women and children. They operation of empathy rounded them up, tying them together with and antislavery rope, then led them to a creek bed where they imagery have also were hacked or clubbed to death and then focused on identifying decapitated.36 At a time of heightened public its limits. Marcus Wood’s fear and anger in New South Wales, primitivist analysis of antislavery visual stereotypes battled with affective antislavery culture concludes that slaves were represented strategies employed by humanitarians both in (above) as passive beneficiaries of white compassion, Australia and in Britain. So missionary Lancelot The emblem of reflecting abolitionist perceptions of black the abolitionist Threlkeld of the London Missionary Society 43 men and women as human, but not equals. movement, the sought to invoke atrocity to horrify and shock Wood argues that the abolitionist movement’s kneeling slave in settlers, in arguing in his 1837 annual report chains, surrounded logo, Wedgwood’s medallion of the kneeling that a ‘war of extirpation’ had long existed, and by the words ‘Am slave captioned ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’, I Not a Man and a providing graphic descriptions of torture and helped to popularise the antislavery movement, Brother?’ Medallion; cruelty.37 As Laqueur observes, narratives such as jasper ware; chained but emphasised the slave’s helplessness and Threlkeld’s, that spoke in such an extraordinarily kneeling slave in need of white compassion.44 This strategy was relief in black, with detailed way about ‘the pains and deaths of also used to represent the victims of Myall inscription above; ordinary people’, produced a literary ‘reality set in an oval gold Creek in official accounts, as actors such as effect’ in which the body as locus of pain formed mount. Governor Gipps emphasised their peaceful and a common bond between sufferer and observer.38 SOURCE: TRUSTEES OF harmless behaviour.45 THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 49 (right) ‘Phiz’ (Hablot Knight Browne), ‘Australian Aborigines Slaughtered by Convicts’.
SOURCE: PELHAM CAMERON, THE CHRONICLES OF CRIME; OR, THE NEW NEWGATE CALENDAR, LONDON: SYDNEY: PRINTED FOR T. TEGG, 2 VOLUMES, 1841, BETWEEN PAGES 472–3.
One rare image, produced in London within edition was published in London, Sydney, three years of the event, ‘Australian Aborigines Hobart and Glasgow by Thomas Tegg, one of Slaughtered by Convicts’, circulated widely the largest publishers of his day, and is the first among contemporaries. This engraving by example of an attempt to exploit colonial as ‘Phiz’ was published in the 1841 Chronicles of well as metropolitan audiences.49 Among the Crime; or, The New Newgate Calendar, showing Calendar’s 500 cases, the only other Australian the Myall Creek victims being dragged along crimes included were the escape of Mary Bryant, by ruffians on horseback (see fig. above). ‘Phiz’ and the exploits of Van Diemen’s Land convict was the pseudonym of Hablot Knight Browne, Alexander Pierce, a murderer and cannibal.50 a popular artist best known for illustrating These sensational tales characterised the Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and many colonies as places of savagery, bestiality, daring other novels from 1836 onwards.46 The Newgate and transgression. Calendar, originally a register of names compiled The upraised, shackled hands of the each month by the Ordinary, the gaol-keeper of Aboriginal people in Browne’s image evoke London’s most notorious prison, developed into Wedgwood’s antislavery logo, emphasising the a series of sensational accounts written by the innocence and vulnerability of the victims — Ordinary, in order to supplement his wages.47 but also their passivity and need to be helped From its beginnings, British crime reporting of by the white humanitarian.51 Simultaneously, this kind was intended to be both instructive the image exaggerates the brutality of the and profitable.48 Phiz produced 52 engravings perpetrators, drawing them as caricatures rather for the 1841 edition, perfectly harmonising than realistically. The framing text describes with the Calendar’s melodramatic tone. This the ‘atrocious cold-blooded massacre of which
50 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) these persons were guilty’ and contrasts the degraded convicts, ignoring the wider context ‘victims’, ‘the unoffending aboriginal natives of of frontier violence. For example, the discovery (above, left) the country’, with their murderers, ‘Englishmen, of the crime is attributed to the observation of ‘The Man with the who, however, from their sanguinary disposition, carrion birds at the site, completely omitting the Carpet-bag’ by ‘Phiz’ from Chronicles of do not deserve that they should receive such two white ex-convicts who testified against the Crime. an appellation.’ murderers. This perspective echoes that of the SOURCE: PELHAM The text goes on to describe the ‘unresisting’, Aborigines Select Committee, for whom lower- CAMERON, THE CHRONICLES OF CRIME; ‘hapless wretches’ who were ‘brutally butchered’, class white convicts were the source of colonial OR, THE NEW NEWGATE CALENDAR, LONDON: and finishes its account of the atrocity by sin and contagion. The committee’s introduction SYDNEY: PRINTED FOR T. describing how ‘[t]he demon butchers then argued that ‘unoffending’ Australian Aboriginal TEGG, 2 VOLUMES, 1841, BETWEEN PAGES 312–313. placed the bodies in a heap, kindled an immense people ‘suffered in an aggravated degree from the fire over them, and thus attempted to destroy planting among them of our penal settlements’, (above, right) 52 the evidence of their unheard-of brutality.’ and that ‘very little care has since been taken Frontispiece by ‘Phiz’.
SOURCE: PELHAM HUMANITARIAN GOVERNANCE RELIED UPON POPULAR SENTIMENT REGARDING THE CLAIMS AND CAMERON, THE CHRONICLES OF CRIME; CAPACITY OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE, AND IMAGERY PROVIDED A POWERFUL TOOL IN THESE DEBATES. OR, THE NEW NEWGATE CALENDAR, LONDON: SYDNEY: PRINTED FOR T. TEGG, 2 VOLUMES, 1841. This reversal, in which the white masters to protect them from the violence or the rather than their black victims are cast as contamination of the dregs of our countrymen.’54 ‘savage’, was a common antislavery trope in this As Elizabeth Elbourne points out, the period, expressed also in literary responses to Committee’s emphasis on personal and national Myall Creek such as Eliza Hamilton Dunlop’s morality deflected attention from ‘structure’ — poem ‘The Aboriginal Mother’, which echoed that is, the system of colonisation itself and its transatlantic antislavery poetry.53 inherent inequalities.55 Others have noted that As signalled by the caption ‘Australian colonial scandals reveal the transgression of Aborigines Slaughtered by Convicts’, it is also rules, ultimately serving to re-sanction social significant that this popular account portrays norms.56 Framing frontier atrocity as convict the atrocity as a single episode initiated by crime allowed both colonists and humanitarians
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 51 (right) Needlework picture of kneeling slave, America, 1820–55, wool on linen.
THE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION. MUSEUM PURCHASE. ACCESSION #1990-222, IMAGE #DS1995-0174.
(far right) Sugar bowl, England, 1825–30, hand-painted bone china.
THE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION. MUSEUM PURCHASE, MR. AND MRS. JOHN C. AUSTIN, PHYLLIS M. CARSTENS, to displace their own complicity in Indigenous MRS. JOYCE LONGWORTH, dispossession. By laying the blame for damage ANN WINTER ODETTE, JOHN F. ORMAN, JR., MS. to Indigenous peoples not on the system of JOAN M. PLOETZ, MR. AND MRS. THOMAS G. colonisation itself but on a class of already guilty POTTERFIELD, MR. AND MRS. ROBERT PRIOLEAU, outlaws, imperial authority was reconstituted. JOAN N. WOODHOUSE, For white viewers, the savage white THE DWIGHT P. AND ANN-ELISA W. BLACK represents a narrative figure that Greg Dening toward Aboriginal people, but colonists saw FUND, AND THE JOHN R. AND CAROLYN J. MANESS called a ‘comfortable’ sort of villain, one whose their eventual conviction as an injustice to the FAMILY FOUNDATION. wickedness is so unimaginably distant from white perpetrators. Many colonists refused to ACCESSION #1998-37, IMAGE #DS1998-068. the viewer’s experience that it allows us to feel acknowledge the basic humanity of the victims, safely detached.57 Such a conception of atrocity and notoriously, one juror in the Myall Creek renders it as grotesque and the victims as other, trial later declared that ‘I look on the blacks … conferring a sense of the distance of these as a set of monkeys, and I think the earlier they people and events from the viewer’s everyday are exterminated from the face of the earth present, and effecting narrative closure for at the better. I knew well they were guilty of the least some white viewers. For popular audiences, murder, but I, for one, would never consent to the visibly depraved cartoon figures of Phiz’s see a white man suffer for shooting a black one.’58 convicts made it clear where blame should be As many have argued, such responses to Myall placed: at the door of these (already convicted) Creek prompted a frontier culture of secrecy, murderers rather than with the larger forces of and hindered colonial officials pursuing similar state-sanctioned violence and dispossession, crimes against Aboriginal people for decades explaining the event as a tragic crime rather than afterwards, because they were unsure of the an inevitable consequence of white invasion. legal outcome.59 Humanitarian reactions to Myall Creek, and CONCLUSION attempts to awaken compassion for its victims, were clearly shaped by the British antislavery This historical example demonstrates the movement. Yet the politicisation of humanitarian ambivalent and politicised effects of such sentiment both in Sydney and London limited affective strategies. The historical conjunction of the impact of literary and visual accounts. The British imperial philanthropy and settler violence upper-class humanitarians of the 1836 Aborigines in New South Wales during the 1830s shaped Selection Committee were concerned with radically polarised views regarding frontier morality — atonement and redemption — and violence and the impact of colonisation upon particularly the sins of the settlers. Seen in this Indigenous people. Humanitarians represented context, we must recognise the class-based the Myall Creek massacre as an atrocious cruelty displacement of guilt on to already-condemned
52 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) convicts, while leaving the larger apparatus of 1. Jane Lydon, Photography, Humanitarianism, colonisation unscathed. Philanthropists usually Empire (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). I am grateful to Bloomsbury for allowing me to stopped short of acknowledging Aboriginal rights draw from my introduction. For support in to the land, demonstrating that their idealising researching the Myall Creek massacre I also empathy with Indigenous peoples was deeply acknowledge the Australian Research Council complicit with dispossession. Discovery project ‘Anti-Slavery in Australia’ (dp140101793); I am most grateful to my co-Chief Nonetheless this lobby constituted a powerful Investigators Fiona Paisley and Jennifer Burn, voice for justice in 1830s New South Wales. and Partner Investigators Philippa Levine and Among its concrete effects, the humanitarian Kevin Grant, for their intellectual engagement campaign prompted the creation of a colonial and enthusiasm throughout the project. philanthropic network, and in London, the 2. For a recent review see Bee Teng Lim, Helen Moriarty, Mark Huthwaite, Peter Gallagher, Anti-Slavery Society and the Colonial Office Roshan Perera, ‘Teaching Empathy to pushed to admit Aboriginal evidence into court, Undergraduate Medical Students: Translation and to bring Indigenous imperial subjects to Practice’, Focus on Health Professional under the protection of English law.60 Despite Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 17 (2016), 59–70. Quotation from Sandra Boodman, the inequality of affective relationships such ‘How to Teach Doctors Empathy’, The Atlantic, as pity and protection, and the undeniable 15 March 2015
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 53 human rights is unhelpfully narrow, and I prefer Ickes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), pp. 3–16; to see humanitarianism and human rights as C. Daniel Batson, Altruism in Humans (Oxford overlapping concepts with interlinked histories. and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 10. While it is true that each of these distinct 22. Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, categories has attracted scholarly definition and Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions historicisation, as I explain further, here I seek to and Emotions, trans. Frances Anderson (Oxford emphasise what they share. and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 11. Thomas Dixon refers to ‘felt judgements’. 23. Smith, p. 112. See Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: 24. John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 2003); William M. Reddy, The Navigation of 25. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Oxford and New (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Barbara Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review, 107 26. Thomas Laqueur, ‘Bodies, Details, and the (2002), 921–45. Humanitarian Narrative’, in The New Cultural History, ed. by Lynn Hunt (Berkeley and Los 12. Affect is not merely a universal dimension of Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), attachment, it is always already an attachment to, pp. 176–204. given specificity by a range of social encounters. Sara Ahmed, ‘Happy Objects’, in The Affect 27. Elizabeth B. Clark, ‘“The Sacred Rights of the Theory Reader, ed. by Melissa Gregg and Gregory Weak”: Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of J. Seigworth (Durham and London: Duke Individual Rights in Antebellum America’, University Press, 2010), pp. 29–51. Journal of American History, 82 (1995), 463–93; Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Smith 13. Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (eds), Pictures and Progress: Early Photography (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), and the Making of African American Identity pp. 8–9, p. 83. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). 14. Daniel Wickberg, ‘What Is the History of 28. In this vein, scholars such as Martha Nussbaum, Sensibilities?’, American Historical Review, Richard Rorty and K. Anthony Appiah have 112 (2007), 661–84; See also James Chandler, argued for models of cosmopolitan reading ‘The Politics of Sentiment: Notes toward a New that allow the reader to bridge difference: Account’, Studies in Romanticism, 49 (2010), Richard Rorty, ‘Human Rights, Rationality, 553–75. and Sentimentality’, in On Human Rights: The 15. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Oxford Amnesty Lectures, ed. by Stephen Shute by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: and Susan Hurley (New York: BasicBooks, Liberty Fund, [1759] 1984), p. 9. 1993), pp. 111–34; Martha Nussbaum, Poetic 16. Smith, p. 10. Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life 17. Smith, p. 10. (Boston: Beacon, 1996); K. Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers 18. Karsten Stueber, ‘Empathy’, Stanford (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006). Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last revised 14 February 2013
54 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Slavery: Emancipation, Forced Labour and 40. Berlant, ‘Introduction: Compassion (and Australia in 1933’, Australian Historical Studies, Withholding)’, in Compassion: The Culture and 45 (2014), 103–125. Politics of an Emotion, ed. by Lauren Berlant 32. Lydon, Photography; Adele Perry, ‘Vocabularies (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), of Slavery and Anti-Slavery: The North pp. 1–24. American Fur-Trade and the Imperial World’, 41. Berlant, p. 10. Australian Historical Studies, 45 (2014), 34–45; 42. Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire Baughan, 727–8; Rob Skinner and Alan Lester, in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France ‘Humanitarianism and Empire: New Research (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Agendas’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth 2006). History, 40 (2012), 729–47; Andrew Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism’ 43. M. Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations in The Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. by of Slavery in England and America 1780–1865 Andrew Porter (Oxford and New York: Oxford (New York: Manchester University Press and University Press, 1999), pp. 222–46. Routledge, 2000); M. Wood, The Horrible Gift of Freedom: Atlantic Slavery and the Representation 33. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization of Emancipation (Athens, Georgia: The and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention University of Georgia Press, 2010). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Lydon, Photography. 44. Wood, Blind Memory, pp. 22–23; R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The 34. Allan McInnes, ‘The Wreck of the “Charles Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave Eaton”’ (Cairns: Cairns Historical Society, 1983), Trade, 1787–1807 (London: Routledge, 1998). 198–220; Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories (Cambridge: 45. The day after the seven convicts were hanged at Cambridge University Press, 1985). Sydney, 19 December 1838, the new Governor, Sir George Gipps, sent a dispatch to Lord 35. See for example ‘Domestic Intelligence’, Sydney Glenelg at the Home Office, noting that for Herald, Wednesday 29 August 1838, p. 2. For some weeks before the tragedy, around fifty histories of racial thought see for example people had been living in the area ‘in perfect Bronwyn Douglas and Chris Ballard (eds), tranquility, neither molesting the Whites nor Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race being themselves molested by them.’ HRA Series 1750–1940 (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2008). I, XIX, Gipps to Glenelg, pp. 700–04. 36. For accounts of the massacre see Alan Atkinson 46. Valerie Lester, Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens and Marian Aveling (eds.), Australians 1838 (London: Random House, 2011). (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987), pp. 54–60; R.H.W. Reece, Aborigines and 47. By the end of the eighteenth century the Colonists: Aborigines and Colonial Society in Newgate Calendar had joined the King James New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s (Sydney: Version of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, Sydney University Press, 1974); Brian Harrison, Pilgrim’s Progress and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ‘The Myall Creek Massacre’ in Records of Times as the five titles ‘most likely to be found’ in Past: Ethnohistorical Essays on the Culture and even less well-read households: Kelly Grovier, Ecology of the New England Tribes, ed. by Isabel The Gaol: The Story of Newgate, London’s Most McBryde (Canberra: Australian Institute of Notorious Prison (London: John Murray, 2008), Aboriginal Studies, 1978), pp. 17–51; Roger p. 183. Milliss, Waterloo Creek (Ringwood, Victoria: 48. S. Chibnall, ‘Chronicles of the Gallows: The McPhee Gribble, Penguin Books, 1992). Social History of Crime Reporting’, Sociological 37. Niel Gunson, Australian Reminiscences and Review, 29 (1981), 179–217. Papers of L.E. Threlkeld, Missionary to the 49. L.F. Fitzhardinge, ‘Tegg, James (1808–1845)’, Aborigines, 1824–1859 (Canberra: Australian Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1974), vol 1, p. 139. Centre of Biography, Australian National See also Anna Johnston, The Paper War: Morality, University
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 55 Century’, Journal of the Association for the 57. Greg Dening, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Study of Australian Literature, 11 (1)
56 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) MACARONI MEN AND EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY FASHION CULTURE ‘THE VULGAR TONGUE’
» PETER Mc NEIL
Maccaroni, An Italian paste made of flour and eggs; also, a fop; which name arose from a club, called the Maccaroni Club, instituted by some of the most dressy travelled gentlemen about town, who led the fashions; whence a man foppishly dressed was supposed a member of that club, and, by contradiction, stiled [sic] a Maccaroni.1
In 1823 when this term was included in Pierce of the British Museum’s eighteenth-century Egan’s new edition of Grose’s Classical Dictionary satirical prints gave the topic greater potential of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), ‘macaroni’ had been for study with their comprehensive published circulating in the English language for sixty catalogue cross-referenced to historical events. years, denoting a species of foppish man.2 It was The catalogue had been undertaken, building a term mainly used between 1760 and 1780, but on the earlier notes of Edward Hawkins, in the was still in everyday use in 1795, when a verse 1860s by Frederic George Stephens, a member of described men shopping in the spa town of Bath the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and supporter of thus: ‘booted and spur’d, the gay macaronies, late-nineteenth-century aestheticism (hence the Bestride Mandell’s counter, instead of their co-authorship of ‘Stephens and Hawkins’ for the ponies’.3 The word continues to echo on a daily first part of the British Museum catalogue). It was basis within the refrain of the famous patriotic continued in the first decades of the twentieth tune Yankee Doodle (published 1767), referring to century by the indefatigable M. Dorothy George the appearance of troops during the French and (who had worked for British Intelligence), one Indian War (or the ‘Seven Years War’, 1754–63): of several notable women including ‘George Paston’ (pseudonym of Miss E. M. Symonds) to Yankee Doodle Came to Town set themselves the task of cataloguing British Riding on a Pony, caricature prints with explanatory keys. Stuck a feather in his cap Not well known to the general public apart from And called it Macaroni!4 those who have a particular interest in late- The macaroni were remembered in the Georgian England, the macaroni evokes bemused (above) nineteenth century as colourful fashion puzzlement when his name is mentioned Detail, fig. 8, p. 64, eccentrics from a romantic past long surpassed today. Slippery like the pasta that his name Ridiculous Taste or by Victorian materialism, until the cataloguers connotes, the term ‘macaroni’ was once widely the Ladies Absurdity.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia { 57 (left) Fig. 1. Man’s Coat and Breeches, Italy, probably Venice, c. 1770, green silk, a) coat centre back length: 35¾ in. (90.81 cm); c) breeches length: 24 ½ in. (62.23 cm).
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, COSTUME COUNCIL FUND M.83.200.1A-C. Man’s Waistcoat, France, c. 1770, pink silk, Waistcoat centre back length: 26 in. (66.04 cm).
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. PURCHASED WITH FUNDS PROVIDED BY SUZANNE A. SAPERSTEIN AND MICHAEL AND ELLEN MICHELSON, WITH ADDITIONAL FUNDING FROM THE COSTUME COUNCIL, THE EDGERTON FOUNDATION, GAIL AND GERALD OPPENHEIMER, MAUREEN H. SHAPIRO, GRACE TSAO, AND LENORE AND RICHARD WAYNE. M.2007.211.688A.
since, for a period of thirty years, ‘macaroni’ was a highly topical term, yielding a complex set of meanings and associations. ‘Macaroni’ indicated either fine or ultra-fashionable dressing, but it was not a static fashion movement with simply one form. Macaroni men dressed in a manner that asserted a cosmopolitan, fashion-centric outlook (fig. 1). Desirous of the rich and colourful textiles that countries such as France and Italy were renowned for, their attitude towards fashion was exclusive and undemocratic. Many macaroni men wore the tightly cut suit or habit à la française that derived from French court society, which also became the trans-national and up-to-date fashion for many European men at this time. (Swedish courtiers rushed to get out of their imposed national dress and into the modern ‘French suit’ as soon as they could whilst travelling). Such clothing and the accessories expected to accompany it were expensive and recognised in daily life, just as the word ‘punk’ unsuitable for many forms of work. Yet it was is now. Eclipsed by the fame of the masculine possible to copy many aspects of the macaroni Regency bucks and swells, and not embedded in appearance, particularly the hair-style, and it tumultuous political events as was the Incroyable seems many did so, including young men from of post-Revolutionary Paris, the macaroni existed the countryside. thirty years before the justly famous figure of Macaroni men were connected to new ideas the dandy. Although many people today say ‘aha! about masculine self-presentation, selfhood and A dandy’ when they hear his name, his ethos and celebrity in late-eighteenth-century England. appearance were completely different from that Contemporary interest in male sartorial display Promethean figure. was amplified by the great expansion of printed The study I have recently completed,‘Pretty satirical caricatures that occurred concurrently, Gentlemen’: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth- where the macaroni phenomenon formed a Century Fashion World, is on one level a study major topic. Macaroni dress was not restricted of men and their sartorial fashions.5 It is also to members of the aristocracy and gentry; men a social, sexual and more general cultural history of the artisan, artist and upper servant classes
58 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) wore versions of this visually lavish clothing with many young well-to-do men rushed to the a distinctive cut and shorter jackets in woolen continent to see what was going on with the cloth, for example. Wealthier shopkeepers French and Italian fashion they had so missed and entrepreneurs also sometimes wore lavish during wartime. The Seven Years War was a clothing, particularly those associated with the disaster for France but saw an ascendancy for London luxury trades. Macaroni status was Britain, hence the even stronger significance attributed to figures as notable as the Whig of clothing styles adopted at a time of national politician Charles James Fox (1749–1806) — ‘the confidence. The American, Revolutionary and Original Macaroni’; botanist and explorer Sir Napoleonic wars that reshaped borders and Joseph Banks (1743–1820) — the ‘Fly Catching colonies mark the conclusion of the period Macaroni’; the renowned miniature painter under consideration. Richard Cosway (1742–1821) — ‘The Miniature Other issues are important for understanding Macaroni’ [he painted in this format and was the significance of men’s fashion. Some of these also very short in stature]; the famed landscape acquisitions were status-conscious purchases to designer Humphrey Repton (1752–1818); the signal cosmopolitanism and success; others were St Martin’s Lane luxury upholsterer John Cobb; possibly crafted by female relatives and lovers Julius ‘Soubise’, the freed slave of the Duchess of and therefore inscribe chains of attachment and Queensbury, known as the ‘Mungo Macaroni’; sometimes also eroticism. Eighteenth-century and the Reverend William Dodd (1729–1777) — women frequently worked waistcoats and made the ‘Macaroni Parson’ [the extravagantly-dressed sword-knots for their husbands, particularly Chaplain to George III, later put to death as at their marriage, a custom explicit for the perhaps the first ‘white-collar’ criminal]. John aristocracy in France.8 There was therefore Gascoigne faha outlines Sir Joseph Banks’s a personal charge attached to aspects of ‘gift macaronic affiliation and the subsequent exchange’ as well as the making of sartorial attacks on his scientific credentials (linked to fashions. This was transferred in a homophobic his youthful interest in fashion) in Joseph Banks manner to a group of ‘queer embroiderers’ and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge described in a scurrilous pamphlet mocking such and Polite Culture (1994).6 Sarah Sophia Banks, men entitled ‘The Pretty Gentleman’ (1747), from Joseph’s sister with whom he lived in Soho which my forthcoming book takes its title. Square, created an extensive collection of prints Fundamental to the general notion of and ephemera (akin to the natural history and macaroni fashion was the hair-style. Fashionable other specimens collected by her brother in its men in the late 1760s and 1770s replaced the taxonomic ambition) which is now in the British small ‘scratch-wig’ of the older generation, Museum and British Library. She owned several a prosthetic which supplemented the natural prints identifying her brother as macaroni. hair and was often worn for riding, with Men of secure social standing such as Banks elaborate hairstyles that matched the towering seem to have been more comfortable with heights of the contemporary female coiffure. For the label, which was something of an ‘in joke’. men, a very tall toupée rising in front and a thick The repetition of certain motifs within these club of hair behind required extensive dressing caricatures — the very high hair-style, a tiny hat, with pomade and white powder. Other wigs the cane and sword, spying glasses, high-heeled had very long and thin tails, looking rather like shoes and use of a snuff-box — indicates that horses’. Wigs became a widespread fashion item, these objects had a powerful charge for male able to be copied by men ‘up from the country’, participants in this type of dressing. and barbers and hairdressers were common even This is certainly the view taken by the late in rural areas of England and France. The new Paul Langford, who noted that ‘young men fashionable macaroni ‘queue’ of hair was held with too much money and too few inhibitions in a large black satin wig-bag, often trimmed prospered in the permissive climate of the with a rosette, to protect the back of the jacket. years between two great wars’ in the eighteenth The wig-bag was requisite for attendance at century.7 Here he referred to the cessation of court and therefore became striking when worn the Seven Years War (1756–1763), at which point in the street and in everyday life; it also carried
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 59 (right) Fig. 2. Man’s Vest, English, c. 1780, cotton plain weave with supplementary-weft patterning, centre- back length: 24 in. (60.96 cm).
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, GIFT OF JACK COLE, 63.24.6.
an added expense (account books indicate that refer to women noted for their conspicuous wig-bags had to be replaced at least several gambling, described, like fashion, as a form times a year). The effect of the hair could be of endless and ephemeral expenditure — but copied with real and partial wigging; many it generally referred to the styling of men. men wore a mixture of their own hair plus The famous observer of manners, Sir Horace wigging. The macaroni ‘big hair’ silhouette Walpole, made numerous references to these dominates the fashion ideal of many of the new fashionables. In the first relevant letter, men of this era and is a signature of the notable dated February 1764, Walpole discussed gambling portraiture associated with the most important losses amongst the sons of foreign aristocrats at artists of the day including Joshua Reynolds, the ‘Maccaroni [sic] club, which is composed of Thomas Gainsborough, Pompeo Batoni and all the travelled young men who wear long curls Richard Cosway. and spying-glasses’.10 Macaroni men wore and carried accessories MACARONI ORIGINS that were characteristic of societies with a court at their pinnacle. These included the hanger The first use of the term ‘macaroni’ appeared or dress smallsword, traditionally the preserve within actor and theatre-manager David of the nobility, but worn also by this time as Garrick’s play The Male-Coquette (1757), which a fashion statement. Red-heeled and thin-soled, included a foppish character, the ‘Marchese di slipper-like black leather shoes with leather Macaroni’.9 The term was used occasionally to rosettes or decorative buckles of diamond, paste
60 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) or polished steel; a tiny nivernais, named for the Evelyn James Stuart (1773–1842), politician and French Ambassador resident in London, the duc soldier, second son of John Stuart, first Marquis de Nivernais (translator of Horace Walpole’s of Bute. Since he was a young man in the 1790s, essay on gardening into French); large floral this is an indication of the longevity of certain corsages or ‘nosegays’ as they were called in courtly fashion tastes. the eighteenth century; chateleines or hanging The carrying of such fashion accessories watches and seals suspended around the contributed to an emphasising of what was seen waist-line; elaborate or finely turned canes; either as polite or courtly manners in posture, and decorative neo-classical metal snuffboxes gesture and speech, further underlined by the and spying or eye-glasses feature in the many use of cosmetics such as face-whiteners and descriptions and images of the macaroni rouge, breath fresheners and even preferred wardrobe. drinks such as asses’ or donkey’s milk. Asses’ The macaroni departed from the trembling milk was used to great satiric effect by Pope erotics of the rococo taste in that symmetry and in his Epistle (1735) which referred to ‘Sporus! new textile preferences were often enforced That mere white curd of ass’s milk…’11 Asses’ in his dressing. The newly fashionable textiles milk carries two further contrasted suggestions. were often spotted or thinly striped, moving The first is the practice of bathing in it by famed away from the large-patterned meandering women such as Cleopatra and various Roman brocades characteristic of the period of George II empresses to preserve their looks; hence when and Louis XV. Macaroni often balanced the consumed by males its use was highly effeminate. pocket watch hanging from the waistcoat with Secondly, the male ass since antiquity has from a bunch of seals, or perhaps a fausse-montre, the size of its genitals figured as a symbol of a dummy watch. His clothing therefore mirrored developments in architecture and interior (left) design, when elite interiors included false doors Fig. 3. English to achieve symmetry in interior architecture. smallsword with chased cut-steel New materials also set new fashion trends. hilt, attributed to Fine examples of this development include the Matthew Boulton, ‘jockey’ style printed cotton waistcoats associated length 104 cm, blade length 83 cm. with late macaroni taste; such garments created COURTESY PETER FINER, new fashions for men, that must even have felt LONDON. different, being soft, pliable and easily washed (cotton was not generally worn by men as either undergarments or overgarments until the last years of the eighteenth century) (fig. 2). These clothing innovations replicate the effects of the much more expensive trimmings used on more expensive urban dress but they also have a new jauntiness. By the 1770s the fashion was for the new material of steel rather than silver accessories, including buttons; sometimes a combination of materials was used in a piece of jewellery or a shoe-buckle. Bobbing just below the waist was the sword-knot, which garnished the small-sword. Although sword knots were generally made from textiles, and few seem to survive, some were made of steel, as with the beautiful example attributed to the great entrepreneur of metals Matthew Boulton or his workshop (fig. 3). The original owner of this sword was Colonel Lord
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 61 (above, left) hypervirility (as in Apuleius’s Golden Ass and the to the South Seas explorer Sir Joseph Banks, uses Fig. 4. M. Darly, anonymous Greek predecessor Lucius, or the a sextant (for celestial navigation) to observe Ridiculous Taste or Ass). Hence drinking the asses’ milk might have the top of the head of a female fashionable, who the Ladies Absurdity, London, 15 July been a tonic to restore virility, and therefore is tended by an ugly frizeur or hairdresser in 1771. consumed by invalid or delicate males. According macaroni dress, standing up a ladder. Hanging
COURTESY OF THE LEWIS to contemporary reports, there was also a on the wall in the background is a severe portrait WALPOLE LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY. mannered macaroni accent and idiom, captured of an unfashionable man, perhaps Oliver in popular ditties and joke-books of the period. Cromwell. The image was clearly very popular, (above, right) The interest in the macaroni was not confined as another version was published in the Oxford Fig. 5. R. Sayer to one visual or literary genre or even to England. Magazine as ‘The Female Pyramid’, a nice joke and J. Bennett, Macaroni dress was amplified in its influence about exploring exotic and unbelievable places Ridiculous Taste, 10 June 1776 because it appeared concurrently with the (fig. 6). It finds an echo in Thomas Patch’s (reduced copy marked expansion of the production of English painted caricature of an Italian gallery with the after M. Darly), caricature prints, which were perused far beyond Medici Venus c. 1760 (fig. 7), in which the painter mezzotint. the borders of that country. Almost immediately, himself, dressed in seaman’s trousers, scales the © THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. plays, joke-books and songs were written about classical statue and uses dividers to measure its him and glass and ceramics were painted with proportion. As David Cast notes of such Grand his likeness. He developed a wide European Tour images, they are not simply about laughing appeal, particularly through the caricature at others, but often concern the self-assurance of print published by Matthew Darly, Ridiculous the arrogant and well-to-do.12 Taste, or the Ladies Absurdity, first issued in July The Darly print of the macaroni hairdresser 1771 (fig. 4), re-published in reverse by Sayer reappeared in many surprising formats, direct and Bennett in 1776 (fig. 5). A man who might and indirect copies, indicating the usefulness represent a husband, but whose figure also refers and malleability of print culture within wider
62 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) (left) Fig. 6. ‘The Female Pyramid’, The Oxford Magazine, 1771, facing p. 129.
© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
(below) Fig. 7. Screen, converted from a painting by Thomas Patch, A Gathering of Dilettanti in a Sculpture Hall, c. 1760–1, oil on canvas, 137.2 × 228.6 cm (54 × 90 in). Anon. photograph, Patch Papers 75 P 27 S940 Extra III.
COURTESY OF THE LEWIS WALPOLE LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 63 (below, top) (below, bottom) Fig. 9. Erik Borg, Fig. 10. Ridiculous Ridiculous Taste or Taste or the the Ladies Absurdity, Ladies Absurdity, faience tray, sepia embroidery, wool and paint, 46 × 30.5 cm, silk yarn on fabric, produced by 41 × 35.5 cm, c. 1800, Marieberg, 1772. purchased 1895 from Bukowski auction NATIONAL MUSEUM OF house, Stockholm. FINE ARTS, STOCKHOLM,
NMK 78/1943, NM.0080638, NORDISKA PHOTO COPYRIGHT MUSEET/NORDIC MUSEUM, GRETA LINDSTRÖM, STOCKHOLM. NATIONALMUSEUM, STOCKHOLM.
(above) design and decoration. It was copied in the Fig. 8. Ridiculous unusual medium of an oil painting that is extant Taste or the Ladies in Sweden (fig. 8) and on a Swedish Marieberg- Absurdity, oil on canvas painted on made ceramic tray (fig. 9) painted with a the reverse of a macaroni hairdresser tending a lady client, dated possible signboard, 1772, and hence just a few months after the first 84 × 52 cm, c. 1780. appearance of the image (if the date is correct). KULTUREN, LUND, SWEDEN, KM 15580. The painter of the ceramic tray simplified the details of the rich interior so that it did not disrupt the expanse of glossy white glaze and the striking impact of the leaf-form handles that are possibly by a sign painter. The composition modelled in relief. was also reworked in wools into a picture, The translation across borders and media was eighteenth century or slightly later, probably not a simple act of copying; an extant Swedish made by a leisured woman (fig. 10). The strong painted copy of the English caricature — an Swedish interest in this image is not surprising; extremely rare survival — is set in a recognisably Patrik Steorn’s post-doctoral research, carried Swedish type of interior with fictive boiserie and out within our EU-funded project, discovered a trompe-l’oeil painted perspectival floor typical that the first illustrated cover of a Swedish of that region. The oil was painted on the back newspaper (Stockholms Posten) carried a crude of a panel decorated with flowers, the latter wood-cut interpretation of the print in July
64 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) mantles or dressing tables, remains unclear, (far left) although Horace Walpole and others complained Fig. 11. Ridiculous about the invasion of china figurines and Taste or the Ladies Absurdity, wood- knick-knacks into women’s private cabinets cut, front cover and lives at this time. Research conducted by of Stockholms Jan Stockigt faha (kindly communicated to Posten, 17 July 1779, Dagstidning me) has indicated that Dresden court circles 1700–1850. during carnival enjoyed the porcelain figures MAPS AND PICTURES, PL. (resting on dinner tables) that they sometimes AF 50: 105, KUNGLIGA BIBLIOTEKET, NATIONAL resembled, including when they dressed as LIBRARY OF SWEDEN. tavern folk, peasants and in occupational dress (the Wirtschaft). Another Continental hard- paste figure group of the 1760s–70s depicts a courtier sporting an enormous black wig- bow attempting to walk through the arch of a classical ruin (fig. 13). He is watched by another fop and a poorly-dressed man, but
(left, top) Fig. 12. The Coiffure, Ludwigsburg Porcelain Manufactory, Germany, model 1779, noting that it was after an English original, attributed to 13 Gottlieb Friedrich but not naming the printmaker Darly (fig. 11). Riedel (German, The image was connected to an article by the Dresden 1724–84 newspaper’s editor, Johan Holmberg who, Augsburg), c. 1770, hard- Steorn writes, ‘defended the rights of authors paste porcelain, of texts and images to remain anonymous by 12.7 cm × 9.8 cm, discussing the necessity of satire, for example depth 7 cm, The Metropolitan of women’s fashion exuberance’. Gustav III Museum of Art, had restricted the press in Sweden in 1774, and New York, NY, newspaper publishers used as covers several USA, Gift of Irwin Untermeyer, 1964 redrawn caricatures based on French fashion (64.101.326), periodicals, suggesting that fashion images were ART462021. useful in underscoring the corrective power of © THE METROPOLITAN 14 MUSEUM OF ART. satire. Visual satires of macaroni fashion played IMAGE SOURCE: ART multi-facetted roles in their incarnations in and RESOURCE, NY. outside England. (left, bottom) The noble ceramic works Ludwigsburg, Fig. 13. Figure which specialised in fine quality porcelain figural group; porcelain; groups, created another version of a hairdresser attributed to group in which the lady sits at her toilette table Ludwigsburg, Württemberg, (fig. 12). Numerous men with very high hair tend German, c. 1770. her with the support of stepladder and spying British Museum glass, suggesting that men’s business has been 1923, 0314.102.CR. reduced to frippery. The design was possibly © THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. by Gottlieb Friedrich Riedel (1724–84), director of painting and design at Ludwigsburg from 1759 to 1779 and an independent engraver as well. Whether such models had any corrective potential, or were simply made to decorate
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 65 (right) Fig. 14. Carl Pehr Hilleström, Petter Pehr Hilleström studying a sculpture, c. 1770, oil on copper, 50 × 39 cm.
KONSTAKADEMIEN / THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, STOCKHOLM.
there is empathy, sweetness and charm in the the topicality and mobility of images of the expressions and the selected palette. The allusion Grand Tourist abroad and the enjoyment of here includes a ludicrous participation in the print culture as a part of everyday life for those Grand Tour. A painting of this period by the with leisure, access to imported images and Swedish painter Carl Pehr Hillestrom, Petter education.15 The Swedish artist who copied Pehr Hillestrom studying a sculpture, indicates Darly’s print created the sense of a proscenium the complex relationship between artistic stage, and this is significant, as many such prints practice, fashionable clothing, bodily posture might have had their basis in performances at the and an observation of the classical tradition, in theatre, or been associated with that giddying this case a cast of the Apollo Belvedere (fig. 14). world. Satirical prints inspired the theatre and These Swedish and German survivals indicate other ‘real life’ situations. A contemporary report
66 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) of the London Pantheon masquerade ball in 1773, viewers were probably able to identify domestic for example, noted that a woman wore ‘a tall and imported silks, as they had a highly refined Head-dress and a little ladder to it, after Darley’s sense of materiality, colours and cloth. It was [sic] print’.16 suggested that French silks resembled colours None of the recent scholarship on the viewed under artificial light, whereas the English macaroni focuses much on what was actually (or so it was claimed) used a palette drawn worn by these men. Assessing what people more from nature.19 French silks were banned wore is a complicated matter that demands in Britain from 1766, and excluded from the an assessment of sources including accounts, Free Trade Treaty of 1786, ‘a prohibition which diaries, letters, memoirs, literature, and incipient lasted until July 1826’.20 Much smuggling of cloth journalism, to name but a few. In some cases continued; ambassadors could flout the rules there is evidence that the elites were depicted but tourists sometimes had their fine purchases wearing clothes specially purchased for a portrait burned at the border. A legal case of 1773 against sitting (for example on the Grand Tour), but the foppish Lord Villiers determined that a it is also well understood that in many cases ‘gentleman’ could not be prosecuted for bringing the clothing depicted in art is fictive, or serves in his own foreign-purchased clothes. Macaroni various allegorical or other purposes. What was men, therefore, embodied a tension in English ‘actually worn’ in the past is a topic that has society between native interests, manufactures been emphasised by art historian Aileen Ribeiro, and prerogatives, and a cosmopolitan outlook who has argued that theoretical understandings that privileged travel, urbanity and access to of dress and fashion sometimes get in the way outside ideas. of understanding exactly what we are talking Being a macaroni was about more than about in the pursuit of fashion studies.17 ‘Fashion wearing fashion. There were strong links studies’ in the US and the UK has tended to be between modes of appearing in dress and dominated by ethnography and sociology and interior decoration. Fine London townhouses has been somewhat uncomfortable with material such as Chandos House (1770–71) and No. 20, culture, museology and so called ‘dress history’. St James’s Square (1772–74), designed by Robert Writers to date have not often enquired what Adam, were being erected at this time. The the macaroni resembled. What did he look like and how are we to recognise him? If ‘costume (left) history’ makes frequent use of printed and drawn Fig. 15. M. Darly, caricatures, then do we arrive at a caricature of Sam Spot Esquire, 1 July 1778. a caricature when assessing macaroni fashion? COURTESY OF THE LEWIS That was certainly the impression re-presented WALPOLE LIBRARY, YALE in period films such as James Ivory’s Jefferson UNIVERSITY. in Paris (1995), which included a greatly exaggerated (but effective) vignette of the painter Richard Cosway.18 At a time when English dress generally consisted of more sober cuts and the use of monochrome broadcloth, macaronism emphasised the effects associated with French, Spanish and Italian textiles and trimmings such as brocaded and embroidered silks and velvets; pastel colours, fashionable patterns of spots (fig. 15), stripes and small-field motifs. So ‘over the top’ were some Italian silks and velvets that the painter Venceslao Verlin depicted a man wearing leopard-skin pattern breeches in a Grand Tour scene of 1768 (private collection, sold Carlo Orsi, Milan 1997). Contemporary
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 67 (far right) preferred colour combinations and effects of Fig. 16. A French macaroni men were not without meaning; Macarony eating they related to broader fashion schemes for of macaroons, published as the goods and spaces as diverse as snuffboxes and Act Directs, 22 July boudoirs. The colours particularly associated 1772. with macaronism include those used in the © THE TRUSTEES OF THE designs of this neo-classical architect: pea BRITISH MUSEUM, J,5.95. green, pink, red and deep orange, garnished with a great deal of gilt. Adam’s use of ‘patches of bright colour in a non-constructional way’ was a departure from the more tonal approach of his rival, William Chambers, and surprised viewers and critics alike.21 The striking colours and light effects created for patrons by Adam in the 1770s, such as the red foil set behind glass and simulating porphyry for the drawing room of Northumberland House, London (1774), find their corollary in the foiled buttons and jewels of this period worn by men and women of fashion. The clashing components of macaroni dress were not always ‘harmonious’ but suggested a mode of dressing that carried ludic overtones and suggestions of carnivalesque mentalités that reached far back in time. be connected to earlier mentalités. ‘Maccus’ or FASHION AND FOOD — MACARONI MEN ‘Maco’ was the name of a glutton of noodles in the commedia. Pulcinella (later ‘Punch’) was Things culinary have profound cultural meaning famous as a ‘lazy, cunning and licentious’ stage in all parts of the world. The slipperiness — glutton and, as Meredith Chilton writes, his and instability — of the food preferred by the preferred foods were ‘spaghetti, macaroni, and macaroni finds its corollary in the fact that a gnocchi, which he consumed in vast quantities flaccid penis is still compared with a ‘noodle’ whenever possible’.23 In 1888 W.A. Clouston by some Mandarin speakers. To what extent published The Book of Noodles: Stories of did people associate this fashion figure with Simpletons or Fools and their Follies.24 The joke jokes concerning food? Quite a lot, it would here is partly that pasta swells up to several times seem. A French dictionary of 1768 specified its size, just as macaroni were associated with a that ‘macaroni etits [sic] morceaux de pâtes swollen pride.
‘MACARONI’ THEREFORE SUGGESTED THE WORLD OF THE MEDIEVAL CARNIVAL, BURLESQUE AND CAROUSING CONNECTED TO THE GLUTTON.
coupés par tranche’.22 A macaroni caricature The commonly held explanation for the played directly with the analogy between food title ‘macaroni’, that it was derived from a and fop: H. W. Bunbury’s The Salutation Tavern fondness for that dish, may be supplemented (published by J. Bretherton, 20 March 1773), is in that ‘macaronic’ refers also to a type of Latin subtitled ‘Macaroni & other Soups hot every poetry which revolved around wit and also day.’ The macaroni was firmly embedded within foolery, a hallmark of the macaroni stereotype. popular conceptions of food culture, carnival ‘Macaroni’ therefore suggested the world of and the commedia dell’arte and can accordingly the medieval carnival, burlesque and carousing
68 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) connected to the glutton. The carnival reference of the glutton. The devouring Maccaroni does was also related to the topos of the macaroni not derive the appellation from an immoderate as ‘numbskull’ or ‘noodle-head’; cauldrons of indulgence in animal food; the idea would be too the food ‘macaroni’ had been paraded in early- coarse and sensual’.29 modern European carnivals, accompanying a Fops were considered effeminate but that fat man (in Germanic carnival the food is more did not correlate necessarily with a lack of generally sausage).25 Images of pasta-eaters interest in women. Since the Italian Renaissance, consuming huge amounts and lengths of the the effeminate and finely dressed man was (below) food were particularly associated with Naples. sometimes — but not always — associated with 30 Fig. 17. The Porcelain figures were made of ‘spaghetti eaters’ attributes of love and cast as an object of desire. Macaroni Jester and at factories in Italy (Capodimonte) and Spain The macaroni episode redefined such ‘effeminate’ Pantheon of Wit, (Buen Retiro) from mid-century to the 1780s.26 men. A substantial number of prints, plays and frontispiece, 1773. Reproduced here for perhaps the first time, satires cast the macaroni as an indeterminate © THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. A French Macarony Eating of Macaroons (fig. 16) figure not fitting normative stereotypes of gender makes the connection between a foreigner and his food choice explicit. A fop in a fine striped suit, hanger sword and buckled shoes, with an elaborate and high hairstyle, holds an incongruous spoon, lifting his head up to eat some slippery pasta from the dish below. The joke is also scatological as a small dog fouls the pot on the ground from which he is eating. The theorist Jacques Lacan once remarked that ‘everyone makes jokes about macaroni, because it is a hole with something around it’; that is, as medievalist Juliet Fleming notes, an object organised around emptiness.27 The satirical image of the empty-headed man sometimes emerging fully born from an ‘egg’ (that is also subsequently ‘empty’) also might relate to folklore and carnival uses of eggs, in which witches were said to fly. There is another joke at work here: Eros ‘is an ancient mythic figure at the centre of creation mythology who is said to have emerged from an enormous egg to create the earth’.28 Such references provide an explanation for the distinctive image of a well-dressed macaroni hatching from an egg, published as the frontispiece to The Macaroni Jester and Pantheon of Wit (fig. 17). ‘An Account of a Macaroni’, published in the London Magazine, April 1772, described the macaroni as ‘the offspring of a body, but not of an individual. This same body was a many headed monster in Pall- Mall, produced by the Daemoniack committee of depraved taste and exaggerated fancy, conceived in the courts of France and Italy, and adapted in England. Hence that variety of fantastical beings in all places of publick resort’. There followed a discussion of its digestion: ‘The eye is the paunch of a virtuoso Maccaroni, as the stomach
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 69 and sexuality. Although the aesthetics were PETER McNEIL faha is different, the attributes of the Regency dandy Distinguished Professor of (circa 1810) — deviant masculine consumption, Design History at University of non-reproductive irresponsibility, a rejection Technology Sydney and Finland of ‘middling-sort’ gendering, a creation of the Distinguished Professor at male body and home into a ‘work of Art’ — were Aalto University. He was the already present in the macaroni.31 My work Foundation Chair of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University therefore maps a reading of clothing culture onto from 2008–17. Parts of this research have been the history of sexuality. In so doing it questions conducted within the EU-funded ‘Humanities in some of the standard theories of male sartorial the European Research Area’ project Fashioning ‘renunciation’ (an expression coined by popular the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles and Innovation in psychologist J.C. Flügel in the 1920s), many of Europe 1500–1800 (conducted from 2010–13) which which have overlooked the macaroni and turned aimed to investigate the cultures of creativity that directly to the dandy before commencing with an spread west-European fashion across linguistic and geographical borders. McNeil contributed to analysis of modern dressing. the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition The macaroni remained for a time to populate Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear 1715–2015 (and the novels of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens accompanying catalogue, Prestel, 2016), the largest as an ailing and ridiculous fop, generally resident exhibition of men’s fashion ever held, which will in Bath, at odds with youthful masculinity. travel to Sydney in 2018. Austen’s Persuasion includes the character of Sir ‘Pretty Gentlemen’: Macaroni Men and the Walter Elliot, the vain and obsequious father of Eighteenth-Century Fashion World will be published by Yale University Press in March 2018. Grounded Anne, who revels in the society of Bath which in a study of archival documents and surviving is disavowed by Anne in favour of the seaside: material culture, the book uses an art historical ‘Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir approach that crosses hierarchies and genres from Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and the scurrilous caricature to the respectful portrait of situation’.32 The Pickwick Papers (1836–37), set painting as well as a diverse range of applied arts around 1827, features a fifty year old macaroni, including ceramics, glass and printed textiles. master of ceremonies at the Bath Assembly The monograph pays particular attention to the integration of primary sources concerning clothing Rooms, with affected manners and speech: and accessories and their deployment in a range of ‘it was difficult at a small distance to tell the social spaces from the street to the theatre. real from the false’.33 By the Edwardian period, the macaroni was reduced to being a figure of 1. Pierce Egan, Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the ‘olden times’, from a world ‘where grace and Vulgar Tongue (London: for the editor, 1823 charm were omnipotent, where worth without [1785]), unpaginated under ‘M’. wit, or wisdom without brilliance were of small 2. Robert Chambers, The Book of Days (2, 7 July account’.34 He passed into the ‘silver fork’ short 1864), pp. 31–33. stories, as a ‘lahdy-da’ or macaroni in 1935,35 and 3. Cited in Trevor Fawcett, ‘Eighteenth-Century as late as 1938 was mentioned in one such story Shops and the Luxury Trade’, Bath History, 2 (1990), 65. in the Australian Woman’s Weekly.36 He was also 4. The English referred to North Americans as alluded to rather wittily in the trade name of macaroni in printed caricatures in 1774: see ‘Cavalier’ food products, described as ‘Australia’s Carington Bowles, pub., A New Method of most modern macaroni factory’, producing Macarony Making, as Practised at Boston in vermicelli and semolina pastes, in Collingwood, North America, 12 October 1774, in which two Bostonians tar and feather a customs officer. Melbourne.37 Macaroni had come ‘full circle’, 5. Peter McNeil, ‘Pretty Gentlemen’: The 18th ready to be consumed as everyday food on Century Fashion World (New Haven and London: Australian dining tables. The macaroni ended Yale University Press, in press). up old, foolish and feeble, rather than young and 6. John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English sparkling like the men I introduce. ¶ Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
70 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) 7. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: die industrien in England und in Nordeuropa, ed. England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Oxford University by Regula Schorta (Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, Press, 1989), p. 577. 2000), p. 230. 8. Sword knots were sometimes distributed to 20. Rothstein, p. 20. members of a French aristocratic wedding party. 21. Michael Snodin, ‘Interiors and Ornament’, in See Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, Fashion Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III, ed. Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and by John Harris and Michael Snodin (New Haven Marie-Antoinette (New Haven and London: Yale and London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 148. University Press, 2015), p. 87. 22. [Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli], Dictionnaire 9. David Garrick, ‘The Male Coquette’ (first Critique, Pittoresque et Sentencieux, propre à published in 1757, Paul Vaillant). faire connoître les usages du siècle, ainsi que ses 10. Wilmarth S. Lewis, ed., The Yale Edition of bisarreries (Lyon: Benoît Duplain, 1768), vol. 2, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 48 volumes p. 1. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 23. Meredith Chilton, ‘The Spaghetti Eaters’, 1937–83), vol. 38, p. 306. Metropolitan Museum Journal, 37 (2002), 223–36. 11. Robert Halsband, Lord Hervey: Eighteenth- 24. W.A. Clouston, The Book of Noodles: Stories of Century Courtier (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), Simpletons or Fools and their Follies (London: E p. 176. Stock, 1888). 12. David Cast, ‘Review of Viccy Coltman’, Classical 25. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Sculpture and the Culture of Collecting in Britain Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 185. since 1760. Classical Presences (Oxford: Oxford 26. Chilton, ‘The Spaghetti Eaters’, 227. University Press, 2009), Bryn Mawr Classical Review (March 2010),
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 71 AUSTRALIAN LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION AND WAR REFUGEES Internationalism and Humanitarianism, 1930–39
» JOY DAMOUSI
‘Never since the days of the Great War’, over time developed into a coherent narrative. stated the New South Wales (NSW) branch Most notably, this became apparent with the of the Australian League of Nations Union indirect and then direct challenge to the White in its Bulletin in 1932, ‘have the international Australia policy from Union members as they waters been so troubled’.1 The branch noted became more assertive in their demands for that just ‘when it seemed that the League was government to take in refugees from war zones. handling current international problems with Second, how Union branches shifted from a considerable measure of success’ issues were being educative groups to ones more directly emerging to create a ‘multitude of new problems’. involved in political agitation and active One of the ‘new’ and ‘multiple’ problems that lobbying. Related to this is a key argument of this escalated during the 1930s was the growing essay: that we can identify a shift by the Union number of refugees from various international from supporting specific and individual causes conflicts. Refugees flowed from the Spanish Civil to adopting a defined liberal internationalist War of 1936; the Sino-Japanese war of 1937; and position on humanitarian refugee relief. This can finally, in 1938, on the eve of the outbreak of the be traced over the period from 1936–1939, when Second World War, an unprecedented refugee a wider and broader campaign developed in crisis was developing in Czechoslovakia and support of a more liberal refugee policy. across Europe. Third, why a focus on this period is significant The branches of the Australian League of for historiographical reasons. In histories of Nations Union (hereafter Union) — formed refugees, the 1930s are often seen as simply to promote the values and aims of the League a prelude to, and dress rehearsal for, the Second of Nations — responded to the growing World War. But this period warrants closer international refugee crisis with a range of attention especially in relation to the NSW and measures and actions. I explore three distinctive Victorian branches of the League of Nations aspects of this response, as a way of considering Union and their shifting response to the growing the role of the Union branches in attempting refugee crisis during the 1930s. to foster within Australia an international and The broader significance of focusing on the humanitarian outlook towards the plight of war 1930s is, I also suggest, to be found in the history (above) refugees during the interwar years. of government administration. It is crucial to Montage, Australian First, how these Union branches began to recall that, at this time, issues of immigration League of Nations coalesce their activities in the 1930s around a were dealt with in the External Affairs branch Union members, 1938 (p. 73). language of refugees and humanitarian aid that of the Prime Minister’s Department, which in
72 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) 1935 became a separate Department of External who were able to procure an Australian sponsor Affairs. The Department of Immigration was not or provide landing money. By the mid to late established until 1945. Why was this important? 1930s refugee movements became a wider public In having the two areas coupled administratively, issue when applications for Jewish immigration we see a merging of international relations began to increase with the rise of Nazism and with issues of immigration where international the consequent flood of applications pouring in diplomacy became focused on refugee and after 1933. Leaders within the Jewish community migration policy and vice versa. This became in Australia mobilised to contribute to refugee significant I argue because, flowing from relief and lobbied governments to accept greater this, Union members began to insist on the numbers of Jewish refugees. Following the independent and separate Australian response destruction and violence of Kristallnacht, the to the international crisis that Australia’s refugee issue escalated world-wide. In 1938 the membership of the League of Nations allowed. Australian Government announced that a quota Immigration became, in this context, about of 15,000 refugees would be received over three Australia taking the lead in international years, beginning in 1939.2 diplomacy and international relations. One of the key tasks of the League of The 1930s are significant for shifts in Nations from its inception in January 1920 immigration policy itself, so I will very briefly was to protect minorities and offer help to the comment on this, before moving on to the continuous waves of refugees.3 In 1920, Russian growing agitation by the Union on the question refugees were supported following the Russian of refugees. revolution and the conflicts thereafter.4 The exchange of populations between Greece and *** Turkey was also a major focus for the efforts of By the early 1930s, as the events in Europe began the League, and it recorded that between 1924 to escalate, there was increasing pressure on and 1928, it had helped to settle over 200,000 Australia to accept more non-British migrants. families.5 Refugees were at the centre of Stanley At this time, landing permits were required for Bruce’s report to the Australian parliament in non-British immigrants, normally given to those November 1935, outlining the aid and assistance
(left) Australian League of Nations Union members attending the annual meeting, Canberra, January 1938.
PHOTO: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, HTTP://NLA.GOV.AU/NLA. OBJ-138082183.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 73 provided by the League of which Australia With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War was an active member.6 But Australia’s own in 1936 Union branches offered similar support, record on this issue reflected its commitment most of it in the form of endorsing the efforts of to the Immigration Act of 1901 designed to others, such as Spanish relief aid organisations, limit migration to Australia and to protect a as well as the Federal Government’s allocation of ‘white’ Australia by ensuring that it remained £3000 to both sides of the conflict. In April 1938, uncontaminated by those not of British stock. the Victorian Branch of the League of Nations While governments were prepared to provide Union resolved to write to Prime Minister Lyons material support for refugees, it was quite ‘congratulating the Government on the grant another matter when it came to accommodating of £3000 for Refugee Relief in Spain’.10 The them in Australia. During the ongoing crisis in Joint Spanish Aid Council worked with Union Armenia, for instance, the League of Nations branches to co-ordinate the relief of Spanish requested that Australia take a certain number of refugees and orphaned children. They also refugees, but this request was declined on racial supported the efforts by the Republican 7 (below) and economic grounds. government to establish children’s ‘cities’ where Newspaper article In Australia, Union branches had been formed orphaned and refugee children were cared for from The Mercury across the country to promote the values and and educated with aid from the Joint Spanish detailing the 11 address given by aims of the League which included upholding Aid Council. Ms Fabian Chow, peace and security, international law, and the But when it came to actively agitating for Thursday 24 March, settlement of disputes through arbitration, a cause, it was the Sino-Japanese war of 1937 1938. negotiation and disarmament.8 The Victorian that mobilised Union members into direct PHOTO: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, and NSW branches played a central role from activity. The visit of Mrs Fabian Chow, originally HTTP://TROVE.NLA. GOV.AU/NEWSPAPER/ 1936 to 1938 in supporting refugees, initially by from Victoria and ex-President of the Chinese ARTICLE/25501429. assisting individual causes through fund raising Women’s Club of Shanghai which carried out and education. This gradually began to change. relief work for women and children in China, and Elsie Lee Soong, also a member of the Chinese Women’s Club,12 helped promote the need for financial aid for refugees from this war13 and the Union supported their efforts through fund raising. In June 1938, it raised £116 at a public meeting.14 The Victorian branch took up the cause of Chinese refugees with particular enthusiasm and energy to support humanitarian efforts. A boycott of Japanese goods was recommended to the Secretary-General in Geneva by the Victorian branch,15 but the wider executive of the Australian League organisation opposed such actions.16 In November 1937, the League of Nations provided much needed medical supplies.17 At In July 1936, following the attack by Italy on the annual meeting of the Victorian Branch in Ethiopia, Union branches believed sanctions mid-1938, the success of the China Relief Appeal should be imposed on Italy to assert the was prominent with the branch having collected authority of the League of Nations while it was £2470 in Victoria, an astonishing achievement.18 also working to secure a peaceful settlement. By the time of the invasion of Czechoslovakia The attack pointed not to the failure of the by Germany in 1938, both the NSW and Victorian League, they argued, but to the failure of branches had become actively involved in member states who had not used the machinery lobbying the Federal Government. For the of the League effectively.9 But apart from first time they began to direct their energies expressions of outrage and this call for sanctions, into calling for assistance in bringing refugees Union branches took little action. to Australia. In October 1938, the Victorian
74 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) branch sought to pressure the Government to Government take a new role: facilitate the immigration of Czech and German The Government can only be expected to refugees.19 As the international crisis escalated, act in these matters if a sufficient number the branch became more assertive in its demands in the community asks for it to act. Such and made its own position clear publicly: a request for action will only develop if It needs little imagination to get some each individual who feels the need for idea of the magnitude of the suffering humanitarian action joins with the League and distress resulting from the cession of Nations Union in trying to aid these of Czech territory to Germany. Many desperately unfortunate people.24 thousands of people, both Czechs and The economic argument was one of the key anti-Nazi Germans, are being rendered points marshalled to support refugees. In homeless, thousands of industrialists are a program outlined in November 1938 at a being forced to migrate and so become gathering at the Melbourne Town Hall, the unemployed. … We British people have Victorian branch identified, as a key priority, the been saved, we hope finally, from the assimilation of refugees into the most suitable unspeakable horrors of a world war — industries needing workers.25 but the cost of that escape has been The Union took its position to the community borne in large measure by the people of and to other organisations. In December Czechoslovakia.20
WE CAN IDENTIFY A SHIFT BY THE UNION FROM SUPPORTING SPECIFIC AND INDIVIDUAL CAUSES TO ADOPTING A DEFINED LIBERAL INTERNATIONALIST POSITION ON HUMANITARIAN REFUGEE RELIEF.
Soon the argument was made that such refugees 1938, members convened a public meeting would contribute to Australia’s population and that aimed to assist the ‘speedy assimilation employment needs since their experience in of refugees’, suggesting ‘the establishment of either primary or secondary industry would a refugee emergency council to co-ordinate be particularly suited to Australian conditions, and develop the work of existing refugee although questions of race were never far from welfare organisations’. It explicitly expressed the discussion.21 Professor G.L. Wood from the ‘its sympathy with those who by reason of University of Melbourne suggested that their race, religion, or political ideas were persecuted and forced to become refugees’. both for humanitarian reasons, and The meeting also supported government efforts from motives of self-interest we should to provide a sanctuary for those in need such as all [do what] we could to settle some ‘distressed men, women, and children’. Francis of these refugees in Australia. We need Anderson, the president of the NSW branch, skilled workers for our expanding worked with church groups, women’s groups, secondary industries, we need highly unions, the Workers’ Educational Association trained scientists, and we need people and the Refugee Committee of the Union and of good stock.22 its chairman, Mr F.E. Barralough, to mobilise Wood agreed with many Australians when support.26 Branches of the Union were also he observed that there was a chance ‘that an involved in initiatives with others to convene immigrant will keep an Australian out of work’. a united front of support for refugees, urging the The solution in his mind was ‘careful selection’ Australian government to adopt such a stance in of those to be brought out, directed towards international affairs. choosing ones ‘with a training that cannot be But economic imperatives were never obtained in Australia’.23 The Union believed far removed from humanitarian concerns. it was the responsibility of their members, The needs of Jewish refugees caught the along with others of similar views, to insist the
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 75 (right) Professor Francis Anderson and his wife returning to Sydney by the ship Port Melbourne, New South Wales, 15 February 1930.
PHOTO: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, HTTP://NLA.GOV.AU/NLA. OBJ-160681036.
attention of the Union in 1936.27 In September Woodruff arrived in Australia from England the Union resolved that it supported in 1913 as professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Melbourne. He served in the on humanitarian grounds that the Australian Imperial Force in the Veterinary administration of the Immigration Act Corps in Egypt and France, returning in 1917. be reasonably relaxed in the case of After the veterinary school was closed in 1928, a limited number of approved Jewish Woodruff took up the position of director of the refugees and refers the matter to the bacteriology department. An advocate for world Federal Executive to take action as it may peace and a practising Methodist, Woodruff deem desirable after making enquiries as spoke against fascism in the 1930s, toured around to the present conditions.28 Victoria warning against racial discrimination Several arguments were put forward to support and actively advocated the end of the White the immigration of Jewish refugees: 1. ‘it would Australia policy in the 1940s.30 be a humanitarian gesture’; 2. ‘members of Duncan was a graduate of the University the League could do something where the of Melbourne, completing her Bachelor of refugee movement had failed’; 3. ‘it would be an Arts in 1917 and Master of Arts in 1922. She advantage to Australia to import’ skilled workers became Australian secretary of the local branch from Germany.29 of the Young Women’s Christian Association Throughout the 1930s, then, the Victorian (YWCA) and travelled to Japan where she forged branch led the way in active agitation and considerable links. There she learnt Japanese and support for Australia’s acceptance of refugees, worked for the YWCA in Tokyo. She returned using a range of arguments in an attempt to to Australia in 1932, joined the Lyceum Club, convince the government to do so. This was and from 1934 to 1941 was the Victorian branch largely because of two active and committed secretary of the League of Nations Union and of members: Professor Harold Woodruff, the the Bureau of Social and International Affairs. Victorian president in 1938, and the Victorian Duncan become directly involved in the secretary, Constance Duncan. The efforts of both refugee question though her role as director of Woodruff and Duncan are notable as they were the Victorian International Refugee Emergency vocal, strident and increasingly insistent that the Council formed in 1938. She led the move to entry of European war refugees be a high priority agitate for more refugees to be allowed to come for Australia. to Australia. Through the Council, which was sponsored by the League of Nations Union and
76 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) the churches, Duncan advocated the admission The Victorian branch believed that the of more refugees, pressing the need to assist question of refugees was not separate from them in settling into Australia and acquainting broader concerns. It was a ‘serious international them with Australian culture, language and problem’, it argued in 1938, ‘likely if unresolved to customs. She wrote of the need for Australians have adverse effects upon international relations, to adopt a more progressive stance regarding with world-wide consequences’. It urged ‘the support for refugees: ‘People need to be shown Commonwealth Government to co-operate to that to attack the refugee is really to help Hitler’s the fullest extent possible in the international propaganda’.31 In Duncan’s association with both effort to provide refugees with a new political organisations she pushed the needs of refugees and economic basis of life’.33 Immigration and as an issue of utmost priority that should be of the influx of migrants was seen as a solution to primary concern to the Union. increasing Australia’s productivity and its ‘sparse In particular Duncan promoted the need to population’ — both issues which would later assist political refugees, outlining this activity shape Australia’s immigration policy.34 as central to the work of the Union. She By June 1939 Duncan and the Victorian believed that branch had become some of the most vocal supporters of refugees. When the ‘value of assistance to refugees was an integral part refugee immigrants’ was discussed, Duncan of the League of Nations’ Union work, argued on economic grounds about the the Union should endeavour to urge the enormous value refugees from Europe would Government to adopt a more definitive bring to the community.35 She believed that policy with regard to granting political they were not to blame if they knew no English refugees an asylum in Australia, and … and were more likely to be employers when select immigrants from amongst the very they settled.36 For these reasons, she personally large number of applicants, choosing agitated for assistance to be given to them. In those who can best be absorbed into July 1939, she helped in the arrival of a Viennese Australian life.32 couple.37 In August 1939, in a speech at the This was a major advance in the efforts of Melbourne Lyceum Club, Duncan asked its the Union. In August 1938, it passed a list of graduate women members to act as guarantors resolutions regarding political refugees. These for a graduate refugee. She succeeded in raising included: ‘the cause of refugees is an integral enough funds for three refugee graduates to part of the work of the League’, and a ‘direct be supported.38 concern’; and the Government should adopt *** a positive policy towards refugees. It was also stated that ‘[i]ndifference to the fate of political As the world plunged into further crisis towards exiles is not in the British tradition, nor would it the outbreak of war, Woodruff and Duncan be calculated to raise the reputation of Australia became less measured in their public comments. in the eyes of international public opinion’. In a letter published in the Age in April 1939, Furthermore, an humanitarian argument was their frustration was palpable when they advanced by Duncan: admitted the League of Nations had failed in its ultimate goal: to create a new and peaceful Merely on humanitarian grounds there world order. With deep concern they noted is a case for helping refugees. Australia is that nations had ‘sacrificed justice to their own a democratic country; its sympathies are selfish interests’; the breakdown of the League with oppressed minorities; but sympathies system meant that the key factor determining without practical expression are evasions international politics was now brute force. of moral responsibility; Australia is morally The British were not ‘blameless’: ‘we [too] have committed not only by its membership of considered our own narrow and short-term the League of Nations, but by its inherent interests in preference to those of the world nature as a democratic state to share in the community’, they reflected. If any reprieve from protection of minorities. war was to be permanent, then a more effective
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 77 body needed to be formed, ‘something … JOY DAMOUSI fassa faha more than a hastily constructed association of is Professor of History at the nations, united only for the purpose of meeting University of Melbourne. She has an immediate threat’. The League must be published widely on aspects of rebuilt, they believed. No nation was free from political history, women’s history responsibility for the current crisis, though they and feminist history, memory acknowledged that circumstances were beyond and war, history of emotions and psychoanalysis, sound and war, the control of individual nations. and the history of post-war migration and refugees. For a brief period in the 1930s the Union She is the author of numerous books which include took an active role of pressuring the Australian The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Government to change its international policy Bereavement in Australia (Cambridge, 1999); Living and accept more refugees from Europe. In doing with the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in so, it began pushing the Australian Government Post-war Australia (Cambridge, 2001); Freud in the into a sphere of independent international Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia (University of New South Wales Press, diplomacy and relations — one less governed 2005: Winner of the Ernest Scott Prize); Colonial by Imperial interests — a move which was Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia 1840– required if a more open immigration policy was 1940 (Cambridge, 2010) and Memory and Migration to develop. Once Europe became consumed by in the Shadow of War: Australia’s Greek Immigrants war it was too late to save many refugees from after World War II and the Greek Civil War (Cambridge, the catastrophe. Far from despairing, Duncan 2015). With Philip Dwyer she is the general editor and other committed members of the Union of a four volume World History of Violence due to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. redoubled their efforts after 1939. Even if peace Her latest project is a history of child refugees, was lost, or because of its loss, the cause of humanitarianism and internationalism from 1920 refugee relief became more urgent and required to the present for which she was awarded an greater intervention, as the victims of war Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. were increasing in numbers never seen before This research seeks to examine the experiences and across Europe. After the war, a new chapter impact of child refugees displaced by the wars of the would begin for both the League of Nations, twentieth century. when it later morphed into the United Nations, and for the Australian Government, with the 1. Australian League of Nations Union, Bulletin, establishment of the Department of Immigration NSW Branch, February 1932, no. 2, p. 1. in Papers of Raymond Watt, Box 2, Folder 2/25A, MS 1923, to manage refugees as well as migrants. But this National Library of Australia (NLA). was almost a decade away. 2. See M. Blakeney, Australia and the Jewish Duncan, Woodruff and their ilk in League of Refugees, 1933–1948 (Sydney: Croom Helm Nations Union branches were amongst those Australia, 1985). who, in the 1930s, began to lay the foundation 3. Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee for drawing the attention of governments to (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 53. the importance of the war refugee question to 4. A Brief History of the League of Nations, p. 130, Folder MS123/3/46, MS 123 Box 3, Papers of Australia’s economy, population growth and Raymond G. Watt, NLA. issues of international relations. They were not 5. A Brief History of the League of Nations, p. 131, the only advocates of broadening Australia’s Folder MS123/3/46, MS 123 Box 3, Papers of refugee intake but they played a central role in Raymond G. Watt, NLA. insisting that Australia act with independence 6. League of Nations Sixteenth Assembly and autonomy on the global stage. We have seen Sept–October 1935; Report of the Australian Delegation by S M Bruce 11/11/35, MS 123 Box 3, that, in the space of a few years, their voices Papers of Raymond G. Watt, NLA. became louder and more strident as the political 7. Barrier Miner, 20 September 1924, p. 3. terrain became more desperate. Eventually 8. Stuart Macintyre, A History of a Nation: Ernest Australian governments would listen, but not Scott and the Making of Australian History before the calamity and devastation of total war (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), p. 125. had created a refugee crisis on a scale beyond 9. West Australian, 6 July 1936, p. 21. anyone’s imagination and comprehension. ¶
78 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) 10. Minutes, Executive Meeting, 11 April 1938, 24. ibid. Australian League of Nations Union, Victorian 25. ibid. Branch, MS 2198/1/5, NLA. 26. Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1938, p. 12. 11. Minutes, Executive Meeting, 24 October 1938; 27. Minutes, Executive Meeting, 29 January 1936; 23 November 1938, Australian League of Nations 21 April 1936, MS2198/1/5. Union, Victorian Branch, MS 2198/1/5, NLA. 28. Minutes, Council Meeting, 25 September 1936, 12. Age, 23 February 1938, p. 6; Argus, 23 February Australian League of Nations Union, Victorian 1938, p. 7. Branch, MS 2198/1/5, NLA. 13. Argus, 28 June 1938, p. 7. 29. Minutes, Executive Meeting, 21 April 1936, 14. Minutes of Council, 21 June 1938, MS 2198/1/5, Australian League of Nations Union, Victorian NLA. Branch, MS 2198/1/5, NLA. 15. Minutes, Executive Meeting, 24 September 1937, 30. Norah L. Killip, ‘Woodruff, Harold Addison Australian League of Nations Union, Victorian (1877–1966)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Branch, MS 2198/1/5, NLA. National Centre of Biography, Australian 16. Advertiser, 29 January 1938, p. 29. National University
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 79 » PETER ANSTEY
Sometimes it is the sheer ubiquity and of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I ordinariness of a thing that prevents us from soon found myself overwhelmed with materials seeing it or appreciating its significance. Such to work on. This is a rich seam in the history of is the case with the idea of principles in the philosophy, the history of science, the history early modern period, the age of the Scientific of religion and art that to date has never been Revolution and the Enlightenment. Because mined. Thanks to the faith and generosity of the almost everyone was talking about principles, Australian Research Council and the support of arguing for them, arguing from them, assuming the University of Sydney, I have spent the last them, and using them, they have somehow four years as a Future Fellow surveying, setting slipped under the radar in intellectual history. up various mineshafts, and drilling down and Yet principles were important, very important. extracting from this precious vein of ore. Look at some of the titles of path-breaking books from this period: Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687), René Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy (1644), George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). There is a recurring theme: principles feature in both the titles and the content of these works. Principles were in the warp and weft of early modern thought. There are books about (above) the principles of nature, principles of reason, Montage using principles of chemistry, principles of painting, article figures. principles of law and government, principles of morality, principles of theology, principles (far right) of navigation, of hunting, midwifery, taste, and The title page of a rare annotated first writing. Principles were everywhere. Moreover, edition of Newton’s principles were central to the assessment of Principia, 1687. character: it really meant something to be a REPRODUCED WITH woman or a man of principle. PERMISSION OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL It is hardly surprising then, that once I started COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY LIBRARY. to look for principles in the thought and writings
80 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) And precious it is. There is a reason why study of nature that principles had work to do. the most valuable book in the Rare Books and For some thinkers, such as the leading English Special Collections Library at the University philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), believed of Sydney — indeed one of the most valuable that it was possible to deduce a science of books in Australia — is the annotated first morality from a handful of principles, analogous edition of Isaac Newton’s Principia. For this to Euclidean geometry. Locke never undertook book introduced to the learned world a new set this task, but it was attempted by others. of principles, namely, the laws of motion and Talk of moral principles brings to mind the law of gravitational attraction, which would propositions like ‘Love your neighbour as transform the study of nature for centuries yourself’ and ‘One ought to keep one’s promises’. to come and which are still taught today in These are normative principles that are secondary schools the world over. concerned with what we ought to do. However, Yet for the historian of philosophy, the really as one reads more and more moral philosophy interesting feature of Newton’s magnum opus from the period it becomes clear that, by the is the way in which his laws of nature came so mid-eighteenth century, the discourse about quickly to be called principles. It may come as moral principles undergoes a significant a surprise to learn that the notion of laws of change. Instead of attempting to base morality nature as we know it today only emerged in the on normative principles, philosophers, such seventeenth century. The key figure here was the as David Hume (1711–76) and Adam Smith French philosopher and mathematician René (1723–90), argued that it is based on principles Descartes (1596–1650). He effectively introduced about human nature, and, in particular, human the modern notion of laws of nature into natural psychology. Thus, Hume had little interest philosophy (what we now call science), and he in foundational normative claims. Instead too regarded them as a kind of principle and he argued, on the basis of the observation of argued that his two primary laws of nature human nature, that ‘morality is determined by derived from the immutability and simplicity of sentiment’. Virtue, for Hume, is what gives the God.1 This is because the idea of principles was ‘pleasing sentiment of approbation’ and vice at the very heart of the early modern view of the opposite.2 Nevertheless, Hume, like Locke how one acquires and builds a systematic body before him, was committed to the standard of knowledge. view that to be a science is to be a structured The core idea was that to be a science, body of knowledge based on principles: it is just such as chemistry, optics, theology or morals, that he disagreed with Locke about the nature of is to be a systematic body of knowledge those principles. founded on a small set of principles. Once the With so much talk about principles in the principles are in place, one then uses a method air, it is hardly surprising that some scholars of demonstration — something like a set of attempted to develop theories of principles. knowledge generating procedures — to deduce These theories were sometimes concerned with all that can be known about the subject. The what qualifies a proposition to be a principle. model, of course, was Euclidean geometry, which Thus, the French logician Peter Ramus (1515–72) from a set of only five postulates generated proposed three laws that principles had to an enormous number of theorems, many of conform to. They had to be universal, essential which were entirely unexpected. It was as if the and convertible, as in ‘All humans are rational postulates or principles were so fertile, so fecund, animals’. It was also believed that there were that they contained within them all sorts of different types of principles, such as common wonderful new truths. principles that pertained to all the sciences, and To many in the early modern period, the proper principles that were applicable only to newly discovered laws of nature seemed to one science. Some philosophers, such as some function in the very same way: they seemed to of the leading lights of the Berlin Academy in enable one to generate knowledge. For example, the 1740s and 1750s, argued that the ultimate Newton’s laws were used to ‘deduce’ Kepler’s laws principles of all the sciences were metaphysical, of planetary motions. And it was not only in the that is, principles about the nature of being itself.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 81 (far right) Indeed, some francophone philosophers claimed Portrait of Jean Le that, in fact, there is just one fundamental Rond d’Alembert by principle from which all other principles and Maurice Quentin de La Tour, musée de ultimately all the sciences can be derived. Louvre. Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83), Pierre-
REPRODUCED WITH Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759) and PERMISSION. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–80) each claimed to have found such a principle, though ironically their principles all differ. In his article on the ‘Elements of the Sciences’ in the massive Encyclopédie project of the French Philosophes, d’Alembert claims:
if we were able to observe without interruption the invisible chain that links all the objects of our knowledge, the elements of all sciences could be reduced to one unique principle, whose consequences would be the elements of each particular science.3
D’Alembert believed that this single foundational principle can be found a priori, that is, without the use of observation and experiment. Experiment, however, was absolutely central to the early moderns’ attempts to discover and establish principles. For example, in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals conjunction with a work that continues his (1751), Hume claims ‘we can only expect success, polemical strategy. It is entitled ‘Experiments and by following the experimental method’.4 That Notes about the Producibleness of Chymicall experimental method was the method of a Principles’. Boyle argued there that the chemists’ new movement in the study of nature called principles were ultimately reducible to more Experimental Philosophy, which first emerged fundamental principles, namely, the shape, in the nascent Royal Society of London in the size, motion and texture of the underlying tiny 1660s. The impact of this new approach to material bodies, or corpuscles. He called this science on the quest to establish principles was his Corpuscular Philosophy and he attempted profound. And perhaps the best way to illustrate to back up his claim with appeals to numerous this is through the experimental philosopher par chemical experiments. excellence, Robert Boyle (1627–91). Experimental philosophers were adamant Boyle is known today as the father of that, in order to understand the structure and chemistry, and that epithet provides a nice entrée behaviour of nature, we need to derive its into the centrality of principles to his thought. principles from observation and experiment. His most famous book The Sceptical Chymist Thus, they were opposed to those who eschewed (1661) is also something of a treasure — a first experiment and began with untested principles edition recently sold at auction for £362,500. and hypotheses. This is precisely what John In that work Boyle uses the term ‘principle’ Locke opposes in the opening book of his 270 times. His purpose in the book is to argue famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding against various theories of chemical principles (1690), which argues against the popular view in favour at the time, such as the Aristotelian that the mind at birth is furnished with innate four element theory and the Paracelsian tria principles. It is also what Newton opposed in his prima of salt, sulphur and mercury. The second, famous dictum Hypotheses non fingo— I feign 1680, edition of the book was published in no hypotheses.5
82 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Now, it can hardly have escaped the reader’s (left) notice that the term ‘principle’ referred to Brass cast by Carl a variety of things in the seventeenth and Reinhold Berch of an ivory medallion of eighteenth centuries. Laws of nature are very Robert Boyle made different to chemical principles, which, in turn, by Jean Cavalier in do not have much in common with normative 1690. claims such as ‘You should keep your promises’. PRIVATE COLLECTION Part of the challenge of understanding the idea of principles in this period is to make sense of the variety of uses or types of principles that were appealed to. It really does seem to be a family resemblance concept rather than something for which one can give a simple Canaletto (1697–1768), who perfected two-point definition. Nevertheless, there is a fairly natural perspective painting in his marvelous scenes division between principles that are things in the of Enlightenment Venice. In his painting of world, such as chemical principles, and principles St Mark’s Square below we can see the manner in that are propositions, such as those we find in which he has used two vanishing points to create morals or logic or geometry. a vista that cannot be seen in real life. A fascinating example of the use of principles If there was a true man of principles in in geometry is Brook Taylor’s New Principles the early modern period, it would have to be of Linear Perspective, which appeared in 1719. G.W. Leibniz (1646–1716). This extraordinary (below) Taylor was the first to set out the principles of polymath — co-inventor of the calculus, Piazza San Marco two-point perspective drawing. The work itself historian, philologist, diplomat, natural looking South and is technically demanding but its application is philosopher and metaphysician — was known West, by Canaletto, relatively intuitive and was already being applied above all for his Principle of Sufficient Reason. 1763. by architectural artists. Perhaps the high-water The principle claims ‘[T]here can be found USED WITH PERMISSION FROM LOS ANGELES mark of architectural painting in the eighteenth no fact that is true or existent, or any true COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. century is the work of the Venetian painter proposition, without there being a sufficient
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 83 reason for its being so and not otherwise’.6 A about his laws of nature and these laws were very second fundamental principle for Leibniz was quickly appropriated for other purposes. A case the Law of Non-Contradiction, namely ‘No in point is the role that they came to play in proposition and its negation can be true at the natural religion. The view that there is a natural same time’. Together these two principles for religion, constituted by principles, as distinct Leibniz were the basis of human reasoning. from revealed religion, emerged in the second The Principle of Sufficient Reason is an half of the seventeenth century. It is found, explanatory principle. It underlay Leibniz’s view for instance, in John Wilkins’ Of the Principles that this world is the best of all possible worlds. and Duties of Natural Religion of 1675. The After the devastating Lisbon earthquake in kernel of natural religion is a set of principles 1755, the French philosophe Voltaire (1694–1778) discoverable by human reason and available to famously took issue with Leibniz’s claim, everyone. These principles include such things mocking it in his satirical novel Candide. as ‘that there is a just and holy God, and a wise Providence, and a future State of Rewards Terrified, confounded, thoroughly and Punishments’.9 distraught, all bleeding and trembling, In the early eighteenth century, some Candide reflected to himself: ‘If this is the mathematically competent theologians who best of all possible worlds, then what must understood Newton’s achievement realised the others be like?’7 that his laws could be used as support for the
THUS, HUMANS SEEM TO HAVE FOUND A ROLE FOR PRINCIPLES IN AN ENORMOUS VARIETY OF DISCIPLINES IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.
Yet some of Leibniz’s other explanatory principles of natural religion. William Whiston principles fared much better. One extremely (1667–1752), for example, who succeeded popular explanatory principle, that Descartes Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics made famous and Leibniz promoted, was the at Cambridge — the chair recently held by view that all explanations of change in nature Stephen Hawking — argued that the principles should be analogous to the functioning of of natural religion were themselves derived machines: all explanations should only appeal from more fundamental principles, namely, to the shapes, sizes and motions of the parts Newton’s laws of motion and gravitational of the objects involved. This was at the core of attraction. The title of his book The Astronomical what was called the Mechanical Philosophy, Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal’d (1717) an approach to nature that was enormously says it all: the principles of natural religion are popular and highly controversial. It was largely founded on astronomical principles, namely, the on the basis of this explanatory principle, for principles discovered by Newton! Samuel Clarke example, that Descartes could claim that animals (1675–1729) makes a similar claim in the famous are merely very sophisticated machines, the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence, which was doctrine of the bête machine.8 This principle published in the same year as Whiston’s book. was also the primary motivation for Leibniz to Where Descartes had earlier based his laws on reject Newton’s claim about universal gravity. the immutability of God, Whiston and Clarke Gravity seemed to Leibniz and many others to argued for the existence of God from the laws. be a violation of the fundamental mechanical Thus, humans seem to have found a role nature of the natural world, a mysterious form for principles in an enormous variety of of action at a distance. He regarded it as an disciplines in the seventeenth and eighteenth occult quality that violates the principles of the centuries. They appear in everything from mechanical philosophy. natural philosophy and its sub-disciplines, to Now, while some had doubts about the nature theology and morals. And principles still have of Newtonian gravity, few had any reservations a central place in many disciplines today. For
84 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) some, the mark of a mature or developed science 1. René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Part 2, is the fact that it has clearly articulated and §§37 and 39, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols, ed. by J. Cottingham, well-supported principles. Nevertheless, the R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: quest for certain and necessary principles from Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1, pp. 240–2. which knowledge can be derived is no longer 2. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the universal in the natural sciences. Inductive Principles of Morals, ed. by T.L. Beauchamp reasoning now has a very prominent and (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). secure place in the way in which we generate 3. D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond and Jean de La Chapelle, ‘Elements of the Sciences’, in knowledge. Moreover, the grip of the Euclidean The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert model has significantly weakened. Looking back Collaborative Translation Project, trans. by at the early modern period, I believe, there is a Lauren Yoder (Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, principled reason why we can say that that was University of Michigan Library, 2011)
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 85 » CHRIS ANDREWS
(above) Anzac Bridge, Sydney.
PHOTO: CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY.
86 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Two Bridges
A fish plops back into the river. A woman on the bridge who kisses each slice of bread before she sends it spinning away through the gnatty air. The rake is set at a new angle in its rain-pocked bunker, and the cars idle over the incoming tide. I believe what the scrum master says: the future belongs to the agile.
I’m just not sure about agile: good. A jackhammer jars its backhoe arm. A wet demolition saw cuts in. A crumpled youth interminably tuning his ukulele beside the cash machine, preparing to sing for his ibuprofen is perhaps the still middle-point of this ripping up and down and out to fill the skips.
What if it’s more agile to outsource the enforcement of paralysis? A man on the railway bridge who counts rolls of steel. A student of English as a third language eventually inferring that Ikn means I think. What carbs escape this ibis probing will be discovered when brightness falls and the netways of ratwork go live.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 87 Ex Libris
The Fellows’ Library of the Australian Academy of the Humanities contains a wide collection of modern and historical publications reflecting the authoritative and richly diverse output of humanities scholars in Australia and internationally. Apart from volumes subsidised by the Academy’s Publication Subsidy Scheme, many book publications by, or about, Fellows have been donated to the Academy over the years. The Academy welcomes the following recently released books into the Fellows’ Library:
Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin and John G. Butcher and Luxury: A Rich History Lyndel V. Prott (eds) R.E. Elson (Oxford: Oxford University Cultural Property and Sovereignty and the Sea: Press, 2016) Contested Ownership: How Indonesia Became an *Donated by The Trafficking of Archipelagic State Peter McNeil faha Artefacts and the Quest (Singapore: NUS Press, 2017) for Restitution *Donated by (London and New York: John G. Butcher faha and Routledge, 2017) R.E. Elson faha *Donated by Lyndel V. Prott faha
88 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Publications by, or about, our Fellows are always sought for the Academy Fellows Collection. Such generous gifts help the library to remain a relevant and up-to-date repository for humanities research.
Elizabeth Minchin and William Blackstone Jaynie Anderson, Christopher R. Heather Jackson (eds) Commentaries on the Marshall and Andrew Yip (eds) Text and the Material Laws of England (4 vols), The Legacies of World: Essays in Honour Wilfrid Prest, general Bernard Smith: Essays on of Graeme Clarke editor Australian Art, History (Uppsala: Astrom Editions, (Oxford: Oxford University and Cultural Politics 2017) Press, 2016) (Sydney: Power Publications, *Donated by Elizabeth *Donated by 2016) Minchin faha and Heather Wilfrid Prest fassa faha *Donated by Jackson fsa faha Jaynie Anderson faha
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 89 The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)