ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2 , No. 1, 2006
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks go first and foremost to the contributors and the referees. This issue exists be- cause of the quality and range of contributions and the willingness of the contributors to engage with feedback and revise their work. The individuals who refereed the essays did so on tight timelines generously offering constructive responses, suggestions and insights. I am very grateful for their collaboration in the process of putting together this issue. I would also like to thank the national executive of ACRAWSA for supporting this issue and the editing process. I would like to especially thank Jane Haggis for her timely suggestions and Damien Riggs for developing the templates for the journal, his technical expertise and responding instantly to all moments of panic in the process of preparing the copy for publication. I would also like to thank Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Fiona Nicoll for their support and advice.
Maryrose Casey
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ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006
WHITENESS & THE HORIZONS OF RACE
MARYROSE CASEY
The ACRAWSA Journal is a forum for the gated. In Britain critical race and white- growing network of researchers who , as ness studies are primarily focused on the ACRAWSA website states : postcolonial migrations to Britain particu- larly the reaction to, and the framing of, ‘recognise that whiteness operates immigration by those from former colo- through institutions, ideology and identity nies not usually included within the des- formation to secure political, legal and ignation ‘white’. In Australia, critical writ- economic privileges for white people as ings engage with migration, Indigenous a collective leaving many Indigenous dispossession and whiteness. The acts of and other people racialised as 'non white' collectively disadvantaged and colonisation and dispossession and their dispossessed of material, cultural and in- traces in the present are a primary focus tellectual resources’. of the research and scholarship.
This whiteness is the invisible norm that is The first issue of this journal produced by implicit in constructions of identities, rep- ACRAWSA in 2005 featured important resentations, subjectivities nationalisms and well-known contributors to the field and legal systems (Allen 1994; Dyer 1997; of critical race and whiteness studies. Frankenberg 1993). The scholarship sup- The current issue is focused on new and ported and promoted by ACRAWSA fo- emerging voices in the field of critical cuses on a number of key elements. race and whiteness studies. The essays These include recognition and respect are drawn from papers presented at the for the existence and continuing rights Whiteness and the Horizons of Race con- derived from indigenous sovereignties in ference in Brisbane in December 2005. Australia and elsewhere, and the task of critically investigating, exposing and Moreton-Robinson, as convener of the challenging the construction and main- conference, put out a call for papers tenance of hierarchies of race through arguing that the practices of white privilege. ‘an academic conference on the his- As Aileen Moreton-Robinson has argued torical, social, political, cultural, eco- so persuasively, the focus of Australian nomic and discursive construction of race and whiteness can make an impor- critical race and whiteness studies ex- tant contribution to broader public de- tends the critical engagement prac- bates, providing the opportunity to ex- ticed in British and American studies (viii). amine popular understandings of race In America, critical race and whiteness and whiteness evaluating the ways in scholarship effectively locates the field which current and historical debates are primarily in relation to the development and have taken shape’ (Horizons of and practices of the enslavement of Af- Race 2005a). ricans within the American continent and to a lesser extent with immigration o This call was in the context of her argu- different ethnic groups. The dispossession ment that the discourses of Race and of Native Americans and the practices Whiteness are : of colonisation tend to be uninterro-
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inextricably connected to the formation race and whiteness studies being ac- and politics of modern nation states and tively created within academia . the communities which inhabit their terri- tories shaping identity, representation, The number of publications engaging subjectivity, nationalism and institutions with whiteness in Australia is growing, led such as the law. by publications such as Moreton- As Moreton-Robinson and the organising Robinson’s monograph Talkin’ Up to the committee, including Fiona Nicoll and White Woman (2000) and her edited myself hoped, the conference was an collection of essays from a range of interdisciplinary project with contribu- academics in the field, Whitening Race tions from sociologists, social anthro- (2004). Other publications over the last pologists, political scientists, psycholo- few of years include books such War- gists, economists, literary scholars, legal wick Anderson’s The Cultivation of scholars, media scholars, philosophers, Whiteness: science, health and racial historians, and scholars from wide rang- destiny in Australia (MUP, 2005), Tanya ing fields such as performance, feminist, Dalziell’s Settler Romances and the Aus- Indigenous, multicultural, Australian and tralian Girl (UWA Press, 2004). There are also multiple examples of essays by Aus- cultural studies. The keynote speakers were Professor David Roedigger, Dr tralians engaging in whiteness studies Wendy Brady, Dr Suvendrini Perera and included in international publications Professor Marilyn Lake. The numerous such as Changing Law: rights regulation panel sessions included explorations of and reconciliation (Ashgate, 2005) and the dynamic relationship between Critics and Writers Speak: revisioning whiteness and the law, the politics of post-colonial studies (Lexington Books, performativity, the boundaries of toler- 2006). Further extending the field are ance, history and historiography, fic- forthcoming books, such as Damien tional narratives, multiculturalism, the Riggs’ Taking up the Challenge: critical framing of the domestic, terrorism and whiteness studies and indigenous Sover- the war on terror, religion and compas- eignty , and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s sion, the visual and performing arts (Hori- collection on Indigenous sovereignty. zons of Race 2005b). Supporting these there are journals such
as the ACRAWSA Journal and Border- The conference was remarkable for a lands . number of reasons. Not the least of which were the range of disciplines en- Conferences are also playing an impor- gaged in direct dialogue and ex- tant role in developing and supporting change. Another remarkable feature of the field with published outcomes of the conference was the supportive and conference proceedings such as Plac- open atmosphere that gave the pro- ing Race and Localising Whiteness (Flin- ceedings a sense of community and ders University, 2004) edited by Susanne freedom that supported social and cul- Schech and Ben Wadham. tural exchange as well as academic ar- gument and debate. Another striking The number of conferences and semi- feature of the conference was the high nars focused on whiteness studies is in- level of involvement from post-graduate creasing. This year there are a number of students and early career researchers. In conferences focusing on the critical some ways the involvement of such high framework of whiteness including the numbers of new and emerging scholars Borderpolitics of Whiteness Conference reflects the increasing intellectual space to be held in Sydney, December 11-13, for research and scholarship in critical and Historicising Whiteness, to be held in
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Melbourne, November 22-24. The Bor- that strengthen and maintain white- derpolitics of Whiteness Conference is nesses as a justification for colonising an ACRAWSA event. The keynote and racist actions. Fiona Nicoll in her edi- speakers will include Professor Aileen torial of the inaugural issue of the Moreton-Robinson, Professor of Indige- ACRAWSA journal identified a challenge nous Studies at Queensland University of facing Australian critics. She wrote that Technology, Professor David Theo Gold- “we need to register an important shift in berg, Director, University of California the meanings attached to ‘whiteness’, Humanities Research Institute, Professor ‘race’ and ‘racism’ under John How- Cheryl Harris, Law, University of Califor- ard’s prime ministership” (1) This is a chal- nia, Los Angeles and Associate Professor lenge with which many of the essays in Joseph Pugliese, Critical and Cultural this issue directly engage. The contribu- Studies, Macquarie University. tors essays engage with both the broader issues of whiteness historically Further developing and supporting the and the immediate shifts in the recent growing interest in whiteness studies past whilst focusing on specific expres- there are courses at universities that fo- sions and practices of whiteness. cus on critical race and whiteness stud- ies such as those taught by Damien Satoshi Mizutani is an Assistant Professor Riggs at the University of South Australia at the Institute for Language and Cul- and Jane Carey at the University of Mel- ture, Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan). bourne. Mizutani is currently rewriting his doctoral dissertation into a book, provisionally ti- In 2003 ‘whiteness’ as a study had be- tled Boundaries of Whiteness: Racial and gun to achieve sufficient profile to the Class Ambiguities in Late British India, extent that it was acknowledged in the 1858-1930 for Oxford University Press. popular press with quotes from academ- Drawing on and extending the research ics such as Ghassan Hage under titles for his dissertation and book interrogat- such as ‘Middle class blanches at white ing whiteness in the practices of late Co- studies growth’ (Lane 3). At the same lonial India, his essay explores the prob- time the all too prevalent misreadings of lems posed to the British administration whiteness studies as propagating a of India by European and Euro-Asian white ethnicity was mocked in the press pauperism. Mizutani breaks new ground by journalists who played on the word with this work by examining the hierar- whiteness and the potential meanings of chies of whiteness within colonial Indian its critique (Anonymous; Lane). As the society and the steps taken to negotiate war on terror continues to escalate, it is and camouflage types of whiteness that interesting that at present there are no weaken the imperial myths. such popular acknowledgements or en- gagements with critical race and white- Based on archival research and framed ness theory, however negatively. by critical theories of colonialism and whiteness, he demonstrates how a Within a country deeply implicated in “domiciled” class of working class whites the global war on terror and with inter- and Europeans with Asian heritage per- nal policies and practices that isolate sistently unsettled the ideological work and vilify ‘non-white’ refugees and In- of British colonialism by countering the digenous Australians, a journal such as mythical ideal of bourgeois white mas- the ACRAWSA journal is a potential fo- culinity. The visible presence of these rum to document and interrogate the people outside the desired stereotype implications and premises of practices called into question the myths of Euro-
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pean “civilisation” and “progress” Connellan describes and analyses spe- through which the British justified their cific architectural spaces offering in- presence and rule in India. After investi- sights into how the problematic confla- gating laws, institutions and practices tion between whiteness and light and its developed to manage the “problem” of associated mythologies of goodness European pauperism, the paper con- and cleanliness is part of the construc- cludes with reflections on how the history tion and maintenance of white privilege. of this minority within British and post- colonial India complicates ahistorical In the fourth essay, Rob Garbutt en- accounts of social and psychological gages with the foundational and always liminality as well as post-colonial theories problematic issue in Australia of being of hybridity reliant on an analytical dis- local, of belonging. Garbutt is a PhD tinction between a metropolitan centre candidate with the Centre for Cultural and a colonised periphery. Diversity and Social Justice at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South The next essay by Victoria Sentas, a PhD Wales. In ‘White “Autochthony”’, Gar- candidate in the Department of Crimi- butt examines western conceptualisa- nology at Monash University, engages tions of autochthony, the classic Greek with the present in her examination of concept ‘of being born of the earth it- counter terrorism policing and the ways self’. He argues that this concept is a in which this policing is part of a long useful frame for understanding aspects term investment in the racial/colonial of the settler Australian idea of “being a state. In the process, her article ‘Counter local”. Garbutt persuasively demon- Terrorism Policing - Investing in the Racial strates the implicit violence both literal State’ offers an important theoretical and epistemic that is the corollary of uni- and political analysis of current Austra- fying myths of autochthony and plots lian policing strategies in the ‘war the specific and unusual path of white against terror’. settlers claiming ‘native’ status that has been part of Australian colonial history. In ‘White Spaces’, Kathleen Connellan His discussion and conclusions are par- investigates the colour 'white' within the ticularly important in the context of visual arts and the architecture and de- scenes such as those that surrounded sign within the built environment. Con- the Cronulla riots with banners and T- nellan, a Lecturer in design, craft and art shirts proclaiming ‘respect locals or piss history and theory at the South Austra- off’. lian School of Art at the University of South Australia, explores the ‘invisible’, In an exploration of the transitions and unacknowledged prevalence of white- deployments of different types of mas- ness in public and private space expos- culinity, Katherine Bode interrogates the ing implications and implicit beliefs. myths of Anglo-Celtic Australian mascu- linity from a different perspective in her White walls, white surfaces and white essay ‘Aussie Battler in Crisis? Shifting expanses are designed to place all other Constructions of White Australian Mascu- colours into sharp contrast. The smooth- linity and National Identity’. Katherine ness of these white surfaces also shows Bode completed her PhD in 2005 and up texture and variation; the sameness will take up the Colin and Margaret of white in design is positioned as a basis for designed interiors. White in this sense Roderick Postdoctoral Research Fellow- becomes the one upright against which ship at James Cook University in 2007. all else is peripheral’. After documenting ‘the manifestation of the ‘man in crisis’ in current political and
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popular debates’, Bode considers the sive but underpinned by an adherence ways in which these debates are ex- to a teleology of Australian nationality pressed, affirmed and sometimes trans- that is Anglocentric in its outlook’. She formed within contemporary Australian provides a revealing analysis of media women’s fiction. She argues that in ‘the reports and government commentary, popular and political arenas, the identi- of the ways in which religion is embed- ties of the Aussie battler and the man in ded in the purported secular discourse crisis currently exist in tension’. However, of Australian national identity which fur- despite these tensions and the reconfig- ther entrenches the racialised nature of urings of Australian masculine identities ‘Australia’ as ‘white’. within these tensions, she concludes that ‘contemporary Australian women’s fic- tions continue to imagine Australian Farid Farid engages with contemporary identity in terms of whiteness’. Australian political rhetoric from a differ- ent perspective as he seeks to trace the Holly Randell-Moon engages specifically manner in which whiteness attempts to with Howard’s rhetoric as she argues define ‘Arab’ and Muslim subjects, and that “the articulation of whiteness as a allow or disallow voice and rights to moral homogeneity comprising ‘com- these subjects in the context of the post- mon’ Judeo-Christian values has con- September 11 ‘war against terrorism’. tributed to the formation and represen- Drawing on Said’s call to ‘let the Egyp- tation of Australian national identity as tian speak for himself’ Farid details the unproblematically Anglo-Celtic”. Ran- experiences of those of ‘Middle Eastern dell-Moon is a Doctoral candidate in appearance’ and how they came to be Critical and Cultural Studies at Mac- signified as the latest others along the quarie University, Sydney. In ‘Common continuum of cultural and racial de- values’: whiteness, Christianity, asylum monisations that have been inherent in seekers and the Howard government’, Australia’s racial history’. Farid Farid is a Randell-Moon examines the ways in PhD candidate with the Centre for Cul- which Howard’s repeated framing of a tural Research, at the University of West- set of so-called Christian values as uni- ern Sydney. Using Said’s critique of orien- versal and Australian reproduces and talism as the point of comparison, Farid protects white privilege and hegemony argues that the ‘discursive and political while it reproduces the illusion of a ra- stratification of racialised others is not a cially unmarked subject through the dis- new phenomenon and is certainly not association from the specific context. unique in the Australian context of state She examines government responses to multiculturalism’. media reports of asylum seekers convert- ing to Christianity and demonstrates how Events such as the Tampa affair, the the ‘discursive association between ‘War on Terror’ and the incarceration of whiteness and Australianness is pro- Cornelia Rau set the context for duced as a naturalised norm’. Jeanette Krongold’s argument that
Randell-Moon traces the ways in which a breach of trust has occurred within by aligning these so called Australian Australian society between the stake- holders of multiculturalism, whereby the and Christian values with a discourse of rhetoric and cultural politics of the gov- secular, Western nations, the Howard ernment of the day have promoted em- Government ‘makes invisible a religiously phasis on a nationalism that is antitheti- inflected cultural agenda that presents cal to the pluralistic dynamics of a multi- Australian values as ‘broad’ and inclu- cultural society, and foster intolerance.
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Krongold approaches the discourse on relatively new to the academy but they Australian multiculturalism at the turn of are already contributing in an important the twenty-first century as conflicted, way. and analyses how this conflic t might be resolved. In ‘A Breach of Trust: The Viti- References ated Discourse of Multiculturalism at The Turn of the Twenty-First Century’, Kron- ACRAWSA Home Page gold, a PhD candidate with the De- http://www.acrawsa.org.au/ partment of History at the University of Allen, T. 1994. The Invention o the White Melbourne, explores Race, London & New York: Verso.
the argument between those that ad- Anonymous. 2003. Review – Institute of here to a core/periphery functionally as- Public Affairs , Vol 55, Iss 3, 40 similationist definition of multiculturalism Dyer, R. 1997. White , London: Routledge. (emphasising otherness) and those that Frankenberg, R. 1993. White Women, urge a re-definition of the term to em- Race Matters , London & New York: phasise notions of alterity (de- Routledge. emphasising otherness) and hybridity Horizons of Race, 2005a. Conference through some recent historical meta- Flyer. phors of cultural racism. Horizons of Race. 2005b. Conference
Program She concludes by suggesting that what Lane, Bernard. 2003. ‘Middle class is needed is ‘public policy with a code blanches at white studies growth’, of ethics or politics of civility to facilitate Weekend Australian June 28, 3. a hybridising society’. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. 2004. ‘Pref-
ace’ in Whitening Race , (ed) Aileen These essays interrogate the meanings, Moreton-Robinson, Canberra: Aborigi- implications and histories of discrimina- nal Studies Press, vii-ix. tory practices that depend on the nor- Nicoll, Fiona. 2005. “Editorial’ in mativity of whiteness to maintain their ACRAWSA Vol 1., 1-7. legitimacy. Each voice in this issue is
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ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2 , No. 1, 2006
AUSSIE BATTLER IN CRISIS? SHIFTING CONSTRUCTIONS OF WHITE AUSTRALIAN MASCULINITY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
KATHERINE BODE
Abstract lian identity in ways that depart from the longstanding affiliation of nationhood with masculinity. Yet despite their recon- In the last decade, the white ‘man in figuration of gender, these contempo- crisis’ – a prominent figure in American rary Australian women’s fictions continue society – has entered the Australian cul- to imagine Australian identity in terms of tural conscious, and now begins to chal- whiteness. lenge the position of the ‘Aussie battler’ as the dominant version of Australian Introduction masculinity. This paper investigates the implications of this shift for Australian na- tional identity – a construction historically Over the last decade, the white male and contemporaneously tied to white victim, or the ‘man in crisis’ – a promi- male identity – by exploring the manifes- nent figure in American society – has tation of the ‘man in crisis’ in current po- entered the Australian cultural con- litical and popular debates, before mov- scious, and now begins to challenge the ing to consider the ways in which these position of the ‘Aussie battler’ as the debates emerge and are affirmed and hegemonic construction of Australian transformed in contemporary Australian masculinity. This shift has important impli- women’s fiction. cations for national identity, for as R.W. Connell asserts, “It is by now a familiar Specifically, I argue that in the popular observation that notions of Australian and political arenas, the identities of the identity have been almost entirely con- Aussie battler and the man in crisis cur- structed around images of [white] men” rently exist in tension. Some contempo- (“Introduction” 9). rary Australian women’s fictions, like Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect , resolve This paper investigates this shift, paying this conflict by privileging of the man in particular attention to its manifestation in crisis to the exclusion of the Aussie bat- current political and popular debates, tler. Although such narratives appear to before moving to consider the ways in offer a more sensitive and emotional which these debates emerge and are model of masculinity, closer analysis affirmed and transformed in contempo- evinces the sexist, racist and homopho- rary Australian women’s fiction. Although bic undertones of this emerging phe- this conjunction of Australian masculinity, nomenon within Australian fiction and national politics and women’s fiction is society. Other contemporary Australian unusual in many respects, the treatment women’s fictions, such as Fiona Capp’s of masculinity in these arenas is at times Last of the Sane Days and Sarah Myles’s remarkably similar, and at others signifi- Transplanted , depict and engage with cantly different, and thus offers a useful both the man in crisis and the Aussie matrix for gauging and unpacking con- battler to produce a refiguring of Austra- temporary gender discourses. The use of
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women’s fiction as a source in such de- women’s fictions continue to imagine bates also permits the inclusion of a per- Australian identity in terms of whiteness. spective on white Australian masculinity Although they are contradictory in many (and for that matter, on national identity ways, both the Aussie battler and the and politics) seldom considered: that of man in crisis are regularly evoked in dis- women. For, to expand Connell’s state- cussions of Australian politics and na- ment, in Australia white men have over- tional identity. In Ozwords , the Australian whelmingly constituted not only the fig- National University’s online dictionary of ures in, but the commentators on, na- Australian words, Frederick Ludowyk tional identity. Concurrently, an analysis identifies the Aussie battler as the central of the distinctions and associations be- icon of Australian masculinity in the tween the white male victim within Aus- twentieth-century. Moreover, he insists tralian national politics and contempo- that, although the term has had differ- rary women’s writing, and between the ent inflections, 1 the Aussie battler at the Australian and North American contexts, beginning of the twenty-first century is challenges a conception of whiteness as still the person of Henry Lawson’s tradi- monolithic and enables an insight into its tion, a man who “with few natural ad- various national and international trans- vantages, works doggedly and with little lations and translocations. reward, who struggles hard for a liveli- hood, and who displays enormous By discussing current constructions of courage in so doing” (7). 2 Ludowyk over- white Australian masculinity, especially in looks one important characteristic of the relation to the political personas of John battler in this definition: his whiteness. Howard and Mark Latham, I will argue Relatedly, Mary O’Dowd asserts that this that in popular and political debate, the stereotype of Australian masculinity identities of the Aussie battler and the arose from the construction of Australia man in crisis currently exist in tension. itself as “an enemy, a land to be con- Some contemporary Australian women’s quered and transformed” (4) – an fictions resolve this conflict by privileging imaginary that occluded “the real con- of the man in crisis to the exclusion of flict” between settlers and Indigenous the Aussie battler. Although such narra- people (1). tives may seem to offer a more sensitive and emotional model of masculinity, an Accordingly, the origins of the Aussie analysis of Jillian Watkinson’s The Archi- battler can be located in the familiar tect evinces the sexist, racist and homo- narratives and images of explorers, phobic undertones of this emerging colonists and farmers doing battle with phenomenon within Australian fiction drought, heat and distance. The notion and society. Other contemporary Aus- of the land as the primary site of the bat- tralian women’s fictions, like Fiona tler’s struggle has continued, despite the Capp’s Last of the Sane Days and Sarah fact that relatively few Australians now Myles’s Transplanted , depict and en- live in the bush. The perpetuation of this gage with both the man in crisis and the narrative is facilitated by a slight shift in Aussie battler to produce a refiguring of the conception of land and the battle: Australian identity in ways that depart today, the banks are often a principal from the longstanding affiliation of na- adversary, though this occurs because tionhood with masculinity. the battler has lost the contest with the environment (or with interest rates) and Yet despite their reconfiguration of gen- is threatened with losing his land. der, these contemporary Australian
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The continuing importance of the Aussie effect (and indeed, the existence) of this battler to Australian identity is evident in crisis has been somewhat divided, the the frequency of references to this figure familiarity with which such ideas are in public and political debates. Although employed testifies to their entry into Aus- predominantly used to describe men – tralian cultural consciousness. particularly working-class men, sporting ‘heroes’ and farmers – the term is also Increasingly, proclamations of a crisis in employed in a number of figurative masculinity are occurring in the context ways. ‘Aussie battler’ is used by politi- of depictions of white male bodily harm. cians and political commentators from This is evident, for example, in an article across the domestic spectrum to dem- entitled “Mothers must tell the truth,” onstrate awareness of the difficulties published in the Australian March 2005, faced by ‘ordinary’ Australians, and in which Janet Albrechtsen attacks even to describe Australia’s relationship women who commit “paternity fraud.” to the international community. 3 The This occurs when women conceive chil- prevalence and variety of references to dren with men other than their partners the Aussie battler in political discourse and these partners consequently sup- aptly demonstrates the way in which port children not biologically their own. conceptions of white masculinity con- tinue to organise and define Australian According to Albrechtsen, this “dreadful national identity. deception” creates “a web that entraps more men … than we may care to be- While the icon of the battler remains lieve.” Instead of allowing women to “go central, the contradictory discourse of a about their deceit without penalty,” she crisis in masculinity is increasingly promi- argues that the “victims” of such deceit nent in public and political debates should receive “recompense for ex- about the position of men in contempo- penses … incurred and for the pain and rary society. Two themes dominate such suffering … endured” (15). Her claims of discussions: men no longer have access male victimisation are accompanied by to, or are unable to fulfil, a masculine a drawing of a naked white man being role; and men are emotionally discon- constrained by the thorn-covered stem nected from one another. Conse- of a rose as he is consumed, head first, quently, male relationships, particularly by this flower. Male damage is also de- those between fathers and sons, are im- picted in the illustration that accompa- poverished. Such claims underlie the re- nies a similar article by John Hirst, pub- cent rise in Fathers’ Associations and the lished two days earlier in the same related perception of the Family Court newspaper. Entitled “Court rule offensive as a site of male oppression. The notion to families,” but with the by-line, “No- of a crisis in masculinity was also a sig- fault divorce tends to unfairly target per- nificant component of Mark Latham’s fectly decent fathers,” the illustration leadership campaign for the last federal depicts a “perfectly decent” white fa- election, specifically his assertions re- ther being beaten across the face by garding the under-achievement of boys the female figure of justice (7). in schools and his association of this trend with a lack of appropriate male This man in crisis differs from the tradi- role-models. The resonance such ideas tional icon of the Aussie battler in a fun- attained with the community is evident damental way. In the battler’s life of in the prominence of articles debating hardship and struggle, only one thing is the nature and impact of this crisis in never in doubt – his masculinity; indeed masculinity. 4 Although opinion on the the more he struggles, the more his
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masculinity is affirmed. In contrast, the the emerging Australian man in crisis man in crisis is feminised by the chal- and the established discourse of male lenges he faces, a feminisation that is victimisation prevalent in American me- particularly evident in illustrations of bod- dia and culture. Although some com- ily harm. To put this another way, mentators have identified this American whereas the battler “refuses to admit discourse as evidence of the challenge defeat in the face of adversity” (“Bat- posed to male power by a focus on tler,” def. 1), the assertions of victimisa- masculinity and whiteness as topics of tion and disempowerment that charac- discussion and critique, 5 in many recent terise the discourse of masculinity crisis analyses the “white male victim” is seen represent a call for immediate interven- as “an attempt by white men to respond tion and assistance: they signify a belief, to and regroup in the face of particular in other words, that white men face im- social and economic challenges” since minent disaster and need the support of the 1960s (Savran 5). Sally Robinson, for public policy to overcome it. instance, argues that the “dominance of … liberationist rhetoric” ( Marked 7) in In this sense, the emergence of a dis- contemporary American society means course of masculinity crisis in Australia that claims of victimisation and disem- might be taken as evidence of the posi- powerment have become a recognised tive and politically productive challenge strategy for asserting rights. that feminism (and other identity-based liberationist approaches) have posed to Significantly, while white men lack re- traditional enactments of male power; course to social inequalities when claim- as evidence, in other words, that white ing victimisation, “[b]odily wounds have male hegemony is finally collapsing. a persuasive power that does not de- However, this interpretation overlooks pend on the social; and images of the ways in which both identities func- men’s bodies at risk work to legitimise a tion to protect white masculinity from discourse that often veers off into the criticism. This function is quite clear in apolitical and asocial” (“Men’s” 208). In relation to the Aussie battler. As well as other words, representations of providing proof of masculinity, the narra- wounded men provide proof of white tive of the battle allows challenges male claims of victimisation and disem- posed to white male hegemony by powerment, at the same time as this fo- changing economic conditions, women cus on individual bodies in pain con- and racial minorities to be subsumed ceals the political, social and institutional into the dominant struggle with the land: privileges still accorded such subjects. challenges to white men’s cultural and Thus, Robinson argues that the cultural economic priority are therefore con- prominence and visibility of wounded structed as part of the struggle that sup- men in American society “functions as a ports, constitutes and proves white Aus- strategy through which white men nego- tralian masculinity. Not only do these tiate the widespread critique of their other battles consequently diminish in power and privilege” ( Marked 6). Simi- importance, they are framed in relation larly, although the idea of a crisis in to, and thereby function in support of, masculinity has attracted both support- the dominant construction of the white ers and detractors in Australia, when Australian man as battler. presented in this context of male bodily harm, such claims are overwhelmingly To understand how proclamations of a informed by a belief in the actuality of crisis in masculinity do the same, it is use- such a crisis, and the need for a com- ful to note the resemblance between
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mensurate defence of white men’s enti- ity as increasingly globalised and ho- tlements. mogenised, 7 it simultaneously suggests a hierarchy within the West: as well as non- However, arguing that the man in crisis Western conceptions of masculinity be- and the Aussie battler both function to ing subsumed by Western constructs, support male power does not explain American discourses of masculinity and the recent emergence of the discourse nationhood seem to be gaining cultural of masculinity crisis, and its associated priority over Australian ones. This ac- claims of male rights and victimisation, in count, however, represents too one-side Australia. Periods in both Australian and and simplistic a view of how discourses American history – typically those char- of whiteness and masculinity are trans- acterised by changes in labour, gender located and translated from one coun- and racial relations – have been experi- try to another. enced and theorised in terms of a crisis in masculinity. 6 Yet although masculinity Rather than a notion of the American has been perceived as threatened dur- cultural juggernaut infringing on and ing such times, it is only in the current pe- overwhelming a traditional (though of riod that white men have been seen as course, not a native) Australian con- deliberately and maliciously targeted, struction of white masculinity, I would attacked and disadvantaged. In this suggest a leaching of the discourse of sense, and as Robinson argues, the fig- masculinity crisis into Australia. This ure of the victimised and disempowered leaching is enabled by a change, and white man signals a new conception of hence, a receptivity in Australia to a racial and gender relations, one that is new model of white male hegemony. at least partly common to Australia and Many recent debates have made the America. Yet at the same time, there is a Aussie battler’s relationship with the land significant temporal difference in the more difficult to sustain. Native title has emergence of this discourse of male been (nominally) awarded and refugees disempowerment between the two are seen as invading Australian shores. countries: although prevalent in America Environmental debates have likewise since the 1960s, it is only since the mid- disrupted the myth of white men’s rights 1990s that the situation of white Austra- over the land. Potentially, the accep- lian men has been consistently under- tance and support given by Australia’s stood and presented in this way. government to the idea that the West is engaged in a war against terror also Given that identity-based liberationist creates a fertile ground for the idea that movements have had a similar influence white men are in crisis. on social relations and rhetoric in Austra- lia as in America, this is a curious diver- Significantly, this notion of terror simulta- gence. Why, then, have claims of male neously builds upon and intensifies ear- victimisation and disempowerment only lier challenges to the battler mythology: recently appeared in Australia? The like Indigenous Australians and refugees, emergence of such claims could be ex- terrorists are seen as having ‘invaded’ plained as simply another manifestation Australian soil, threatening to destroy our of Australia’s increasing economic, mili- (read white men’s) way of life. The im- tary, political and cultural turn to Amer- age that became definitive of the Cro- ica. Accordingly, while the entry of the nulla race riots – of the young white man in crisis into Australian political and man, draped in an Australian flag with popular debates supports Connell’s the slogan, “We grew here, you flew identification of contemporary masculin- here,” painted on his body (Hudson) –
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signifies a particularly blatant symbol of Latham who, given his background, this juxtaposition of whiteness, masculin- represents a far more plausible em- ity, self-proclaimed suffering and na- bodiment of the Aussie battler than tionalism. The credence given to the Howard. idea that the rights of white Australian men have been overwhelmed by the The resulting leadership campaign was claims of women and other races dis- characterised by both politicians’ en- rupts the dominant battle narrative un- gagement with and negotiation of the derlying and enabling hegemonic con- rhetorical strategies of the Aussie battler, structions of white Australian masculinity. but also of the discourse of masculinity In this context, it is possible that the trope crisis. On the one hand, Latham’s gen- of male damage prevalent in American eral political approach was designed to media and culture offers a more reliable appeal to the battler mentality. way of upholding white male power and privilege. That is to say, white male Curious in Latham’s politics is the focus struggle is more effectively individualised on power in itself rather than on what in the current Australian political and power enables one to do. … What public climate by association with bodily [Latham] is against is the concentration of power in itself, not the uses to which pain rather than with the land. concentrated power is put. Wherever power is concentrated in society, he An effective and relevant way of con- says, we have to be anti-establishment. ceptualising this leaching of the man in (Brett 14) crisis into contemporary Australia society is in relation to the political identities pro- Latham’s approach is curious only if jected by John Howard and Mark considered apart from the tradition of Latham in the lead up to the last federal the Aussie battler. At the same time, and election. Howard’s “improbably success- as mentioned above, Latham explicitly ful self-portrayal as a battler, a man who affiliated himself with the discourse of rejoices in the virtues of ‘mateship,’ a masculinity crisis. For instance, in a major representative of the average Aussie” speech at the National Press Club he (Rundle 7), has been widely acknowl- claimed that “our boys are suffering edged. 8 As Judith Brett notes, Howard from a crisis in masculinity. As blue-collar has worked hard to identify himself with muscle jobs have declined, their identity the popular vernacular nationalism of and relationships have become blurred the Australian legend, appearing promi- and confused” (“Speech” 25). Howard nently at the funerals of various bearers continued to align himself with the Aus- of that legend – Don Bradman, Alec sie battler, albeit sometimes “scuttling Campbell (the last Gallipoli veteran) back to the Liberal’s more usual terrain and most recently Slim Dusty …. And of responsible respectability to moralise appearing whenever possible at sport- about men who swing punches” (Brett ing and military events and commemo- 7). Nevertheless, Latham’s use of the rations. (5) rhetoric of masculinity crisis – particularly his focus on the problems faced by boys This affiliation is often identified as a sig- – forced Howard simultaneously to en- nificant factor in his surprising win in the gage with this discourse through policy 1996 federal election, as well as his con- proposals and funding promises. 9 tinuing, and otherwise baffling, popular- ity with working-class Australians. Yet As the discourses surrounding the 2004 previous to the last election, Howard’s Federal election help demonstrate, the political image was threatened by entry of the man in crisis into Australia
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political debates manifests a transforma- The resonance and reach of this dis- tion in notions of Australian masculinity – course of white male victimisation and one that is often assumed in public de- disempowerment is apparent in its bate to indicate the introduction of a emergence in an entirely different more sensitive, emotionally-aware and - arena: contemporary Australian responsive masculine identity. Yet when women’s fiction. Especially since the late conceptualised in terms of Howard and 1990s, an emerging group of Australian Latham, neither the Aussie battler nor women writers have produced novels the man in crisis emerges as appealing that centralise not only male characters, in terms of a move towards equity and but their damaged bodies, in ways that equality in Australia’s politics and na- specifically evoke the notion of a crisis in tional identity. Howard’s longstanding masculinity circulating in popular and identification with the Aussie battler is political arenas. 10 Whereas some of mirrored in his policies, which have long these novels portray white masculinity in demonstrated the disdain for women, different ways to the political and popu- Indigenous peoples and the environ- lar realm, others reproduce the recu- ment that underlies and informs the his- perative strategies associated with the tory and nature of this archetypal model popular portrayal of the man in crisis. This of Australian masculinity. And although latter outcome is particularly evident in Latham might by some have seemed to Jillian Watkinson’s novel The Architect , embody a more progressive and liberal which consistently depicts its protagonist social and economic approach, his re- Jules in ways that manifest the two cent autobiography suggests the ego- dominant themes characterising the tism and spite underlying the supposedly discourse of masculinity crisis in Australia: emotionally-aware and sensitive man in namely, he has lost access to an appro- crisis. priate masculinity role, and he is emo- tionally disconnected from other men, Ultimately, the appeal of the man in cri- especially his sons. sis seems to be the same in Australian public discourse as in the United States: The Architect begins with a motorcycle although suggesting transformation – accident in which Jules is severely burnt. and thus deflecting, and protecting As well as horribly scarring his body (ex- masculinity from, traditional challenges cepting his hands and face), these burns or attacks – this wounded figure in fact result in him losing his right arm and most maintains the focus of national identity of the use of his left. The emasculation on images of white men. This, in turn, al- implied by this amputation is reinforced lows white men to continue to function by Jules’s reiterated association of the as the reference point for understand- loss of his arm with the loss of his identity: ings of citizenship, justice and truth; in- “the maiming grows bigger and I grow deed, figured as wounded, white men smaller” (32). In accordance with Joel are able, explicitly as well as implicitly, to Sanders’s description of “the cultural justify their cultural priority. This re- perception that authors of buildings, like centring of white masculinity, combined the structures they design, embody the with the recuperative strategies enabled very essence of manhood” (11), Jules’s by the figure of the damaged white emasculation is compounded by his in- man, warns against seeing this figure as ability to perform adequately in his job offering a less restrictive – or indicating as an architect. The resulting suggestion an irrefutable challenge to – hegemonic of a crisis in masculinity is compounded notions of Australian masculinity. by the novel’s focus on difficulties with “father and son stuff” (270). Jules has
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two damaged sons: the son he brought pain is so extreme that it becomes a up, Che Lai, and his surrogate son Marc separate, personified force: (the adult child of his lover, Jan). Jules’s estrangement from Che Lai is a great Pain flings me back. Phantom fingers are source of anguish. Burnt as a child, Che tangled in the shirt-sleeve under my Lai is severely crippled by scars, and has sweater. The ragged ends of nerves set always blamed Jules for his unhappy life; me alight. Hot agony becomes a throb- bing; it spreads in waves of reminiscence having resorted to drugs to ease his across the scars and I am caught in that pain, he is dying from AIDS. Marc was vortex where nightmares and memories also damaged as a child: thrown from a are inseparable. (46) horse he was riding pillion with his father, he is paraplegic. In a way that perpetu- The affective impact of representations ates and compounds both the impor- of physical pain encourages sympathy tance and the complexity of difficulties for Jules, as do passages which demon- associated with father and son relation- strate his helplessness and vulnerability. ships in this novel, problems in Jules and A particularly poignant series of images Marc’s relationship are associated with amass around the association of his problems between Jules and Che Lai, burns with physical limitation and con- and Marc and his father. straint. His scars “shrink and grow tight as they mature.” Soon, he admits, “I will not At first glance, the crisis Jules undergoes be able to lift my head to see the sky” seems to offer a more positive model of (89). Even attempts to allow him more masculinity than that of the traditional movement – freedom – produce their Aussie battler: through suffering he re- own constraints. His “utter helplessness” connects with and learns to express his is represented at one point by his con- emotions, heals the relationships with his finement within “a moulded body cast,” sons, and gains access to an authentic which “imprisons his arm to the wrist and masculine identity. Upon closer exami- his torso to the waist” (116). nation, however, Jules’s suffering and healing, and the emotional growth he The emotional pain Jules experiences as consequently experiences, are pre- a result of his injuries is imbued with such sented in ways that manifest the recu- pathos that it comes to achieve the perative strategies characterising the status of existential crisis. He feels, for in- American discourse of male victimisa- stance, that his identity is obliterated by tion. As a result, this novel offers an in- “the elongated, asymmetrical shadow sight into the emergence and the func- of my body” that “blots out all the other tion of these strategies in Australia. images I have of Jules van Erp” (40). His inability to perform simple tasks similarly As Robinson asserts, the purported dis- threatens his identity. When his nurse ties empowerment and disenfranchise-ment his shoelaces, “the kettle in the kitchen of white men in America is frequently began to whistle and it was the sound of represented through images of physical my soul screaming” (36). Later, when his pain. These provide evidence of a crisis shoelaces come undone, Jules laments: in masculinity while occluding the social power white men still exercise. Jules’s All the shoelaces ever tied are coming suffering is emphasised in The Architect undone. They bind the scaffold that through repeated descriptions of the holds the Self. They are unknotting, un- operations he endures, the skin infec- ravelling, snaking free, and I am watch- tions that plague him, and most of all, his ing my own disintegration with a mixture “pain and fear” (217). Frequently, his of fear and indifference (42).
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Sympathy for Jules’s suffering is further mother and childhood in a Vietnamese encouraged by descriptions which allow village; his Swiss father and education in him to appropriate and surpass the pain Europe; and his current habitation in and of socially and politically marginalised acculturation to Australia. But Jules per- others – even when he is the cause of forms whiteness consummately. Take, for that suffering. This process is evident in instance, the following description of his his relationship with Chloe, a blind demeanour at the opening of an arts woman who is in love with him. Her centre he designed, a passage indica- blindness symbolically disempowers her, tive of his portrayal throughout the and such subjugation is perpetuated by novel: the fact that her love is unreciprocated. Chloe’s blindness also allows Jules to He is charming, naturally; boundlessly deceive her about his body: as she says, charismatic, and more – terrifyingly “when one can’t see, one just assumes more. He talks politics from art grants to there are two hands.” This deception human rights, and it’s all done with the evasive but knowledgeable savoir-fair of remasculinises Jules, but it also com- the professional diplomat. … He is neither pounds Chloe’s pain, leaving her having artist nor architect; he doesn’t live in a “never, never felt so fucking blind in all satellite suburb. Nothing so ordinary. He is my life!” (69). Not only is Jules not European nobility. He keeps a private blamed for this suffering, it is ascribed to yacht …. His charm is that of perfect him. Regarding the lies he tells Chloe manners, rote-learned, and polished in about his body, Jules muses: greater halls than this; the charisma’s a blend of self-control and confidence; Always … I have hidden inside the layers and experience. He has everyone feed- of myself and the habit has lent such ing from the palm of his hand …. (168) ease to the practice that I fail to recog- nise now the difference between the Jules’s equivalent or even super- camouflage and the nakedness, be- whiteness is compounded by his con- tween the deception of planned half- struction as “the international person” truths and the unplanned lies that are (264), able to “move between countries self-deception. (70) as easily as we mortals go for picnics” (74). Yet despite being effectively white, In conflating his lies with self-deception – when he first arrives in Australia he is arising from emotional blindness – he not marked as racially and culturally differ- only appropriates her subjugated posi- ent from the norm. As he recalls, tion and presents his treatment of Chloe as an unintentional response to his own People stopped to look two times be- pain, he centralises his own suffering cause I was yet very European in my while marginalising hers. At the end of mannerisms. And I think, also, because I the novel, Jules’s appropriation of am a big man who is too feminine. In this Chloe’s suffering is completed when he country big men dig ditches and play constructs his self-deception as far more football. They are not artists. They do not damaging and hurtful than the lies he have the eyes of the cat or the accent of a perfume maker. (32) told her: “I used her only to deceive my- self” (265). Miraculously, Jules is able to overcome
such racism by learning “not to be too More contentiously, Jules’s appropria- much one thing or too much the other” tion of others’ sufferings is further en- (32), and it is because he is able to as- abled because he is not white. Indeed, sume the invisible position of the white the novel contains frequently references male subject that he experiences the to his mixed heritage: his Indo-Chinese
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visibility that comes with the amputation to a position of power and authority: for of his arm as a profound shock. a re-empowerment, in other words, of white masculinity. In this context, Jules’s The incongruous ease with which Jules is newfound ability to express his emotions able to occlude his racial and cultural becomes merely another way in which heritage only makes sense if it is read as his suffering – and hence, his subjectivity one of the many strategies through – are privileged. which all suffering is insidiously related to and appropriated by his character. As a Jules’s healing is similarly presented in result of being marked as racially and ways that, while seeming to offer a posi- cultural different, Jules experiences the tive model of masculinity, in fact mar- effects of racism, and is therefore able ginalise women, appropriate the knowl- to understand and own this form of suf- edge of other cultures and privilege fering. In turn, and although he some- male subjectivity. Although white female how avoids the extreme poverty experi- characters help Jules to heal by offering enced by the rest of his village, he is as- him unconditional and undemanding sociated with the sufferings of the “Mon- love and support, ultimately it is his sur- tagnard people …. Not Vietnamese, not rogate son Marc who heals him. In part, Chinese. Indigenous … the ones who Marc does so by teaching Jules “about get the worst deal all round. The inno- getting in touch with his own body” cent bystanders” (260). Subsequent ref- (251), and thereby helping him to erences to the deaths by napalming of “own,” “understand” and eventually the women and children in his village overcome “his fear of his damaged associate his burns with theirs, superim- body” (244). Such lessons construct the posing and conflating the radically dif- male body as a site of authenticity and ferent contexts of their injuries. as the basis of a self-actualised healing enabled through male bonding and, in The process by which Jules appropriates particular, father-son connection. the sufferings of women and other races actualises Savran’s description of the At the same time, Marc’s ability to heal way the white male victim “is not only Jules arises from his extraordinary psy- feminized by a masochistic identification chic abilities, which allow him literally to by implicitly blackened as well.” As feel, and hence, to empathise with, Savran contends, “this slippage be- Jules’s pain. For instance, massaging tween sexual and racial differences” is Jules’s back Marc senses “pain … one of the main reasons why the white strongly coloured by anxiety. … Not male victim “has such enormous psychic sharp pain, but an ache of massive in- power and is able to accomplish such tensity” (243). The origins of such psychic an extraordinary amount of cultural abilities are briefly ascribed to the work” (33). Ultimately, although signal- knowledge and teachings of a woman ling the presence of this discourse of in Saigon and “an old gypsy” (209). masculinity in Australia, the prominence However, the marginalisation of women of the notion of a crisis in masculinity in that occurs through the dominant narra- The Architect contains no interrogation tive of male healing is compounded, or recognition of the socio-historical and racialised, by the fact that these power relations in which it thereby par- women’s psychic powers are appropri- ticipates. Rather, the sympathy created ated by a man and entirely directed for Jules’s position, and the pathos im- towards healing Jules (an effectively bued in the loss of his masculinity, en- white male character). courage the reader to long for his return
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Resonating with the idea that contem- thus mirrored by his father’s failure in his porary white men can overcome crisis similarly masculine profession. When, at by reconnecting with each other and the end of the novel, father and son with their authentic or deep masculine commit suicide – both because they feel selves, this narrative, as Robinson notes abandoned by the women they love – in relation to American texts, resolutely this emphasises their alienation, in gen- maintains the focus on individual rather eral and from each other, while simulta- than social or political change. And neously presenting the suffering created while the text may seem to offer a more by a loss of male role, and distance be- positive model of masculinity, Jules’s tween men, as insurmountable and healing and healed relationship with his devastating. son, and the access he accordingly gains to an authentic masculinity, in fact Transplanted , by Sarah Myles, has four privilege male subjectivity and homoso- main male characters and pivots ciality, and actualise the association be- around a burglary, perpetrated by three tween hegemonic constructions of of these men (Ross, Ian and Kelvin) at masculinity and whiteness. The repro- the home of the fourth (Peter). All of duction of the rhetoric of masculinity cri- these men are damaged. Ian is repeat- sis in this and other contemporary Aus- edly brutalised by and subsequently tralian women’s fictions 11 demonstrates murders his brother, Ross. Kelvin has the emergence and resonance of this been in an horrific truck accident where, discourse – and its accompanying figure among other injuries, his arm was of the wounded man – within Australia trapped under the sliding truck carriage, and exposes the implicit danger the his “scapula cracked and ripped at right rhetoric and strategies of masculinity cri- angles, his face de-gloved” (180). Peter sis pose to the creation of a more equi- is suffering from severe end-stage heart table society. failure, and there are many descriptions of his damaged and deteriorating body, Other contemporary Australian women’s as well as of the multiple operations he novels also depict damaged men in undergoes before he dies. Due to this terms that resonate with the discourse of heart condition – described as a “crisis” masculinity crisis. Fiona Capp’s Last of (86) – he is “embarrassed that he is not the Sane Days centres on Rafael’s in- there taking on the role that might be tense abdominal pain. Like Jules, Rafael expected of him” (94) of protector and is forced to abandon a stereotypically provider. Indeed, he “does not think of masculine career as an Air Force pilot. the people who have robbed them …. It This has left him feeling frustrated, con- is his failure to protect that seems the fused and depressed, emotions the dis- weakness. That he cannot know or pre- course of masculinity crisis claims all men dict. That he cannot take control” (83). experience due to the erosion of their traditional role in contemporary society. In this text, the associated theme of fa- As in The Architect , this theme of male ther-son disconnection extends to all of suffering is elaborated in the context of the central male characters: Peter’s fa- father-son distance. Rafael is estranged ther died when he was young and Kel- from his father, Gerald, largely because vin’s father was abusive and neglectful. he decided to join the Air Force instead However, it is particularly prominent in of following in his father’s footsteps by descriptions of the relationship between managing the family farm. This farm is Ross and Ian and their father, which in- now failing due to drought, and Rafael’s volve extended passages detailing Ross inability to perform his masculine role is and Ian’s inability to understand what
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their father is saying, and his inability to becomes for a time his lover. Hilary helps recognise them. As in The Architect , a Rafael locate places where Nietzsche complex relationship between male stayed, and also conducts her own re- damage and emotional distance is search on the philosopher. Her more elaborated. pragmatic and distanced perspective on Nietzsche is contrasted with Rafael’s Yet although these contemporary Aus- almost religious belief in his philosophy tralian women’s fictions clearly manifest and its powers of healing. the discourse of masculinity crisis, they employ it in a different manner to texts This focus on Nietzsche can be inter- like The Architect . In particular, whereas preted in terms of a deliberate en- the figure of the Aussie battler is absent gagement with white Australian identity from The Architect , entirely replaced by and literary history. As Veronica Brady Jules’s masculinity crisis, Last of the Sane asserts, “it has become a truism that Days and Transplanted present encoun- Nietzsche is a crucial figure for the un- ters between men in crisis and figures derstanding of Australian culture” (87). representative of the Aussie battler. Al- Describing Nietzsche as Australia’s “be- though far less programmatic in their neficent grand-uncle” (51), Vincent depiction of white Australian masculinity Buckley identifies influential features of than The Architect , the hybridised mas- his “metaphysics of Will” to dominant culinities that subsequent emerge repre- notions of Australian masculinity and na- sent identities which enable, but do not tionhood. Primary among these is the constitute, a more positive and politi- centrality of the male leader and cally productive version of Australian “metaphysical hero, even as the chief identity. For whereas women are mar- value, against the universe.” Commonly ginalised by both the Aussie battler and conceptualised as a “metaphysical ad- the man in crisis, these fictions present venturer who in his journey … asserts the versions of Australian identity that are value of his own will, his own integrity, his underpinned and enabled by equitable own exploration” (48), this figure can be relationships between male and female taken as an ancestor of the Aussie bat- characters. Nevertheless, although there tler. are allusions in Transplanted to the In- digenous owners of Australian land, the Yet in Last of the Sane Days , Rafael’s pre-eminent concern with the identities adoption of a Nietzschean philosophy – of the Aussie battler and the man in crisis and his consequent affiliation with a bat- in both novels leads to a reinscription of tler mentality – do not alleviate his suffer- whiteness in the resulting portrayals of ing. Instead, he finds respite from his Australian identity. pain in his relationship with Hilary. More- over, descriptions of their sexual relation- In Last of the Sane Days , Rafael attempts ship – which repeatedly demonstrate to overcome his intense physical pain – their equality – pose a direct challenge and his resulting masculinity crisis – by to a conception of masculinity that privi- travelling to Europe and following in the leges masculine autonomy and “Will.” footsteps of Nietzsche. Having received As a prelude to their sexual relationship, no help from western medicine, he be- Hilary and Rafael play a game in a hotel lieves that Nietzsche’s philosophy of self- foyer where, overcoming will allow him to resume his career as an Air Force pilot. Coinciden- as they created more outlandish histories tally, while in Europe, he encounters for the guests who passed by, they were Hilary, his godmother and doctor, who at the same time conjuring up a world of their own in which they were agents in
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enemy territory with no one but the other crisis thereby teaches Wendy to see Aus- to trust (105). tralia in a different way – a difference seemingly enabled by his distance (both Instead of a master/leader against the historically and psychologically) from world, Hilary and Rafael create an alter- Eyre – Wendy’s touch heals Kelvin’s native reality based in mutual trust and physical and emotional wounds. As they reliance. Descriptions of their sexual con- stand in this underground pool, her fin- tact during the train journey they take gers trace his “scar which has not been across the Alps again evoke an equita- touched since the hospitalised stitching ble other world: “Their world shrank to of silk into anaesthetised skin” (180). This the size of a cabin, to the size of two touch causes Kelvin to relive his acci- bodies in a knotted embrace where dent, yet the effect is cathartic: it allows nothing else mattered” (113). him to mourn for the pain he has experi- enced, and thus, to begin the recovery Although occurring in the context of a process. The description of “water pour- European journey that is repeatedly af- ing over them as if in some ritualised filiated with Nietzsche’s own travels, this baptism” (179) reinforces a reading of image of their knotted bodies offers an Wendy’s touch in the cave Kelvin finds explicit alternative to the philosophy of as offering a new beginning. individuality, autonomy and mastery. Transplanted similarly juxtaposes the This association of Kelvin with vision and wounded white man with another an- Wendy with touch resonates with a cer- cestor of the Aussie battler, and indeed, tain gendered division of senses: of Nietzsche’s metaphysical “Wanderer” namely, the association of men with vi- (Buckley 48): the explorer. Like Nietzsche, sion and women with touch. As Evelyn the explorer is an accepted archetype Keller and Christine R. Grontkowski as- 12 of the national identity and literature. sert, Much of the central part of this novel is occupied by Wendy and Kelvin’s jour- The notion that vision is a peculiarly phal- ney from Melbourne to Perth. During this lic sense, and touch a woman’s sense, is, journey, Wendy reads to Kelvin from a of course, not new. Indeed, it accords all book about Edward Eyre, tracing his too well with the belief in vision as a journey across the same land and re- ‘higher’ and touch as a ‘lower’ sense marking on the hardships he endured. (207). Emphasis is placed on the cruel irony of the fact that, Yet in Transplanted , neither vision nor touch is privileged. Rather, they are Beneath the surface, there are a net- equivalent, and the way Wendy and work of caves, thousands of under- Kelvin help the other by helping them ground passages which extend to the move towards the sense they are alien- subterranean caverns, often deep ated from suggests both reciprocity and enough to reach the watertable” and complementarity. Due to such reciproc- create “still, clear lakes(176). ity, Wendy and Kelvin are able to trav- erse the landscape – presented as a Yet while Eyre’s “blind and obsessive psychological journey through them- purpose” rendered him unable to find selves and Australian identity – with these underground lakes, Kelvin can. He symbiotic ease. Their journey would not takes Wendy there without difficulty, have been possible for the suffering Kel- “even when the road was unmarked vin alone; nor was it possible for Eyre, and almost indistinguishable from the who longed to conquer rather than un- flat desert plain” (178). While this man in derstand the country, and “foul[ed]
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each sacred waterhole for the price of has its foundation in a fundamentally flour” (164). white, individualistic romance narrative. This re-inscription of whiteness is even In these and other ways, Last of the more apparent in Last of the Sane Days , Sane Days and Transplanted depict in which the imagining of Australian wounded white men in the context of, identity occurs through the established and contrast them with, archetypes of trope of a journey to Europe. The occlu- Australian literature and culture, figures sion of Australia’s Indigenous heritage that emerge as recognisable ancestors inherent in this strategy is compounded of the Aussie battler. Whereas both the by the journeys – imaginary and actual – man in crisis and the Aussie battler in dif- that Hilary takes when she returns to Aus- ferent ways affirm the individualised tralia after Rafael’s suicide. The first of struggle of the white man over all others, these occurs in a dream where these novels challenge these construc- tions of masculinity by evoking them in … she was flying with Eva over the out- the context of equitable heterosexual back. … [T]hey came to a small com- relationships. Both novels subsequently munity in the middle of nowhere with just show these heterosexual relationships a few houses and an airstrip like a dirty cream bandage on the red, red earth. failing, implying that this dream of a new … Hilary was struck by the feel of the masculinity is impossible in the context of ground, which had the texture of flesh. current Australian society and its gen- The bandage of the airstrip was curling dered inequalities. Nevertheless, and in at the corners and as she bent down to stark contrast to The Architect , as well as tease it away, she grew afraid of what to the male-dominated renderings of she might find. But instead of a weeping white masculinity and national identity in wound she uncovered a pearly scar, its Australian public and political discourse, edges still slightly inflamed. (253-54) this re-inscription of hegemonic models of Australian and American masculinities The flight central to this dream is not in- challenges, and offers an alternative to, cidental to the sense of healing por- the longstanding alliance of national trayed, but suggests that Hilary is able to identity with myths of masculinity. fulfil Rafael’s dream of a return to the skies, and in doing so, to reclaim his lost Yet while these novels appear subver- identity in a way that again signifies a sive in their refiguring of gender inequali- unity between men and women. Yet ties, their privileging of heterosexual rela- while the positioning of this healing of tionships between white men and gender inequalities on the Australian women concurrently reinscribes Austra- land consolidates the novel’s engage- lian identity as white. The journeys that ment with national identity, Hilary’s dominate both novels unconsciously ex- dream overwrites the original wound of pose this process. On the one hand, Australian nationality: the invasion of In- Wendy and Kelvin’s journey across Aus- digenous land. The racism contained in tralia displaces Eyre’s previous explora- this strategy is consolidated by Hilary’s tion, and in turn, white men’s original subsequent flight over Rafael’s family’s invasion of and appropriation of Indige- farm. Healing is again represented in nous land: the act that O’Dowd identi- relation to the land and the airstrip – fies as the unacknowledged basis of the here, in the way that “the airstrip was battler identity. On the other hand, their overgrown and absorbed into the fabric own journey inscribes another white nar- of the grass.” The healing of this wound rative over the land – one that incorpo- allows new life to occur, but the form rates women as well as men, but which that this new life takes is one that re- enacts the white appropriation of In-
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digenous land: “Already subdivision had continuing need for analyses of Austra- taken place and a network of bitumen lian identity and culture that are attuned courts and streets had been laid out to to social power relations in ways that create yet another seaside estate” extend beyond the issue of gender. (255).
Transplanted and Last of the Sane Days Author Note challenge the traditional affiliation of Australian national identity and mascu- Katherine Bode completed her PhD in linity. In the contrast thereby established 2005. She is currently travelling in Asia between these texts and public and po- and Europe. In 2007 she will take up the litical debates, as well as novels like The Colin and Margaret Roderick Postdoc- Architect , they indicate the extent to toral Research Fellowship at James Cook which gender divisions continue to un- University. derpin Australian identity and culture. References At the same time, and in accordance with the dominant discourse, Trans- planted and Last of the Sane Days privi- Albrechtsen, Janet. “Mothers must tell lege whiteness in their constructions of the truth.” Australian 23 March 2005: national identity. Indeed, these texts, like 15. The Architect , seem entirely unaware of Bachelard, Michael, and Rebecca the ambivalence – in terms of sexuality DiGirolamo. “Latham Targets the Boy as well as race – of their refiguring of Crisis.” Australian 19 February 2004: 1, Australian identity in relation to hetero- 6. sexual relationships between white “Battler.” Oxford Dictionary of English . women and men. In itself, this lack of 2nd edition revised. Ed. Catherine awareness indicates the continuing Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Ox- dominance and invisibility of whiteness in ford: Oxford UP, 2003. Australia, a dominance that is presuma- Blain, Georgia. The Blind Eye . Ring- bly perpetuated by the current cre- wood: Penguin, 2001. dence given in this country to images Brady, Veronica. “In a Critical Condi- and claims of white male victimisation. tion: Two Responses to John Docker: II.” Westerly 30.2 (1985): 83-87. But whereas the discourse of a crisis in Brett, Judith. “Latham’s Sydney view of masculinity reaffirms the affiliation of the world.” Age 13 August 2004. 22 masculinity, whiteness and national paras. 26 November 2005. identity, the privileging of whiteness in
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Cleven, Vivienne. Bitin’ Back . St Lucia: Keller, Evelyn, and Christine R. Gront- U of Queensland P, 2001. kowski. “The Mind’s Eye.” Discovering Connell, R.W. “Introduction: Australian Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epis- Masculinities.” Male Trouble: Looking temology, Metaphysics, Methodol- at Australian Masculinities . Ed. ogy and the Philosophy of Science . Stephen Tomsen and Mike Ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hin- Donaldson. Melbourne: Pluto, 2003. tikka. Boston: Reidel, 1983. 207-24. 9-21. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in Amer- ~ “Masculinities, Change, and Conflict ica: A Cultural History . New York: Free in a Global Society: Thinking About Press, 1996. the Future of Men’s Studies.” Journal Kossew, Sue. Writing Woman, Writing of Men’s Studies 11.3 (2003): 249-67. Place: Contemporary Australian and ~ The Men and the Boys . St Leonards: South African Fiction . London: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Routledge, 2004. ~ “Preface – Masculinities: The Global Latham, Mark. The Latham Diaries . Dimension.” Manning the Next Mil- Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2005. lennium: Studies in Masculinities . Ed. ~ “Latham’s Press Club Speech.” Syd- Sharyn Pearce and Vivienne Muller. ney Morning Herald 18 February Bentley, W.A.: Black Swan, 2002. vii- 2004. 56 paras. 29 November 2005 xiv. 16 BODE: AUSSIE BATTLER IN CRISIS e:AD9o3Fl7S6wJ:www.arts.monash.e Watkinson, Jillian. The Architect . St Lu- du.au/history/events/genidwar/pap cia: U of Queensland P, 2000. ers/odowd.html+%22The+Invasion+of White, Richard. Inventing Australia: Im- +Australia+and+its+Legacy+to+Whit ages and Identity 1688-1980 . Sydney: e+Fellas%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8>. Allen & Unwin, 1981. Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis . New York: Co- Endnotes lumbia UP, 2000. ~ “Men’s Liberation, Men’s Wounds: Emotion, Sexuality, and the Recon- 1 Until the 1950s, the term, Aussie battler, was struction of Masculinity in the 1970s.” also used to refer to itinerants, men who Boys Don’t Cry? Rethinking Narra- earned a meagre living at the race tracks, tives of Masculinity and Emotion in and prostitutes (Ludowyk 3-5). the U.S. Ed. Milette Shamir and Jenni- 2 Ludowyk identifies Henry Lawson’s While the fer Travis. New York: Columbia UP, Billy Boils , published in 1896, as the first literary 2002. 205-29. reference to the Aussie battler (7). Rotundo, Anthony. American Man- 3 Ludowyk notes that the phrase, “little Aussie hood: Transformations of Masculinity battler,” has been employed to describe the from the Revolution to the Modern struggle of the Australian dollar against the Era . New York: Basic Books, 1993. mighty Greenback and the success of small Australian businesses in spite of the power Rundle, Guy. “The Opportunist: John and reach of international corporations (10). Howard and the Triumph of Reac- 4 During February and March, 2004, literally tion.” Quarterly Essay 3 (2001): 1-65. hundreds of articles on the notion of a crisis in Sanders, Joel. “Introduction.” Stud: Ar- masculinity were published in Australian chitectures of Masculinity . Ed. Joel newspapers. For example, in the Australian Sanders. New York: Princeton Archi- during February 2004, a prominent series of tectural P, 1996. 10-25. articles were published all debating the im- Saulwick, Irving, and Denis Muller. “Is it pact of this purported crisis on the well-being of boys and the status of fathers (Bachelard just a matter of class?” Age 16 Sep- and DiGirolamo; Carr-Gregg; Costello; Edito- tember 2004. 59 paras. 19 December rial; Legge). 2005 5 Theorists who adopt such a position include 17 BODE: AUSSIE BATTLER IN CRISIS 9 The Howard government responded to Latham’s popularity on the issue of an edu- cational crisis for boys with the idea of a Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools scheme – designed to provide funding for schools attempting to address the problem of boys’ education – and the Success for Boys pro- gram. More contentiously, the Coalition in- troduced legislation to amend the Sex Dis- crimination Act so that more male teachers could be recruited to counteract the per- ceived gender imbalance among teachers (Saulwick and Muller 23-24). 10 Such novels include Kirsty Machon’s Im- mortality (1996), Patti Miller’s Child (1998), Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sand Days (1999), Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect (2000), Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye (2001), Vivienne Cleven’s Bitin’ Back (2001), Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling (2001), Sarah Myles’s Transplanted (2002) and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda (2002). 11 Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye follows many of the same strategies as The Architect , pre- senting the damaged male protagonist in ways that privilege male suffering and sub- jectivity, marginalise women and present a homosocial solution to masculinity crisis. In- deed, the strangest aspect of The Architect – the use of psychic powers to demonstrate understanding, connection and empathy between men – finds its echo in the portrayal of homeopathy in Blain’s novel, in which the most important relationship occurs between Silas, the protagonist, and his homeopath Daniel. Like Marc with Jules, Daniel is able to heal Silas’s terrible, internal burning because he can literally feel Silas’s physical and emo- tional suffering by touching him (47-8; 206). 12 Paul Genoni has recently demonstrated the centrality of themes of exploration, map- ping and geography to Australian fiction. 18 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2, No.1, 2006 WHITE SPACES KATHLEEN CONNELLAN Abstract ing to use any colour, I just want to keep it white and simple.’ This paper brings white as a colour in de- ‘I just want to keep it white and simple.’ signed interiors and whiteness in race The assertion is that white is not speci- together. The ‘invisible’, unacknow- fied, it is there but not there. Having re- ledged prevalence of whiteness in race searched modernist design over the is aligned with the silent yet pervasive past decade and located that research ubiquity of white in architectural space. within the context of the home, I am The paper asserts that both are privi- continually reminded that not only was leged, that is the colour of the paint and modernist design supposedly ‘simple’ i.e. epidermal whiteness. White walls, white modular, standardised and geometric surfaces and white expanses are de- without ‘unnecessary’ embellishment, signed to place all other colours into but it was also predominantly ‘white’. sharp contrast. The smoothness of these Mark Wigley makes this point in his book white surfaces also shows up texture and White walls, Designer dresses: the fash- variation; the sameness of white in de- ioning of modern architecture , a text sign is positioned as a basis for designed that addresses the silence surrounding interiors. White in this sense becomes the white as a ubiquitous choice for exteri- one upright against which all else is pe- ors, and more specifically interiors, in ripheral and as such the paper argues modernist architectural and design the- that it has an elite status. This status is ory literature (Wigley 1995: xiv). more often than not evidence in the all white interiors of expensive architectural My interest now is to pursue the contin- spaces. The paper also argues that ued dominance of white in a socially white as a colour is problematically con- designed postmodern world. Postmod- flated with light and its associated my- ernity, in design terms, is a celebration of thologies of goodness and cleanliness. In colour and a liberation of the palette in this way white as a colour is the insignia a design era that is ostensibly free from of white wealth and ostensible superior- the dogma of totalitarian modernist de- ity. Specific architectural spaces are de- sign orthodoxy. Indeed contemporary scribed and analysed in relation to white design has been posited as a departure race privilege. from the constraints of the monochrome or the pure primary and the grid. Robert Introduction Venturi’s scathing criticism of modernist architecture called for a ‘messy vitality’ What is it about this colour white? It per- over an ‘obvious unity’ (1994: 53). Given vades and invades interior spaces, cov- the current rejection of modernist design ers and clothes bodies and seeps both principles, why is there still so much white into and onto numerous products in in- in interior architecture and contemp- habited spaces. Have you ever heard or orary design? Who is responsible for this been part of a conversation that goes whiteness and what does it signify? Do something like this: Q: ‘What colour are the white interiors have any connection you going to use’? A: ‘Oh, I am not go- with whiteness in race? To put it another ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES way, is the continued use of white in cer- that include changing its orientation. The tain exclusive or ‘expensive’ interiors an entire piece rests on slim polished steel extension of white hegemony in particu- legs. A dark suited young man stands in lar societies? shadow on the extreme left with one hand casually in his pocket and a wine Methodology glass in the other hand as he talks to a seated young woman in a backless knee-length cocktail dress of sheer pale The paper will attempt to arrive at possi- green and pink and high strapped san- ble answers and will begin by providing dals. She is twisted around to address detailed and objective visual descrip- the young man, thus exposing an ex- tions of photographed and advertised panse of her pale white back to the spaces/forms in contemporary Australia. viewer. On the other end of the sofa The visual descriptions attempt to recre- another young woman in knee-length ate the visual space so that the image cocktail dress and stiletto sandals, sits can be pictured in the mind of the listening to a standing couple: a man in reader and it is hoped that they present a dark closed suit and a woman in a as objective data. A formal and contex- thigh length dress and heels. All five tual analysis of the pictorial examples will people are white and all hold wine follow the descriptions. This analytical glasses. There is a plain rectangular design methodology will combine with a screen some distance behind the sofa hermeneutic approach that incorpo- that provides a backdrop for the intri- rates whiteness theories. cate geometric criss-crosses of a round monochrome string floor sculpture. The Criteria used for selecting the examples colours of the photograph are predomi- is based upon my observation of white nantly greys against brilliant whites. The spaces in buildings that are designed by floor gleams with reflections and is con- architects and which probably hold trasted by a red and cream oriental some sort of prestige, status or position. woven carpet in the bottom foreground. As a result some of the interiors des- Highlights are captured from the hang- cribed below come out of a typical ex- ing lamps upon white leather, white skin ample of an interior architecture maga- and shiny floor. Below the image is a zine and others are taken from my own caption printed in narrow grey-blue sans photographic survey. serif capitals. It reads: ‘Some saw a cloud … we saw a light’. Visual descriptions Example 2. Example 1. The photograph is taken from a corner Six white lights hang from a high ceiling of the outside balcony of an apartment on several thin white cords; all have ver- and shows the grey granite floor tiles, tical undulating cylindrical and repeti- uninterrupted by outside furniture as tive curves. From the photograph they they meet the balcony wall of varying look like thin paper or fabric folded in white diagonals and horizontals on the rounded tubular formations. The ceiling right edge of the picture. On the left above is blurred into a shadowed grey and taking up most of the picture space extending down the wall. The room ap- is the interior of the lounge room of an pears spacious and the photographed inner city apartment as viewed through view shows a large single articulated the large rectangular balcony window. white leather sofa that has adjustable The room reveals a section of a smooth back rests and other flexible features white sofa arrangement that has a wide 2 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES extended section the size of a double tecture. The top area of the picture is a bed. The back rest and cushions are all total contrast to the school because it white. A white shawl is draped neatly shows the surrounding cottage street over the double bed section. A pale architecture and some of the skyline of slab of wood sits on narrow steel legs the city. The top level of the school has a serving as a coffee table, which is posi- roof garden that is filled with green foli- tioned upon a thick piled white rug on age in planter pots that are angled into the surrounding pale yellow wooden the architecture. Some of the school floating floor boards. The ceiling and children are seated up there but they walls are white expanses that meet blend into the foliage and background each other without the punctuation of street scene unlike the stark contrast of cornices. The main wall on view in the the dark uniformed shapes in the court- photograph is decorated with a single yard below. unframed image of a pale yellow sphere, which blurs out if its orbit into a Example 4. white painted background. The other A section of a hospital foyer is photo- wall some distance behind the sofa has graphed showing a wide staircase with a ledge or table (also pale wood) with one banister side support in clear per- white ceramic vessels displayed upon it. spex with a steel riveted rail and the The only things that are not white or pale other side in sheer white painted con- yellow in the picture include a small crete, each with a stainless steel rail, green arrangement in a low glass bowl steps up to a mezzanine level of white on the coffee table and a large stand- walls that are hung with identically sized ing mortar. There is also a small sec- paintings in rows. The under section of tioned view of a dark brick warehouse- the staircase as it rises up to the top level style neighbouring building. The picture is seen from below (the vantage point of is also made up on light reflections from the photograph) as a solid white sculp- the many long architectural lines. There tured object suspended in the open well are no people in the space. A heading of space from the ground floor foyer up printed below the image in yellow slab to the top level. The photograph fea- sans-serif reads: ‘Inner-city Metamorpho- tures the staircase with its combination sis’. of simple but large forms. Example 3. Example 5. Looking down from a high mezzanine or The room is a long rectangle that glasses bridge, the image takes in a large area onto a green garden at the end and of a school building and yard. The left side. It is a kitchen and living area in one foreground reaches into the middle and long sweep. The white ceilings move background by way of a long white down without cornices into white walls concrete bridge with vertical grey rail- on the one side and then equally seam- ings. This flat high white painted con- lessly the expanse of white moves on to crete expanse is photographed in full long white floor cabinets that are clear sunlight. Tall, repeated pillars of similarly of utensils. The surfaces of the cabinets slabbed concrete form a colonnade against the wall have one stainless steel from the ground level up to the very top. sink that looks pale and white because Below on the unshaded hard white tiles, of the reflected sunlight from the oppo- sit and stand informal groups of children. site picture window strip. This length of The white of the architecture is con- white is continuous except for a short trasted by deep shadows caused by the dark section of the stainless steel stove bright light and hard angles of the archi- that is flush with the cabinets. In parallel 3 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES placement to the wall cabinets is a wide pletely white matching chairs takes up white rectangular island that stretches most of the space in a double glass straight down to the far glassed end, sided meeting room. which accommodates neat book- shelves, sofas and a postmodern rendi- Analysis and Relation to tion of Le Corbusier’s chaise longue .1 This Whiteness Theory island has a decorative display of over- sized ostrich egg forms in a rectangular container at the far end but besides this The above examples of a lighting adver- one piece the surface is clear. The pho- tisement, an apartment lounge room, a tograph has no human inhabitants. Col- school, a hospital foyer, a suburban ours that contrast or merge out of the kitchen/dining/living area, an airport, a white dominance are the pale browns business premises and boardroom have of the floor, wooden window beams other things in common besides the and the abundant greens from the out- dominance of the colour white. Most side garden. give the impression of spaciousness by means of extended parallel architec- Example 6. tural lines and surfaces. Most also give This is a photograph from a series taken the impression of luxury with gleaming by the author of the new Adelaide air- chrome, steel and large glass window- port. The floors, walls and ceilings of the walls. These elements are without excep- enclosure are all white as one walks tion represented as uncluttered and free away from the check-in counters to- of busy ornamentation. The white sur- wards the exit. The rows of trolleys offer faces and forms in the examples are no contrast to the top to bottom white shown to have large dimensions, expanse because they reflect the bright whether in length, breadth or height. The white lighting upon their chrome sur- surfaces conform to a sharp geometric faces. This large open area designed for alignment or angularity that also em- crowds and queuing does not have phasise space by means of deep linear shops or vending machines and ap- perspective or a horizontality that pears as a totality of whiteness. stretches out of the picture plane. The colour white is represented in a brilliant Example 7. hard light thus making all other pale The ground floor of a Melbourne busi- tones even fainter and causing them to ness’ premises in the central business dis- blend into the white painted surface trict was photographed at night with and the space of the picture. This ac- street lights shining upon the huge white centuation of whiteness results in any three dimensional numbers of 121. The contrast of dark or varied surfaces as interior foyer is clearly visible through the being stark and obvious. Sara Ahmed glass wall frontage, with a deep space writes: of white tiles and chrome. Whiteness is only invisible for those who inhabit it . For those who don’t, it is hard Example 8. not to see whiteness; it even seems eve- A white boardroom table and white rywhere. Seeing whiteness is about living chairs from the new Kaurna Building of its effects, as effects that allow white the South Australian School of Art and is bodies to extend into spaces that have an example of furnishings chosen by the already taken their shape, spaces in architects who designed the building, which black bodies stand out, stand which was completed in 2005. The large apart, unless they pass, which means tapering oval table with its twenty com- passing through space by passing as white (Ahmed 2004: 1). 4 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES Ahmed is referring to black people as White as a colour is conflated with angu- showing up in an environment that is not larity, order, cleanliness and simple de- only populated by the physicality of sign, which makes it a more encompass- white people but also dominated by ing agent for white superiority. White de- white privilege. I am saying that this is sign needs support to both exert and exacerbated by the use of the colour maintain its impression of strength be- white in designs that are associated with cause it is inherently fragile, imperma- status and elitism in a white society that nent and vulnerable. Wigley asserts that applauds material success. The white white is only as strong as the thickness of people in the white space discussed it surface, which is very thin and in con- above blend in by revealing long white stant need of touching up (Wigley 1995). limbs and pale dresses in the lighting The colour white cannot cope alone, advertisement, whereas the dark suited like white authority in society, it needs its men are suffused into shadows. In other henchmen. The painting of white sur- examples that contain people such as faces and the insurance that forms are the school and the airport, the dark bold, hard and free of clutter is an effort shade of the people’s clothes contrast on the part of (white) society to reveal against the white expanses of the archi- anything that does not conform. For tecture. white paint and white surface then, this support includes the unforgiving nature While hospital-white is something that of geometric design, a design that ex- people have come to expect over time cludes softness or texturing associated on account of the practicalities of show- with humanity. Forms and people that ing up dirt so that it can be cleaned, the are not long, lean and classical attired impracticalities of maintaining such a count as intrusions in the designed visage of cleanliness is extended to spaces. The photographs of actual inte- other interior spaces that do not require riors in the design magazine are devoid sterility. Even in the hospital example, the of people. This is a device that serves to monumentalisation of the white stair- emphasise spatial dimensions and en- case dominates all other colours and sure that surfaces are not interrupted by forms in the space. In the other exam- any untidy design elements. This lack of ples the wide expanses of white tiled humanity was one of the main criticisms floors and white counter and table tops of modernist design and indeed what all proclaim an obsessive cleanliness. brought about its supposed demise, a Hygiene and neatness are middle class demise that heralded the mixed colours domestic preoccupations and manifest and textures of postmodern architec- the struggle to separate the interior from tural design. But whiteness in design per- the exterior and perceived chaos of na- sists, modernism like so many despots, ture. Mary Douglas reaffirms the Victo- did not die it just went away for a while rian belief that ‘dirt is matter out of only to return with another name and place’, a notion that still seems to apply wield a disconcertingly similar rule of in contemporary design (Douglas 1966: law. 36). The Melbourne business premises discussed in example seven could Then one also has to ask, if white is a equally have been a private hospital colour at all? According to Isaac New- foyer in the sense that whiteness takes ton it is not. White, in Newtonian physics, on the colour of the idealised and sterile is white light. The conflation of white and corporation. light and the assumption that white is a non colour has been accepted in colour theory. Colour theory, like formalism in 5 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES art theory fell out of vogue with the os- is similar to the privileging of the white, tensible passing of modernism. However yet unacknowledged race in social his- while postmodern art history and theory tory. Rendering the apparently invisible, eschewed the structural and Cartesian visible is a significant aspect of whiteness aspects of modernist theory, white has theory in race as both bell hooks, Rich- somehow remained a non colour into ard Dyer and others in their wake have the post-modern era. By remaining in iterated. The supposedly ethereal, insub- abeyance or supposedly out of mind, stantiality of light is taken up by interior white had the opportunity to gain designers and interior decorators as they strength because it was not considered play upon western myths of divinity and a reality. If something is not acknowl- vision in a lit interior. In the examples of edged, it is assumed that it does not ex- lighting, kitchen and interior design, the ist. Denial is destructive in human rela- spatial aspects of white as possessing tionships and this must also be true in qualities of boundlessness and by exten- environments designed for human be- sion an agency with infinity is endorsed ings. How does one oppose, or for that by the serene inaccessibility in the visual matter work with nothing? How do black presentation of such designs. The lighting people oppose white authority if the example, which advertises hanging people who are in authority do not ad- lamps by well known contemporary de- mit they are white or that it is their white- signers Michele de Lucchi and Gerhard ness that keeps them in positions of Reichart portrays a group of people in power? With the use of white in design, it the presence of whiteness. Classic ad- is hard to imagine an opposition to light vertising rhetoric builds upon the myth of because in this guise white seems to po- a divine epiphany by adding the cap- sition itself beyond scrutiny? The mythol- tion: ‘Some saw a cloud … we saw a ogy of light is linked to some religions’ light’. belief in light as synonymous with good- ness. Darkness in this instance is all that is This is the world of the white cube so be- bad, the dichotomy of light and shadow loved of twentieth century modernist in the examples used for this article serve architects. In Thomas McEvilly’s introduc- to accentuate the contrast. In this way tion to Brian O’Doherty’s Inside the White white is transfigured into light in design Cube: the ideology of the gallery space , with all of its concomitant codes of pu- he writes: rity, which in turn become part of the ideology of whiteness in race. This specially segregated space is a kind of non-space, ultra-space, or ideal The privileging of white light in Newto- space where the surrounding matrix of nian physics was contested by Johann space-time is symbolically annulled. … By suggesting eternal ratification of a cer- Wolfgang von Goethe, who asserted tain sensibility, the white cube suggests that the natural world was overlooked the eternal ratification of the claims of as credible and practical proof of colour the caste or group sharing that sensibility. action (Jackson 1994: 679). As such he … The Spectator is the attenuated and considered Newton’s mathematical bleached-out life of the self from which approach as ‘artificial’ and confined to the Eye goes forth and which, in the the intellect. This narrow Newtonian view meantime, does nothing else. The Eye in Goethe’s mind was a denial of ‘Truth’ and the Spectator are all that is left of because it dismissed the senses (Jackson someone who has ‘died’ as O’Doherty puts it, by entering the white cube. In re- 1994: 689). The link between white light’s turn for the glimpse of ersatz eternity that relatively undisputed and yet the white cube affords us – and as a to- unacknowledged leadership in colour ken of our solidarity with the special in- theory is similar to the privileging of the 6 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES terests of a group – we give up our hu- D.J.B. Young uses the heading ‘Any col- manness and become the cardboard our so long as it’s white’ in an article on Spectator and the disembodied Eye properties for sale in London (2004: 11). (McEvilly in O’Doherty 1999: 9, 10). Young relates the way in which sellers are encouraged to keep ‘a blank can- McEvilly’s above explanation can be vas’ in the interiors so that illusions of light applied to current issues of whiteness in encourage the buyer to enter the space critical race theory. The ‘the caste or without reservations about previous group’ is the white academic, profes- owners’ identities (2004: 9). Roland Mar- sional elite or if there are black people chand compares the confused reflec- then it is those who pass as white by tion of the real and the ideal in the his- conforming to whiteness. That gallery tory of advertising to the zerrspiegel ‘a space is the white world displaying its distorting mirror that would enhance ware and the similarities between the art certain images’ a neat way of present- gallery and the many white interiors in ing the conflict between desire, identity, contemporary design is striking. The per- status and affordability (1985: xvi). Ad- petuation of white as a symbol of au- vertising fables of ideal homes and im- thority and status in design in the con- ages are fodder for consumption be- temporary postmodern scenario serves cause they represent a utopia that will to exclude both people and ideologies of necessity never be fulfilled thereby that favour environmental and social ensuring eternal capitalism as opposed sustainability issues. Simply put, these ex- to eternal life. clusions are a reiteration of the ‘chaos of nature’ that the Enlightenment and Vic- The reified non-space of the gallery is, as torian era in design were so afraid of. mentioned, a parallel for the spaces Such exclusions are especially true of shown and discussed in this paper. White urban domestic and inner-city design. is not neutral ‘the white wall is precisely Interior design magazine Indesign makes not blank’ and its inhabitants are invited the distinction between urban and rural in only if they comprehend the lan- spaces, rendering the one ‘sleek’ and guage, this is the language of a domi- the other ‘charming’ ( Indesign 2004: nant group which is determined to re- 162,163). To put it bluntly, white design is main unnamed in its masked emptiness an extension of white racism where (Wigley 1995: xiv). This emptiness is also blackness, colour, variety and ethnic the visual legacy of ‘modern’ white identities in person, dress and choice of western power. Steve Martinot and Ja- 2 interior design, do not have a place. red Sexton put it succinctly when they The positioning of white within the para- write: digms of western hegemony suits the agendas of such a regime. White is not White supremacy is nothing more than just a colour it is a code of entry. The what we perceive of it; there is nothing clamour of white voices is prevalent in beyond it to give it legitimacy, nothing consumer marketing and as previously beneath it or outside it to give it justifica- mentioned in the western paranoia with tion. The structure of its banality is the sur- dirt, darkness and mess. 3 White utopias face on which it operates. Whatever are sold to people in a postmodern era mythic content it pretends to claim is a of crowds and busy lives. White is the priori empty. Its secret is that it has no depth. There is no dark corner that, once sought after space that is promised to brought to the light of reason, will un- release individuals from having to cope ravel its system (2003: 169). with anyone besides their own white personas. The term for white that is used The supremacy of the white space and in real estate rhetoric is often ‘neutral’. white surface, in its physicality, is only skin 7 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES deep and is a cosmetic layer at that. and material whiteness, testimonies to a White paint like white skin has many society controlled by a corporation. shades of pale and none are perm- Those responsible for an extensively anent or constant, in fact white skin is white painted environment are those not really white. In order to sustain and who still believe in the dated notion of maintain their precarious position, white ‘civilisation’, they are not only those ar- surface and white skin have to subscribe chitects who subscribe to white elitism to costly cosmetic applications without but an entire web of associated profes- admitting it. sionals who live in denial of nature and messy humanity. The interior examples Conclusion are without exception static, fixed forms. There is no evidence of movement, not only because there are few to no peo- The paper has posed a number of ques- ple in the images but primarily because tions such as: ‘Who is responsible for the of the hard inflexible architectural lines whiteness in architectural spaces, why is and shapes in the white spaces repre- there still so much white in postmodern sented. White is a death colour, it is the interiors and is there a connection be- reincarnated ghost of modernism. This tween white paint and white race’? whiteness is the corporate control of so- What the paper has indicated is that we ciety and it carries its cold lifelessness live in a designed world of surveillance, into the city scapes of work and life. an environment under lights. It has been argued that there is a direct connection Author Note between the painting of white spaces and the maintenance of white racial Kathleen Connellan is a Lecturer in de- status. The strong conflation of light and sign, craft and art history and theory at white in colour theory has been carried the South Australian School of Art at the across into design. Therefore, in the University of South Australia. Research semblance of light, whiteness continues interests include: domesticity and iden- incognito and as such strengthens its tity in race and place; design colour power base. In design theory, it does so and elite social environments, and em- by pretending to be space, in critical bodied memory in the making of design race theory, whiteness strengthens itself and craft objects. by ongoing group denial. The brighten- ing and spatial enhancing qualities of References light are used to exaggerate white spaces and white surfaces. In this way white becomes the backdrop for identi- Ahmed, S. 2004. ‘Declaration of white- fication of an Other. People who are ness: the non-performativity of anti- dark or who contrast against the combi- racism’, Borderlands, vol. 3, no.2, nation of bright whiteness and neatness http://www.borderlandsejournal.ade cause a ripple in the surface order. laide.edu.au/issues/vol3no2.html Connellan, K. 2006. ‘White skins, white The white designed world has been surfaces: the politics of domesticity in planned; these are not ‘spec’ buildings South African homes’, in Taking up but carefully and usually strategically the Challenge: critical whiteness placed edifices in the urban structure. In studies and indigenous Sovereignty , the case of domestic interiors, they are Riggs, D (ed.), Adelaide: Crawford published with proclaim in architecture House. magazines. They are symbols of power 8 CONNELLAN: WHITE SPACES Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger: 2. Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp, An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution Meta Apartments, Sydney. In- and Taboo , Harmondsworth: Pen- design 22 (August 2005): 73. guin. 3. Tanner architects, additions and Dyer, R. 2000. ‘The Matter of White- re-design of SCEGGS School, ness’, in The matter of whiteness , Sydney. Indesign 19 (November Back, L and Solomos, J (eds.), Lon- 2004); 156. don: Routledge. 4. Gray Puksand, Medibank Private, hooks, b. 2003. Teaching community: Melbourne. Indesign 22 (August pedagogy of hope , New York: 2005): 171. Routledge. 5. Jackson Clements Burrows, Ex- Jackson, M. 1994. ‘A Spectrum of Be- tension of house in Richmond, lief: Goethe’s “Republic” versus New- Melbourne, 2002. Indesign 19 ton-ian “Despotism” ’, Social Studies (November 2004): 141. of Science , vol. 24, no.4, 673-701. Krauss, R. 1979. Grids: format and im- Endnotes age in 20 th century art , New York: Pace Gallery. 1. Le Corbusier (Charles Eduard Jean- Marchand, R. 1985. Advertising the neret) was a high modernist architect American Dream: Making way for who influenced a generation of archi- modernity 1920-1940 , Berkeley: Uni- tects with his white utopian ideologies of versity of California. space. The reclining sofa was originally Martinot, S and Sexton, J. 2003. ‘The designed together with Pierre Jeanneret Avant-Garde of White Supremacy’, and Charlotte Perriand in 1928 out of Social Identities , vol. 9, no. 2, pp.169- chrome-plated steel and black cowhide 181. with a steel base; the chaise longue in this picture has black and white varie- O’Doherty, B. 1999. Inside the White gated leather upholstery. Cube: the ideology of the gallery 2. Whiteness in sartorial style and also in space, Berkley: University of Califor- magazine ‘representations’ of fashion nian Press. and colour is too much to cover in this Wigley, M. 1995. White walls, designer paper and will form the content of a dresses: the fashioning of modern forthcoming paper. architecture , Cambridge Mass: MIT 3. Darkness, blackness and the immoral- Press. ity of dirt is something that I have located Young, D.J.B. 2004. ‘The Material Value in the pre-Apartheid period of South Af- rica and can be read in a chapter, of Color: The Estate Agent’s Tale’, which will appear in Damien Riggs’ Home Cultures , vol.1, no.1, 5-22. forthcoming book Taking up the Chal- lenge: critical whiteness studies and in- Image references from Indesign digenous Sovereignty , Crawford House, Adelaide. 1. Michele de Lucchi and Gerhard Reichert, Lighting design, In- design 19, (November, 2004): 33. 9 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2 , No. 1, 2006 LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK FOR HIMSELF: AN AGITATION OF THE CULTURAL INTEGRITY OF WHITENESS IN AUSTRALIAN MULTICULTURAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES FARID FARID Abstract trol and mastery over him (2003: 31-38). The name, Balfour, is The increase of racist incidents towards synonymous with the declaration that people of ‘Middle Eastern helped create the state of Israel and appearances’ since 2001 and the sense with it the untold agony and suffering of of discomfort that has been associated the Palestinian people who to this day with them, problematises the ability of have yet to recover from one of history’s Arab Australians to participate as worst political and moral injustices (Rizk, legitimate citizens in their sociopolitical 2000). environment. This paper departs from this epistemic angle explaining how ‘pa- Said details how the wholeness of Bal- triarchal white sovereignty’ (Moreton- four’s colonial fantasy depended on this Robinson) has created a flawed prac- belligerent essentialist categorization in tice of multiculturalism which has not his speech to the British parliament attempted to decentre this Eurocentric about the success of the colonial ex- assumption. I argue that the Australian periment in Egypt. If an Egyptian, like government’s policies and practices me, seeks to unsettle this fantasy by since September 2001 have been un- speaking out, he or she is seen as “the derpinned by a broadly orientalist ideol- agitator who wishes to raise difficulties ogy that assumes an essential difference than the good native who overlooks the between Arab and Muslim Australians ‘difficulties of foreign domination’” from other Australian citizens and frames (2003:33). As the distinction of minority such a difference as a distance from and majority populations becomes in- and a lack of Australian whiteness. I creasingly blurred through transnational suggest that in order to expose and un- migration and technological advance- dercut this (re)inscription of otherness on ment, scenarios of colonial domination this diverse yet silenced community, an are currently being replayed in the Aus- ‘agitation’ of the intersections of the tralian bodypolitic and these will shape power asymmetries and cultural hierar- the epistemic tone of this essay. chies between those who can and those who cannot ‘speak’ must be In those terms, this paper will analyse brought forth in this paper. how orientalist representations of the ‘Arab’ in the Australian government’s Introduction policies and practices of state multicul- turalism especially after the events of September 11 th are determined by es- The first part of the title of this paper is sentialist and quasi-biological notions derived from Edward Said’s description that ideologically contain other non- of Lord Balfour’s political technique of white ‘bodies’ within the nation’s white silencing the Egyptian to ascertain con- racial and cultural integrity (Pugliese, ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK 2003). Hence, in this paper I will detail outside… ‘whiteness’ usually can de- the experiences of those of ‘Middle scribe whiteness, reflect on it, and re- Eastern appearance’ and how they count experiences of it” (1999:169). In a came to be signified as the latest others sense, I am grappling with Frantz Fanon’s along the continuum of cultural and ra- aphorism that “colonialism forces peo- cial demonisations that have been in- ple it dominates to ask themselves the herent in Australia’s racial history i question constantly ‘In reality, who am (Poynting et al., 2001). What this paper I?’”(1963: 203). puts forward is how the discursive and political stratification of racialised others Arabophobia – The Tyranny of is not a new phenomenon and is cer- ‘Non-White’ Appearances tainly not unique in the Australian con- text of state multiculturalism. In his masterful work Orientalism , what It is precisely this role to ‘agitate’ the Said exposes in the seemingly benign power asymmetries and cultural hierar- political thinking of Balfour of the ‘Orient’ chies between those who can and and ‘Orientals’ is symptoms of prejudicial those who cannot ‘speak’ that I wish to thinking. The very Western study of the bring forth in this paper. I cannot as a East, in Said’s view, was bound up in the post-colonial intellectual in Western systematic prejudices about the non- academia measure how this discursive Western world that turned it into a set of intervention through ‘speaking’ here in tangibly felt political and geographical the language that colonised my country dominations. The ability to make a dis- of origin can effectively contribute to- course suggests that the Orientalist, in wards achieving a sense of justice for my this case Balfour, is driven by a need to fellow colonised. I am weary that be- construct an image of a norm that is cause of my privileges, I am complicit in able to speak for the silent other which is some way in reproducing the same marked as racially and culturally aber- hegemonic structures of whiteness that I rant. This has been a concern of Said am seeking to dismantle. Yet, this ir- and other post-colonial theorists (Spivak, resolvable paradox borne out of existing 1988; Ang; 1994) where the ‘Oriental’ is power relations can be seen as strategi- not given the opportunity to make cally disabling or enabling. Through my statements about his or her people, let privileged location in the West, I am alone the ‘Occidental’, and informs the able to embrace a theoretically self- tone of his writings post Orientalism es- assertive persona that allows me to be- pecially about the Palestinian quest for come the ‘agitator’ without the threat of self-determination (1992;1994). Said at- being physically or intellectually re- tributes the authority and the ability to pressed (Perera 1999: 195-197). Although ‘speak’ to the unacknowledged privi- the new Australian sedition laws may be leges of ascribing to ‘whiteness’ proving me wrong! (Williams 2006:11). (2003:228). What I am pointing to here in is not a liberal romanticisation of the processes The seamlessly acquired demonised th of ‘speech’ as simply a subversive libera- status of the ‘Arab’ post September 11 tion of repressed voices from the throes echoes the same manner of objectifying of whiteness. Rather, I am attempting to the ‘Oriental’ subject during the eras of de-hegemonise the naturalised status of British and French colonialism. The Sep- th whiteness into the foreground of critical tember 11 terrorist attacks on the inquiry about Australian multiculturalism. United States, and subsequent terrorist As Haggis et al. argue “those placed attacks including the Bali bombings, re- vealed degrees of how Western states 2 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK assumed the orientalist role of protecting This blend of cultural determinism breeds the West from the perils of the East (Dut- a tacit distinction between an Australian ton et al. 2004: 5-6). In Australia, a pri- and Western world that is characterized mordial position of defending ‘our way by democratic beliefs and an Arab so- of life’ has been formulated with a na- ciety that is hampered by undemocratic tionally defined cultural core in mind practices such as terrorism (Turner 2003: based on Western democratic values. 414-417). The discourse of the Australian This territorial self-assertion, couched in government in its multicultural policies terms of security jargon, becomes par- and practices assumes implicitly that ticularly stressed in the political spaces that lie between the Australian nation- on the one hand there are Westerners, state and the indigenous and immigrant and on the other there are Arab- minorities in it. This means that the con- Orientals; the former are…rational, cept of national security, in this instance, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural sus- becomes stretched to include some picion; the latter are none of these groups and exclude others from political things” (Said 2003: 49). processes almost at will (Poynting & No- ble 2003: 41-43). The flexibility and in- The fact that multiculturalism has been herent ambiguity of this concept en- structured as a contest of mainstream ables the state to promote inherently and minority relations asserts its embed- exclusive mental spaces, that of the ori- ment in colonial presuppositions and entalist division that Said aptly describes, Orientalist practices of othering (Ahmed to control political arenas. By this I am 2000: 95-113). It has to be duly noted following Said in arguing that before that this polarization is not egalitarian in there could be a materialization of any sense of the term. The bifurcation European colonialism there had to be that multiculturalism posits is between an idea of the ‘West’ or the notion that two unequal cultural spheres – an An- there was a social and geographical glocentric white one and anything dif- space sanctimoniously guarded by the ferent from it. There is continuity in the ontological boundaries of whiteness that assumption that minority groups are es- was formulated in contrast to the ‘East’. sentially static and authentically differ- ent from a dominant culture. This essen- In other words, this universal practice of tialist tactic privileges the dominant designating in one’s mind a familiar group, and its pervasive culture, in al- space which is “ours” and an unfamiliar ways treating the other as alien to divert space beyond “ours” which is “theirs” is away opposition to social and power a way of making geographical distinc- inequalities (Ahmed 2000: 97-101). Lar- tions that can be entirely arbitrary. I use balestier reiterates that in mainstream the word “arbitrary” here because “representations of multiculturalism, imaginative geography of the “our land- whiteness itself is frequently an unexam- barbarian land” variety does not require ined all-encompassing given”(1999:146). that the barbarians acknowledge this Thus, this ideology also serves a system of distinction. It is enough for “us” to set up Orientalist domination that sets up onto- these boundaries in our own minds; logical boundaries between different “they” become “they” accordingly, and groups along the hierarchy of whiteness both their territory and their mentality in society and divides their members are designated as different from “ours” along imaginary, but at the same time (Said 2003:54; my emphasis). real, lines of binary opposition. In this in- stitutional moment of multiculturalism post September 11, the dominant white 3 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK culture becomes the sole and overriding ness that sees how whiteness in its local- mode of ‘national’ interactions flanked ised manifestations and global conse- by other minority groups. These racial- quences is bound up in a series of ised groups enter into a colonial game vested political interests that bestow of competing for the colonial gaze of those within its contingent discursive and the dominant culture or resisting its impe- cultural domains (un)acknowledged rialist asphyxia or an ambiguous combi- privileges and power (Gabriel, 1998; nation of both as exhibited by the minor- Moreton Robinson, 1998; Perera, 1999; ity of Arab Australians. Pugliese, 2002). The Location of the White Self Within the racial spectrum designed vis-à-vis the Arab Other through a hierarchy of “white interests” (Gabriel 1998: 97), Arab bodies are marked with pre-configured meanings in When analysing Australian politics most Australia: suspected terrorists, presumed scholars who include ‘race’ in their study religious and misogynistic fanatics and do so when the non-white ‘other’ is oppressed women. Arabs exist outside of clearly visible in the political landscape the ideological scope of ‘belonging’ (Gunaratnam 2003: 128-129). This form of within the Australia. Located within a race politics is rarely perceived as being racial paradox, Arab-Australians were shaped by the relationship between pa- once, in Australia’s immigration history, triarchal white sovereignty and those simultaneously racialised as white and who do not ascribe to its phenotypic non-white. Being unable to fit into read- characteristics (Moreton-Robinson, ily assigned racial and ethnic categories 2004b). This process, known as racialisa- used by Australia, Arabs traditionally tion, is understood were and are still not legally ‘raced’ and therefore were presumably white before as the way in which complex social phe- the gang rapes incidents and Septem- nomena are refracted through and be- ii come explained primarily in terms of ber 11 (Batrouney 2002: 28-42) . How- ethnic and racial categories of social ever, after these events Arab-Australians perception (Poynting et al. 2004:14). have become signified as oppositional to Australia’s democratic civilization and Its credibility is sustained through the thus have firmly become placed outside normalized quiet of an unseen but em- the boundaries of ‘whiteness’. Oriental- bodied power of a whiteness ism, based on the othering of the Arab in the Australian context, has now become that is conferred not as an individualistic a sedimented language of everyday act, but rather as a performative en- socio-political interactions that creates abled by an entire discursive apparatus the backdrop for social and national constituted by such institutional bodies exclusions to take place. Moreover, it as the Australian government, the De- can be seen how this discourse easily partment of Immigration and so on (Pug- liese 2002:165) degenerates into an exercise of stereo- typical thinking that involves making Thus, central to understanding the pos- generalized and sweeping assumptions sessive logic of this racialised thinking is a about an entire set of individuals and recognition of the ambiguous position- populations (Osuri, 2004). It follows, that ing of the other in a society where race these discourses have been integral in has been intrinsically used, as an all- the circulation of a ‘common’ knowl- purpose marker, in political practices. edge that is at once dominant as is This entails a further self-reflexive aware- popular within political circles, because 4 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK it inhibits the other from producing The targets of these post-September 11 his/her own discourses that run counter incidents attest to how the cultural other to accepted discourses. This hegemonic has been excluded on the basis of a knowledge prevents the other rupturing convoluted strategy. Thus, non-Arabs, the ideological grip held by these widely such as Sikhs and Indians, as well as non- held norms. So in this sense, benign or Muslims, including Arab Christians, have normal ‘everyday’ practices of the na- been adversely affected (HREOC, 2003). tion should not be assumed as free from This violence is best understood not as being complicit in imperialist processes racist incidents but as imperialist prac- of ensuring a skewed normality toward a tices of white Anglo Saxon fragility that dominant group (Goldberg 1993: 83-84). invoke a demarcatory philosophy of dis- Further, it must be noted that the impe- criminating against the non-white other rialist ambitions of a nation are not sim- threatening the socio-economic, politi- ply forgotten with the conquest of terri- cal and cultural privileges held by this tory. The desire to homogenously elimi- un-raced group (Hage 1998: 28-32). The nate differences in the attempt to main- ironically multicultural target of these tain a unified national identity, specifi- incidents is instantiated by identifying cally adhering to a constructed norm, others through corporeal and cultural still informs the political and cultural descriptors of the Middle East. Pugliese, agendas of many postcolonial states in explaining how the power of oriental- (Hardt & Negri 2000: 128-134). ism touches other non-Middle Easterners, argues that Sticks and Stones: Broken Arabs and Bones everything in this descriptor is predicated on situating the interpellated subject within a geographical location: this de- In the wake of the September 11 attacks scriptor assumes its animating essence on the United States mainland, a whole precisely through its naming and invoca- wave of racist violence and discrimina- tion of a geopolitical place. Yet…this de- tion was directed to Arab and Muslim scriptor, when applied to individual bod- ies, obliterates the specificity of geogra- diasporic communities throughout the phy as such (2003). West, including Australia (Mason 2004: 233). After September 11 hate crimes increased dramatically. Hate crimes Thus, the articulation of differences are including beatings, arson, attacks on embodied and embedded in encoun- mosques, vehicular assaults and verbal ters with others who fit this orientalist pro- threats were reported. The Australian file. Yet, this paradox is constructed Arabic Council reported a twenty fold through a distinct process of racialisa- increase in reports of discrimination and tion. While other ethnic groups are ra- vilification of Arab Australians in the en- cialised according to phenotype, Arab- suing period after September11th Australians have become simultaneously (HREOC, 2003). However, these are racialised according to religious and merely the racial incidents that have pseudo-cultural and biological symbols. been reported through legislative Religious racialisation conflates Arabs means. Many other factors prevent such and Islam, and consequently reduces all incidents from being acknowledged Arabs as Muslims. Moreover, it represents publicly as statistical figures, as already Islam as a monolithic religion erasing di- subjugated communities sense a versity among Arabs and Muslims; and heightening of persecution (Humphrey marks Islam as inherently incompatible 2002: 206-223). with Australian ‘democratic’ beliefs. This exceptional process of racialisation posi- 5 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK tions Arabs in a peculiar location within equations since the incorporation of the Australian racial terrain in which they race in the formation of the modern na- are not racially legible within the operat- tion state(Said 2003: 332). But, that this ing racial framework and has thus con- marginalised population has not osten- tributed to Arab-Australian demonic sibly been associated with being Austra- visibility post September 11 (Pugliese, lian. The first part of this hyphenated 2003). identity has become a cultural obstacle towards being nationally recognised as It must be noted that these recent inci- the second part of the hybrid identity. A dents were not suddenly brought about precariously defined state citizenship in a bout of nationalist fervour following that is available in naturalisation cere- the events of September 11 and later monies as part of extending a multicul- terrorist attacks. The incidents must be tural good will to others does not cap- situated in a larger trend of ‘moral ture the intricacies of cultural identity panic’ that has linked crime with ethnic- (Kampmark, 2003). Although, the state ity and that has been characterised by recognises through its multicultural poli- the same racialising ideology that Arab- cies that all those assuming citizenship Australian communities are currently are willing to commit to the Australian reeling from (Batrouney, 2002; Collins et ‘way of life’, they are still marginalized al, 2000; Poynting et al, 2004). As Hage through the hegemonic formations of reiterates regarding previous racist acts white belonging. Citizenship should be understood as more than a document what was more important than any ide- of national standing, it should include a ology of essentialisation was the more sense of belonging to the nation (Hage general process whereby one group of 2002: 2-4). This means that democratic ‘White’ Australians felt empowered , and political values do not only affect the were in a position, to subject another way the government and its people (Arab-Muslim) group of Australians to such harassment (1998:35). draw collective boundaries, but it is through the national imaginary that this It asserts that Orientalism as employed idea takes place. by Said maintains that an imaginative geography based on misconceptions of With this point in mind, it can be further the other “puts the Westerner in a whole argued that belonging is not only de- series of possible relations with the Orient termined through institutional channels without ever losing him the relative up- but through daily regimes of social per hand” (2003: 7). Such a description knowledge that are (re)produced and exemplifies how the Australian govern- practised daily. Thus, what these racially ment since the time of Federation has motivated incidents signify is a sense of managed to keep this status quo undis- national and cultural belonging inter- turbed. The cultural primacy accorded twined with a feeling of securing this be- to the white Australian male of Anglo longing. The conflicting sense of being Celtic background has created a both Arab and Australian is an oxymoron flawed practice of multiculturalism that to the white bodypolitic that ensures has not attempted to decentre this tentative accommodation of a singular Eurocentric assumption. identity based on negating another with all of its complexities. This falls within Har- What is at issue is not that the Arab- ris’ argument of whiteness as property Australian population has firmly personi- whereby the right to exclude the other is fied this other, as the dialectics of orien- seen as normative if the other does not talism are always present in nationalist 6 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK possess any of the criteria of whiteness ratic values” (MPS 158, 2001). The per- (1993:1721). ception of cultural practices of others as inherent and innate to them collapses The Non-Performativity of State the myriad of differences between sub- Multiculturalism iii ject peoples. It situates subject commu- nities, in this case Arab and Muslim communities, in a particular relation of The government’s immediate response inferiority within the discursive regime of to the racially motivated episodes in the whiteness. Moreover, it affirms that aftermath of September 11 was of swift terrorism “is held to be a weapon of the condemnation. The Minister for Immigra- weak because the strong also control tion and Multicultural Affairs at the time, the doctrinal systems and their terror Philip Ruddock, was quick to rebuke all doesn’t count as terror” (Chomsky, those who engaged in acts of racist 2001). Thus, it is interesting to note how conduct (MPS 158, 2001). But the gen- the reach of the term ‘un-Australian’ eral tenor of this ‘anti-racist’ rhetoric can goes well beyond certain targeted ra- be seen as an ideological cover for the cialised groups to include racists who do strengthening of the hegemony of the not ascribe to an aestheticised progres- government through ‘colour-blind’ poli- sive and middle class version of multicul- cies that are aimed at ensuring the turalism (Hage 1998:182). The targeting safety of the state and ‘all’ its citizens. of such groups as well as those ‘racists’ hooks eloquently summarizes the Minis- identified by Ruddock, sheds light on the ter’s view as manner in which ‘un-Australian’ oper- ates as a heterogenous catchword that The eagerness with which contemporary semantically and politically excludes al- society does away with racism, replacing this recognition with evocations of plural- ternative discourses to that propagated ism and diversity that further mask reality, by the government. It typifies a kind of is a response to the terror. It is has also discursive terror, which emanates from become a way to perpetuate the terror, the Balfourian technique of silencing the by providing a cover, a hiding place. Oriental that suppresses any avenues of (1992: 176). critiquing governmental practices that can be interpreted as terrorising to some The common undercurrent in anti-racist communities. and multiculturalist discourses is the idea that the Western democratic socio- What I am pointing to is how the gov- political model originating from the his- ernment, in maintaining its hegemony as tory of European Enlightenment is the the only legitimate political actor to use most advanced of humanity (Goldberg violence, creates in an orientalist man- 1993: 14-18). It constructs the West as a ner an environment of “moral panic” for zone of uncontested morality. This thesis its citizens who are seen as un-Australian represents all that is pleasing about hu- (Poynting et al. 2004: 1–3). In this key man beings, and in its defence those document, the moral upper hand re- who dishonour its basic tenets are casti- sides with “innocent Australians” who gated as anti-democratic (Ahmed, “are being wrongfully blamed” or “are 2004). Ruddock describes the attacks being threatened” (UDR 2003: 7). The against Arab and Muslim communities in ‘threatening’ of the ‘Australian’ social Australia as “un-Australian”. He goes on order has become irrationally linked in to say that “such incidents merely play orientalist commonsense with “terrorists” into the hands of those, like terrorists, who “claim religious sanction for their who do not share our civilised democ- actions despite there being no religious 7 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK or cultural basis for terrorism” (UDR 2003: The linguistic asymmetry in this policy 7). This falls in line with one of Said’s prin- document has been based entirely on cipal themes in Orientalism . Said insists orientalist bias. Through this language on how orientalist language is powerful the government’s hierarchical structure in its ability to be shrouded in an aura of of power is perpetuated amongst its moral superiority and invisibility that im- population, as conceptions of ‘truth’ munes it from any opposing discourses and ‘reality’ become established as (2003: 227-228). Orientalist discourse norms in political language. As Said suc- embodies and articulates “a certain will cinctly sums up: or intention” emanating from the dis- course producer (2003: 12). The dichot- For every Orientalist, quite literally, there omy of the Australian people and the is a support system of staggering power, ‘terrorists’ is carefully used to relieve the considering the ephemerality of the Australian government of any associa- myths that Orientalism propagates. The system now culminates into the very insti- tion of terrorism that is not religiously or tutions of the state . To write about the culturally based. It is also interesting to Arab Oriental world, therefore, is to write note how these characteristics have with the authority of a nation , and not been synonymously assigned to terrorism with the affirmation of a strident ideology without taking into account other politi- but with the unquestioning certainty of cal, geographical or economic factors. absolute truth backed by absolute force. It is strategically not mentioned in this (2003: 307) [My emphasis] document the Australian Government’s involvement in a ‘Western’ led cam- Thus, political rhetoric here has followed paign in the ‘war of terror’ may have in an orientalist trend of ‘fixity’ and ra- contributed to the rise of terrorist inci- cialised abstractions that are far from dents after September 11 th (Osuri & empty in their implications (Bhabha Banerjee 2004: 168). Furthermore, the bi- 1983: 18). To the Australian government, partisan support for an Israeli state oc- those who engage or sympathize with cupying Palestinian lands is not included terrorist activity whatever the motivation as another form of accepting state- or obligation is, are political outlaws. At sponsored terrorism, as against other po- the bottom of this view is a stereotype litical actors’ terrorism (Jakubowicz, which connotes a semantic rigidity 2003). It might be argued that the con- through a label that is emotionally laden text might not be the most appropriate in the context of national security (Noble to list the foreign political interests of the 2005: 109). This colonial stereotype acts government in a policy document for as a discursive strategy that ‘fixes’ the multiculturalism. And this criticism is other, be they terrorists or non- voiced by a leading multicultural theorist Australians, in a position of inferiority vis- in Australia, Andrew Jakubowicz, where à-vis the white rational Australian. Fur- he recognizes that “the Is- thermore, this discourse is effectively a raeli/Palestinian conflict has become national self-narrative that demarcates conflated with the politics associated the borders of Australia and its enemy with the US/UK/Australia invasion of Iraq” terrorists or the West and East (Lee Koo, (2003). Yet in the same spirit he equally 2005). Said makes clear that argues that the invocation of interna- tional crisis, notably terrorism, causally in any instance of at least written lan- creates a racialised domestic environ- guage, there is no such thing as a deliv- ered presence, but a re-presence , or a ment that identifies and racialises those representation. The value, efficacy, who look like ‘terrorists’ in Australia (Ja- strength, apparent veracity of a written kubowicz, 2003). statement… is a presence to the reader 8 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK by virtue of its having excluded, dis- From this standpoint, Ruddock assumes placed, made supererogatory any such the role of the orientalist by mimetically real thing as ‘the Orient’ (2003: 21). representing the views of these ‘uncivi- lised’ communities to the ‘civilised’ and The ideas of orientalist scholarship can concerned Australian public (Said 2003: be seen to have evolved as foundations 39). It is as if the Arabic and Muslim for both ideologies and policies devel- communities are homogenously lumped oped by Australia and the West. To le- as separate communities apart from the gitimise defence against vague enemies Australian one and that their presence is that are diametrically positioned as op- one of containment and judgement. This posed to Australia, this policy uses an dichotomisation of us and them, firmly orientalist language that is normalised situates the ‘Arab’ in a space that is on with its appeal to the maintenance of “the locus of the non” to frame it in Pug- the security of the homeland (Hage liese’s words (2003). What this existential- 1993: 93-96). What these statements ist term maintains is that in order for the (re)present are simplified schemata of Australian national self-image to be per- complex cultural and political realities petuated as unified against competing that easily conflate and collapse ethnic discourses of otherness, the constitution categories with undemocratic practices of this self is based on the ‘de- of violence. By identifying with what is constitution’ of the other through politi- associated with Australia (e.g. freedom, cal and discursive measures (Ingram human rights, democracy, and toler- 2001: 163-168). ance), the public is more willing to ac- cept other policies of the government In this light, the practices of placing that might include invasion of other mostly Arab and Muslim asylum seekers countries (Moreton Robinson 2004a: 78). in detention centres in 2001 is consid- This is because to voice dissent would ered as morally and culturally accept- mean to identify with the other’s ‘way of able as it protects the Australian ‘way of life which is supposedly far removed life’ from their otherness. This physical from an Australian one (Hage 2003: 122). implementation of othering became a This belief, that has become a corner- simplistic yet effective political strategy, stone of governmental policies in the which was used by the Howard gov- domestic and international fronts, reiter- ernment in a time of elections, to ex- ates how “psychologically, Orientalism is clude others from ‘our’ Australian society a form of paranoia” (Said 2003: 72). (Perera, 2002). Juxtaposing the racial incidents perpetrated against the Arab (Un)Australian (In)Securities and Muslim against communities, the violence committed by the terrorists on white diasporic territory as well as the In the same document, Minister Rud- government’s own form of violence (i.e. dock allays the fear of the Australian mandatory detention) reveals a deeply public in assuring them that flawed moral system that is only judged these [Arabic and Muslim] communities from a white perspective of knowledge have a demonstrated commitment to (Moreton Robinson 2004a: 75-78). All Australia and have stated their abhor- three cases of violence are con- rence of terrorism just as much as every demned, but the latter two escape the other section of the Australian commu- full scale of condemnation because nity (MPS 158, 2001). they are seen as protecting the nation from the threatening others (Hoh, 2002). Thus, while the Australian government’s 9 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK ‘anti-terrorist’ protective policies can be non-state terrorism to be part of a nar- seen as trying to preserve the sanctity of rowly defined narrative of belonging Australian life from terrorists, it can simul- (MPS 158, 2001). This means that the suf- taneously be seen as a departure from fering of ‘white diasporas’ (Osuri & the egalitarian rhetoric of multicultural Banerjee 2004: 161- 169) must be val- policies through the political racialisation orised by ‘non-white’ diasporas in Aus- and exclusion of the other (Lee Koo, tralia to relieve themselves of the “asso- 2005). ciative logic of racism” (Hage 2002:242) by the government or its concerned citi- At this point I want to return to the term zens. ‘un-Australian’ to explain how it can be seen to operate as a metonymic form of The formation of the Muslim reference ‘neo-racism’ (to invoke Etienne Balibar’s group is a case in point as it illustrates term). This means that the Darwinian the embrace of a rhetoric of grief and form of biological racism that discrimi- compassion, moderation in religious nated on the basis of a belief in biologi- views and condemnation by Arab and cally inferior or superior races along a Muslim communities as a politically rec- hierarchy of white features is now being ognised effort to reject the Arab mar- replaced by a belief that groups of ginality (Dowling, 2005; Kerbaj, 2006a). people are ‘unassimilable’ because of The advisory group was formed in late particular cultural values and beliefs 2005 through a handpicking by the fed- (Balibar 1990: 17-27). This is the discursive eral government of influential Muslim domain where religious antithesis is in- leaders within their communities that ex- voked in popular discourses of the na- hibited signs of religious conservatism tion to further polarise Arab Australians and political support within their com- from white patriarchal sovereignty munities (Kerbaj, 2006b). These leaders through an orientalist view of Islam. with their varying views, motivations and Through the oppositional construction of their diverse social and political Islam to the Judeo-Christian tradition in- positioning within these racialised herent in Australian and Western de- communities joined together in the mocracies, Arab Australians, specifically political hope to be accepted as Muslim Arab Australians, are relegated belonging and to be considered to being anti-democratic and thus anti- ‘Australian’ by the government and its Western. The interstitial political space of other ‘non-racialised’ citizens (Kerbaj, articulating experiences of discrimina- 2006c; Noble & Tabar 2002: 140-144). In tion and still being committed to an essence, this form of ‘coercive ethico-political position of justice is be- mimeticism’ entails a discursive coming increasingly inexistent for such apologetic by which an already subju- communities (Kerbaj, 2006c). The politi- gated people are driven to reproduce cal option afforded by the government the characteristics and ideals of a is that once the Arab-Australian com- dominant culture in a way that affirms munity strips itself of its own religious and the categorical thinking that locks those cultural traits to join a Western condem- colonised in convenient roles of banal- nation of such acts, the effacement of ised exoticism (Chow 2002: 107). This the negatory prefix in front of ‘Australian’ leads to what Foucault calls the “objec- is complete. This is exhibited in Rud- tivizing of the subject”, where “the sub- dock’s reassuring tone of the ‘good ject is either divided inside himself or di- white nationalist’ (Hage 1998:78-104), vided from other. This process objectiv- who allows the Arabic and Muslim izes him.” (2003:126). Therefore, the Arab communities who publicly denounce Other who is already subjugated and objectified from a history of orientalist 10 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK expansion in the ‘Orient’ (Said 2003:72), political façade. What they also denote is re-subjugated, re-objectified and re- is a cultural particularism of institutionalis- orientalised and is caught in a struggle ing whiteness and its vehement imple- of conflicting impulses that defies the mentation into definitions of Australian egalitarian underpinnings of state multi- nationalist practices (Kampmark 2004: culturalism. This is because supposedly 287-298). all Australians, regardless of their race, culture, religion or gender, are entitled Conclusion: Beyond Saying and to the same equal treatment from the Doing government (UDR 2003: 6-8). th Yet, in order to ‘fit in’ the Arab is forced The post September 11 Arab Australian to assimilate to an Australian ‘way of life’ experience of multiculturalism crystallises that homogenizes his/her cultural differ- the sense among those ‘of Middle East- ences (Noble 2005: 115-119). What these ern appearance’, and I strategically in- anti-terrorist practices post September clude myself within this category af- 11 th by the Australian government ger- forded to me by the government, that minated out of was a legitimate need to they are the current ambivalent ‘others’ protect ‘our way of life’ or , as I interpret of Australian society (Green 2003: 7-13). it, a safeguarding of a privileged white The daily incidents of racism and the position of political and cultural hegem- Australian government’s responses ony. This fear stems from the guilt associ- towards Arab Australians exhibit several ated with the foundational moment of of the orientalist biases identified by colonial invasion and the subsequent Said. These include a belief in the glossing over that delicate balance of superiority of the West through anti- xenophobic whiteness through policies terrorist rhetoric and legislation, an of exclusion and tentative inclusion of inability or unwillingness to allow these the ‘other’ (Perera, 2002). Thus, the ra- communities to represent themselves, cialisation of suspicious Arabs or implic- and an exaggerated fear of defending itly identified un-Australian communities the homeland that is fortified by a becomes a fundamental feature of pre- degree of discomforting these serving the nationalist and orientalist communities. rhetoric of multiculturalism (Hage 2003: 38-43). It exemplifies “the culmination of In the Australian context of state multi- Orientalism as a dogma that not only culturalism, the discursive economy of degrades its subject matter but also representations of ‘culturally diverse’ blinds its practitioner” (Said 2003: 307). others and the hierarchy embodied in Hence, there is an apparent contradic- these constructions has had significant tion in the modern liberal ethos of multi- implications for the unequal distribution culturalism that espouses a shared hu- of power between the government and manity involving an idea of Australian its internal ‘others’. The most pervasive citizenship and values. This ensures that feature of the orientalist language em- no individual or group living in Australia ployed in the multicultural policies and seems to be excluded (UDR 2003:6). practices of the Australian government is the problematisation of minorities In the context of these exclusionary (Schech & Haggis 2001: 143-150). The governmental practices, the actual ‘problem’ of the examples given in this embodied experiences of racial dis- essay is that cultural differences are be- crimination of Arab Australians post Sep- ing presented in a continuation of the tember 11 render multiculturalism as a same orientalism, which Said so critically 11 FARID: LET THE EGYPTIAN SPEAK wrote about. The idea of a vibrant mul- on orientalist dogmatism, can be ticulturalism that celebrates difference is realised. unfortunately still rhetorical rather than practical in its democratic manifesta- Author Note tions (Ang 1996: 37-40). The danger of an orientalist multiculturalism is that it cre- ates an illusion of equality where the Farid Farid is a PhD student at the Centre other is visible and is given a voice to a for Cultural Research at the University of certain extent. However, this visibility is Western Sydney researching the dias- built on orientalist stereotypes where the poric cultural politics and practices of other’s role easily becomes exhibitionist the Iraqi community in Sydney. He is also in performing exotic spectacles or being a research assistant at UTS Shopfront re- excluded on the basis of their otherness. searching strategies of capacity building The narratives of exoticness and cele- and conflict resolution for racialised brating cultural diversity are undoubt- communities. edly preferred to hostile attitudes or even fear of the other, but unfortunately References these options are not mutually exclusive. In either case, the Western self is dis- tanced from the other through a series Ahmed, Sara. 2004. ‘Declarations of of hierarchical obstructions predicated Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of on exclusivist notions of whiteness and Anti-Racism’. Borderlands e-journal 3 Australianness. 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Williams, George. 2006. ‘Speak up in defence of free speech’. Sydney Morning Herald . Comment, 11. Endnotes i The Australian Arabic Council in the wake of the increased usage of that derogatory term in popular discourses of the mass media and the government released a press release explaining the orientalist histories and racist underpinnings of such a term. Refer to Aus- tralian Arabic Council. (2003). ‘Ethnicity & Crime in NSW: Politics, Rhetoric & Ethnic De- scriptors’. (http://www.aac.org.au/media.php?ArtID=2 4) ii In October 1998, a young boy was stabbed to death in the western suburbs of Sydney. This incident and the subsequent backlash became a sensationalised event that domi- nated Australian mass media and the NSW government where a link between crime and Middle Eastern ethnicity was bluntly ar- ticulated. For an in-depth discussion about the politics of racialisation that elevated those ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ to embody demonised others, refer to Collins et al. (2000). Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime: Youth, Ethnicity and Crime . Sydney, NSW: Pluto Press. iii I adopt this title from Sara Ahmed’s paper on exploring the ineffectual politics of anti- racism within a framework of critical white- ness studies (Ahmed, 2004). 16 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2 , No. 1, 2006 WHITE “AUTOCHTHONY” ROB GARBUTT Abstract lands, and importantly, the implicit moral virtue of one people’s claim to specific territory over that of others. The virtue of Western conceptualisations of autoch- being a local, of a local place or of the thony — that is, of being born of the nation, rests on a false claim of white earth itself — are a useful frame for un- “autochthony” that to perform its social derstanding aspects of the settler Aus- function must conceal Aboriginal au- tralian idea of “being a local”. The tochthony. western tradition of autochthony under- pins relationships between particular Bringing Australian settler claims of au- peoples and particular lands, and im- tochthony into the light enables its criti- portantly, the implicit moral virtue of one cal examination, and complements the people’s claim to specific territory over critical examination of that other fic- that of others. The virtue of being a lo- tional people-land relation, terra nullius . cal, of a local place or of the nation, The usefulness of white “autochthony” rests on a false claim of white “autoch- as an idea is not simply the deconstruc- thony” that to perform its social function tion of its fiction. A critique of white “au- must conceal Aboriginal autochthony. tochthony” opens local and national spaces to a constellation of ethical con- Bringing Australian settler claims of au- siderations. In particular, it institutes an tochthony into the light enables its criti- ethics of location that decouples the cal examination, and complements the necessary connection that claims of critical examination of that other fic- white “autochthony” produce between tional people-land relation, terra nullius . settlers, local places and the nation. The usefulness of white “autochthony” as an idea is not simply the deconstruc- The Standing Ground tion of its fiction. A critique of white “au- tochthony” opens local and national spaces to a constellation of ethical con- This paper is written in Bundjalung kuntri, siderations. In particular, it institutes an however, I situate myself within a differ- ethics of location. ent imaginary geography: a settler imaginary of the land. 1 I say this not to Introduction deny Bundjalung claims to kuntri but to acknowledge the imaginary that informs my first language for this land: the In this paper I propose that Western imaginary to which I am habitually conceptualisations of autochthony — bound to return and draw upon — that is, of being born of the earth itself — through language to repeat, and in are a useful frame for understanding as- practice to re-enact. These are habits of pects of the settler Australian idea of generations. My project is one that seeks “being a local”. The western tradition of to disrupt the way that return is repeated autochthony underpins relationships be- and re-enacted as everyday Australian tween particular peoples and particular settler colonialism. It is a project that is ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY constrained by the settler clearing in the movement that brought me into which particular things and ideas are Lismore but instead towards my sense of able to appear. origins within the local: What ideologies and concepts inform the processes Aus- In the first language of my imaginary… tralian settlers undertake to install them- I was born in Lismore on the far north selves as “local” or “original”? 2 coast of New South Wales. My mother and father were also born in Lismore. My inquiry into how I came to think of Mum grew up in South Lismore, dad in myself as a local of Lismore began with Green Forest. My mother’s family, a rail- becoming conscious of the physical, way family that followed the construc- social, cultural and imaginary displace- tion of railways north, came from some- ments of Aborigines that had occurred where down near Bathurst and from the in order that being a white local could New South Wales South Coast. At some happen in the first place (see Garbutt point, more distant maternal relatives 2004). This paper attempts to go some arrived in Australia from Scotland and way to answering these issues in terms of Leicestershire. These are impressions an idea I call white “autochthony” . rather than facts. On my father’s side, his parents emigrated from near Helmsley in Yorkshire in the late 1800s. They bought a AUTOCHTHONY AND THE LOCALS farm at Green Forest and another at Tuncester 5 miles from Lismore and it was Autochthony at Tuncester that I spent the first three years of my life, before mum and dad left dairying and floods and headed into The word autochthon is directly bor- town and the hills of East Lismore. Those rowed from the Ancient (Classical) east Lismore hills and paddocks in which Greek word αυτοχθον [ autochthon ] I played explorer and naturalist as a meaning ‘sprung from the land itself’ child is now Southern Cross University (Delbridge 1991:113) or ‘children of the where I play a cultural studies Ph.D. land itself’ (Isocrates 1990:33,§24). For candidate. the ancient Athenians being an autoch- thon had the sense of being indigenous I grew up with a sense that this family to their territory (Walsh 1978:301). This story is a monocultural Anglo-Celtic story autochthonous relationship between of rootedness in Lismore. By turning the Athenians and their land—Attica— family tree upside down, however, there produced ‘the “empty space”,’ Nicole is a reverse sense—a sense of branching Loraux says, ‘where the civic imagina- and dispersal, an international diasporic tion of Athens began to crystallise’ movement. It is, however, without any (1993:51). Within this space emerged sense of diaspora that I grew up as one ideas of citizenship, the polis , democ- of the Lismore locals: ‘Born and bred,’ as ratic government, public ritual and relig- they say. Rooted in place, despite the ion, and the roles of women, slaves and movement that lies not so long ago in foreigners within the polis .3 the past. Athens provides an example of the par- My sense of being a local was disrupted ticular effects of the Western autoch- through signing a Sorry Book that even- thonic imaginary. Firstly, the inequalities tually led to the question of my current and violence that accompany the research. This question was not directed foundation of the state are forgotten towards my personal history of forgetting through a single unifying myth. There is 2 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY ‘a founding forgetting … of the division claims are founded upon the practices unity implies’—a ‘ forgetting of the politi- of nineteenth century settler colonialism cal as such ’ (Loraux (2002:43 and 42 and articulate with contemporary post- [emphasis in the original]). Secondly, au- colonial settler nationalism to produce tochthony eliminates the question: ‘To ongoing colonising effects. whom does, or did, the land belong?’ (Saxonhouse 1986:255) Thus autoch- The locals thony serves to provide a myth of doubly peaceful origins. Thirdly, autochthony The claim of being one of the locals is legitimises a claim to territory through continually being asserted throughout boundaries dictated by nature and not Australia in everyday conversations and through a social contract or the arbi- the local media. The Cronulla riot in De- trariness of a treaty (Saxonhouse cember 2005 brought the locals to na- 1986:255). Finally, the status of autoch- tional attention with some in the crowd thon automatically marks the citizen holding banners proclaiming ‘Respect from non-citizen and foreigner. locals or piss off!’ (TCN 9 2005). The con- nection of being local with Anglo-Celtic Marcel Detienne, in a comparison of au- Australian nationalism was unmistakable tochthony in ancient Athens, ancient in this context. However, despite the Thebes and present-day France, asserts pervasive language of being local there one should always read autochthony is no sustained scholarship on the sub- and foundation in partnership. He ar- ject in Australia. There are a number of gues that questions of ‘founding, begin- insightful analyses of being local in works ning, creating’ are inextricably tied to that deal with other Australian issues, ‘ways of being born of the earth’ however, these analyses do not refer- (Detienne 2001:53). ‘There are’, he con- ence each other as the idea of being a cludes, ‘ten or twenty ways of founding local is not the object of study (see one’s autochthony’ (55). Ancient Athens Woolley 2003, Schlunke 2005:43–56 and is a site to which a study of western au- Kijas 2002:78–93). tochthony must return, but it is not the only autochthony: there are numerous My work on the idea of being local is autochthonies, each founding its own situated in contemporary Lismore and is birth from its soil. an attempt to understand the meanings and effects of locals’ claims of belong- Loraux, Saxonhouse and Detienne alert ing in contemporary Australia. This work us to two sets of issues. Detienne alerts us draws from a survey of the use of the to the fact that western autochthony is word “local” in national and daily news- found, begun or created—that it comes papers in the two years since December into being through a process of com- 2003 (Garbutt 2005). My particular focus mencement followed by a legitimising has been Lismore’s only daily newspaper claim. Secondly, Loraux and Saxon- The Northern Star . This newspaper is a house alert us to the type of social ef- major New South Wales north coast re- fects that we might anticipate when gional daily with a claimed readership of claims of belonging are founded on a 70,000 people. I also draw to a lesser ex- Western tradition of autochthony. tent from The Sydney Morning Herald to provide state and national contexts. This paper proposes that claims of being a local are claims of belonging that In that analysis I have identified a num- draw on the legitimacy conferred by ber of characteristics of what it might autochthony. These autochthonist mean to be a local in Lismore (cf. Hall et 3 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY al 1984:204–207). Four of these are par- comers, hippies and greenies) when it ticularly relevant in this paper. Firstly, be- comes to access to local resources. Lo- ing a local includes a person in a field of cal belonging articulates with a British relations marked by propinquity and system of absolute and exclusive enjoy- that gives rise to a sense of community, ment of property as a right of legal or care and belonging. The community of assumed ownership (Rapport 1997). locals has a sense of homogeneity that is distinct from a heterogeneous outside. A fourth characteristic of being local is This homogeneity is understood to have the focus of this paper and is examined a geographical basis. For locals com- in more detail below (also see Garbutt munity arises organically within, and is 2005). This is a racial aspect to being lo- coextensive with, the local place. cal in Lismore in which the locals repre- sented in the local print media are al- Secondly, being local is connected with ways white, and Aborigines are never a suspicion of mobility. This typically locals. The exception to this rule is in cir- takes the form of creating somewhat cumstances in which place denotes arbitrary rules regarding how long it race (Razak 2002). In Redfern, for exam- takes to be a local. In Lismore this may ple, identified by many if not most settler take between twenty years and never. Australians as an Aboriginal place, Abo- This temporal criterion extends across rigines may be termed locals (Goodsir generations creating a local aristocracy 2004). The use of local as an identity is of the established and the outsiders expressive of a segregated settler spa- (Elias 1994: xv–xvii). A third order of local tio-cultural imaginary. time is established that marks local his- tory as beginning at a point in time with Overall, the process of becoming a local the coming of “the discoverers” and tak- naturalises the local in the local place. ing a specific historical form beginning Yet as Pred shows in his model of be- with “the pioneers” or “first settlers”. Prior coming-places, processes of social re- to this time is an undifferentiated ex- production and practices of individual panse of prehistory. The most local of agency simultaneously produce place, the locals have been in Lismore since individuals and societies (Pred 1984:282). time “began” and can trace their line- In other words, the local place is always age to an old pioneering “name” (Gar- becoming through larger-than-local (for butt 2004:112–114). History and time are example, social) processes as well as closely articulated with the British ‘born through local processes. The locals are and bred’ kinship system transported to never absolutely or essentially local. Australian soil (Edwards 2000:28). Once the natural category of the locals and local culture is exposed as prob- Thirdly, as the local is always experi- lematic—that is, that the local is pro- enced as enclosed but with external re- duced through processes that cross spa- lations with more powerful larger-than- tial boundaries—‘the only choice,’ Amy local geographic scales, the locals also Shuman says, ‘… is to study the proc- have a tendency to feel under siege esses of marking [and] claiming authen- from extra-local incursions. There are ticity’ (1993:94–5). many variations of how such contests are expressed but they tend to take the Claims Of Being Local As form of “locals first”. There is also an im- Claims Of Autochthony plicit message from locals of a sense of moral priority over variously constituted outsiders (such as tourists, blow-ins, new- Autochthony is a particular claim of au- thenticity emerging from a ‘magical’ 4 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY relation between people and soil (Co- Autochthony has a continuing and maroff and Comaroff 2001:239). Walsh growing significance in the twenty-first (1978:301) asserts that for ancient Athe- century. Some authors speak of ‘an up- nians autochthony referred to their indi- surge’ of autochthony (Geschiere and geneity. This meant more than being Nyamnjoh 2000:425, Ceuppens and descendants of the earth-born autoch- Geschiere 2005). This upsurge is occur- thon, King Erichthonius. It was an Athe- ring, I would contend, because of au- nian claim that they had never moved tochthony’s usefulness in claims to terri- from that earth of their founding ances- tory and the concomitant certainties it tor’s birth. 4 The basis of their claim to ter- brings—authenticity, legitimacy and be- ritory was that it had always been theirs longing. These benefits—placed beyond as first possessors (Harris 1993:1726–1727, question in claims of a unique people n. 68). 5 and place connection—accrue at the very time they are under threat from hy- It is a leap of logic to argue that Austra- bridising transnational and translocal lian locals regard themselves as autoch- flows. As Geschiere and Nyamnjoh thons in the above sense. Detienne re- (2000:425) have argued: minds us, however, that there are many ways of founding one’s autochthony. In such a perspective, cosmo-politanism While classical Athens is the Western ex- and autochthony are like conjoined emplar it represents only one form of au- twins: a fascination with globalization’s tochthony amongst many. In this section open horizons is accompanied by de- termined efforts towards boundary- I will argue that being a local is a claim making and closure, expressed in terms of autochthony along two lines. Firstly, I of belonging and exclusion. will set my argument in the context of current claims of autochthony in Africa Twentieth and twenty-first century claims and Europe. This is an argument for the of autochthony are and have been a possibility of autochthony — that au- response to territorial and cultural uncer- tochthony is not dead and buried in the tainties. During the late 1920s and early ruins of ancient Athens. Secondly, I will 1930s Heidegger’s mission was to found draw on empirical language use data to a German national socialist philosophy argue that the claim of being local is a in the autochthonous soil of middle- form of Australian settler indigenisation. Europe (Bambach 2003:1–5). In the late This argument demonstrates that being twentieth and twenty-first centuries Afri- a local has the discursive and cultural can and European peoples in Camer- form of an autochthonist claim. My ar- oon, Ivory Coast, the Great Lake Region gument does not result in proof but an of Rwanda-Burundi, Flemish Belgium, the informed suggestion. Netherlands, and northern Italy have claimed territory and full citizenship rights Contemporary Autochthony for autochthons (Ceuppens and Gesch- iere 2005). In Romania autochthonists Claims of autochthony are double and westernisers continue to debate claims with people and place forming a cultural forms (Szilagyi-Gal 2001, Iordachi single and particular interpretation of and Trencsényi 2003). society: a territory belonging to a peo- ple and a people belonging to a terri- Most relevant to this discussion, however, tory. “We” and “here” is spoken in one is the work of Carlos Alonso. He notes the breath: there are few things more local. ‘power and its irresistible appeal [of au- tochthony] as a trope of cultural affirma- tion’ for the settlers of postcolonial states 5 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY (1990:10). In particular, he proposes that similar ground is what makes the settler Spanish American settler culture is struc- claim worthy of critical examination in tured by a social order he names “cul- conversations regarding Australian be- tural autochthony”: longings. [A] cultural state that is interpreted as Settler Indigenisation and Cultural having generated itself in a natural fash- Autochthony ion, that is, arising automatically from the midst of the collectivity and in perfect consonance with the surrounding envi- The analysis of the processes by which ronment (1990:10 [emphasis in original]). Australian settler belonging achieves legitimation and authenticity is rarely Cultural autochthony underpins a claim made through the idea of autochthony. of the unique cultural difference of a Deborah Bird Rose’s analysis is one ex- (post)colonial culture from that of the ception. Rose (2004) proposes that at metropolitan power. The cultural the national level settlers have authenti- uniqueness springs from the new land cated their belonging to the country by itself, a necessary marker for articulating imagining that the mantle of autoch- the new nation with statehood. The thony has been passed from Aborigines power and irresistible appeal of ‘the to themselves. As ‘the ancient autoch- autochthonous cultural order’ is the thon passes away,’ she says, ‘… the set- ‘seeming transcending of the na- tler takes his place as the new (and su- ture/culture dichotomy’ that assuages perior) indigene’ (117). the anxiety of the colonist in exile from the metropolis (Alonso 1990:10). Other scholars have tended, rather, to analyse such processes in terms of settler It is against this background that I pro- indigenisation. Literary critic Terry Goldie pose the claim of being an Australian (1989) provides one of the earliest analy- settler local is a claim of cultural autoch- ses of indigenisation in settler nation- thony. I also propose that such claims states in his analysis of representations of are produced (and productive of) a cul- indigenes in Canadian, Australian and tural state located in specific ways. This New Zealand literature. Goldie location is marked by the dispossession (1993:unpaginated) defines indigenisa- of indigenous peoples by settlers seeking tion as the process ‘through which the legitimation through a ‘founding forget- “settler” population attempts to be- ting’ of that dispossession. In claiming come as though indigenous, as though autochthony the settlers naturalise “born” of the land’. Concomitant with themselves to place. They become un- this social production of indigenisation is marked: the natives born to the nation, a political production: the land ‘as a the locals. This particular settler form of natural nation’ (1993:unpaginated). cultural autochthony, I name white “au- Processes of indigenisation are attempts tochthony” because its unmarked na- to satisfy the ‘impossible necessity’ ‘to ture has the unmarked form of white- become “native,” to belong here’ ness. It is, I propose, a cultural form (1989:13). found in many settler states, including Australia. I also use the term white “au- Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffen (2002:135) tochthony” to separate the settler claim have also identified indigenisation as from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander one part of the tension in postcolonial Indigeneity. Clearly the settler claim is at settler identity: a tension that arises be- variance with the ontological status of tween ‘the backward-looking impo- Indigenous peoples. That they occupy tence of exile and the forward-looking 6 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY impetus to indigeneity’ (135). These ten- future. Both represent the colonists break sions, they assert, are part of the process with the motherland through “birth” in a through which settlers come to terms new land, despite the obvious continui- with establishing their lives in new land- ties in the cultural, economic and politi- scapes using imported cultural practices cal relationship. and languages and applying them in often contrary conditions to those in My interest in autochthony is in its impli- which the practices and languages cation of a relationship with place, es- arose. pecially of human co-existence in place rather than the appropriation of an In- Most recently David Pearson (2002) has digenous identity. Autochthony implies a argued that in Canada, New Zealand necessary connection with a place, and and Australia citizenship is ‘best concep- the analysis of settler belonging in terms tualized and described by examining of white “autochthony” has the poten- the linked processes of … the abo- tial to disrupt that necessary (and typi- riginalization (of aboriginal minorities), cally exclusive) connection. In doing so the ethnification (of immigrant minori- a more inclusive politics and ethics of ties) and the indigenization (of settler being in place might be possible. majorities)’ (990). For Pearson, indigeni- sation represents a move from a settler Settler Indigenisation, White to a post-settler position which signifies “Autochthony” and Settler detachment from the British motherland Discourses of Belonging and identification as a “native” of a new land, a move from ‘home there’ to ‘home here’ (1004). Pearson argues that Of the scholarship engaging with settler the interlinked processes of Aboriginali- indigenisation in Australia, the most rele- sation, ethnification and indigenisation, vant to the arguments in this paper is the ‘reflecting a tripartite relationship of work of Pal Ahluwalia (2001), because of power between indigenes, settlers and his analysis of language. Language is ‘others’’, became prominent from the both a social product and productive of 1970s onwards (1004). During this time social orders and provides an insight into Britain moved towards the European Un- the operation of white “autochthony”. ion, while Australia, New Zealand and Canada concentrated on involvement Ahluwalia notes that in Australia the in their own regional re-alignments, in- category “aboriginal native” was used cluding increased regional, specifically to disenfranchise Aborigines from citi- Asian, migration (1004–5). zenship rights but also prepared a con- ceptual space for the emergence of the The parallels and resonances between settler as “native” (2001:64). Ahluwalia the process of settler indigenisation and draws on Chesterman and Galligan’s what Alonso calls the cultural state of discussion of Australian late-nineteenth cultural autochthony are clear in these century definitions of aboriginal and na- various accounts. It may well be that tive. Whereas “native” typically signified what Alonso describes as a state is the indigenous populations throughout the outcome of the process of settler indi- British Empire, in Australia “aboriginal” genisation. Both involve transformations ‘was used to refer to [indigenous popu- of the imaginary of the colonist/settler in lations], often in terms of ‘blood’; [while terms of cultural and spatial identity. “native” referred] to place of birth’ Both occur in the tension arising be- (1997:87). “Aboriginal native” refers, tween exile and belonging, past and therefore, to an Aborigine. On the other hand ‘the word native,’ Anthony Trol- 7 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY lope observes from his travels in Australia (Mamdani 1998:251; Ahluwalia 2001:66). during 1871 and 1872, ‘is almost univer- The idea of the settler as native or na- sally applied to white colonists born in tive-born continues to recirculate in Aus- Australia’ (1967:101). Native, the un- tralian discussions of relationships to the marked form, represents the settler. Abo- land. For example, Peter Read (2000:Ch. rigines required marking out from the 5) explores songs expressive of the non- naturalised white natives to the nascent Indigenous attachment to the land in a nation as ‘aboriginal natives’. chapter of Belonging entitled ‘Singing the native-born’. Allaine Cerwonka Trollope may well have noted the use of (2004:3) critically examines ‘the proc- native in the title of the Australian Na- esses by which [non-Indigenous] people tives’ Association (ANA) formed in 1872. territorialise the nation’ in her book enti- The ANA was an Australian form of the tled Native to the Nation . “native societies” that, Terry Goldie ob- serves, ‘existed in [Canada, New Zea- In my research, I have found a similar land and Australia] in the late nine- language structure to the “aboriginal teenth century, societies to which no native”/”native” formation in operation non-white, no matter how native, need amongst the locally-born at the local have applied’ (1989:13). In Australia, the level. This local cultural form is made ac- ANA was a patriotic and friendly society cessible through an analysis of the lan- initially formed in 1871 for the protection guage of “the local” in Lismore’s re- of the interests of ‘Melbourne Natives’. It gional daily newspaper The Northern later expanded to include ‘Victorian Na- Star . tives’ and by 1872 had opened mem- bership to Australian natives, calling itself In grammatical terms the word local is the Australian Natives’ Association (Me- an adjective which is usually accompa- nadue n.d.: 6, 8, 12). Membership was nied by a noun to form a noun group conditional on being male, white and (Sinclair 1990:2–4). The adjective “local” born in Australia—three conditions the classifies the noun, typically in terms of ANA imposed in order to be declared pertaining to a place. A local person is ‘native-born’ (Menadue n.d. 7; Blackton therefore a person somehow connected 1958:40). with a place. When we talk about a lo- cal or the locals, however, the noun Pal Ahluwalia concludes: drops from the noun group. This is the substantive form of the adjective where The idea that white colonists born in Aus- the adjective local, a classifier of nouns, tralia were natives whilst the indigenous takes on substance and performs the population were not was an important additional work of the noun. That is, the one. It was an idea that went to the noun-local does the work of referring to heart of the manner in which the conti- a thing and its place in one breath. nent was settled. The myth of terra nullius was dependent upon the non- “Are you a local?” recognition of the local population and the ‘indigen-isation’ of their white con- This question brings people and place querors (2001:64–5). and identity together seamlessly. In the regional town of Lismore that has relied Proposing an Australian response to on extractive and rural industries for its Mamdani’s postcolonial African ques- wealth, predicated upon dispossession tion, ‘When does a settler become a of Bundjalung peoples, it may be no native?’ Ahluwalia asserts ‘this occurred surprise that issues of race become em- when white colonists were locally-born’ bedded within the definition of the lo- 8 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY cals: of who specifically the locals can place into a complex of material and be. imaginary relations between people, peoples and land. In Australia it takes its In the naturalised form, the locals of Lis- particular form by articulating cultural more are always white. People and autochthony with practices and social place and identity are brought together: orders transported from England and a white people in a white place that re- located within the Australian context. quires no further explanation. Identity as white need not be specified. As Pal Ahluwalia (2001:65) notes, indi- genisation is part of the colonial founda- Within the white local place of Lismore it tion of Australia upon empty land or is Aborigines that require particularising terra nullius . Terra nullius grants settlers and marking. Unlike the locals in gen- first possessor status and provides the eral, the noun-locals, Aborigines must be initial conditions for the emergence of marked and not be included amongst white “autochthony”. It is against the the unmarked. In an invariable practice autochthonous status of Aborigines that in The Northern Star the substantive the settler nation legitimates itself by noun-local reverts to the adjective when claiming its own “autochthonous” status. speaking of Aborigines. In the adjectival Cultural autochthony articulates, then, form “local” is a modifier that relates an with a regime of property ownership to object to its physical place. Thus Bund- legitimate exclusive rights to ownership. jalung artist Digby Moran is reported as a The mixing of soil with settler blood ‘local indigenous artist’ who teaches through colonial “pioneering” work also ‘local [Goori] kids’ about ‘their local cul- legitimated these property rights. As ture’ (Anonymous 2003). 6 This passage is Aileen Moreton-Robinson writes, in Aus- careful not to confuse categories of lo- tralia the non-Indigenous sense of be- cals: those marked and those un- longing is ‘derived from ownership as marked. Aborigines are always adjec- understood within the logic of capital; tive-locals while only settlers can be and it mobilizes the legend of the pio- termed noun-locals. neer, ‘the battler’, in its self- legitimization’ (2003:23). Through this In a mirror of the national language of work an autochthonous settler identity the “aboriginal native”/”native”, in Lis- comes into being along with terra lo- more the paradox is that the locals are calis —the local-land of the settler locals non-Indigenous and the Aborigines are and the nation-country of the settler na- not locals. In effect, settlers have in- tives. stalled themselves as the locals, as white “autochthons”. The process of “indigeni- Recently Genevieve Lloyd has argued sation” that Ahluwalia and others have that the philosophy of Kant and Locke identified is productive at the local and ‘come together to rationalize European national scales: productive of an presence as embodying the most fully autochthonous settler imaginary (Cas- human way of relating to the land’ toriadis 1997:7–8, O’Loughlin 2003:131– (2000:34). It was Locke in particular that 132). brought landed property and autono- mous identity together through labour. Founding White “Autochthony” He writes: ‘…Labour, in the Beginning, gave a Right of Property whereever any one was pleased to employ it, upon White “autochthony” is a type of cultural what was common’, thus autochthony that collapses Australian settler culture and nature, people and 9 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY ‘[ a]s much Land as a Man Tills, Plants, in Bacup, one also needs to be reared in Improves, Cultivates, and can use the Bacup. The experience of being brought Product of, so much is his Property . He by up in the town is said to be influential: it his labour does, as it were, inclose it from moulds a particular kind of character the Common’ (Locke 1988:II§32 and (2000:84). II§45 [emphases in original]). White “autochthony” finds its particular Echoing Locke in a chapter called ‘Sing- form in the articulation of cultural au- ing the Native-Born’ of his book Belong- tochthony with exclusive private owner- ing , Peter Read makes the link between ship of property and born and bred kin- the production of settler identity and ship. Through these articulations not only working the land. He says: is the connection of land and settler considered natural—a necessary con- My feeling is growing that the once im- nection—but it is made into an exclusive plied and now explicit Aboriginal moral form of autochthony. There is no room claim to the land perhaps is answered, for a multi-local sense of place-based not by contentious or aggressive asser- belonging—of having one’s ties in more tion, but by a statement of countering values. …The moral justification is evolv- than one place, nor is it possible to en- ing through a three-way relationship be- visage multiple autochthonies arising in tween a man, his work and the land’ one place—of peoples’ coexisting with (2000:117). varying senses of place-based belong- ing. The ideas of being a local, and of White “autochthony” provides a reading being a native born to the nation, are of this three-way relationship. From the often expressions of exclusive, white “au- mixing of sweat and soil emerges the tochthony”. As the locals of Cronulla autochthonous birth of the pioneer. demanded, ‘Respect locals or piss off!’ Through ideological descent subsequent (TCN 9 2005). Or as the famous rock at settlers are “born” from the pioneers. 7 Byron Bay, 40 kilometers from Lismore, This is the ideology of the ‘Australian reads: ‘LOCALS ONLY’. Locals only: only type’—a culturally autochthonous form those who are born (here) and bred of whiteness that emerges with the pro- (conform to the “Australian type”) be- duction of the Australian national soil long here. (Ahluwalia 2001:65). Towards An Ethics Of Location This autochthonous form of belonging both locally and nationally is further To conclude I would like to make a few strengthened through the articulation of brief comments on how autochthony cultural autochthony with ‘born and might open onto an ethics of location bred’ kinship. This English kinship system for the settler locals. ‘is made up of a code of conduct (what people do and say they do) and ideas A number of threads crowd in at this of shared substance (symbolized in idi- point in somewhat of an interconnected oms of blood and increasingly genes)’ jumble. To begin the unravelling, then, (Edwards 2000:28): thus “born”—the with a list: ‘immutable place of birth’—and “bred”—‘ the effects of a variable up- • Firstly, to strife and reconciliation. This bringing’ (Edwards 2000:84). In the site of paper is set against a background of Edwards’ research, the town of Bacup investigating local Australian white- near Manchester being born and bred ness, an investigation that began at embraces two significant aspects of Eng- the end of ten official years of Rec- lish kinship…. [I]t is not enough to be born onciliation in 2000. It addresses ‘a 10 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY White problem’ not “the Aboriginal reformulations of democracy, nation problem” (Pearl Gibbs in Fox and citizen. White “autochthony” is 1983:41). It is a response to a prob- something to think about and to lem of settler relations with Aborigi- think against. nes. This is the background of my discussion for an ethics of location that unconceals claims of white “au- And to begin again; this time to begin a tochthony”. narrative. I take note of Entrikin’s asser- tion that democracy has both an ‘imag- • Rather than proposing that settler ined and a real geography’(Entrikin Australians have a lack of connec- 2002:24). Imagined geographies are no tion to the land as some commenta- less real in their effects. White “autoch- tors do, I propose that the opposite is thony”, I propose, is part of the imagined the case. I would argue that all geography of Australian settler democ- places are constituted through rela- racy that requires critical scrutiny when tions and that settler-land relations moving towards any ethics of location. are in manifest, if problematic abun- dance. Being a local is part of that Autochthony, as bodenständigkeit , with abundance, so too, being native- its association with the German national born. socialist philosophy of “blood and soil”, indicates the perils of an autochthonist • ‘You think that it is the bird who is cultural discourse (Heidegger 1966:48– free . You are deceived; it is the 49; Bambach 2003). Autochthony can flower .’ (Jabès 1972:115) be the basis of cultural forms that ex- Might being a local be always inher- clude in the most brutal and unjust ways. ently violent? Through claims of In ancient Athens itself, autochthony as white “autochthony”, I think so. But a basis for citizenship, came under ques- being a local of itself? I am not so tion. It was a concept at odds with Ath- sure. I write this at a time of theory (in ens vision of itself as an open city, as a cultural studies amongst other lo- city of welcome (Saxonhouse 1986:256 cales) that I perceive to value mobil- and 273). This was particularly the case ity and instantaneity over emplace- as it expanded into an Empire that ment and slowness. I find myself re- looked towards the sea rather than to acting against this. A white local’s the land. Thus in Euripides’ Ion the rela- reaction maybe. A reaction directed tionship between autochthonous citizen- towards not disregarding the care of ship and the non-citizen status of slaves, the locals for place and each other, women and resident strangers in the city but of becoming aware of the limits is explored. to that care. The most vocal contemporary critics of • White “autochthony” serves to autochthony, Doreen Massey (2005:189) commence an analysis and critique and Emmanuel Levinas (1998:117–118) of settler belonging; an idea from for example, call for its abandonment in which to reimagine the ‘imagined all cultural forms because of its exclu- and [ ] real geography’ of the born sionary nature. Levinas insists that au- and bred locals and the born and tochthony is a triumph of ontology over bred natives to the nation (Entrikin ethical relations with others. For him, 2002:24). Keeping white “autoch- home, as a figure for place, must be thony” in-mind is important as a re- opened to welcome the stranger (Levi- minder of what should be rejected in nas 1969:168–174). 11 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY Derrida takes a similar line, but notes the Diversity and Social Justice at Southern necessity of a site for roots. For him it is Cross University in Lismore, New South the nature of the site that is the issue. He Wales. He has a wide ranging interest in notes that there is freedom in the site the manner in which we locate our- ‘[p]rovided this Site is not a site, an en- selves and the ways in which we are lo- closure, a place of exclusion, a province cated. He can be contacted by email or a ghetto’ (Derrida 1993:66). More at [email protected]. than a geographic site, this is a social site as Derrida’s language indicates. Freedom in the site of roots is dependent References on openness, an openness that includes openness to roots, multiple roots. Ahluwalia, Pal. 2001. ‘When Does a Set- tler Become a Native? Citizenship and An ethics of location, must somehow Identity in a Settler Society’, Pretexts: promote the interruption of notions of literary and cultural studies , 10(1), 63– white “autochthony”, to open the site of 73. the settler clearing and resist the idea of one single taproot into the earth. It Alonso, Carlos J. 1990. The Spanish would name the way cultural autoch- American regional novel: Modernity thony conceals movements and exclu- and autochthony , Cambridge: Cam- sions of people that occur in the name bridge University Press. of being local, of always having been Anonymous. 2003. ‘Indigenous art for here, of having installed our-settler-selves airport’, The Northern Star , Lismore, 15 as ‘local’ or ‘original’. It insists on an August, 6. opening of the local as a site of wel- Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, come. Helen 2002[1989]. The Empire Writes Back , 2 nd edition, London: Routledge. Interrupting white “autochthony” does Bambach, Charles. 2003. Heidegger’s not devalue settlers’ relations to place, Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, or call for rootlessness. 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Rob Garbutt is, he hopes, in the final Cerwonka, Allaine. 2004. Native to the stages of writing his PhD thesis titled “Lo- Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and cals only? An analysis of identity and Bodies in Australia , University of Min- place in Australian settler society”. Rob is neapolis: Minnesota Press. a student with the Centre for Cultural 12 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY Ceuppens, Bambi and Geschiere, Peter. 1969) , Chippendale, NSW: Alternative 2005. ‘Autochthony: Local or Global? Publishing Co-operative Limited, 40–43. New Modes in the Struggle over Citi- Garbutt, Rob. 2003. ‘On shaky ground: zenship and Belonging in Africa and Land, Australian settler belonging and Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropol- Reconciliation’, presented at the Acti- ogy , 34, 385–407. vating Human Rights and Diversity Chesterman, John and Galligan Brian. Conference , 1–4 July 2003, Byron Bay 1997. 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Endnotes Rose, Deborah Bird. 2004 Reports from a Wild Country: ethics for decolonista- tion , Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. 1 I use the word kuntri here to denote the relationships Indigenous Australians have with Saxonhouse, Arlene W. 1986. ‘Myths and the land, compared with the ‘Western’ rela- the Origins of Cities: Reflections on the tionships with the land evoked by the com- Autochthony Theme in Euripides’ Ion ’ mon spelling country . My thanks to Glenn in Pere J. Euben (ed) Greek Tragedy Woods at Gnibi, Southern Cross University’s and Political Theory , Berkeley: Univer- College of Indigenous Australian Peoples for sity of California Press, 252–273. this insight. 2 See Garbutt (2003) for an initial exploration Schlunke, Katrina. 2005. Bluff Rock: of this questioning. Autobiography of a massacre , Fre- 3 For an overview of these issues see: Loraux mantle: Curtin University Books. (1993), Loraux (2000), Saxonhouse (1986), Shuman, Amy. 1993. ‘Dismantling Local and Walsh (1978). Culture’, Western Folklore , 52(2–4), 4 The ancient Athenian myth of autochthony 345–364. begins with the first king of Athens, Cecrops. Cecrops emerged from the earth itself and Sinclair, John (ed.-in-chief). 1990. Collins bore the form of his unusual birth: ‘above the Cobuild English Grammar , London: waist he was a man, below a curling snake’ Harper Collins. (Parker 1986:193). Cecrops’ line proved dis- Smith, Anthony D. 2000. ‘National iden- continuous and was eventually overthrown tity and myths of ethnic descent’, Na- by Erichthonius. Autochthonous Erichthonius was born under different circumstances and tionalism: Critical Concepts in Political unlike the semi-serpentine Cecrops, was Science , 4, 1394–1429. wholly human and produced a continuing Szilagyi-Gal, Mihaly. 2001. ‘The National- line of kings. Erichthonius, also called Erech- ity of Reasoning: Autochthonist Under- theus, is therefore portrayed as the autoch- standings of Philosophy in Interwar thon of the Athenian polis . Erichthonius was a Romania’ in Balazs Trencsenyi, Dragos male child born without a mother when Hephaestus, the Olympian blacksmith, lust- Petrescu, Cristina Petrescu, Constantin fully and unsuccessfully pursued grey-eyed 15 GARBUTT: AUTOCHTHONY Athena. Just evading rape, she wiped Hephaestus’ sperm from her leg on to the ground. Ge, or Gaia, the earth, gave birth to a child she handed to Athena, who acted as mother to Erichthonius. The version of the myth related here comes from Parker 1986. See also: Loraux (1993:39) and Peradotto (1977). 5 Clearly ancient Athenians were not claim- ing first possession in the Lockean terms Harris discusses, however, their claim of moral prior- ity as the first possessors is echoed by Locke. 6 The word goori is used throughout the Bund- jalung nation for Aboriginal people. 7 On ideological and genealogical myths of national descent see Smith (2000:1394-1395). 16 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2 , No. 1, 2006 A BREACH OF TRUST: THE VITIATED DISCOURSE OF MULTICULTURALISM AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY JEANETTE KRONGOLD Abstract nity, the latest arrivals in a country with a history of difficult arrivals. This paper sees the discourse on Austra- The latent ambivalence of the Australian lian multiculturalism at the turn of the multiculturalist model, containing a re- twenty-first century as conflicted, and pressed sense of racialisation, needs to tries to analyse how this might be re- be resolved. It is argued that it is an im- solved. perialist project that privileges the core white Anglophone culture over ‘subal- A division is noted between the ‘static’ tern’ migrant groups, when what is definition of culture implicit in the struc- needed is public policy with a code of ture of ethnicity as a form of micro- ethics or politics of civility to facilitate a management of socio-cultural issues, hybridising society. and the ‘dynamic’ meaning of culture in a postmodern, globalized world. I ex- Introduction plore the argument between those that adhere to a core/periphery functionally assimilationist definition of multicultural- The looming approach of the Norwe- ism (emphasising otherness) and those gian cargo vessel MV Tampa into that urge a re-definition of the term to Australian waters on the 26 th August emphasise notions of alterity (de- 2001, carrying 438 potential asylum emphasising otherness) and hybridity seekers stowed on deck, caused the through some recent historical meta- Australian government to arguably phors of cultural racism. breach its obligations under the Convention Relating to the Status of Events such as the Tampa affair, the Refugees (1951) and the 1967 Protocol ‘War on Terror’ and the Cornelia Rau and other instruments of international matter have tested belief in the civility of human rights law by interdicting the our society and mutual respect. I use vessel and ‘warehousing’ its passengers these sites as metaphors of cultural ra- (the Pacific Solution). The excision of cism to show how normative multicultur- certain territories from the ‘migration alism has been demeaned in the neo- zone’ further created a legal fiction not conservative political climate of How- recognised at international law (Germov ard’s Australia. I argue that a breach of and Motta 2003:37). According to public trust has occurred within Australian soci- opinion polls (A.C. Nielsen 2001; Roy ety between the stakeholders of multi- Morgan 2001) at the time, this did not culturalism, whereby the rhetoric and bother the Australian public unduly, but cultural politics of the government of the it threw the media into a frenzy and day have promoted emphasis on a na- ignited a furore amongst the tionalism that is antithetical to the plural- intelligentsia which has not subsided. istic dynamics of a multicultural society, and foster intolerance. This has particu- The issue was not simply one of the rights larly impacted on the Muslim commu- of asylum seekers that was quickly sub- ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST sumed into a larger paradigm, fear of complementary top-down, bottom-up global terrorism, and subsequently models of implicit racialised prejudice sharpened to an even more blatant ex- meet at a juncture of signification for the ercise in racial and cultural vilification by multicultural edifice that normative the ‘children overboard’ affair. Hardly multiculturalism has been demeaned in had this been resolved by the Senate the turn of the twenty-first century politi- Report (2002), Select Committee on a cal climate. A breach of trust has oc- Certain Maritime Incident , than the Cor- curred within Australian society between nelia Rau matter surfaced, culminating its constituent groups and the propo- in the Palmer Inquiry (2002) into the cul- nents of a return to a mythical monocul- ture of the Immigration Department. By ture. American sociologist Louis Ada- now the ‘jig’ was up! Julian Burnside QC movic (1944) observed that it was old- penned a prescient analysis that ‘the stock Americans who tended to view abuse of one of us exposes what we’re virtually everyone else as a menace to doing to them’ (Burnside 2005:17). the ‘historic pattern of the country’ ‘Them’ or the ‘Other’ are the asylum when in fact diversity itself was the pat- seekers who received the same ‘care- tern. He believed that only when Ameri- less, cruel indifference’ that Rau re- cans recognised that Americanness re- ceived at the hands of the Immigration sided precisely in the country’s status as Department. Burnside asked, a ‘nation of nations’ that its loftiest ideals why is it acceptable to treat asylum could be realised. seekers this way, but shocking when it is done to one of us … why did it take Cor- My paper outlines the discourse on Aus- nelia Rau’s case to provoke widespread tralian multiculturalism between its pro- public concern about immigration de- ponent and critical ideologies and ar- tention? His answer was that it happened be- gues that either way, the current defini- cause she looked like a typical Aussie girl tion needs changing. A division is noted ‘she is uncomfortably like us’. Her between ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ defini- treatment at the hands of the Immigra- tions of multiculturalism that highlights tion Department, Burnside contended, the problematic─the issue of social mi- was a reflection of a society that is indif- cro-management. I contend that the ferent to the fate of those perceived as temper of the times, marked by such not like us. events as the Tampa affair, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Rau matter, has tested A Breach of Trust belief in an open civil society and mu- tual respect and promoted a defensive, fortress mentality. Negative political Both the Tampa incident and the Rau leadership on multiculturalism has not affair are metaphors of prejudice that helped, and there has been a blurring of reflect on the site of the multicultural the distinction between Australian val- debate in Australia at the turn of the ues and Australian history. The latter be- twenty-first century. The Tampa incident longs to the place, in the ‘Annalesian’ represents a publicly sanctioned scape- sense (Clark 1999), the former is an indi- goating of the unfortunate ‘Other’ by a cia of the beliefs of a society which government in election mode, whilst the changes in composition over time. It fol- Rau matter encapsulates the phenome- lows therefore that propositions such as non of a groundswell of public indigna- an emphasis on mutual responsibility tion at the subjection of one of ‘us’ to and reciprocity in multicultural interac- the dehumanising treatment we reserve tions are more likely to harmonise society for the ‘other’. Taken together, these than the propagation of monocultural 2 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST iconography as national belief. The lat- The Galbally report ( Migrant Services ter reinforces cultural ranking and is divi- and Programs 1978 ) addressed the is- sive, notwithstanding that everyone sues of access, equity and cultural main- should obey the same law. It is also im- tenance in Australia, to ameliorate prob- plicitly racialising. If the aim of multicul- lem areas of the migrant settlement ex- turalism is to harmonise diversity rather perience, such as poverty and high rate than ostracise difference, I contend, of return. It noted the growing recogni- then alterity is preferable to ‘otherness’. tion that a homogeneous society was Through the epistemology of others, I neither possible nor desirable. The argue that an ethics of multiculturalism Gobbo report ( National Agenda for a or code of civility should be developed Multicultural Australia 1989) defined mul- to ameliorate the unwritten code of in- ticulturalism as based on a set of rights civility that has framed the disjuncture to cultural identity, social justice and within multiculturalism at the turn of the economic efficiency, as well as obliga- twenty-first century. tions to national interest, civic structures and reciprocal responsibility regarding For definitional purposes, I refer to the freedom of expression and belief. The three successive reports on the imple- Roach report (NMAC 1999) stressed the mentation of prescriptive multicultural- concept of Australian multiculturalism ism commissioned by the Fraser, Hawke and inclusiveness as a panacea to the and Howard governments (the Galbally, objections of the Hansonite constituency Gobbo and Roach reports, so-called to being ‘swamped by Asians’ and over- after their respective chairmen) as the catering for the welfare of minority templates of public policy settings on groups. It noted the removal of access multiculturalism, relevant to their era, to welfare benefits for migrants in the first and then proceed to discuss how the two years, and, significantly, the Howard various governments finessed them. government abolished the Office of Mul- ticultural Affairs and the Bureau of Immi- Stephen Castles (2001) pointed out that gration, Multiculturalism and Population whilst the dominant understanding of Research on coming to office in 1996. Australian muliculturalism could be seen as a model for public policy, designed Whilst there has always been bi-partisan to ensure the full socio-economic and support for normative multiculturalism, it political participation of all members of is obvious that successive reports have an increasingly diverse population, it narrowed and qualified its definition and was also perceived in other ways. It reach, so that its meaning has run the could be viewed as a multi-ethnic soci- gamut of Castles’ definitions in its reso- ety, with a potential for conflictual inter- nance throughout Australian society. It is group relations (like apartheid South Af- my contention that the multicultural dis- rica), or a negative identity statement, course has been most vitiated during seen as legitimating separatism and cul- the neo-conservative Howard Liberal tural relativism and antithetical to na- ascendancy, with its emphasis on a tionalism. It is my contention that the white teleology of nationhood and its perspectives of the Galbally, Gobbo discursive framing of asylum seekers as and Roach reports corresponded to the the demonised ‘Other’, so that a ques- first, second and third of Castles’ defini- tion mark hangs over its future direction, tions, respectively responding to eco- if not viability. There has been a journey nomic and political considerations of the from a point where society reached out time. to its marginalised migrant groups to a point where they grew and prospered, 3 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST and appeared threatening to a disaf- genitors of Australian multiculturalism fected sector of the host society, disen- (Zubrzycki 1964; Martin 1978), in the late franchised by globalization. A discourse 1980s posited the proposition that nor- of territoriality and managerial capacity mative multiculturalism had been mis- over the national space has ensued, in managed or misunderstood, and issues the words of Ghassan Hage (1998), and policies regarding ethnic identity which has challenged the prescriptive and social cohesion needed to be re- framework of multiculturalism, and calls solved (Zubrzycki 1987:49). He was refer- for a re-definition. ring to perceptions of divisiveness within the Australian social fabric when ethnic Mark Lopez’s revelatory work, The Origins lobby groups were seen to pressure poli- of Multiculturalism, demonstrated that ticians and public organizations for self- the advent of multiculturalism as public serving policy outcomes that did not policy sprang neither from a grass roots necessarily coincide with mainstream movement nor any political epiphany, concerns. The implication was that sup- but was rather a long and painstaking port for migrant group welfare should be lobby for the recognition of the mi- interlinked with Australian identity, and grant’s plight and aspirations by a select not function as a foundation stone for a few activists (Lopez 2000). The uptake of nation of self-perpetuating migrant this cause by a number of academic tribes, with a potential for conflicts of researchers and finally some individual interest. Similar arguments were made politicians culminated in a social justice by academics such as psychologist policy of access and equity to disadvan- Frank Knopfelmacher (1982), philoso- taged groups, including a multilingual pher Lauchlan Chipman (1980), historian delivery of services to people of varying Geoffrey Blainey (1982) and one-time migrant group backgrounds. This member of parliament and leader of the marked the end of the assimilationist One Nation party, Pauline Hanson ideal. The ascent of normative and pre- (1997). scriptive multiculturalism occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Foster Jamorzik, Urquhart and Boland’s book, and Stockley in Multiculturalism: The Social Change and Cultural Transforma- Changing Australian Paradigm noted tion in Australia used a core/periphery the Fraser Liberal government’s co- metaphor to describe Australian multi- opting of ethnic leaders and tying their culturalism as a monocultural core of interests in with that of the government, social institutions surrounded by forms of when mutually suitable, in a celebration ethnic and cultural diversity of ‘ethnicity’ as a form of micro- (Jamorzik:1995). Jon Stratton, in Race management of socio-cultural issues Daze, surmised, (Foster and Stockley 1984:68). Jon Strat- ton in Race Daze observed with a It is the claim to a core culture which touch of irony some twenty years later enables conservatives to argue for a re- that John Howard criticised the Labor turn to assimilation. Assimilation, in the Party for doing the same (Stratton Australian case, implies that the core cul- ture remains the same whilst it is the mi- 1998:41). grant who is transformed (Stratton 1998: 16). Within a decade of its inception, how- ever, popular perceptions of multicultur- Expanding this argument, Stratton noted alism were beginning to sour. Professor that one could find in Hegel’s master- Jerzy Zubrzycki, who along with Jean slave argument a ‘Foucaultian’ site of Martin was one of the academic pro- power, where one’s position was vali- 4 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST dated through the objectifying experi- otherness. Professor Zubrzycki empha- ence of the other (Stratton 1998:209). sised, Appropriation of the ‘other’ as a form of knowledge could be likened to the pro- the culture of a group cannot be seen as ject of nineteenth century imperialism. a static fossilised entity which remains Thereby, deduced Stratton, the meta- unchanged from the time a particular phor of the imperialist project could be group sets foot on Australian soil, but as a living, dynamic, changing and interact- seen to resonate through the structure of ing set of life patterns (Zubrzycki 1987:52). official multiculturalism it was the core culture which was privileged while the Leader of the Labor Opposition, Mark marginal, ethnic cultures were formu- Latham, speaking at the Global Founda- lated as ‘objectified spectacles’ for the tion forum in Sydney on 20th April, 2004, members of the core culture. Ethical ob- concurred, declaring, ligation on the part of the objectifier was therefore negated, as objectification If we treat multiculturalism as a static was a dehumanising process. In this way, concept, as something frozen in time Edward Tyler’s nineteenth century an- each of us pigeon-holed into past habits thropological definition of culture as an and past identities then inevitably, it object of study delimited in space and will be a policy based more on differ- an unchanging, timeless whole (Tyler ence than diversity (Latham 2004:5). 1871)─by means of which official multi- culturalism in Australia has been con- The question arises, then, as to how, ceptualised ( Migrant Services and Pro- within a democratic, pluralist society, is grams 1987:104)─had ‘Othered’ the transitional support for newcomers (pro- members of those cultures. viding a sense of community, security, maintained traditions and language en- This distillation of an objectified multicul- vironment) reconciled with a core An- turalism as a functionally assimilationist glophone culture that objectifies these model has been critiqued by protago- people? David McKnight, in Beyond nists of a more subjectified multicultural Right and Left: New politics and the cul- philosophy, who highlight the ‘subaltern’ ture wars, rejects mosaic multiculturalism position of ethnic minorities in Australia. as ‘group thinking’ dangerous be- Their agenda proposes replacing the cause it is a form of stereotyping in delineated and unchanging definition of which generalised judgments are made ‘culture’ with an open and evolving ac- about particular groups (Aborigines are knowledgment that cultures hybridise lazy, Jews are greedy, the English are and transform. For instance, Stratton illus- snobs, Asians are hard-working …etc.). trates, a person’s Australian culture is He makes an important distinction, that, inflected by their background and the although issues involving competing and migrant history of that background is antagonistic cultural values are usually transformed within Australia. This requires settled by reference to Australian law, an ethics of reciprocity in human rela- which favours individual over group tions which acknowledges difference rights, the public debate over the limits but denies objectification. It evolves out of cultural diversity is not ‘settled’ so eas- of the experience of marginalisation, but ily (Mcknight 2005:216). culminates in an understanding of cul- ture (Stratton 1998:210). It is an ethics of The National Multicultural Advisory mutual responsibility in the tradition of Council (NMAC) was commissioned in Levinas (1997) of alterity as opposed to 1997 to undertake a report ‘aimed at ensuring that cultural diversity was a uni- fying force for Australia’, in light of the 5 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST upsurge in popularity of the simplistic, life through many cultural habits’ anti-cosmopolitan nationalism repre- (Latham 2004:5). sented by Pauline Hanson. Its recom- mendations, contained in Australian Notwithstanding that the Howard gov- Multiculturalism for a New Century (the ernment continued the tradition of im- Roach report), outlined a critique of mul- plementation of multiculturalism as pub- ticulturalism held by a sector of the Aus- lic policy (albeit in a truncated form of tralian community. They believed that service delivery and academic analysis), multiculturalism applied only to migrants it was the rhetoric and cultural politics of from a non-English-speaking back- the neo-conservative political ascen- ground and seemed to deny Australian dancy that, I argue, breached trust culture. The report also acknowledged amongst the stakeholders of multicultur- that past practices had focussed on alism. The paradox of the Howard gov- rights rather than obligations and submit- ernment and the Roach Report has ted that a new emphasis on inclusive- been that public debate has centred on ness and obligation would remedy this. It adherence to core Australian values, recommended that terms such as ‘Aus- that is implied assimilation, rather than tralian multiculturalism’ and ‘inclusive- embracing diversity. The effect has been ness’ be focal points to convey: com- to divide rather than unite. mon membership of the Australian community; a shared desire for social Suvendrini Perera has noted that instead harmony; the benefits of diversity; an of a focus on equal access for all to the evolving national character and iden- institutions of citizenship, Australian ‘mul- tity. These sentiments are conducive to ticulturalism’ in recent years has been the promotion of a hybridised cultural confined to exhorting the Anglo majority identity which can accommodate both to display ‘tolerance’ toward racial and cultural blending and the persistence of ethnic minorities (Perera 2002:18). Toler- diverse cultures, but, argues McKnight, ance is a word which carries negative they should occur within the framework connotations it means forbearance, of the values of an evolving common putting up with something that you do culture (McKnight 2005:218). He cites not necessarily like or agree with. Ghas- Laksiri Jayasuriya (1990) and Sunder san Hage, in his deconstruction of toler- Katwala (2004) as protagonists of hybrid- ance in multicultural Australia contained ity theory, and Ien Ang offered a practi- in White Nation: fantasies of white su- cal description of it in On Not Speaking premacy in a multicultural society , con- Chinese. She wrote, tended that the ‘ethnic caging’ of boatpeople was an expression of the it is a form of micro-politics of everyday actuality of the treatment of ethnicity life informed by the pragmatic faith in within Australia. Howard, according to the capacity for cultural identities to Jon Stratton, argued that multicultural- change, not through the imposition of ism threatened national identity be- some grandiose vision for the future, but cause he saw that as an expression of slowly and unsensationally … In this way, a cosmopolitan ethos can be fostered the historical experiences of the people from below … (Ang 2001:159). rather than a statement of shared values (Stratton 1998:109). In January 1989 he Presumably, this is what Latham meant imparted to Gerard Henderson, ‘The ob- when he pronounced that ‘multicultural- jection I have to multiculturalism is that ism lies not so much between individuals multiculturalism is in effect saying that it as within them the habit of living one’s is impossible to have a common Austra- lian culture’ (Henderson 1995:27). He fol- 6 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST lowed this, in office, with an implemen- enough, or too British, too American? tation of a white teleology of nation- We’ve suddenly realised what we’ve hood. been all along, we’re just 100 per cent Australian. Judith Brett noted that by appropriating the rhetoric and symbolism of radical Brett has further identified Howard’s nationalism, such as ‘practical mate- speeches since 1997 as filled with char- ship’, once left to Labor, Howard acterisations of what he variously calls thereby promulgated an assertive na- the Australian way, Australian values, the tionalism (Brett 2003). She identified how Australian identity or the Australian his ‘conservative populist’ style focussed character (Brett 2004:84). The problem on Labor as captive to minority interests was that the founding culture of the and out of touch with ‘mainstream Aus- ‘Australianness’ Howard relied on was a tralia’ (Brett 1997). This included multicul- white Anglo monoculture, so that every tural and indigenous groups, which by time he addressed an audience that inference were influencing Paul was not wholly part of that foundational Keating’s espousal of a vision of ties with culture, it nuanced a feeling of ‘other- Asia, Aboriginal reconciliation and a re- ness’ and exclusion from the essentialism public (Day 2002) concerns distant of Howard’s Australianness. Howard’s from the lives of ordinary Australians. harking back to the Anzac tradition, Howard thus defined his sympathies mateship, military valour, remembrance, within the discourse of identity politics as the martial defence of Western values being ‘nationalist’, alongside those of demonstrated a nationalism rooted in Geoffrey Blainey and Pauline Hanson. the past (Manne 2004). No new Michelle Grattan opined, ‘He lacks that nationalist image was produced that special quality of imaginative empathy included the different strands of political that would allow him to enter the minds community, binding them in a new and souls of those whose experience is exhortation. A report by the Civics totally outside his own’ (Grattan Expert Group (1994) on attitudes 2002:458). towards the Constitution, citizenship and civic participation showed many Howard’s critics, among them Robert disparate groups excluded from the Manne, accused him of creating a divi- post-federation settlement (non-whites, sive agenda on issues such as Australian indigenous people, women, people of history, Aboriginal affairs and asylum non-Anglo-Celtic background) wanted seekers, through branding opponents as to be included in a new definition of the minority ‘elites’ and claiming his opinion Australian nation. represented that of average and there- In his discourse on hospitality within the fore the majority of Australians, thus nation in Against Paranoid Nationalism, putatively shutting down debate Hage argued that when a defensive so- (Manne 2004). His own view was that he ciety lived in paranoid fear of an alien was healing divisions by equating cul- ‘other’, it suffered from a scarcity of tural homogeneity with social harmony. hope, becoming non-nurturing and in- In an Age interview of 29 February, 2002, tolerant (Hage 2003). This was a cultural titled ‘Thoughts of a Bypassed Lazarus’, expression of the political reality that he emphasised, developed under the neo-conservative ascendancy. With a political ‘wedge’ We’ve brought to a respectable conclu- (Marr and Wilkinson 2003:310) having sion this perpetual seminar on our na- been driven between ordinary Austra- tional identity that went on. We ago- lians and the intellectual elite over the nised were we too Asian or Asian totemic issues of multiculturalism, Abo- 7 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST riginal reconciliation and the republic, who believed government rhetoric as this ‘cultural rollback’, maintained threatening the social and political or- Robert Manne, served the government der. A moral panic driven by govern- well. When it came to political divisions ment rhetoric conflated the Tampa inci- to be reopened by ‘an extremely tough dent, the attack on New York of Sep- border protection policy aimed against tember 11, 2001, and the ‘children over- the ultimate ‘Other’, the unwanted Mus- board’ affair of 7 th October, 2001, into lim asylum seeker’, Manne claimed one issue: terror. Muslim Australians un- Howard had ‘found the issue where he derwent the impugning of their moral could simultaneously gazump One Na- and cultural standards by slogans such tion and destabilise a Labor caught be- as, ‘we decide who comes to this coun- tween its conflicting constituencies’ try and the circumstances in which they (Manne 2004). A discursive framing of come’, and John Howard’s infamous, ‘I asylum seekers and by association their don’t want people like that in Australia. Australian Muslim bretheren as the de- Genuine refugees don’t do that … They monised ‘Other’ was juxtaposed against hang on to their children’ ( Herald Sun the white teleology of nationhood to 2001). produce the most explicit attack on mul- ticulturalism since its inception. Statistics tell us that over two-thirds of the population believed the government’s The politicisation and militarisation of the rhetoric and acquiesced in its cultural Tampa incident in the pre-election politicking. The mendacity of the de- months of 2001 marked the zenith of the humanising of desperate people for multicultural assault. A signification spiral short-term political gain rebounded on occurred (Hall et al., 1978) in which dis- its perpetrators with ironical embarrass- crete events, such as the Sydney rape ment. The racialising displayed towards trials, were ideologically associated and asylum seekers and the Islamic commu- linked to wider discourses of national nity (the latest arrivals in a country experience by which a whole commu- whose history is built on difficult arrivals nity (Australian Muslims) was made to (Wills 2002)), with inferences of their har- share the burden of blame and carry bouring a fundamentalist, culturally un- responsibility (Jones 2001; Devine 2001). accommodating mentality, was ex- Notwithstanding pejorative and legally posed as a projection of the attitude of, false terms such as ‘queue jumpers’ and firstly, the Australian government itself, ‘illegal immigrants’ (Menadue 2001) be- and secondly, that of its Immigration ing used to vilify mostly Muslim inmates Department. of immigration detention centres who were fleeing totalitarian regimes, the Revelations that the London Under- ‘dog whistle’ in this exercise was that ground bombings of July 2005 were car- these people were contravening a ried out by three British-born citizens out moral order (Poynting et al of the four perpetrators prompted a re- 2004) queuing and obeying rules are evaluation in Britain of the culture of the seen as a proper and fair way of acting. ‘ethnic’ enclave. Guardian columnist Dog whistle politics involves pitching an Jonathan Freedland commented, implied message to a particular group of voters that other voters do not hear We could shut out every last asylum (Oakes 2001:8), so by criminalizing boat- seeker, expel every illegal immigrant, people and asylum seekers and inferring and it would make us no safer. This at- that they were committing an immoral tack came from within (Freedland 2005:9). act, these people were seen by those 8 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST Baroness Kishwer Falkner, a Pakistani- cerned intelligentsia debated their poor born member of the House of Lords treatment, particularly in reference to asked, ‘Do we tolerate segregation in traumatised children (HREOC 2004), but the guise of multiculturalism?’ She ex- it was the graphic revelation of the horted a rethink of the multicultural treatment of a white Australian girl, Cor- compromise─that Britain spell out more nelia Rau, with all the callousness and clearly what it was prepared to ask from, indifference meted out to the ‘Other’ as well as give to, its migrants (Freedland that caught the public’s attention and 2005:9). The point was not lost on Austra- embarrassed the government (Palmer lia. Suddenly the Prime Minister became 2005). Political journalist Michelle Grat- receptive to meeting with Muslim civic tan, commenting in The Age on the and clerical leaders, to recognise and Palmer Inquiry into the detention of Rau embrace their position as stakeholders in and Vivian Alvarez Solon, and by infer- Australian society, and to enlist their par- ence the racialised assumptions by ticipation in combating radical agitators which the immigration department de- (Zwartz 2005:6). There was an about- humanised its victims, wrote: face recognition that demanding commitment from newcomers required the department’s culture intolerant and mutual respect, not a position defined always assuming the worst of detainees by policies that told them their cultures or those who have not complied has were irrelevant and inferior (Jakubowicz been the Government’s culture … in tak- ing its uncompromising line, the depart- 2005:13). It remains to be stated, there- ment was doing what was wanted by a fore, that legitimate avenues to social Government that was so ready to insist participation in nationhood do not that asylum seekers had thrown their emanate from a static definition of cul- children overboard. If it had not mistaken ture and the importance of privileging a couple of Australians for foreigners, it’s the comfort, cohesiveness and exclu- quite likely its general bad behaviour siveness of the white Anglo founding cul- would be continuing unquestioned ture of Australian statehood. The pros- (Grattan 2005:6). pect of a re-badging of the evolving and hybridising nature of Australian so- It was only through the prism of racial- ciety remains one of hope for the future. ised whiteness and Australian residency The neo-conservative legacy of ‘toler- that the public began to comprehend ant’ multiculturalism has been a meta- not only that no one with those attrib- phor for subaltern relegation of migrant utes should be treated the way Rau and groups. Solon were, but also that no one should be treated that way at all. The static The second point of exposition of the prescription that ‘Australian’ meant a prejudice underlying ‘tolerant’ multicul- core privileged culture and marginalised turalism concerns the culture of a dys- stakeholders like migrants and refugees functional Immigration Department. For were alien and objectified because of as long as ‘Othered’ asylum seekers their differences, was exposed for the were showing signs of disturbance over intolerant, prejudiced mindset that it the wilful neglect and emotional abuse is a callous rejection of the Kantian to which they were subject in manda- view of human self-worth. tory detention, neither the government nor the public were moved or cared Once it has been recognised that mi- much (A.C. Nielsen 2001; Roy Morgan gration tides contribute different attrib- 2001). Health care workers, church utes to the common good, then the groups, journalists, lawyers and a con- evolving common culture hybridises. Logically, a statement of shared values 9 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST should change over time, as does the Australian flag. What I condemn is loutish composition of society. Simpson and his behaviour, criminal behaviour’ (Editorial donkey might mean less to Italian, Chi- 2005), was reminiscent of his similar reti- nese, Lebanese or Vietnamese immi- cence to acknowledge the racial over- grants than the descendants of the An- tones of Pauline Hanson’s 1996 parlia- zacs, but does that mean that these mi- mentary debut. In response to her xeno- grant groups have made no contribu- phobic notions as politics of grievance, tion to society? If they have put their Howard had applauded the arrival of a trust in the laws, civic institutions and new era of free speech instead of de- democratically elected politicians of ploring the arrival of a new politics of Australia, then it is a breach of trust to race (Abbott 1998). Journalist Shaun diminish their cultural signifiers. Carney analysed the Prime Minister’s words as ‘a positive message about the Perhaps a transformative metaphor can good nature of the Australian people be seen in the Cronulla riots of Decem- not most of us, or the vast majority, but ber 2005. The image of drunken white all of us’(Carney 2005:29). By this he youths draped in the Australian flag and meant the white, insular, parochial, anti- carrying bottles with which to harass multicultural constituency of his power ‘Lebs’ and/or people of Middle Eastern base, the neighbours and mums and appearance resonated around the na- dads of the Cronulla rioters, were not tion and throughout the world media. being judged, threatened or rebuked. Historian Marilyn Lake seemingly He was inclusively telling his xenophobic summed up the Howard era when she voters that they should continue to feel wrote, ‘Militant nationalism also breeds relaxed and comfortable. A former po- racism’ (Lake 2005:19). More specifically, liceman turned academic, Michael Milad Bardan, executive officer of the Kennedy, after a compelling analysis of Australian Arabic Council, cautioned: ethnic culture and violence, concluded the matter was about politics and im- There is a thin line between verbal and plied it required leadership (Sheahan physical abuse, and the riots in Sydney 2005:25). Marilyn Lake and Shaun Car- are but proof of systematic natural pro- ney both demonstrated how negative gression of years of ethnic hounding, leadership inflected multiculturalism. taunting and stereotyping. If Australia is to avoid a repetition of the weekend ri- ots, it is vital that the media and the au- thorities refrain from using this practice in Despite an Age readers’ poll showing 68 their quest to provide a safer and more per cent did not agree that multicultur- integrated Australian community (Bar- alism was dead in Australia ( The Age dan 2005). 2005:18) and positive community action implyin-g the same, the politics of multi- It appears that his words were heeded cultural victimisation has vitiated the phi- at least by the community, if not the losophical and public policy discourse Prime Minister. until such time as its propagators are re- placed by a different political culture ─ one that displays positive leadership. Amidst a plethora of spontaneous community initiatives undertaken to condemn violence and mitigate com- Poynting et al. in Bin Laden in the Sub- munity tensions, the Prime Minister again urbs maintain that the hysteria associ- damned a site of multicultural disjunc- ated with the attacks on multiculturalism ture with faint praise. His ‘I would never represents the ideological agendas of condemn people for being proud of the 10 KRONGOLD: BREACH OF TRUST conservative politicians and the com- Adamovic, L. 1944. Nation of Nations, New mercial imperatives of tabloid journalism York: Harpers. more than it does popular opinion Age readers poll 2005. Age, 15 December. (Poynting 2004:259). However, they urge Ang, I. 2001. On Not Speaking Chinese: a rethink on the nature and direction of Living Between Asia and the West, Lon- multiculturalism and national belonging don: Routledge. in Australia in the twenty-first century. In Bardan, M. 2005. ‘ … or years of ethnic this, they echo the sentiments of Profes- hounding’, Age, Letters to the Editor, sor Jerzy Zubrzycki (1987). Ien Ang asks Age, 14 December. for an ethics of multiculturalism. She ar- Brett, J.1997. ‘John Howard, Pauline Han- gues that Australian multiculturalism has son and the politics of grievance’, in always been ambivalent─it claimed to Gray, G., and Winter, C., (eds), The Re- be anti-racist but propagated a re- surgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson pressed sense of race (Ang 2001:104). and the Race Debate, Dept. of Social Unless we interrogate this ambivalence, History, Monash University. she urges, we will maintain a multicultur- ~ 2003. Australian Liberals and the Moral alism that preserves a conservative ele- Middle Class: from Alfred Deakin to John ment of racialisation (Ang 2001:111). This Howard, New York: Cambridge Univer- concurs with Jon Stratton’s observations sity Press. in Race Daze. Whilst fashioning hybrid ~ 2004. ‘The New Liberalism’, in Manne, R., lives and intercultural relations that cut (ed.), The Howard Years, Melbourne: across assumptions about ethnic en- Black Inc. Agenda. claves takes generations, Hogg and Burnside, J.2005. ‘The abuse of one of us Brown (1998:177) argue in Rethinking exposes what we’re doing to them’, Law and Order that we need a ‘politics Age, 7 July. of civility’ which challenges the unwrit- Clark S., 1999. ‘The Annales Historians’, in ten social codes of incivility and moves Clark S. (ed.), The Annales School: Criti- towards greater recognition of shared cal Assessments, London: Routledge. responsibility. Carney, S. 2005. ‘Howard plays the Spin’, Age, 17 December. Author Note Castles, S. 2001. ‘Multiculturalism in Austra- lia’, in Eric Jupp (ed.), The Australian People, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- Jeanette Krongold has a legal back- sity Press. ground, specialising in immigration law. Civics Expert Group, 1994. 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(ed.), Challenging Histories: Reflections on Aus- tralian History, Australian Historical Stud- ies Special Issue, Vol. 33, No. 11. Zubrzycki, J. 1964. Settlers of the Latrobe Valley: a sociological study of immi- grants in the brown coal industry in Aus- tralia, Canberra: ANU Press. ~ 1987. ‘Public Policy in Multicultural Aus- tralia’, Quadrant, July. Zwartz, B. 2005. ‘Muslim MP calls for a new council to accredit imams’, Age, 21 July. 13 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006 HISTORICISING WHITENESS: FROM THE CASE OF LATE COLONIAL INDIA SATOSHI MIZUTANI Abstract may come charged with inevitable self- contradictions and ambiguities, and with those counter-measures that seek It has been a while since critical race to contain the socio-political unrest re- and whiteness studies have dissemi- sulting there from. nated the now-familiar notion that whiteness is not a given but a social Introduction construct. The idea, however, is yet to be fully explored, with many untouched areas and methodologies of potential Ruth Frankenberg has influentially ar- importance. This paper is a humble at- gued that, whilst white people’s raciali- tempt to make a contribution to the sation of their non-white counter-parts field from the perspective of colonial has long been subjected to research, history. Drawing on a historical case the former’s own racial identity, or study on British Indian society from the ‘whiteness’, has often escaped critical late nineteenth century onwards, it firstly examination. It is upon their privileged focuses on the oft-neglected social extra-racial or racially non-problematic world of white colonials of ‘respectable’ status that the hegemonic power of standing, enquiring what defined their whites rests. In her words, ‘whiteness whiteness and under what material con- makes itself invisible precisely by assert- ditions it was to be acquired. This is to ing its normalcy, its trans-parency, in be followed by an examination of how contrast with the making of others on these whites differentiated themselves which its transparency depends’ from, and in turn controlled the lives of, (Frankenberg 1997: 6). What has been the so-called ‘domiciled’ population, lacking is to ‘race’ the quotidian lives of members of which were of white de- white individuals or communities, and scent, permanently based in India, often unfortunately, this concomitant failure in impoverished and frequently (if not al- displacing the unmarked status of ways) racially mixed. Such a two-level whiteness has also been a common fea- approach to the people of white ture of the scholarship on colonial ra- descent is to reveal that the colonial in- cism. As Ann Stoler has pointed out, vention of whiteness depended both on studies of colonialism have long con- the securing of a ‘bourgeois’ social mi- strued white, colonising communities ex- lieu for middle-class whites and on the clusively as abstract agents of the eco- vigilant control of the impoverished nomic and political projects of colonial- domiciled. The paper shows the com- ism. In other words, it is chiefly for what plex ways in which the insidiously un- they did in the public sphere that white sound nature of such a construction of individuals and their communities have whiteness repeatedly posed a political been treated: what they were or sought challenge to the colonial racial order. to be , or their clandestine and yet ob- The case of colonial India may be taken sessive preoccupation to construct as a vivid example of how whiteness some indubitable racial prestige at the ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS domestic as well as public realms, has ing, as well as with race itself. On the not attracted due attention (Stoler 1996; one hand, while inventing and preserv- Stoler 2002). Drawing on my historical ing their own whiteness through clinging research on colonial Indian society from (if not always successfully) to the social the late nineteenth century onwards and cultural milieu of the imperial (1858-1930), this paper aims to address metropole, the colonials of higher social the subject of whiteness with a view to order never welcomed the existence of stimulating wider debates on race, par- their less-privileged domiciled brethren ticularly those in colonial and postcolo- whose lives seemed too irrevocably nial studies. In her study on colonial rooted in the colonial land. Conse- South Asia, Mrinarini Sinha has graphi- quently the former excluded the latter cally carved out the gendered struc- from their tightly guarded sphere of tures of socio-political order, by address- status and privilege, despite the (mostly) ing not just men’s subordination of British origins they had in common 1. On women but also how both British and the other hand, however, this exclusion- Indian men constructed their own mas- ary attitude had ambiguously been culine identities through complex proc- coupled with an inclusionary impulse of esses of colonial politics (Sinha 1995). peculiar sort: since the colonial authori- While this paper primarily concerns itself ties feared that the increasingly visible with race, it will draw on Sinha’s meth- pauperisation of the domiciled might odological insights in order to suggest disgrace white racial prestige in the eyes one meaningful way of studying whites of the native subjects, they sought to as white , thereby historicising their control the latter’s lives through a politics whiteness, in the same way that she of welfare and education. Thus the re- seeks to ‘give masculinity a history’ production of whiteness can be said to (Sinha 1999). have depended both on the securing of a ‘bourgeois’ and metropolitan milieu It is at two interconnected levels that this for middle-class whites and on the vigi- essay will engage with the question of lant control of the impoverished domi- whiteness in late British India. First, it will ciled. The paper will describe these his- focus on white colonials of ‘respectable’ torical processes at some length, but its standing. What defined the bodily and aim is not so much to subject them to moral constitutions that made them a elaborate empirical analysis as I have ‘ruling race’? How were these consti- done elsewhere 2, as to relate them to tutions to be built not just into themselves broader issues that may well be relevant but also into their offspring? Secondly, to critical race and whiteness studies in the essay will discuss how these whites general. differentiated themselves from, and in turn controlled the lives of, the so-called White Colonials as Civilising Agents ‘domiciled’ population, members of which were of white descent, perma- nently based in India, often impover- In order for the British to govern several ished and frequently (if not always) ra- million subjects of the post-rebellion In- cially mixed. This two-level approach to dia, the importance of military domi- the people of white descent will be un- nance was unquestionable, but equally dertaken in ways that will introduce a significant, so it was perceived, was to historiographical argument, derived establish and maintain an unequivocal from my empirical research, that ‘to be racial identity for white colonials. In the white’ had fundamentally to do with wake of the 1857 Mutiny and of the sub- both class origin and place of upbring- sequent transition from Company to 2 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS Crown rule the following year, the impe- tain ideas and practices concerning the rial authorities deemed it necessary to ways in which social distinctions had circumscribe the image of a new white been perceived and articulated within community, and this entailed a clarifica- white British society. According to tion of criteria for membership. In its Re- Benedict Anderson, it was the feudal port, the Select Committee on Colonisa- and/or early modern iconographies of tion and Settlement (appointed in 1858) class, where the obvious dissimilarities officially declared that all settlers should between the aristocracy and the com- originate from the ‘respectable’ layers mon populace were considered to be of British society and subsequently be- as absolute as those of heredity, or of long within limited occupational cate- ‘blood’, that informed the development gories of prestigious order. They should of colonial racisms (Anderson 1991, 150). form a small cadre of governors and One offshoot of such a vision, as David high-ranked civil servants (running what Cannadine has shown, was India’s British was known as the most prestigious bu- colonials’ romanticised self-image as a reaucracy in the world), military officers, sort of super-caste, reigning, as it were, capitalists (factory owners, merchants at the top of a finely-graded, immob- and planters), professionals (scientists, ilised structure of pre-modern feudal hi- doctors and lawyers), missionaries, and erarchy (Cannadine 2001, 41-57). philanthropists. According to the Com- mittee, only these groups would be able Attention to these racial and class- to uphold the ‘dignity’ of British’s civilis- based ideas of whiteness is important for ing mission in India. In their respective our understanding of the chauvinistic domains of activity: administration, ideologies of the British bourgeoisie and commerce, science, and spiritual uplift- their peculiar incarnations in the colonial ing, these select members of the British context, but it alone would not be suffi- nation were to realise its proclaimed im- cient for revealing a whole picture of perial mission to modernise and civilise whiteness in colonial India. For white this allegedly ‘backward’ part of the supremacy was to be nurtured not solely globe (Mizutani 2005, 24-28). through positing certain racial qualities that supposedly made up the colonisers’ Such a fashioning of white people as constitutions: rather, it was to be de- civilising agents was deeply implicated fended by addressing, if not so proudly, in those structures of social precedence the insidious dangers of white racial that had been shaped by the ideas of degradation. The nineteenth-century ‘race’ and ‘class’ much characteristic of idea of race did assert the superiority of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. First whites at the conceptual level, but there of all, whiteness was to be constructed still remained, at the practical level, the in ways that went hand in hand with the question of how the supposed bearers contemporary notion of racial differ- of such superiority actually led their lives ence, which increasingly cast the differ- in the overseas colonies whose natural ence between Britain and India in a So- and social environments often widely cial Darwinist contrast of ‘civilised’ versus differed from that of Britain. Thus, in- ‘backward’, or ‘evolved’ versus ‘de- stead of being allowed to behave just generated’ (see Metcalf 1995). Thus, as they willed, white colonials found being white in India meant, first and themselves tightly bound by certain so- foremost, being a member of the con- cial codes and cultural conventions quering, imperial race. Second and no which severely restricted their private as less importantly, the reorganisation of well as public lives. Defining themselves whiteness was also predicated on cer- as civilising agents did not mean that 3 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS they had been given unrestricted free- posefully to the tropical climate. It is no- dom. This tendency towards stricter so- table that such an anti-miscegenation cial self-discipline was not triggered sim- sentiment was frequently expressed by ply by a Puritanical penchant for self- way of comparing the British model of moralising, but also by a penetrating colonial settlement with its Portuguese fear that, without sufficient vigilance, the counterpart. The supposed failure of British might easily lose those racial quali- Portuguese colonialism was ascribed to ties that had made them ‘white’. Rather what was seen as an endemic preva- surprising as it might sound by our pre- lence of inter-racial breeding observed sent standards, only a cursory glimpse in Portugal’s South American territories. into the colonial archive would suffice to Furthermore, it was also argued that the show the extent to which middle-class same mistake of allowing miscegenation Britons had been ridden by anxieties to prevail had been committed by the over an irrevocable ‘degeneration’ of Portuguese in the Subcontinent as well their own physical and mental constitu- before the British came to power in the tions supposedly caused by immersion in eighteenth century; that the present de- the Indian environs. The British did cer- scendants of Portuguese setters were tainly believe in their racial superiority as almost always tinted by native blood, whites but at the same were convinced which had made them far from being that only certain self-imposed limitations ‘healthy’ or ‘vigorous’, and hence utterly and socio-cultural norms would save unsuitable for the sacred tasks of colo- them from metamorphosing into an im- nial ruling and civilising. pure, weaker, and, therefore, ‘non- white’ being. Clearly, the British should not follow the Portuguese way. In fact, these reactions As Mark Harrison has demonstrated, the against miscegenation served to stigma- medico-scientific circles at the time tise not just ‘Luso-Indians’ (people of Por- were increasingly hostile to the optimism tuguese origins) but, indirectly, also of the preceding decades and were ‘Eurasians’, the mixed-descent people strongly inclined towards a view that the of India most of whom actually had Brit- white race was not so constituted as to ish blood on the paternal side. By the ‘acclimatise’ (e.g., adapt to the tropical mid-nineteenth century, the British la- environment) (Harrison 1999). Uncon- mented that the miscegenation of Brit- trolled exposure to the Indian surround- ons with natives or with Eurasians was ings and inhabitants would only incur engendering some unretractable traces changes of inimical sort. Such influential of hybrid offspring in whom the ‘worst scientific authorities as Edward Tilt and points’ of both the white and non-white Joseph Fayrer generally agreed that, characteristics were frequently com- after the third generation, the British ra- bined (Mizutani 2005, 33-39). cial stock would either go extinct or pro- long its existence at the expense of be- These ideas on environmental influence coming something fundamentally al- and miscegenation had been closely tered (Harrison 1994, 36-59; Mizutani linked up with certain social practices 2005, 30-32). The same scientists also and cultural conventions. For white considered ‘miscegenation’ (e.g. the males, miscegenation increasingly be- interbreeding of people regarded as came a risky business, as the strong different racial types) as yet another stigma attached to it by that period mode of racial degeneration, rather would easily harm their social credibility than as a positive measure for creating and career prospects (though, as will be a part-white hybrid race adapted pur- explained later, many men of lower- 4 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS class origins did continue to marry into ter graduation. In fact, the idea of send- the Eurasian population). Moreover, the ing off children for a course of upbring- mid-century arrival of middle-class ing in Britain was articulated not just as a women not only made miscegenation desirable option but as a sacred duty: a much less in demand but served to cre- duty most parents did actually faithfully ate a white domestic space that repro- discharge, despite the psychological duced the strict sexual morality of Victo- and financial sufferings such parent- rian Britain (Sinha 1995; Whitehead 1996). child separation could easily impose (Buettner 2004). As for environmental influence, resi- dence in European hill stations in North- Each member of the British nation was ern India was encouraged as an alter- supposed to be in India only as a self- ative to the plains, because the physical conscious agent of imperialism or as his and social environment of the latter dutiful wife, and the reproduction of were believed to drag down the white such agents of colonial rule would al- race into the bottomless depths of racial ways depend on the metropole for its deterioration. Ultimately, a periodical supply of those men and women who rest for adults (especially white women) embodied the ideals of the bourgeoisie. and the entire education for children The construction of whiteness was to be only in Britain (and not in any parts of done neither naturally nor in a piece- India) were regarded as essential not meal fashion, but required a heavy set just for hygienic but also for social rea- of social rules and, above all, the mate- sons. rial resources that made it possible to follow them. These rules were demand- The hill stations, as Dane Kennedy has ing for all the men, women and children shown, did assume a degree of ideo- involved, and even for the wealthier logical and practical significance as an members of the middle class, being institution for reproducing, from within white was nothing less than a burden- India, the whiteness of the British (Ken- some business with many hazards to cir- nedy 1996). This did not mean, however, cumvent and fragile constitutions to that these idealised white enclaves (‘Lit- jealously protect. Their fear of ‘going tle England’) were to be fully utilised for native’ was a real one, not least when procreating any substantial white popu- their offspring were concerned. lation so that India would have a self- sufficient supply of white blood. This Uncivilised Whites eventual dismissal of the hill stations is shown by the extent to which British par- ents historically preferred to send their It was in yet another sense, however, India-born offspring directly to the that whiteness was seen as caught up in metropole rather than to the schools the danger. While the aforementioned Indian hills harboured. Elizabeth Buett- anxieties concerned the paranoid care ner’s recent book tells us how they of self on the part of the bourgeois, tended to dismiss ‘European schools’ in there were other concerns as well, es- India as a possible substitute for families pecially concerning the ‘non-bourgeois’ and schools in Britain lest their own chil- elements of colonial white society. De- dren, especially boys, might end up spite its official wish to be contrary, British sharing for the rest of their lives the ex- India’s white population was not at all tremely limited socio-economic pros- homogeneous but was divided in both pects that usually awaited lower class class and racial lines, and it is on this divi- whites and mixed-descent Eurasians af- sion that the following section will focus. 5 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS plement measures either to eliminate or Among the 150,000 odd Britons in late put under control the presence of white nineteenth century India, nearly half subalterns. Works by Kenneth Ball- were those who would be more aptly hatchet and Douglas Peers on the con- called as ‘poor whites’ than civilising trol of the sexuality of white subaltern agents. Many of these arrived in India soldiers, those on European prostitutes as subaltern soldiers or railway workers. by Philippa Levine and by Harald Fisher- They suffered not only from the class Tiné, all testify to the degree to which prejudice of India’s white society but the colonial authorities were eager to from the crude fact that the colonial control the lives of poorer members of economy did not require their labour white society (Ballhatchet 1980; Peers except in very limited arenas. They of- 1998; Fisher-Tiné 2003; Levine 1994). ten became unemployed after the army More generally, David Arnold’s study of or the railways discharged them, and, in the European Vagrancy Act (1869, 1871, the absence of the money that would and 1874), a law which allowed the po- have brought them back to Britain, got lice to capture and repatriate ‘loose stranded in India. From the perspective whites’, demonstrates the colonial of the ruling classes, their mere existence state’s anxiousness to sweep away the was seen as imminently injurious to white existence of any ‘unfit’ whites, and racial prestige. Usually drawn from the thereby to maintain the prestige of the working class, these whites were ex- colonising community as a whole (Ar- pected to possess neither the hygienic nold 1979). norms nor the culture of self-discipline that their middle-class counterparts These measures, how-ever, were never cherished in India. good enough for erasing the poor white question. Nor were they successful in Ever since the era of the East India stopping these white people from per- Company, British authorities had offi- manently residing in India across gen- cially been against the colonial pres- erations, making themselves known as ence of any substantial white-working ‘Domiciled Europeans’. Still less were population, and this attitude had been these measures able to prevent them faithfully readopted by the new regime: from merging into the mixed-descent thus it was only blatantly against the of- ‘Eurasian’ population (existing as a ficial intentions that a substantial group group since the early nineteenth cen- of impoverished whites made their pres- tury 3, and numbering at least 150,000 by ence felt in the colonial context. Natu- the 1930s) through miscegenation: in the rally, as Kenneth Ballhatchet has ar- absence of any substantial numbers of gued, the visible existence of subordi- working-class white women, a number nate whites was perceived as nothing of poor-white men married Eurasian but a problematic source of political women. Taking a cue from those studies disorder (Ballhatchet 1980, 121-2). on impoverished and socially marginal- ised whites, my own historical research Their presence was captured and repre- has focused on the colonial attitudes sented by official and non-official publi- towards those of white descent who cations alike as a ‘danger’ to the church became domiciled, if often involuntarily, and the state, not least because of its in India. poor reflection upon the British and their institutions in the native perception of Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians them. It was at this juncture that the co- were discrete from one another in that lonial authorities felt compelled to im- the former were of unmixed white de- 6 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS scent while the latter were not. How- consequences too: it found itself in- ever, as Arnold has rightly pointed out, scribed not just in racist and classist for the governing classes these differ- stereotypes but also in the socio-legal ences were often inconsequential and arrangements concerning the allocation the two groups were actually seen as of white privilege and status, especially constituting the same problematic (Ar- those regarding the recruitment of colo- nold 1979, 106). The rationale for this nial civil service officers. From the late curious bracketing was that, in spite of nineteenth century onwards, the domi- their having British blood, neither of them ciled were excluded from the higher were regarded as presenting the right ranks of the colonial civil service (a kind of whiteness to Indians. Domiciled process which in itself was one of the Europeans were purely white but were major causes for their impoverishment) seen to be far too indigent and uncivi- on the grounds that their education was lised to be genuine members of the rul- inferior to that imparted by schools ing race. Meanwhile, an overwhelming found in the metropole. Thus, since majority of the Eurasian community were 1870, in contrast to the home-educated also severely impoverished and illiterate. Britons who were categorised as ‘Euro- Both were too unrefined and/or hybrid pean British subjects’, the domiciled to be regarded as authentically white, were counted just as one of the many and it was in this context that they were ‘natives of India’. Such an arrangement often seen as of one piece and were effectively made it clear that Domiciled collectively referred to as ‘the domi- Europeans and Eurasians were ex- ciled’ as opposed to those whites who pected to be content with a typically did live in India but were emphatically Indian standard of living, making their not domiciled there. claim to be recognised as ‘British’ a mis- guided and illegitimate one. Unlike the middle-class whites who des- perately remained in touch with the Such an exclusionary attitude of the metropolitan centre, the domiciled were bourgeois Britons towards their domi- characterised for their immersion in the ciled kin seems somewhat counterintui- social and cultural influences of the co- tive, given the strong tendency of colo- lonial periphery. Whether one returned nial and postcolonial studies to associ- Home or made India his / her home was ate social exclusion solely with the ra- not at all a simple matter of personal cialisation, or ‘othering’, of the colonised preference but much hinged on the subjects. Yet it does point us towards (un)availability of money and one’s class one important form of modern social position that underlined it. Such class exclusion that at first glance might ap- origins of domiciliary difference were pear irrelevant to the colonial construc- readily transposed to a racialised image tion of racial categories: namely the so- of Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians cial-evolutionist and (later) eugenicist as ‘degenerate’, as though their pau- form of exclusion that ‘discovered’, in perisation was due to some innate pre- London and other industrial cities of Brit- dispositions. Despite their white de- ain, ‘unfit’ populations, such as the scent, the domiciled were at times seen ‘poor’, the ‘mad’, and the ‘infirm’ as a ‘race’ apart, deprived of their white (Himmelfarb 1984). elements and gone degenerate be- The way in which the very category of yond redemption. the domiciled came into being in colo- nial India tells us convincingly that such The domiciliary distinction drawn within a class-specific mode of exclusion is not the white community had its material irrelevant to the concerns of colonial 7 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS studies, and by extension, to those of Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians, one critical race and whiteness studies at may naturally wonder whether or not large. It is significant as it presents us the former ever considered disowning with one instance of how the bourgeois the latter completely, while allowing anxiety about what were seen as alien them to merge into the native masses or ‘dangerous’ classes manifested itself, without trace. Such a view was not en- in the altered context of colonisation, as tirely absent, with some commentators an urgent problem of ‘whiteness’. What actually advocating a complete exclu- we may learn from such concern with sion of some (if not all) sections of the white identity is the extent to which the domiciled population. The dominant making of whiteness was at its roots a view, however, was that such was too highly ambivalent and unstable process, unpractical an option and that the Brit- whose self-purifying mechanisms almost ish had to take seriously the question of necessarily entailing a contradictory ef- the domiciled as one of their own. fect of producing, and simultaneously However, this call to responsibility de- excluding, those who were white, ‘but rived not so much from some kindred not quite’. sympathy for an impoverished kin, as from a mixed sense of embarrassment ‘European Pauperism’ and the and alarm. It was not because they saw Ambivalence of Imperial Civilising the domiciled as their own kind, let alone their equals, that the white ruling classes threw their lot in this struggle to Exclusion, however, was in some ways ‘rescue’ the latter: rather, they had only always connected with a certain, if been forced to realise that the pauper- equally contradictory, mode of inclu- ised existence of the domiciled not sim- sion. To grasp the fuller picture of white- ply became publicly noticeable but, ness in late colonial India, one would because of its very visibility, emerged as have to see how the demand of secur- a menace to colonial white prestige. ing racial order made it necessary for Impoverished as they might have been, the authorities to come to terms with the Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians excluded, instead of consigning them to were ‘white’ by descent (racially white, oblivion and negligence. Just as the whether unmixed or mixed), by lan- poor in Britain were not simply alienated guage (English), and by religion (Christi- but were simultaneously made an ob- anity). While they were considered not ject of intense reformist interventions, as civilised as home-educated Britons, India’s domiciled population soon at- they were at the same time neither seen tracted a great deal of attention from as ‘Indian’ nor regarded themselves as the state and private social reformers, such. Moreover, from the perspective of with its chronicle pauperism and illiter- colonised natives, the domiciled were acy becoming highly publicised and not their natural allies in their struggle politicised. However, it would be too against imperial domination: if anything, simplistic to see the colonial focus on the they merely appeared as collaborators domiciled poor as a mere, unmediated of colonial rule or as a parasitic commu- replication of European class attitude. nity that desperately sucked white privi- For it was also out of some distinctly co- leges without any regard for the interests lonial concerns that the impoverishment of colonised natives. Such historical cir- of India’s domiciled population was cumstances made it impossible for the identified as an urgent problem. non-domiciled Britons to desert their domiciled counterparts. Consequently, Given the almost racist attitude with what we witness from the end of the which middle-class whites regarded 8 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS 1850s right up to the close of colonialism impossible to integrate all children and were numerous social reform measures thus to make them literate, but it was addressing the problem of so-called extremely difficult to find suitable em- ‘European pauperism’. These measures ployment even for those who did actu- did not so much seek to solve as con- ally get schooled. By the beginning of ceal, or make less visible, the pauperisa- the 1890s, it seemed increasingly clear tion of Domiciled-European and Eura- that the British could not solve European sian people. What was at stake was the pauperism unless they directly and spe- spectacular visibility of such pauperism cifically addressed the condition of the and its negative political implications. A poorest section of the domiciled (which brief look at some of these counter- increasingly constituted a majority). measures may be helpful. Upon this realisation, in 1891, the colonial Colonial authorities found education as government appointed the Pauperism one of the most effective measures to Committee to enquire into the extent control white pauperism. It was Bishop and nature of the indigence penetrating Cotton in Calcutta who, with the support Calcutta’s domiciled population. In the of the Viceroy Lord Canning, started an same spirit, about two decades later, a almost century-long struggle against the similar committee, the Calcutta Domi- pervasive illiteracy among domiciled ciled Community Enquiry Committee children. Cotton’s efforts to create (1918) was launched (albeit not by the schools were continued by successive government this time but by a non- governments and social reformers, re- official initiative) to solve such a problem sulting by the turn of the century in a that had appeared almost unsolvable network of ‘European schools’ and in a and yet could not be left unattended code that standardised and regulated to. their educational and administrative policies. 4 Characteristic of such urgent attention to pauperism was a typical bourgeois What is notable is how, in the evolution representation of the pauper as both of this comprehensive edu-cation physiologically and psychologically ‘un- scheme, more and more attention was fit’. In a colonial rendering of such a paid to the poorest of the poor domi- theory, Domiciled Europeans and Eura- ciled children: it was increasingly made sians in Calcutta collectively entertained explicit that the education these schools a ‘false’ kind of self-image. On the one provided would be first and foremost hand, it was argued, they fallaciously supervisory and disciplinary in kind, imagined themselves to be essentially rather than being academic-oriented. one and the same with better-off, Only the state control of its children home-educated Britons. This allegedly would be able to prevent a further pau- had an effect of making the former too perisation of the domiciled community. proud to set their hands to manual la- It was out of this belief that both state bour whilst spending recklessly to satisfy agents and private philanthropic circles their vain need for pretence, even in the combined their efforts. midst of life-costing impoverishment. On the other hand, the domiciled were It was increasingly obvious, however, supposedly inclined towards a habit of that the mere provision of a com- thinking that they were naturally superior prehensive education system did not to their native neighbours. This allegedly prove as effective as its enthusiastic led the former to employ the latter as promoters had hoped. Not only was it domestic servants, not only increasing 9 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS their poverty through the expenses in- form the negative attitude of the domi- volved but making their children as help- ciled towards manual labour and hum- lessly dependent, spoiled and vain as ble living. themselves. All these confusions in terms of class and racial identification com- One might add that such efforts found bined to cause the pauperisation of the crystallised in St. Andrew’s Colonial domiciled. What followed from such an Homes, whose reputation among the observation was a proposal to remedy British in India was nothing but phe- European pauperism through curing nomenal. Established in 1900 at Kalim- domiciled persons of their ‘defects of pong near the Eastern Himalayas by a character’. Scottish missionary Rev. John Graham 5, this orphanage-like institution provided The quasi-psychological theory of the its 500-600 domiciled inmates with a domiciled character did indicate cer- complete boarding-school education. tain ‘innate’ dispositions but also looked In this highly acclaimed institution, the to environmental influence. By way of a everyday lives of domiciled children curious fusion of biological determinism were strictly supervised and regulated, and social constructivism, the family and so that they would take up domestic the community were identified as the work by themselves, while simultaneously sources of mental as well as physical ‘unlearning’ their infamous dependence degeneration. In other words, the plight on servants as well as their allegedly of the domiciled community would not characteristic disinclination towards me- be solved unless its members were relo- nial labour. In the meanwhile, the cated from urban centres such as Cal- Homes offered a curriculum which em- cutta, where most of them lived. More- phasised industrial and agricultural over, in yet another sense was this idea knowledge for boys and domestic skills of collective removal appealing to the for girls, preparing them for such careers colonial ruling classes: even when un- as farming, marine piloting, and soldier- able to change the racial constitutions ing. The Homes served not only to con- of the domiciled, or to find them em- ceal the potential perpetrators of Euro- ployment, it would at least erase the po- pean pauperism through their thorough litically undesirable sight of European institutionalisation, but also to perfect pauperism. It was out of these concerns the process of such politically significant that, throughout the late colonial period, concealment by sending its graduates British philanthropic circles considered away from India as emigrant farmers or several schemes that would not simply menial labourers. discipline Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians, but also, in varying ways and To what extent is the example of these degrees, removed them from their ur- measures of control useful for our effort ban residences. to demystify whiteness? My argument is that, with qualifications, the reformist These schemes included the participa- measures on India’s Domiciled- tion of youths in military and marine European and Eurasian populations can training; the establishment of agricultural be discussed in ways that address the communes in the unpopulated country- broader question of whiteness, and this, side; and emigration to British ‘setter particularly in regard to the complex re- colonies’ such as Australia and New lationship between whiteness and the Zealand. Under these schemes, social notion of ‘civilising’. isolation and discipline would supple- ment one another as a means to trans- 10 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS Those various measures directed at In- thorities were anxious to civilise the indi- dia’s domiciled population had been gent classes through social measures strongly influenced by the metropolitan including sanitary reform and education discourses and practices regarding the in which Social Darwinism was increas- indigent inhabitants of the British Isles. As ingly influential (Davin 1987; Semmel we have observed above, such impor- 1960). tation was no less than a mere duplica- tion of metropolitan class control but At the same time, however, the history was motivated by colonial demands for of ‘European pauperism’ in India sug- racial order. While recognition of this gests that the reference to class is not difference is of great significance, the sufficient for explaining such internal civi- very fact of such cross-continental con- lising. ‘British social history’ (especially tinuum of philanthropic knowledge and the kind covering the modern age) practice is interesting in its own right. would be enriched by introducing colo- nial and postcolonial perspectives: for, in It indicates, for one, that the ensuing the age of empire, even what seems to question of modern pauperism was not be no more than a straightforwardly simply confined to the urban areas of domestic question of civilising might be the United Kingdom but travelled far connected with colonial social forma- overseas, forcing colonial white societies tions. The ways in which the Domiciled- such as the one in India to practice a European and Eurasian poor were iden- similar (if not the same) kind of class poli- tified in India as a special social cate- tics. Careful attention to such a global gory never simply derived from the diffusion of social control measures may bourgeois conception of pauper man- contribute to widen the scope of colo- agement alone. Neither were the pro- nial and postcolonial studies, which posed countermeasures mere emula- have thus far tended to restrict them- tions of those class politics that had al- selves to the theme of how the colonis- ready been practiced in the metropoli- ers ruled the colonised, with a relative tan centre. Such discourses as those on indifference to the parallel process Oth- the dependence on native servants, the ering of, and subsequent control of, ‘false’ sense of superiority over natives, subordinate populations within Euro- and the mesmerising impact of the In- pean societies (Moor-Gilbert 1997, 129: dian climate and environment, ad- see also Cooper and Stoler 1997; Stoler dressed colonial problems, serving to 1996; Stoler 2002). harden the internal differences of India’s white population into racial ones. Ac- While the idea of ‘civilising’ did increas- cordingly, the civilising of Domiciled ingly become perceived as a colonial Europeans and Eurasians entailed differ- business of converting native subjects ent concerns from that directed at the overseas, it never actually ceased to be pauper populations in the United King- an enduring domestic concern. Even in dom. Under imperialism, it was not just the late nineteenth and early twentieth class but race that defined the terms on centuries, Britain still embraced within which the internal civilising of ‘degener- itself ‘barbaric’ populations yet to be ates’ was conducted. ‘civilised’ (Himmelfarb 1984; McClintock 1995). At a time when colonial India’s Ultimately, however, even such efforts to domiciled population had been discov- compare race and class, and determine ered as an ‘unfit’ element of the com- which was more important, may turn out munity, in the metropole too, intellectu- to be counterproductive, if not com- als, social reformers and the state au- pletely futile. After all, as Susan Thorn’s 11 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS work on British missionary activities has as providing a vivid example of how the shown, any representation of the ‘other’ construction of whiteness may be within the missionary discourse of civilis- charged with inevitable contradictions ing since the late eighteenth century on and ambiguities, and with those coun- was to some degree racialised and termeasures that seek to contain them. classed simultaneously (Thorn 1997). Whiteness in such a context is not simply Stereotypical images of the indigent about white skin colour or about cultural and of the colonised natives hybridised norms, but is closely linked with the one another and became mutually in- state’s construction of ‘populations’, in- terchangeable, creating such contra- volving legislative and social measures dictory figures as the ‘white negro’ (re- for biopolitical intervention. Such meas- ferring, for instance, to the impov- ures produce not only normalness but erished Irish people in London). also forms of ambiguous identity against the backdrop of which such normalness Perhaps, the characteristically ambiva- is in part constructed. lent (un)-whiteness of Domiciled Euro- peans and Eurasians were to be located The ambiguity of mixed-race identity in only within such conflations of class and India has been identified and universal- racial otherness within the vast imperial ised by some social theorists as repre- space penetrating both metropole and senting a certain ‘personality’ sup- colony, and to that extent, the equally posedly typical in racially divided socie- characteristic ambiguities of those colo- ties (Park 1928; Stonequest 1935; Gist nial efforts of civilising the domiciled and Wright 1973). However, such a- community may be seen as reflecting a historical abstractions may lead one to wider context, enabling us to rethink overlook, and therefore unintentionally what civilising meant in modernity. Fur- repeat, the past representation of thermore, this in turn invites us to ques- mixed-race people as having a unique tion who ‘whites’ were: while they may psychological disposition. Based on my be readily defined as civilising agents, historical research, my argument is that the notion of civilising itself was in fact their identity cannot be fully explicated an equivocal one, and to this extent, without referring to their troubled rela- their identity was no less ambiguous, tionship to the colonial construction of with its historical roots traceable to both whiteness, which effectively attached to bourgeois and imperial cultures. them a label of being psychologically abnormal. As Lionel Caplan has rightly Concluding Remarks: argued, India’s domiciled community Historicising Whiteness were nothing but ‘children of colonial- ism’, with their fates largely determined It has been a while since critical race by how the ruling whites treated them: and whiteness studies have dissem- and even the condition of the ‘Anglo- inated the now-familiar notion that Indians’ in post-colonial India would not whiteness is not a given but a social be fully understood without due refer- construct. The idea, however, is yet to ence to the colonial past (Caplan 2001). be fully explored, with many untouched areas and methodologies of potential In this sense, the problematic category importance. This paper has been a of the domiciled can be construed humble attempt to make a contribution properly as a subject of postcolonial to the field from the perspective of co- studies. And yet, while its characteristic lonial history. It has shown that the case ambivalence can be seen as a moment of colonial Indian society can be taken of ‘hybridity’, so influentially formulated 12 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS by the prominent postcolonial theorist, Author Note Homi Bhabha (Bhabha 1994), it would be necessary to carefully combine the Satoshi Mizutani earned his MA from postmodernist privileging of radical am- Warwick University (Race and Ethnic bivalence with rigid historical contextu- Studies, 1998) and DPhil from Oxford Uni- alisation. To read India’s domiciled versity (British Imperial and Common- community as an example of in- wealth Studies, 2004). Since 2005, he has commensurable ‘inbetweenness’ may been Assistant Professor at Institute for well be applicable where they had ac- Language and Culture, Doshisha Univer- tually been given an intermediary socio- sity (Kyoto, Japan). He has been rewrit- economic position, as Laura Bear argues ing his doctoral dissertation into a new to have been the case in railway em- book, Boundaries of Whiteness: Racial ployment (Bear 1994; see also Arnold and Class Ambiguities in Late British In- 1983). dia, 1858-1930 [provisional] (Oxford Uni- versity Press, forthcoming). However, it was especially as a concrete historical problem that the existence of Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians re- Acknowledgments currently presented itself, and not nec- essarily as a metaphysical otherness that I am grateful to Dr. Susanna Pavloska of deconstructed colonial categories with Institute for Language & Culture, Dosh- its uncategorisable ambivalence. What isha University (Kyoto, Japan) for reading is crucial to note is that such an urgent an earlier version of this essay. politicisation of domiciled identity was triggered by an eminently alarming fact that an increasing majority of the com- References munity were not even inbetween but ranked among the most indigent of all Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined social groups in India including the na- Communities, Reflections on the Origin tive poor. and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. The inscription of such indigence in the Arnold, David. 1979. ‘European Orphans colonising scene came as a serious blow and Vagrants in India in the Nine- to the supposedly extraracial status of teenth Century’, The Journal of Impe- the British, or to their whiteness, which rial and Commonwealth History , 7, 104- should have rested precisely on the in- 127. visibility, and therefore normalcy, of the Arnold, David. 1983. ‘White Colonisation white community as a whole. To recon- and Labour in Nineteenth-Century In- struct such a process of marking off, and dia’, The Journal of Imperial and simultaneously civilising, the pauperised Commonwealth History , 11, 133-158 populations of white descent may carry Ballhatchet, Kenneth. 1980. Race, Sex us a step forward in our contemporary and Class under the Raj: Imperial Atti- interventions to demystify whiteness: it is tudes and Policies and their Critics, by disclosing such internal struggles in- 1873-1905, London: Palgrave Macmil- volved in its very making that whiteness lan. is to be dragged down from its universal- Bear, Laura Gbah. 1994. Miscegenations ised ascendancy, with its true historical of Modernity: constructing European particularities exposed to our eyes. respectability and race in the Indian railway colony, 1857-1931’, Women’s History Review , 3, 531-548 13 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Kennedy, Dane. 1996. The Magic Moun- Culture , London: Routledge. tains: Hill Stations of the British Raj, Buettner, Elizabeth. 2004. Empire Fami- Berkeley: University of California Press. lies, New York: Oxford University Press. Levine, Philippa. 1994. ‘Venereal Dis- Cannadine, David. 2001. Ornamentalism: ease, Prostitution, and the Politics of How the British Saw Their Empire , Lon- Empire: The Case of British India’, Jour- don: Oxford University Press. nal of the History of Sexuality , 4, 579- Caplan, Lionel. 2001. Children of Coloni- 602. alism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial Park, Robert E. 1928. ‘Human Migration World , Oxford: Berg Publishers. and the Marginal Man’, The American Davin, Anna. 1978. ‘Motherhood and Journal of Sociology , 33, 881-893. Imperialism’, History Workshop Journal , Peers, Douglas. 1998. ‘Privates off Pa- 5, 9-65. rade: Regimenting Sexuality in the D’Souza , A. A. 1976. 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Local Whitenesses, Localizing White- Mizutani, S. 2004. ‘The British in India and ness’, in Ruth Frankenberg (ed.), Dis- their Domiciled Brethren: Race and placing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Class in the Colonial Context, 1858- Cultural Criticism , Durham: Duke Uni- 1930’, DPhil thesis submitted to the His- versity Press, pp.1-33 tory Faculty, University of Oxford. Gist, Noel P. and Roy Dean Wright. 1973. Mizutani, S. 2005. ‘Constitutions of the Marginality and Identity: Anglo-Indians Colonising Self in Late British India: as a Racially-Mixed Minority in India , Race, Class and Environment’, Zinbun: Leiden: E. J. Brill. Annals of the Institute for Research in Harrison, Mark. 1994. Public Health in Brit- Humanities, Kyoto University, 38, 21-75. ish India: Anglo-Indian preventive Moor-Gilbert, Bart. 1997. Postcolonial medicine 1859-1914,Cambridge: Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics Cambridge University Press. London: Verso. Harrison, Mark. 1999. Climates and Con- Semmel, Bernard. 1960. Imperialism and stitutions: Health, Race, Environment Social Reform: English Social-Imperial and British Imperialism in India, 1600- Thought, 1895-1914. London: Harvard 1850 , Oxford: Oxford University Press. University Press. Hawes, C. J. 1996. Poor Relations: The Sinha, Mrinalini. 1995. Colonial Masculin- Making of a Eurasian Community in ity: the ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Ef- British India, 1773-1833, Richmond: feminate Bengali’ in the Late Nine- Routledge Curzon. teenth Century , Manchester: Man- Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1984. The Idea of chester University Press. Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Sinha, Mrinalini. 1999. ‘Giving Mascurinity Age , London: Faber & Faber. a History: Some Contributions from the 14 MIZUTANI: HISTORICISING WHITENESS Historiography of Colonial India’, Gen- der and History , 11, 445-460. [email protected], or mizu- Stoler , Ann. 1996. Race and the Educa- [email protected]) tion of Desire, Durham: Duke University 3 For a history of the formation of the Eurasian Press. community, see (Hawes 1996) 4 ~ & Frederick Cooper. 1997. ‘Between For a historical account of the institutional evolution of these schools, see (D’Souza Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a 1976) Research Agenda’ in (eds.) A. Stoler & 5 For a biography of Graham, see (Minto F. Cooper, Tensions of Empire: Colonial 1974) Cultures in a Bourgeois World , Berke- ley: University of California Press. Stonequist, Everett. 1935. ‘The Problem of the Marginal Man’, American Journal of Sociology , 4, 11-12. Thorn, Susan. 1997. ‘“The Conversion of Englishmen and the Conversion of the World Inseparable”: Missionary Imperi- alism and the Language of Class in Early Industrial Britain’, in (eds.) A. Stoler & F. Cooper, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley: University of California Press, Berkeley, 238-262. Whitehead, Judith. 1996. “Bodies of Evi- dence, Bodies of Rule: The Ilbert Bill, Revivalism, and Age of Consent in Co- lonial India”, Sociological Bulletin , 45, 29-54. Endnotes 1 Not every member of the domiciled popu- lation within the British territories of the Sub- continent was originally of British descent, with some having initially descended from the Portuguese, Dutch or French colonials, merging at a later stage into the British- descent communities. 2 Much of this essay will draw on the author’s doctoral dissertation (Mizutani 2004). Be- cause of its specific focus on the analysis of whiteness as well as for the sake of stylistic simplicity, it will use the empirical findings of the dissertation without referencing them, except for those contained in a published article (Mizutani 2005) which itself is a revised version of one of its chapters. The author has been revising the whole dissertation to pub- lish it as a book. Any comments and en- quires will therefore be extremely valuable and welcome (he can be contacted at smi- 15 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. II , No. 1, 2006 ‘COMMON VALUES’: WHITENESS, CHRISTIANITY, ASYLUM SEEKERS AND THE HOWARD GOVERNMENT HOLLY RANDELL-MOON Abstract Introduction The articulation of whiteness as a moral This essay posits that the ways in which homogeneity comprising ‘common’ the Howard Government cites Christian- Judeo-Christian values has contributed ity is reflective of an investment in, and to the formation and representation of protection of, a white teleology of Aus- Australian national identity as unprob- tralian nationalism. By examining gov- lematically Anglo-Celtic. The ways in ernmental responses to media reports of which the Howard Government cites asylum seekers converting to Christianity Christianity is reflective of this investment it will be shown how the discursive asso- in, and protection of, a white teleology ciation between whiteness and Austra- of Australian nationalism. By imputing a lianness is produced as a naturalised universal status to Australian and Chris- norm. This examination will include at- tian values through an articulation of a tending to assumptions of secularity ‘common’ set of values reflective of a where the reproduction of a racialised ‘broad church’, Howard’s statements on construction of Christianity (as an ab- religion and national culture attempt to stracted signifier of whiteness) is ob- reproduce racially unmarked subjects scured within a language of national and disassociate this location from the values as ‘common values’. Such a investment in and protection of white connection between religion and state hegemony. By examining governmental evidences a teleology of nationalism responses to media reports of asylum that works to displace Indigenous sover- seekers converting to Christianity it will eignty by affirming an Anglocentric be shown how the discursive association identity and heritage as Australian. By between whiteness and Australianness is suturing this Anglocentric identity to dis- produced as a naturalised norm. Within courses of ‘the West,’ ethnicity and na- the media reports on asylum seekers tionality are conflated into a homoge- converting to Christianity, differentiations nous whiteness (Moreton-Robinson 2005: based on race are subsumed by as- 23). In this way, Otherness in the form of sumptions of moral difference that lo- asylum seekers and Muslims, are consti- cate Christianity with Australianness. By tuted by their difference from the relig- aligning these values with a discourse of iously inflected ‘common values’ that secular, Western nations, the Howard unite Australia with other ‘Western’ na- Government makes invisible a religiously tions such as the United States and Brit- inflected cultural agenda that presents ain. Aileen Moreton-Robinson writes that Australian values as ‘broad’ and inclu- ‘whiteness secures hegemony through sive but underpinned by an adherence discourse by normalising itself as the cul- to a teleology of Australian nationality tural space of the West’ (2004b: 78). that is Anglocentric in its outlook. Drawing on this critical insight, it is ar- gued that the ideas embedded in how ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES Australian values are presented and en- tional identity (Hage 2003; Standfield acted by the Howard Government draw 2004; Moreton-Robinson 2005). on racialised discourses of Western cul- ture refracted through a ‘Judeo- Many theorists have written about how Christian’ value system. After establishing discursive productions of Australian na- the theoretical grounds of connections tionality are inextricably linked to white- between Christianity, whiteness, and ness through particular sets of colonial Australianness, a discussion will follow of and cultural knowledge (Perera & Pugli- media reports on convert Christian asy- ese 1997; Lake 2003; Moreton-Robinson lum seekers and the use of Christianity in 2004a; Moreton-Robinson 2004b; Ahmed political rhetoric by the Howard Gov- 2004). Joseph Pugliese argues that ernment. ‘whiteness is not a racial category that necessarily inscribes or colours the body When launching the National Multicul- en bloc , as a type of totalising or ho- tural Advisory Council Report in 1999, mogenous thing-in-itself’ (2002: 153), but Australian Prime Minister John Howard is subject to cultural and political varia- argued that ‘what holds a nation to- tions that attempt to signify whiteness as gether more than anything else are its ‘self-evidently white’ (166). Whiteness as common values’ (Howard 1999). Else- a racially signifying category is dispersed where Howard has argued that ‘we are as localised and particularised accord- a society that respects all religions, but ing to different historical formations so we should respect our own history and that ‘different people have been al- our own traditions,’ naming specifically lowed in and forced out of Whiteness ‘our’ Judeo-Christian foundations (How- over time’ (Elder et al. 2004: 209; Supriya ard 2004: 119). The ostensibly inclusive 1999: 136). The consolidation of various ‘common values’ Howard speaks of in English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh settler the context of multiculturalism, are asso- ethnicities including Anglo-Celtic and ciated in another context with one spe- Anglo-Saxon, into a broad notion of cific set of values, Christianity. National ‘Australian’ whiteness has significant reli- values are universalised on the one gious dimensions in Australian political hand as ‘common’, but particularised as history. An understanding of Judeo- Christian on the other, situating non- Christian values as signifying Australian Christian values as secondary to na- whiteness is evident in the current dis- tional interests. Michel Foucault defines courses of Christianity utilised by the different discursive processes as ensuring Howard Government. ‘the distribution of speaking subjects into the different types of discourse and the Australianness, Whiteness, And appropriation of discourse to certain Religion categories of subject’ (1981: 64). In view of this, the expression of ‘common val- ues’ raises a series of questions. Through The historicity of whiteness means, that, which speaking position is ‘Christianity’ in Jon Stratton’s words, ‘we can take the being accessed here? How is ‘Christian- term Anglo-Celtic to describe what is ity’ made appropriate to the subject of now considered to be the whitest group nationality? What might be absent in of Australians’ (1999: 163). The embodi- Howard’s invocation of ‘Judeo-Christian’ ment of this form of whiteness is inscribed foundations? Such an invocation re- differently in relation to culturally specific quires the erasure of Indigenous sover- notions of religion. In ‘Multiculturalism eignty and the displacement of migrant and the Whitening machine, or how culture as assimilatory to a ‘unified’ na- Australians became white’ (1999), Strat- ton maps the ways in which the idea of 2 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES culture as deriving from a racial group lian culture’ (Stratton 1999: 178). Where shifted to the view of culture as implicitly previously there was a differentiation signifying race. Such a discursive reposi- between ‘white, northern, Protestant tioning expanded the conception of Europeans from the not-so-white eastern what constituted ‘Australian’ whiteness and southern, Catholic and Orthodox and underscored the adoption of multi- Europeans’ during the operation of the culturalism as government policy. After White Australia Policy, this gave way to the Second World War there was a sub- the ‘later identification of the latter as stantial intake of migrants from Levant, ethnics’ during the advent of multicul- and Eastern and Southern Europe, which turalism (165). It was for this reason that necessitated the broadening of the the binary opposition between Catholic category white (British) Australian to that and Protestants gradually relaxed its of ‘European’. Stratton argues that ‘this power with the de-racialisation of the was made possible by the demise of the Irish as ethnics. This is demonstrated by thinking that allied race with nation, that the term ‘Anglo-Celtic,’ which presumes had allowed for the idea of a ‘British the primacy of culture underpinned by a race’, and the move away from an em- moral Christian homogeneity (172). Strat- phasis on phenotype, ‘white’, to an em- ton writes that: phasis on culture signalled by ‘Euro- pean’’ (164). Underlying the Australian [B]y the time of multiculturalism, when it Government’s broadening of the term was the culture itself that was the osten- ‘white’ for immigration purposes was a sibly privileged entity, and when this was conceptualisation of whiteness as an located in a more general moral system, white was no longer utilised as a classifi- abstraction of ‘European moral assump- catory term. Instead, ‘mainstream’, ‘real tions … articulated in terms of accept- Australians’ and, most commonly, ‘An- able moral difference’ (165). In this way, glo-Celtic’, all terms that evolved their ‘the idea of a common morality has current meaning during the 1980s, were usually been tied to the claim of a used (172). common religious heritage, a claim that equates ‘white’ people with Christianity, The political implications of articulating or a ‘Judeo-Christian value system’’ whiteness in terms of a moral homoge- (Stratton 1999: 165; Dyer 1997; Dyer 1999: neity means that a residual discourse of 458; Hall 1992: 289; Asad 2003: 166). Christianity inflects and informs political institutional structures and arrangements The gradual understanding of cultural in Australia. This is a useful way of under- variation within whiteness, underpinned standing the Howard Government’s ex- by common religious identifications with cavations of an Anglo-Christian subjec- ‘a Judeo-Christian value system,’ leads tivity and Howard’s cultural agenda for Stratton to propose that the adoption of ‘mainstream’ Australia. Howard’s 1996 multiculturalism by the Fraser govern- Federal Election campaign was prem- ment in the 1970s was underpinned by a ised on an aim to re-centre the notion of cultural plurality (1999: 165). This policy a unified Australia in comparison to a aimed ‘to solve the problem caused by perceived privileging of diversity under the failure of assimilation’ of marginal the Keating Government. In an interview white groups, from nationalities such as for the book 100 Years: The Australian Italy and Greece (Stratton 1999: 170; Lo- Story by Paul Kelly, marking the 2001 pez 2000, p. 2, 3; Cox 1987, p. 245, 246) Centenary of Australian Federation, through recourse to ‘a set of moral and Howard argued that ‘unity and diversity cultural assumptions that would make are both important’ but ‘I want Australia easy assimilation into the unitary Austra- to be distinctive, to have Australian 3 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES characteristics that are different from 2005: 22). As Moreton-Robinson points English or Irish or French or Italian or Chi- out, ‘the core values which were dis- nese–quite different’ (Kelly 2001: 251). played by diggers on the battle fields Ghassan Hage describes Howard’s in- are never linked to their colonial origins vocation of cultural values as a trans- and the part they played in claiming the historical reproduction of an Australian nation as a white possession’ (22). The essence, ‘these values are Australian in pervasive ideal in Howard’s ‘broad a ‘strong’ sense: they differentiate Aus- church’ is an ‘equation … between tralians from other people in the world. whiteness and assimilation’ (Stratton They trace what Howard considers a 1999: 177). This is expressed in Howard’s unique ‘Australian way’’ (2003: 70). metaphor by adding ‘extra pews’ to an already existing moral structure or value This cultural agenda for a distinctive but system. Stratton argues that the notion homogenous Australian national identity of cultural diversity as being unified by a is religiously inflected through the mobili- common identification of Australian val- sation of a pan Anglo-European subjec- ues produces an opposition between tivity. When launching the magazine culture and morals that situates moral and website The Conservative , Howard difference with racial difference (170). described the Liberal Party as ‘a broad The assignation of Judeo-Christian val- church’, saying, ‘you sometimes have to ues to Australian nationality by Howard get the builders in to put in the extra reproduces a cultural homogeneity un- pew on both sides of the aisle to make derpinned by racialised discourses of sure that everybody is accommodated’ religion that constructs Australianness as (2005b). The term ‘broad’ can be seen ‘white’. to denote an abstract whiteness capa- ble of absorbing cultural diversity, but This relationship between ‘whiteness’ one that is nevertheless underpinned by and a ‘common morality’ informs other a ‘church,’ by an adherence to a areas of government policy and has ef- common morality that is religiously fects in relation to the operation of the transposed to mean ‘national values’. secular and non-secular in political dis- For example, in an address marking the course. Judith Brett, for example, has ninetieth anniversary of Gallipoli, How- demonstrated how in early twentieth ard argued that Anzac Day has an century Australian politics, Protestant ‘eternal place in the Australian soul’ due conceptions of individualism as liberal to the sacrifice of ‘Australians who have and democratic tended to obfuscate died in war and for peace in our name’ Protestantism through the use of secular (2005a). He went on to say ‘they be- language. Based on moral and there- queathed Australia a lasting sense of fore racial difference, this cast non- national unity’ (2005a). In order to iden- Protestant forms of Christianity, such as tify as Australian, one requires a subscrip- Catholicism, as well as other faiths, as tion to an underlying set of values, a overtly religious and incompatible with ‘democratic temper’, ‘questioning eye government operations (2004: 40, 54). towards authority’, ‘easy familiarity’, Religious values that privilege specific ‘courage and compassion’ (2005a), all forms of whiteness can be rendered in- of which reproduce a trans-historical visible through the assumption of Australian essence. The imputation of secularity. the Anzac solider into a national subject ‘implicitly excludes non-white migrants Talal Asad has argued that the secular and Indigenous people from holding conceptualisation of religion as outside such core values’ (Moreton-Robinson of politics is specific to a modern West- 4 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES ern ideal of government. But rather than that Asad highlights how certain religions simply differentiating religious matters are made compatible with secular gov- from political ones, secularism has the ernments through liberal democratic effect of producing the paradigms principles, this conflation of culture, mo- through which religion is understood. rality, and nation is underpinned by a racialised discourse of religion. The dis- [T]he insistence that religion has an cursive positioning of a pan Anglo- autonomous essence–not to be con- European subjectivity as embodying fused with the essence of science, or of Judeo-Christian values affirms a teleol- politics, or of common sense–invites us to ogy of Australia as a white, western na- define religion (like any essence) as a tion. In the case of convert Christian asy- transhistorical and transcultural phe- nomenon … This definition is at once part lum seekers, their representation in news of a strategy (for secular liberals) of the reports and government commentary is confinement, and (for liberal Christians) underpinned by perceptions of racial, of the defense of religion (1993: 28). and therefore moral difference, that supports their location outside of the na- When the intersection of religion and tion by government policies such as politics in secular governments is thought mandatory detention. These strategies to occur in a positive sense, the religion of exclusion reiterate an understanding in question is framed as commensurate of Australian culture as Anglocentric with democratic principles. through a discursive association be- Only religions that have accepted the tween whiteness and Christianity. assumptions of liberal discourse are be- ing commended, in which tolerance is ‘Detainees Who Find Christ’ sought on the basis of a distinctive rela- tion between law and morality (Asad 2003: 183). On the 21 March 2005, the Sydney Morn- ing Herald reported that the refugee It can be further noted that the relation claims for thirty long-term detainees, of specific religions to political spaces, predominantly from Iran and Iraq, were even as secularism is upheld, is marked being reviewed due to their conversion by processes of racial inclusion and ex- to Christianity. The cases were reas- clusion. Moreton-Robinson draws atten- sessed on the basis that the detainees tion to how ‘whiteness is constitutive of would most likely face religious persecu- the epistemology of the West’ (2004b: tion if deported, particularly under the 75). In this way, white relations of power Iranian theocratic government which and knowledge are represented as self- reprimands conversions from Islam (Sec- evident and normal: ‘It is an invisible re- combe and Morris 2005). The reviews gime of power that secures hegemony formed part of the Cabinet’s considera- through discourse and has material ef- tion of approximately two hundred long- fects in everyday life’ (75). If Judeo- term detainees on 21 and 22 of March Christian religious values are the founda- (ABC 2005a; Hurrell 2005a: 23). This story tions of Australia’s secular government, was subsequently picked up by other as Howard argues, it is because there is news outlets and generated debate a moral compatibility between Christian- concerning the legitimacy of the con- ity and Australianness. National values versions in terms of a possible Christian are asserted religiously whilst a discourse bias by the Government that may exhort of secularity masks the specificity of more asylum seekers to convert to gain these values so they can be presented citizenship; resulting in what an AAP feed (like Australian national identity) as a described as ‘copycat Christian conver- transhistorical essence. In the same way sions’ (AAP 2005a). 5 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES The headline for the front page Sydney key to asylum’ (Hurrell 2005a), and ‘No Morning Herald story, ‘Detainees who special treatment for Christian converts find Christ may be allowed to stay,’ in detention’ (AAP 2005a) makes sense conveys the implicit assumption that only in the context of an already existing Christianity is the dominant religion in alignment between Australian values Australian society, following that those and Christianity. who are not allowed to ‘stay’, asylum seekers, belong to a religion other than Further, questions of religious bias by the Christianity. This use of a stable and un- Government with respect to asylum shifting Christianity is expressed as an seekers are refracted through the ra- opposition between an imagined cially informed policy of mandatory de- Australian ‘Us’ and an Other asylum tention for ‘illegal arrivals’. As Stratton seeker ‘Them’. Because Christianity is observes, the detention of ‘illegal arri- attached to the Australian ‘Us’, this vals’ who come primarily from South-East binary is also overlain with a discursive Asia (2004: 236), can be contrasted with association of whiteness and the non detention of illegal overstayers, Australianness so that racial difference is the majority of whom are from the subsumed by a language of ‘values’ United States and the United Kingdom, difference. This demonstrates the ways in countries considered ‘‘white’ within the which cultural values are racially marked definition Australia uses’ (223). This points and religiously informed. to ways in which ‘the Australian border is more likely to be permeable’ for those A number of points can be made in rela- identified as ‘white’ (Stratton 2004: 223; tion to the discursive framing of religion Tascon 2004; Perera 2005). An assump- and Australianness in the news stories tion of racial and hence moral differ- about the conversions. When replying to ence from white Australians informs the suggestions of Christian bias in the Cabi- stories about convert Christian asylum net reviews, Howard stated ‘there’s no seekers. This is despite for example, the denominational or religious-specific previous detention of Iranian and Iraqi clause in the administration of our immi- Christians, as well as Mandeans who gration policy’ (AAP 2005a). Asylum share with Christians a reverence for seekers converting to Christianity make John the Baptist (Mercer 2002), which visible a whole series of suppositions none of the stories from the headlines about Christianity in Government rheto- mentioned, nor that some asylum seek- ric. The possibility, presented by news ers are not religious at all but may form reports, of religious partiality by the ethnic or cultural minorities within their Government in relation to asylum seek- country of origin. Asylum seekers are ers, supposes an already preferential framed within a naturalised cultural de- treatment of Christianity by the Howard terminism that subsumes overt refer- Government. However, the question of ences to racial difference with moral religious priorities, or lack thereof, does difference. The Howard Government not contest the Howard Government’s exploited this naturalised understanding access to a discourse on ‘Christianity’. of moral difference in the 2001 Federal The print media reports reproduce a Election campaign by characterising similar cultural causality between white- asylum seekers ‘as ‘indecent’, unfit to ness and Christianity that Howard’s become ‘decent’ Australians’ during the ‘broad church’ draws on. The logic of children overboard scandal (Osuri and the headlines ‘Detainees who find Christ Banerjee 2004: 161, n.4). may be allowed to stay’ (Seccombe and Morris 2005), ‘Switching religion no 6 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES The news reports of asylum seekers con- ‘racial suicide’ (1997) where the cul- verting to Christianity work to support the tural compatibility of Christianity with Howard Government’s framing of Aus- Australianness is viewed as vulnerable tralian national identity as ‘white’ by the embodiment of seemingly An- through a racialised discourse of religion glo-Australian religious values by asy- that conflates cultural difference with lum seekers whose corporeal differ- moral difference. Goldie Osuri has theo- ence signifies a racial difference from rised that the discursive production of whiteness. As Pugliese discusses else- Australian nationality through the media where, the and its relationship to the Australian na- tion-state is exercised through ‘newsme- ‘contingent ethnic variations [of white- dia governmentality’. That is, ness] and its necessarily semiotic status generate the possibility for it to be de- the interplay between the right of free fined topically–in the context of systems press in a parliamentary democracy and of differential, and often contradictory, disciplinary mechanisms of normalization, relations that may incorporate a singular manifests itself in a concentrated man- body’ (2002: 153). ner on the newsmedia especially as it concerns those who are perceived to be This ‘historical mobility of whiteness’ (165) ‘other’ than a particular norm (2000: is precisely why conversions to Christian- 211). ity by asylum seekers pose a ‘threat’ to the security of Australian citizenship be- The policy of mandatory detention for cause they undermine the idea of a asylum seekers is justified by the Howard stable, essentialised Australian identity. Government as a security measure to Consequently, for Ferguson, the conver- protect Australian borders (Perera 2002). sions can only be read pejoratively as an In the reports of convert Christian asylum attempt to assimilate to this national seekers there is a conflation of national identity rather than a reorientation in security with the security of Australian religious identification. values through the questioning of the legitimacy of the conversions. It is this changeability in religion as ex- trapolative to issues concerning the un- The then Opposition Immigration stable nature of Australian citizenship spokesman Laurie Ferguson was that underpins the newsworthiness of the quoted in several articles urging the stories. The mainstream media is com- Government to assess the authenticity plicit in the ways in which Christianity is of the conversions saying, ‘I would be made appropriate to the subject of na- prepared to put a large amount of tional identity through the privileging of money on at the TAB for a significant those able to access discourses on Chris- number of conversions (to Christianity) tianity. There were no Iranian and Iraqi to occur now’ (AAP 2005a; Hurrell Christian spokespeople mentioned in 2005a: 23). Ferguson’s comments ex- these articles. By contrast, those affili- press the idea that refugees cannot ated with mainstream Christian religions genuinely convert to Christianity and and Islam were quoted extensively; the Australian values unless it is a ‘ruse’, president of the Uniting Church, Rever- which presumes an intrinsic investment end Dean Clayton (who supported the in Christianity and Australian values is some of detainee’s religious conversions only called into question for non-white and applications for citizenship), Sydney subjects. This anxiety over Australian Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, citizenship recalls what Suvendrini Per- members from the Family First party era and Joseph Pugliese refer to as (which has links to the Pentecostal As- 7 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES semblies of God church) and the presi- whiteness and Australianness in govern- dent of the Lebanese Muslim Associa- ment policy, and secondly, that his tion, Keysar Trad (Seccombe and Morris rhetoric of Australia’s ‘Judeo-Christian’ 2005; AAP 2005a; AAP 2005b; AAP foundations excludes certain subjects, 2005c). That the only non-Christian relig- such as Indigenous peoples, migrants, ion mentioned in the news stories was asylum seekers–those construed as non- Islam, demonstrates the racialised ways Christian, from national identification. in which religion is understood to relate culture and morality to nationality along Policy toward asylum seekers is also im- a binary of Christianness-Australianness bricated within the discourse of the ‘war and Other. This may have been chal- on terror’ that is expressed ‘via a cultur- lenged since all the Christians men- ally imagined ‘West’ versus a culturally tioned above stressed their opposition to constructed Islam’ (Osuri and Banerjee mandatory detention regardless of a 2004: 158). Within this particular context, ‘fear’ of inauthentic conversions. How- racial difference is made visible to the ever, the primary newsworthiness of the extent that supposed differences in ‘val- story was supported by the idea that ues’ become inflated. The orientalist as- conversion to Christianity by asylum sumption that constructs the West in op- seekers is unique or out of the ordinary, position to Islam works to homogenise as well as the Howard Government’s differences within each binary term and views on Christian asylum seekers that link the West and Islam to a correspond- makes the speculation of religious bias ing set of essentialised representations news. (Kabbani 1986; Said 1991; Hall 1992). This dichotomous logic works to privilege an The ways in which Howard mutes and association between a Western and deploys whiteness and Christianity is not white subjectivity to the extent that dif- monolithic but contextually shifting. The ference is reproduced as an Othered invocation of a trans-historical Australian subject position (Frankenberg 1993: 193). essence articulated through an Anglo- In this way, the disproportionate media Christian self is an ideal used to conceal coverage of Islam positions Christianity difference and contradictions. Howard’s as a minority within representations of position that there is no ‘specific’ reli- asylum seekers. gious clause expressing bias in relation to reports on convert Christian detainees is The Howard Government’s use of a claim to the secular operation of im- Christianity is also situated within a migration policy. This externally consti- presentation of Australia as a Western tuted concept of secularity presumes a nation in a global political context. divide between religion and govern- Goldie Osuri and Subhabrata Bobby ment policy that enables the displace- Banerjee theorise this representation of ment of whiteness and the racially in- nationality as both localised and formed practice of mandatory deten- global within a colonial framework of tion through a discourse of ‘Australian’ white diasporas values. These ‘values’ obfuscate the re- lations of power and knowledge that where the ownership of Australia as a sustain Howard’s cultural agenda. In this white, Western country is articulated way, by answering the possibility of reli- through its political, cultural and military gious bias through a presumption of alliances with the United Kingdom and the United States (2004: 160) secularity, Howard’s comments perform a double erasure. Firstly, by invisibilising and is ‘based on the attempted erasure the discursive association between of Indigenous populations as native’ 8 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES (159). For example, Howard describes happy there. But you won’t be happy in Australian heritage by saying Australia (Maiden 2005). we are a nation whose roots are West- Costello portrays an antithesis between ern, British and other European, we have supposedly extreme Islamic values and strong links with North America, both his- secular democratic values by reproduc- torically and based on our common val- ing a religious discourse underwritten by ues and commitments (Kelly 2001: 249). a cultural determinism that combines race with moral difference. This dis- The presentation of Australianness as course has been used to justify equiva- ethnically consistent with countries such lences between terrorism and Islam and as Britain and some (‘other’) parts of has had negative effects on the lived Europe affirms an Anglocentric teleology experiences of those who identify as of Australian national identity as West- Muslim since the September 11 attacks ern. Osuri and Banerjee write that (Akram 2002; Kampmark 2003; Imtoual 2005). The notion of secularism that these relationships may not always be Costello appeals to represents Islam as expressed or referred to, but they may undemocratic because religion and be mobilised in specific circumstances where the legacies of colonial histories government are combined, and forms underpin differentiations based on race the basis of critiques of ‘fundamentalist’ or culture (2004: 159). Islamic subjects as over determined by religious principles that undermine liberal Similarities in Judeo-Christian religious individualism. This ignores the various identifications form an important ele- government mechanisms such as the ment to these ‘common values’. opening of parliament services with the Lord’s Prayer and the swearing in of The ways in which moral differences be- Members and Senators on the Bible pre- tween Anglo-Australians and those iden- sent in the current Australian govern- tified as ‘Other’ relies on an abstraction ment’s operations (Maddox 2001: 109, of religious identifications, that benefits 115), and in addition, obscures the ways whiteness, can be extrapolated into the in which Islam and Christianity share a context of the ‘war on terror’. The mobili- common religious heritage (Said 1991: sation of cultural difference can be used 103, 104). There is a double movement to signify an opposition to an imagined that allows a reading of Islam to meto- ‘kinship of whiteness’ (152) that situates nymically stand in for an undifferenti- Western nations as morally homogenous. ated discourse of politics but separates Preceding the Meeting of Islamic Lead- the Christian influences from Australian ers at Parliament House on the 23 Au- parliamentary arrangements as apoliti- gust 2005, Federal Treasurer Peter cal. As Edward Said indicates, ‘one Costello asserted that fundamentalist would no more think of using … the Bible Muslim clerics hold values that are not to understand, say, the House of Com- congruent with Australia. He went on to mons’ (93) as a basis for comprehending say that Australia: all Western systems of government. But the invocation of secularity allows Islam [I]s a secular society, with parliamentary to be misconstrued as overtly religious law, part of the Western tradition of indi- and makes invisible how Australian cul- vidual rights … If you are looking for a tural values are racially marked and re- country that practices theocracy, sharia ligiously informed. law–which is anti-Western–there are those countries in the world … you will be 9 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES In addition, Costello’s remarks denote a Howard’s ‘broad church’ as representa- white diasporic colonial relationship with tive of government intervention deploys similar Western nations, such as the an understanding of the nation ‘that in United Kingdom. He repeats comments its denial of Indigenous sovereignty is made earlier in August by British Prime perceived to be a white possession’ Minister Tony Blair who argued that ‘fire- (Moreton-Robinson 2005: 21). Along brand (Islamic) clerics’ could be poten- these lines there are overlaps in the tially deported as all British citizens have treatment of both Indigenous peoples a ‘duty … to share and support the val- and asylum seekers ‘surrounding the is- ues that sustain the British way of life’ sue of land’ and Australian national (Burchell 2005: 6). Australia’s national identity (Tascon 2004: 239). The ‘broad identity is linked to other ‘white’ Western church’ attempts to organise the Austra- countries through a moral distinction to lian nation into various heterogenous that of Islam whilst discourses of secular- pews with a ‘common’ set of values. This ism simultaneously exclude how dis- structure implies that the nodal point for courses of Christianity are entrenched in the church, the pulpit, is occupied by the presentation of Australia as ‘white’. the Federal Government of Australia These ideas pervade news reports of the whose sovereignty works to unify and in legitimacy of convert Christian asylum some sense construct a ‘broad’ national seekers and the potential for religious identity. Given this national identity favourability by the Government. Immi- works to displace Indigenous sover- gration Minister Amanda Vanstone ar- eignty, this ‘church’ is invested in the as- gued that the reviews of asylum seekers sociation between Australianness and who had converted did not constitute whiteness as culturally commensurate, ‘a compassion being allocated to Chris- and is consolidated through govern- tians as opposed to Muslims’ (ABC ment policies. Revelations that the for- 2005b). However, the representation of mer Department of Immigration and Christian asylum seekers by the news Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (now media and governmental commentary renamed the Department of Immigra- on religion complicate Vanstone’s tion and Multicultural Affairs) had wrong- statement. The discursive association fully deported at least two Australian between Christianity and Australianness citizens, Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau, depicts convert Christian asylum seekers prompted the establishment of a non- as ‘suspect’ in using the possibility for judicial inquiry headed by former Austra- persecution under the theocratic Iranian lian federal police commissioner Mick government as a means to garner citi- Palmer (Hurrell 2005b: 5; Marr 2005a: 27; zenship in Australia. On the other hand, Marr 2005b: 9). secularism renders fundamentalist forms of Islamic law, of the kind practised in The investigation, known as the Palmer Iran, incompatible enough with Austra- Report, was tabled in Federal Parliament lian law that Costello suggests some on 14 July 2005. In response, Minister Muslims should leave the country. Both Vanstone argued the Department could of these discursive representations form cope with criticism and ‘cultural’ part of the same process that grounds change because the Liberal Party was a Australianness to an Anglocentric ‘broad church’ (Sunday 2005). Judeo-Christian heritage that can be Vanstone’s use of Howard’s metaphor masked through an appeal to a Western attempts to reaffirm governmental sov- notion of secularism. ereignty as able to accommodate cul- tural variations and difference. That the deportation of two Australian citizens 10 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES does not rupture this ‘broad church’ the intersections between religion and demonstrates how it is structured (and politics under the Howard government. which ‘extra pews’ need to be inserted) according to politically and historically Acknowledgments contingent circumstances. This ‘broad church’ is tied to an Anglocentric na- I am grateful to Anthony Lambert and tional identity where whiteness may not Elaine Kelly for their help with numerous always be located on the body, but can drafts of this paper and the anonymous be an imagined investment in a system reader for their suggestions relating to of values that associates Australianness structure and theoretical content. with whiteness through Christianity. References Conclusion AAP. 2005a, ‘Fed: No special treat- The reproduction of continuities and ment for Christian converts in deten- moral homogeneity articulated as tion: PM’, Australian Associated Press ‘common’ Judeo-Christian values has General News , 21 March 2005. ‘helped to preserve the cultural and po- AAP 2005b, ‘Fed: Archbishop says litical power of those identifiable as people don’t convert lightly’, Austra- white Australians’ (Stratton 1999: 182). lian Associated Press General News , The universalisation of Australian values 22 March 2005. as Christian values produces racially AAP 2005c, ‘Fed: Don’t dash their unmarked subjects and disassociates this hopes of freedom: Democrats’, Aus- location from the investment in and pro- tralian Associated Press General tection of white hegemony. Within the News , 22 March 2005. media reports on asylum seekers con- ABC 2005a, ‘Govt reviews asylum verting to Christianity, differentiations seeker status of Christian converts in based on race are subsumed by as- detention’, broadcast on ABC Radio sumptions of moral difference that lo- The World Today, 21 March 2005, cate Christianity with Australianness. The transcript available at ABC Online , Howard Government’s use of religion 11 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES Asad, T. 2003, Formations of the Secu- 12 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES Maiden, S. 2005, ‘Costello tells fire- ~ 2005, ‘Who Will I Become? The Mul- brand clerics to get out of Australia’, tiple Formations of Australian White- The Australian , 23 August 2005. ness’, Australian Critical Race and Marr, D. 2005a, ‘Guilty Secrets’, The Whiteness Studies Association Jour- Sydney Morning Herald , 20 August nal , vol 1, 30-39. 2005. ~ & Pugliese, J 1997, ‘‘Racial suicide’: ~ 2005b, ‘The cover-up comes un- the re-licensing of racism in Austra- stuck’, Sydney Morning Herald , 22 lia’, Race & Class , vol 39, no 2, 1-19. August 2005. Pugliese, J. 2002, ‘Race as category Mercer, P. 2002, ‘Religious tensions in crisis: Whiteness and the topical as- asylum camps’, BBC News Online , 18 signation of race’, Social Semiotics , May 2002, vol 12, no 2, 149-68. London: Pen- 13 RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES Supriya, K E. 1999, ‘White Difference: Cultural Constructions of White Iden- tity’, in Nakayama, T K & Martin, J N (eds.) Whiteness: the Communica- tion of Social Identity , Thousand Oaks: Sage , 129-148. Tascon, S. 2004, ‘Refugees and the coloniality of power: border-crossers of postcolonial whiteness’, in More- ton-Robinson, A (ed.) Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism , Canberra: Aboriginal Stud- ies Press, 239-253. 14 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006 COUNTER TERRORISM POLICING – INVESTING IN THE RACIAL STATE VICKI SENTAS Abstract Introduction This article explores a framework for how That counter terrorism policing is di- racial state power is regenerated in Aus- rected against Muslim and migrant tralia through contemporary counter communities is clear enough. However terrorism policing. Counter terrorism is there is more at play in this common ob- scripted as a struggle over history, the servation. Britain, the United States, future and the space of nation to pro- Canada and Australia for example, tect against multiple threatening ‘ene- have intensified the policing of racialised mies’. In particular the function of secu- bodies. The technologies of this state rity policing and the institution of the po- repression are expanded with pre- lice in constructing racial subjects are emptive criminal laws and immigration considered. regulations (for example, Cole 2003; Hagopian 2004; Fekete 2002). Commu- The counter terrorism policing framework nity and non-government organisations is suggestive of how the social relations (NGO’s) document communities under of race are practices of state terror siege, targeted by state agencies and which remake white nation. The particu- made fearful (Ansari 2005; Nguyen 2005; lar significance of police discretion as AMCRAN 2005a, 2005b; HREOC 2004). always producing social dislocation, Security capabilities emblematic and stigmatisation and criminalisation is con- constitutive of colonial forms of rule are sidered. The historical role of the police reprised by liberal democracies with the to racialise Indigenous and multi-ethnic fervour of war. communities is presented as a continu- ous, albeit heterogenous production of In thinking through the significance of state power through a logic of erasure this apparent reprisal of the state’s re- and denial. In this sense, counter terror- pressive capacities, law and policing ism is conceptualised as a key invest- appear central to understanding the ment in both white ontological security reproductive capabilities of white he- and a teleos of terror. gemony and racial power. Counter ter- rorism both constructs and enacts upon The dynamics of the containment of racial subjects. However, at a time when perceived threats to white interest has the state looms large, the ‘racial state’ is explanatory potential for how neoliberal absent conceptually. What is the rela- ‘democratic’ futures are regenerated. tion of the Australian colonial state to Rather than figuring law and police de- contemporary forms of racial rule? What cision making as a moment of excep- is counter terrorisms’ significance for the tionality, the violence of these relations nature of racialisation? represent what is fundamental to de- mocracy. Scholarship which examines Australian counter terrorism law and policing in de- tail predominantly figures the concep- ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM tual terrain within the erosion of civil and also see, Osuri & Banjeree 2004). Polic- human rights. In particular the deleteri- ing privileges whiteness through prac- ous impact of the erosion of the rule of tices of terror and the foreclosure of non- law and liberal democracy features as a white futures. Erased histories of state key concern (Emerton 2004; Williams terror point to the origins of counter ter- 2003; Head 2002; O’Neil et al 2004; rorism policing in the foundational vio- Carne 2003; Hocking 2004; Tham 2004; lence of colonisation. Michaelson 2003). Important accounts examine the impacts of Australian Secondly, racial power can be under- counter terrorism laws and technologies stood as a historical process dependent on Muslim and ethnic communities. on a series of economic, cultural and These include the suppression of the fi- political investments. The circulation of nancing of terrorism and pre-emptive terror, through the institutions of ‘security criminal justice frameworks (McCulloch policing’, is a constitutive practice of the et al 2004; McCulloch & Carlton 2006), state. That is, state terror consolidates the relation of human rights to racial pro- the racial states’ re-formation. I demon- filing (Golder & Williams 2005) and bio- strate how counter terrorism policing metric technologies and every day life produces continuous terror, central to (Pugliese 2005). Furthermore, analysis of both the historical and contemporary the multiple discursive and constitutive racialisation of social control. processes of racialisation and the war on terror in Australia provides context for Thirdly, drawing on the ideas of Walter law (for example, Pugliese 2005; Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, the Poynting et al 2004; Osuri and Banerjee practice of counter terrorism explains 2004; Perera 2002; Nasser-Eddine 2002). how the violence of white supremacy is The specific relation between counter integral to liberal democracy. An ex- terrorism, the institution of the police and amination of liberal democracy as the central role of the state in racial and founded on the violence of law compels social formation however, remains under a focus on how this violence is integral to theorised. It is with the conceptual con- the institution of the police. The final sec- cern of how the racial violence of white tion of this article then outlines how the supremacy is integral to liberal democ- contemporary legal framework is pro- racy, that this article begins. ductive of police discretion to produce sovereign terror. State terror, rather than This article explores a framework for how exceptional, is essential to the function racial power is regenerated in Australia of racial rule and democracy itself. This through counter terrorism policing. article concludes that practices of polic- Drawing on David Goldbergs’ theorisa- ing as state terror in Australia are dialec- tion of the ‘racial state’, counter terror- tically linked to the processes of white ism is presented as a state investment in nation building. the future of white supremacy. Firstly, I argue counter terrorism reconfigures the An Investment in Whiteness – The colonial project to control national Racial Security State space against heterogeneous collectiv- ities. Counter terrorism operates specifi- cally as a ‘white’ state terror. Following ‘White’, ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white- Suvendrini Pereras’ concept of ‘teleol- ness’ are contested terms with contin- ogy of nation’, counter terrorism policing gent meanings, and their use requires as state practice organises space and specification. The explanatory potential time along racialised lines (Perera 2000: of ‘whiteness’ arises in locating the mul- tiple, intersecting processes regenerative 2 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM of cultural political and economic he- Whiteness is simultaneously the organisa- gemony. The varied ways in which tion of territory and time, whereby visions whiteness dehistoricises how it is pro- of history and future mobilise the present duced, maintains the illusion of a univer- space of the nation. Perera situates sal and natural collective identity. and whiteness as both spatial and temporal operates as a strategy of power (Perera forms of organisation, ‘mapping national 2000). I am concerned here with the space both for past and future’ (2000: strategies of power which include and 10). White power is naturalised, Perera exclude non-white others through for- argues, through successive processes mations of nation-state, rather than and narratives of erasure - the denial of ‘white’ identities. Hage’s analysis of the Indigenous genocide and the violence ‘fantasy of white supremacy’ as the of colonial domination, the continuing governing impulse for a mastery over denial of Indigenous sovereignty and nation, describes how practices of ex- neoliberal practices which variously clusion are predicated on the control or value and construct migrants as either removal of undesirable Aboriginal or within or outside the space of nation non-white others, as transgressions or (2000: 7). intrusions into national space (1998: 47). Racial power in the context of national The functioning of state power in secur- management of categories of undesir- ing itself against racial others is itself ob- ability, is itself conceived within the terri- scured through the spatial and temporal torial space of nation in which such organisation of the nation. The way state categories make commonsense. For power is experienced and responded to Hage, white is a ‘dominant mode of self casts light on the nature of rule. Osuri perception’ expressed as ‘national will’, and Banjeree’s incisive analysis of na- an anxiety targeted at migration as un- tional discourses of security deploys Per- dermining the centrality of white peo- eras’ concept of teleology of nation to ple’s decision making (19, 38, 65). White argue whiteness is both discursive and supremacy then, is understood as a tri- embodied in ‘lived realities and visuali- umph over the organisation of space ties’ (Osuri & Banjeree: 152, 161). Theo- and non-white identities. Specifically, rists such as bell hooks highlight the ter- white supremacy is located as a hege- rorising psyche of whiteness in the black monic strategy of state power. imagination, where in the United States whiteness is associated ‘with the terrible, Situating whiteness in the spatial proc- the terrifying and the terrorist’, as a di- esses which remake nation, must neces- rect result of experiences of domination. sarily identify the historic, geopolitical hooks writes that: specificity of the production of racial subjects and domination (Perera 2005; To name the whiteness in the black Osuri & Banjeree 2004; Pugliese 2002). imagination is often a representation of Stuart Hall’s challenge to situate prac- terror. One must face written histories tices of racism as they arise out of the that erase and deny, that reinvent the past to make the present vision of racial existing organisation of society, is to look harmony and pluralism more plausible. ‘to the present unfolding of its eco- To beat the burden of memory, one must nomic, political and cultural processes, willingly journey to places long uninhab- not simply to its repressed past’ (quoted ited, searching the debris of history for in Gilroy 1990: 265). Yet this ‘present un- traces of the unforgettable, all knowl- folding’ signals precisely what is at stake edge of which has been suppressed.’ in identifying the nature of white power (hooks 1992: 172) as erased and historically buried. 3 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM Counter terrorism policing both sustains society. State authority then is not fixed, and erases the terror of material ‘lived but relational and is informed by social realities’ while racialising diverse peoples relations which do not exist outside of as terrorising and a threat to nation. A capital (for example see, Gramsci 1971; focus on the dynamics of state power Negri 1994; James 1996; Goldberg 2002). and its terrorising impact provides a ref- Thirdly, a key continuity between the co- erent against the erasure of history and lonial state and the modern racial state the foreclosure of contingent futures in a is characterised by the relation between teleos of terror. coercion, enclosure and capital accu- mulation in penetrating social life and in David Goldbergs’ theorisation of the shaping subject formation (see Gold- ‘racial state’ illuminates the enduring berg 2002: 75, 115). While this article foundations on which Europeans estab- doesn’t seek to conceptualise the rela- lished white supremacy. The changing tion of capital to the formation racial ways in which racialised power is main- subjects, an analysis of the social con- tained, economically, politically, cultur- struction of race without this engage- ally, legally animates state form. The ment has limitations. concept of the racial state does not only refer to the management and re- The racial formation of the state is cali- generation of ‘racist exclusion’, but also brated by multiple structures, technolo- ‘how the modern state has always con- gies and relationships which might use- ceived of itself as racially configured’ fully be thought of as a series of ‘invest- (2002: 2). Hence modern state forma- ments’. George Lipsitz characterised tion is characterised by its’ authorisation ‘possessive investment’ as time spent on and regeneration of processes of exclu- a given end, to animate power and un- sion which both ‘outlive its colonial ex- acknowledged white privilege: pression’ and elaborate the colonial project anew (107-109). Whiteness then, I use the adjective “possessive” to stress is fabricated and naturalised primarily the relationship between whiteness and through the political force of state form. asset accumulation in our society, to While this paper does not explore con- connect attitudes to interests, to demon- strate that white supremacy is usually less tested theories of the state and social, a matter of direct referential snarling economic and racial formation, I pref- contempt than a system for protecting ace reliance on the concept of state the privileges of whites by denying with three qualifications. Firstly, that the communities of colour opportunities for Australian state is neither monolithic nor asset accumulation and upward mobil- a coherent entity. Hence state making, ity. (1998: viii) and the reproduction of social condi- tions for racial and racist exclusion and The racial state’s investment in the pro- inclusion, is a continuous and contradic- ject of counter terrorism is significant and tory process. Secondly, that social and multifaceted. At its core, this investment racial formation demand the interplay of relies on a reconfiguration of law en- modalities of race, class and gender. forcement, security and immigration The intersection of varied social actors, apparatus, to function as ‘security polic- economic and cultural processes repro- ing’ in the war on terror. Security policing duce hegemony. The illusory distinction articulates the enmeshing of security between state and civil society obscures and law enforcement capabilities, and how institutional racism is naturalised as the gradual hybridisation of formerly dis- commonsense. In other words, racial tinct intelligence gathering and coer- state power is generated through civil cive, interrogative functions (Hocking 2004: 235-6). This hybridisation in turn 4 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM contributes to the normalisation of ex- with Weber’s often cited insight that the ceptional, militarised, pre-emptive pow- state holds a monopoly on violence, ers (Hocking: 236). Security policing in which it renders legitimate, state terror is this article, describes an intersecting ma- masked as counter terrorism. Rather, trix of agencies and their powers, com- terror tactics are deployed as ‘self- prising the Australian Security and Intelli- defence’ in the national security. gence Organisation (ASIO), the Austra- Counter terrorism in Australia has been lian Federal Police (AFP), state police, recognised as historically providing the the Department of Immigration Multicul- ‘major single rhetorical basis’ for the ex- tural Affairs (DIMA), Centrelink opera- pansion and reorganisation of domestic tions and financial institutions (for exam- state security operations (Hocking 1993: ple, the regulatory role of banks in ‘ter- 16). Counter terrorism is scripted as a rorist financing’). Practices of security struggle over space to protect democ- policing are central in operationalising ratic futures against multiple threatening broadly defined counter terrorism law, in internal and external ‘enemies’. In this actively racialising Muslims and those ‘of sense, counter terrorism as a key invest- middle eastern appearance’ as suspect ment in the nations’ ontological security, and to criminalise cultural and religious is highly successful in Lipsitzs’ terms, ‘in practices and identity. The designation connecting attitudes to interests’ (1998: of these agencies within the function of viii). security policing does not seek to ho- mogenise critical operational differ- Secondly, as will be elaborated below, ences. It does however, point to grow- counter terrorism is an investment in ing jurisdictional indistinctions and whiteness partly as its’ discourse and of- Commonwealth consolidation of law ficial history erases the foundational vio- enforcement priorities enhanced in the lence of the Australian nation. The mul- war on terror. Since 2001 the promulga- tiple, diverse technologies of state terror tion of over 29 state and federal laws, instrumental in accomplishing colonisa- together with massive spending on secu- tion are obscured. The enduring poverty, rity policing capabilities has expanded psycho-social stress and devastation security policing powers, jurisdiction and perpetrated onto Indigenous communi- personnel. 1 Moreover, the ideological ties today is deflected away from State investment in counter terrorism traverses responsibility. Furthermore, Australian public fear campaigns such as the Lets whiteness and state formation explicitly Look out for Australia campaign and the originated and continues to be regen- National Security Hotline, investments erated against ‘multiple ethnic others’ which have resulted in many instances (Perera 2005: 31). Colonial relations are of arbitrary state harassment (HREOC continuous with the terror of contempo- 2004; Pugliese 2005). rary security policing in Australia in var- ied, intersecting ways. Perera’s theorisation of whiteness as a ‘teleology of nation’ provides a frame- Thirdly counter terrorism fabricates the work for interrogating counter terrorism protection of a ‘democratic’ national as part of a historically contingent and future as explicitly incompatible with future oriented racial power. The invest- non-white futures. Counter terrorism law ment, the time spent on a given end, is privileges whiteness through excising a teleos of terror which obscures the Arab-ness or Muslim-ness from national workings of racial state power. What space. By constructing Arabs and Mus- then, is the investment of whiteness in lims outside of nation, as suspect com- counter terrorism policing? Beginning munities, criminalisation ensures white 5 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM identity and strategies of white state ‘ethnic gangs’, drugs, asylum seekers, power continue to be naturalised. The and the most enduring legacy of polic- threat that Arab-ness or Muslim-ness ing, the continuing war on Indigenous poses to white privilege is perhaps the people waged since colonisation. representation of a future which isn’t monopolised by a homogenous white Counter terrorism has its origins in the identity. Pugliese argues that the ‘lived colonial military doctrine of counter in- effects’ of racial profiling in the recently surgency, or the misnomer of ‘low inten- introduced Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 , are sity conflict’ deployed to ensure western that ‘Arab and/or Muslim Australians are imperial expansion and consequent legislatively precluded from inhabiting processes of domination (Hocking 1993). the civic spaces of the nation’ (2005; 19- Counter terrorism has been described as 20). In the latter half of this article I ‘a domestic peace time adaptation of demonstrate how the particular relation strategies to deal with the essentially of counter terrorism law to policing privi- wartime exigencies of a colonial power’ leges whiteness. Law operationalised by (Hocking 1993; 19). Counter insurgency police discretion has always produced has directly influenced modern day social dislocation, stigmatisation and counter terrorism through the following criminalisation. The productive power of strategies: exceptional legislation which state terror relies on communities made departs from legal norms; mass surveil- fearful, surveilled and terrorised. The fu- lance and the collection of large ture oriented discretion of security polic- amounts of intelligence; the preemptive ing however, as elaborated below, in- application of legislation and surveil- tensifies how racial subjects are identi- lance; and militarisation of the police fied and excised. and police and military cooperation and close police media cooperation Criminalisation and the Law (Hocking 1993: 20-29). Counter insur- of the Police gency ‘experts’ such as Kitson and Thompson developed their security The violence of the legal system and at- strategies in response to the struggles tendant processes of criminalisation are against the colonial power of the British one critical historical trajectory of racial and the French in the 1960’s and 1970’s and social formation. Crime has long in Cyprus, Malaya and Algeria (Hocking operated as a proxy for race (Hall et al 18). Critical analysis of the origins of Aus- 1978; Davis 1998), while contemporary tralian counter terrorism are grounded in law is deployed as race neutral and critique of the ‘continuum philosophy’ of democratic (Haney Lopez 1996). Secu- counter-insurgency. This philosophy ad- rity policing is central to processes of vocates that violent insurgency is just a criminalisation of Indigenous and mi- short step from political ‘subversion’ grant communities, at the front end of where ‘previolent’ periods, such as the criminal justice system. Constructions peaceful protest or dissent must be sur- of criminality have been extended in the veilled as potentially terroristic (Hocking war on terror to target ethnic and reli- 19). As such, critical accounts of the ori- gious practice, culminating in what has gins of security policing map jurisdic- been described as the folk devil figure of tional and operational shifts in domestic the ‘Arab or Muslim other’ (Poynting et policing and intelligence strategies tar- al 2004). As the authors acknowledge, in geting a range of civil society activity many ways this is not new but a con- such as labour movements and various tinuation of Australia’s previous wars and leftist ‘threats’ throughout the 20 th cen- racialised punishments – the war on 6 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM tury (McCulloch 2001; Hocking 1993; The systemic destruction by police of Cain 1983 ). Indigenous culture and connection to land since colonisation is central to ra- It is well established that the institution of cial state formation and the teleology of the Australian police originated in the nation. Indigenous political claims upon genocide of Indigenous people and the nation state are replaced with a continuing practices of dispossession devastating criminalisation, and an en- and criminalisation (for example, Cun- during experience of terror represented neen 2001; Finnane 1994). Further, the as legitimate and legal state action genealogy of contemporary police mili- (Cunneen 250-251; Bird 9-10) tarisation is also located in the colonial policing of dispossession (McCulloch It is clear, however that the violent po- 2001; Cunneen 2001). The deployment lice suppression of Indigenous people of police in a state of war was key to the has operated in effect as the training acquisition and consolidation of land ground for paramilitary state police units, and national authority. Furthermore, sys- whose successors are deployed in con- tematic paramilitary police terror, such temporary counter terrorism. Cunneens’ as mass murder and torture, were fun- research demonstrates that soon after damentally bound up in annihilating re- their formation, elite paramilitary police sistance and the active disruption of In- unit, the Tactical Response Group (TRG) digenous family social and cultural life in New South Wales and Western Austra- (Cunneen 2001). Cunneen outlines that lia were deployed specifically to terrorize while indiscriminate police murders had both rural and urban Indigenous com- largely ended by the 1930’s, the use of munities in the 1980’s and 90’s. These police terror remained a key tactic operations facilitated the massive throughout the 20 th century to maintain growth in these paramilitary units (Cun- control against individuals and entire neen: 98). The use of a large scale pre- communities seen as troublesome (106- dawn raid with 153 TRG officers in Red- 127). Hence, while the later role of po- fern in 1990 on the subtext of ‘drug raids’ lice as administrators witnessed the in- resulted in profound and debilitating tensification of surveillance, regulation psychological trauma for many of the and mass incarceration, terror remained Indigenous households raided (122). The constitutive of the ‘legitimacy’ of racial fact that the raids where found on the state violence. whole to be based on illegal warrants is indicative of how ‘exceptional’ state However, the genocidal war against In- violence in Australia is characterised by digenous people since colonisation has techniques of terror and normalised by not been explicitly considered as the institutional racism. historical origins of contemporary Austra- lian counter insurgency and counter ter- The continuous role of police in criminal- rorism. A critique of the cold war periodi- ising Indigenous people and successive sation of the geneology of counter ter- migrant populations has a long, differen- rorism and its relation to frontier conflict tial and often buried history, also char- is beyond the scope of this article and is acterised by the lived realities of police being developed in my broader re- terror. Investments in police terror are search. Conceptually rethinking counter part of a larger whole of racialised pun- terrorism policing as an investment in ishment, experienced as a terrifying fu- white terror, compels a relation between ture for poor people of colour and mi- criminalisation and erasure of culture, grants globally who are incarcerated as space and belonging, history and future. ‘surplus’ populations. Angela Davis’ im- 7 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM portant genealogy of racialised punish- ‘whose task is to take charge of life’ ment connects ‘the links between con- (Foucault 1978: 144). finement, punishment and race’ to lo- cate the way state power is formed Hardt and Negri explain Foucaults identi- along the axis of economic and racial fication of biopower as: domination (Davis 1998: 97). Davis’ theorisation connects the history of in- …[a] form of power that regulates social carceration of peoples of Native Ameri- life from its interior, following it, absorbing can, African, Mexican and Asian de- it and recirculating it. ……Biopower thus scent with the structure and racist logic refers to a situation in which what is di- rectly at stake in power is the production of the reservations, slavery, the mission and reproduction of life itself. (Hardt & and internment camps. Perera’s invoca- Negri 2000: 23-24) tion of the ‘camp’ in Australia articulates how the different forms of continuous Significant limitations to Foucault’s incarceration of Indigenous peoples, treatment of coercive domination and extends denationalization and removal the nature of state power are evident in from nation to non Indigenous popula- his erasure of the punishment of the ra- tions in the form of immigration intern- cial body (for example see, James 1996, ment, detention centres and the prison Davis 1998, Perera 2000). A reading of (Perera 2002). This Australian genealogy the biopolitical which reinstates con- of racialised punishment gives an ana- structions of race together with the sov- lytic coherency to the end point of the ereignty of capital in social formation, investment of security policing. holds explanatory power for locating policing's role in reproducing the racial Biopolitical Police Power: state. Agamben’s thesis on biopolitics Delivering the Privilege of Whiteness and legal exception and Walter Benja- min’s critique of law and violence, lo- The constitutive relation of policing to cate police practices as expressions of the racial state, renders an account of sovereignty. Benjamin’s essay Critique policing as merely a discriminatory of Violence written in 1921, describes the technique of repression analytically in- unique character of the police in their sufficient. Rather, security policing relation to law and state violence. Ben- through its discretionary power, and so- jamin argued that state violence find its cial reproductive function, comes to legitimacy in either ‘law making’ or ‘law define the racial state and as such op- preserving’ violence. Law making vio- erates as a key state investment. Polic- lence is violence which conflicts with or ing animates a particularly sovereign overthrows existing laws, with the effect function, to be both subject to the law of creating new laws, such as colonial and to be outside it. Theories of biopoli- conquest which implements the invad- tical power help to locate the internal, ers laws. Law preserving violence, on the immanent relation of policing and terror other hand, enforces existing laws, within to the racial state. Broadly, Foucault the authority of the legal system itself. theorised shifts of rule to modernity from Benjamin characterises the police as not sovereignty to governance as charac- only engaged in the law preserving vio- terised by disciplinary power, rather than lence we commonly associate with law external domination (Foucault 1995). In enforcement, but also law making vio- the transformation to government, Fou- lence, in that the police also function cault also located biopolitical power, as outside of the law. That is, not in the distinct from disciplinary power, a power sense of illegal activity, or bad apples acting ultravires but rather for legal pur- 8 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM poses, ‘with the simultaneous authority Hardt and Negri also argue that the to decide these ends itself within wide state of exception is normalised particu- limits (it includes the right of decree)’ larly through police decision. They say (Benjamin 1996: 242). The nature of the ‘every civil war is a police action’ and institution of the police as law making that this comes to define sovereignty violence is thus extra-legal in practice (Hardt & Negri: 39). The exceptionality and ultimately socially reproductive. and violence of law, something that lib- eral democracy is at pains to deny and Benjamin outlines two critical aspects to conceal, is characteristic of biopolitical the ‘law’ of the police. Firstly police de- rule and underlies the violence of de- cision is embodied in situations when the mocracy itself. In this sense the ‘new’ state can’t guarantee its desired end manifestations of counter terrorism polic- through the legal system itself, ‘against ing constitutes the rule and what is key thinkers, from whom the state is not pro- to the policing of race. In other words, tected by law’ (243). Is this not the ex- how police power historically both en- emplified in the war on terror, where lib- forces and reproduces law and order eral democracy does not tolerate ex- through its violence, arbitrariness and plicit racial discrimination in law yet relies discretion. on the police to decide to criminalise and racialise multiple non-white others? Police action in Australia is characterised Secondly, that unlike the determinacy of by unpredictable, differential discretions a ‘decision’ of a law proper, police that are read against the bodies of mul- power is described by Benjamin as spec- tiple racial others. From summary execu- tral, ‘formless’ and an ‘all pervasive, tions to supervising the stealing of In- ghostly presence’ (243). This points to the digenous children, to stop and search indeterminacy of police discretion and powers against youth of ‘middle eastern the sovereign power of police decision appearance’, police decision making in action. to either brutalise or supervise are differ- ent forms of biopolitical power (Agam- Carl Schmitt in 1922 argued that in po- ben 1998). Police discretion and terror is litical crisis the State is characterised by central to criminalisation and the repro- the Sovereigns’ declaration of a ‘state of duction of whiteness as both a future exception’. Schmitt characterised this vision of nation and erasure of historical suspension of law as temporary excep- violence. The institutional racism which tion as distinguished from the norm. informs the police discretion to ultimately Against Schmitt, Benjamin in his Eighth ‘decide’ is an exercise of sovereign Thesis on the Philosophy of History char- power, and is consistent with the multi- acterised this state of emergency not as ple discretions of the state to exclude or the exception but as the rule – as fun- include non-white others from the terri- damental to the normal rule of law. tory of nation. Paramilitary policing is (Agamben 2005) Law for Benjamin part of the everyday ‘unexceptional’ generates constant violence and crisis violence experienced by racialised as its’ normal everyday function. Giorgio communities, a policing which silently Agamben, extending Benjamins’ thesis, and mundanely delivers the privileges of distinguished between a ‘fictitious state whiteness to a citizenry defined by what of exception’ which masks the perma- it is not. nent and effective state of violence fundamental to the rule of law (Agam- As Goldberg points out, the institutional ben 2005). racism and violence of the racial state is always normalised, and doesn’t figure as 9 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM exceptional (Goldberg 114-115). The po- ing to extend the reach of sovereign lice function as decision maker against power. A detailed analysis of these ter- those it enacts upon, reflects the per- rains, while not the subject of this paper, manent state of crisis characteristic of points to the reproductive power of the racial state. For example, the effec- counter terrorism policing as both law tive suspension of rule of law in the colo- making and law preserving violence, in nial massacres of Indigenous people in the contemporary racial state. Australia was normalised. The massacres were not considered as mass murder Terrifying Law – Police as and did not require declaration of mar- National Managers tial law (Cunneen 2001: 60-62). The sus- pension of legal norms characteristic of Post 9/11 terrorism laws in Australia re- counter terrorism law is operationalised produce racial state power through two through social relations between police related processes. Firstly, the creation of and policed. The biopolitics, or internali- broadly defined pre-emptive offences sation, of the policing of race, masks the and new terms of art to identify multiple violent state of crisis of institutional ra- racial subjects as potentially suspect . cism. The sovereignty of security police Secondly, massive reconfigurations of intensifies criminalisation of communities security policing powers to enable re- by deploying a range of pre-emptive moval of non-white others from national intelligence measures independent of space as racialised and criminalised. the courts and traditional carceral sys- The laws invest political discipline against tems, such as home detention, informal multi racial bodies through discretionary questioning and warrantless searches. terror and expanded police decision Moreover the recomposition of commu- making. In the last part of this article I nities and the cooperation of civil soci- briefly outline key aspects of this frame- ety in recirculating and internalising ho- work. The statutory regime since 2001 mogenising power signals the immanent invests in malleable legal concepts such nature of racial state power. An appeal as ‘terrorist act’ which at its core crimi- to the restoration of ‘normal’ criminal nalises actual or threatened political vio- law, denies the teleology of whiteness in lence anywhere in the world, for any criminal justice frameworks. purpose, whether it is against violence originated by oppressive, brutal regimes The productive capabilities of policing (Sentas 2006; Emerton 2005). In fact to acquire renewed importance as a site of make out most terrorism offences, there racialised state practice. Particularly as is no need for an actual terrorist act to globalisation erases boundaries be- occur, or for there to be a specific act of tween external and internal wars, and violence contemplated (Pettit & Sentas the distinctions between military and 2005: 283). police apparatus as law and order is in- tegrated into the task of security and The intensification of state violence defence (Hardt & Negri 2000; McCulloch through police discretion identifies racial & Carlton 2006). The ascendency of subjects in a panoply of new law. For neoliberal globalisation, may have example, under the executive proscrip- brought a de-territorial sovereignty of tion of organisations as ‘terrorist’, the At- capital in the liberalisation of money torney General has banned 19 organisa- across borders. But it has also consoli- tions on the recommendation of ASIO. 2 dated the territory of the nation state Criminalisation of ‘indirect’ membership, through intersecting genealogies of ra- funding, training (including humanitarian cialised punishment, bolstered by polic- training) and support for the organisa- 10 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM tions, are not dependant on intention or Policing both associative and pre- engagement in an act of violence, but emptive ‘guilt’ requires mass surveillance on association, where even the emo- and intelligence, increasing discretion- tional or political support for or identifi- ary police contact with predominantly cation with liberation struggle in Pales- non-white multi-ethnic people and those tine or Kurdistan, for example, may at- of the Islamic faith. Legislative measures tract up to 25 years imprisonment (Sen- rely on police discretion and amplified tas 2006). Refugees who have been powers of surveillance to identify and granted asylum in Australia for their ac- decide on racial subjects. For example, tual or imputed affiliations with the now an initial order for 48 hour preventative banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) detention for those who may not be could face security police surveillance, suspected of any offence, is authorised deportation and potential prosecution by a senior officer of the Australian Fed- (Sentas 2006: 32-37). Furthermore, a eral Police, not a court (Chong & Sentas separate regime has listed over 1, 600 2006). New stop and search provisions individuals and organisations as terrorist, give state and federal police pre- (Chong & Sentas 2006: 36) freezing the emptive authority based only on what a assets of those who support diverse in- person ‘might’ do, if they are within an surgencies such as the Liberation Tigers executively designated ‘security zone’ of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Shinning Path (Pettit & Sentas 2005: 284-285). The phe- and the People’s Liberation Army of the nomena of the ASIO raid, now also Phillipines ( Charter of the United Nations flanked by a flotilla of Commonwealth Act 1945; see also Suppression of the Fi- and state police, is invested heavily as a nancing of Terrorism Act 2002 ). zone of spectral, discretionary state vio- lence to dehumanise those raided. Suppression of the financing of terrorism laws empower financial institutions to As pre-emption justified the invasion of report ‘suspicious’ financial transactions Iraq so too the logic of pre-emption in and thus target ethnic or religious iden- the domestic context is manifest in the tity. Those who front up to a bank, and raids of many Muslim families in 2001 and look or sound like a ‘terrorist’, or whose 2002, who were not charged with any name on paper appears ‘connected’ to offence and were racially profiled as a ‘country of concern’ and may then be suspicious. Some raids involved the au- pre-emptively subject to security polic- thorities pointing guns at both adults and ing detention regimes (McCulloch & children, raids occurred in the middle of Carlton 2006: 405-407). Security policing the night with no explanation, and pass- interventions are characterised by racial ports were revoked with no reason. and religious profiling as a substitute for (Clelland 2002; Poynting 2004; Trad 2001) guilt (for discussion of examples of the A woman occupying one of the Sydney impact in Australia, see Chong & Sentas homes raided by Police and ASIO in No- 2006; Pugliese 2005; McCulloch & Carl- vember 2005 conducted as part of ‘Op- ton 2006) Preventative detention and eration Pandanus’ 3 suffered from a heart home detention through control orders attack during the operation (Cubby introduced in the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 2005). After ASIO were granted coercive (Cth), also punish in anticipation of police-like questioning powers for the crime through the inbuilt logic of racial first time ( Australian Security Intelligence profiling, simultaneously denied by the Organisation Legislation Amendment state and acknowledged by the police (Terrorism) Act 2003 ), ASIO officers were as inevitable (Pugliese 2005: 18-20). reported to have threatened a person with detention for three days if the per- 11 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM son did not cooperate with a raid On June 24 2006, the Attorney General (Chong & Sentas 47-48). announced his intention to conduct an investigation for ‘welfare fraud’ of those Muslim community organisations and families who have received charitable individuals have reported being fearful assistance from the fundraising efforts of about engaging in any political activity, the Islamic and Information Services or even social calls to friends for fear of Network of Australasia (IISNA). While non being under surveillance, or fear that Islamic leftist groups have also raised they may inadvertently be ‘associating’ funds for the families, IISNA was targeted with someone of interest to the authori- by media reports as a ‘hardline’ funda- ties (AMCRAN 2005a, 2005b). Such prac- mentalist organisation who raised $50 tices bear the hallmarks of colonial 000 for ‘terrorists’. The fundraising efforts counter insurgency strategies. An of IISNA are represented as inherently anonymous Australian authority said of suspect within the dominant Islamapho- the June 2005 Operation Pandanus bic framework. Moreover, the families of raids, that the stated purpose was to the accused are vilified by virtue of their ‘rattle the cages, to deter them from alleged receipt of ‘combined welfare taking the next step’ (Nicholson 2005) and legal aid payment of 1 million dol- The image of ‘ethnics in cages’ (Hage lars’ (Kerbaj 2006). The accused and 1998) invokes at once the threat of in- their families join the extended category carceration and excision from national of excluded ‘unAustralians’ – welfare space as dangerous and less than hu- recipients, Indigenous people, and con- man. The statutory presumption against secutive categories of ‘scheming eth- bail for terrorism charges ( Crimes Act s nics’. 15AA) and the consequent incarcera- tion of the accused in maximum security The Australian Government’s attempts to prisons delivered on this threat. manage Muslim citizens, through the promotion of ‘moderate’ versions of Is- The racial state delivers its’ terror through lam, the criminalisation of ‘radical’ Islam police discretion to transform questions through police discretion and the impo- of belonging to those of defending terri- sition of core Australian values reflect the tory, both spatial and economic. For organising principles of the racial state. example Liz Fekete describes how the Counter terrorism laws are animated by anti-Muslim xeno-racism of the European police powers to invigorate the racialisa- security state operates to make its ‘inte- tion of social controls as exclusion. gration’ policies of assimilation an exten- However, the policing of ‘inclusion’ is just sion of counter terrorism law (Fekete as central in the regeneration of white 2004). At the same time by rendering nation. Strategies such as ‘community citizenship as a security concern, policies policing’ redefine counter terrorism as a which heighten the socio-economic and self consciously cooperative ‘conversa- gendered exclusion of working class tion’ with Muslim communities rather Muslim communities are extended. The than an explicitly paramilitary exercise. arrests between November 2005 and Such shifts in state power operate to April 2006 of 22 Muslim men for alleged make mechanisms of command and terrorism organisation offences resulted control appear ever more democratic, for some in the suspension of Centrelink involving the policed in their own domi- payments to their wives and the freezing nation. of joint bank accounts as extra judicial punishment. 4 As the history of colonial rule and Gram- sci’s theory of hegemony tell us, rule isn’t 12 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM ever through coercion but also through mentary Joint Committee on Intelli- consensus (Gramsci 1971). The Australian gence and Security- Review of Part III political order is founded on the promul- Division 3 of the Australian Security In- gation of concepts of democracy and telligence Organisation Act 1979. freedom as particularly western identi- Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy ties, and as core values, even as these Network, 2005b, Submission to Senate concepts function unevenly for Indige- Legal and Constitutional Committee nous, migrant and other atomised popu- Inquiry into provisions of the Anti- lations. Discretionary policing reveals the Terrorism (No. 2) Bill 2005 November fundamental character of liberal de- 2005. mocracy as a violently racialised and Ansari, F 2005 British Anti-Terrorism: A bordered project. It is no accident that Modern Day Witch-Hunt, Islamic Hu- state terror reinforces and generates man Rights Commission, available at: democratic racial power. 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Groove, the Cultural Politics of ‘Race’ Kerbaj, R ‘Muslims give big to suspects' and Racism in Britain’ in Goldberg, D Families’ Australian , 21 June 06 (ed) Anatomy of Racism , Minneapolis: Lipsitz, G 1998, The Possessive Investment University of Minnesota Press. in Whiteness: How White People Bene- 14 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM fit from Identity Politics , Philadelphia: 15 SENTAS: COUNTER TERRORISM Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Act 2002 (Cth) Endnotes 1 For a list of legislation see: www.nationalsecurity.gov.au . 2006-2007 Federal Budget spending includes $1.6 billion in additional funding over five years, the ma- jority of funding for security policing capabili- ties, in the Attorney-General’s and Justice and Customs portfolio alone. This includes increases to ASIO, AFP intelligence and sur- veillance capabilities, the establishment of ‘Identity security strike-teams’. See: The Hon Philip Ruddock MP, News Release: Law and Justice Overview, 9 May 2006: 2 The organisations banned in Australia are: Abu Sayyaf Group, Al Qa'ida, Ansar Al-Islam Armed Islamic Group, Asbat al-Ansar, Egyp- tian Islamic Jihad, Hamas's Izz al-Din al- Qassam Brigades, Harakat Ul-Mujahideen, Hizballah External Security Organisation, Is- lamic Army of Aden Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Jaish-i- Mohammed, Jemaah Islamiyah, Kurdistan Workers Party, Lashkar I Jhangvi, Lashkar-e- Tayyiba, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Salafist Group for Call and Combat, Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (the al-Zarqawi network) http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/agd/ww w/nationalsecurityhome.nsf/Page/Listing_of_ Terrorist_Organisations , 3 A series of high profile security police raids were made on homes in Sydney and Mel- bourne, on the 20 June followed by another series of raids and arrests on 8 November. At the time of writing, the 22 men have been charged with membership and financing of an unspecified terrorist organisation, and detained on remand in maximum security units while court proceedings are yet to commence. For the 13 men detained in Vic- toria’s Barwon Prison ‘Acacia Unit’, the last 8 months have been spent in solitary confine- ment for between 18 to 23 hours a day. Cells are raided by security and police every few weeks and the men are reported to be mal- nourished. (Abdou and Kent 2006.) 4 Personal communication with author, 1 De- cember 2005. 16 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2 , No. 1, 2006 BOOK REVIEW ALAN HAN SCHLUNKE, K. M. (2005). BLUFF ROCK : Bluff Rock is not a further addition to this AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MASSACRE . historical discourse. Indeed, it challenges FREMANTLE: FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE the written ethos of these wars by show- PRESS. ing readers what is left out of the debate – the embodied whiteness of the male Katrina Schlunke’s book Bluff Rock: academic historians writing about In- autobiography of a massacre urges digenous histories. non-Indigenous readers to consider “the possibility of an ethical, embodied rela- Schlunke is critical of this disembodiment tionship with the past, not a final story” of whiteness from its writing of Indige- (Schlunke 2005:14). It examines the his- nous histories. In its description of the tory of Bluff Rock in New England, New Rock’s massacre, the tourist leaflet South Wales in the 1840s when many In- reads: ‘[t]he truth of the day remains digenous people were shot and/or clouded by many conflicting versions’ thrown to their deaths over the Rock by and ‘[t]he truth will be forever in the white settlers. Written as an autobiogra- bosom of one of the most impressive phy, Schlunke considers her own white landmarks along the New England family’s entanglement as German set- Highway’. Schlunke interprets these sen- tlers in the region with its history of In- tences as offering “two poles to move digenous massacres. She writes that de- between: the truth of multiple truths and spite the fact everyone in the town the truth of knowing that no human will knew about the massacres, she “didn’t ever know the truth” (Schlunke 2005:32). know about the connections between This reminded me of Suvendrini Perera’s massacre and stolen land and people. use of James Baldwin’s idea of ‘sacred [She] didn’t know how to ask how some ignorances’ (Perera 2005). Perera argues of their land had become [her family’s] that the power of whiteness is exercised farm” (Schlunke 2005:13). It is this search by ignoring Indigenous sovereignties in for answers to questions about the past the past and present. These manoeuvres and its connections to present racialised of sacred ignorances are evident in privileges, which forms the central ar- John Howard’s argument that in the gument of this book. 1901 Federation, Indigenous sovereignty had been transferred to the Australian Through this autobiographical form of state and would thus invalidate any pre- writing, this book contests the field of sent entitlement to a treaty (Perera Indigenous histories dominated by the 2005:32). In this argument, Howard ig- ‘Aboriginal history wars’ spearheaded nores the fact that Indigenous people with Keith Windschuttle’s book The Fab- had been excluded from the discussions rication of Aboriginal History of federation in the lead up to 1901 (Windschuttle 2003). A critique of Wind- (Perera 2005:32). By highlighting the schuttle’s politics and historical peda- power of white historical ignorance, we gogy has been developed in Bain Att- can see how occupying the contradic- wood’s book Telling the Truth about tory position of claiming to know and not Aboriginal History (Attwood 2005) and to know the precise truth of this history, ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 HAN: BOOK REVIEW places the memory of the massacres as this systematic dispossession as a system part of a “fossilised past, a past that of whiteness as possession. Whiteness cannot change, a past that we cannot becomes isolated, and so not part of a change” (Schlunke 2005:35). continuing system, but as a remem- bered past that happened. Schlunke In the very act of remembering the mas- writes: “How useful and ‘practical’ to sacres at Bluff Rock, the tourist industry believe that that is where it all hap- immortalises this history as part of the pened” (Schlunke 2005:122). past, so that “we will never remember the cars and the roads and the reserva- As a queer Asian male reader of this tions and the barristers and the cities book my relationship with the history of which made the systematic disposses- Bluff Rock is different to that of sion and the dispersal of the Aboriginal Schlunke’s. Negotiating my multiple sub- people possible” (Schlunke 2005:122). jectivities (Moreton-Robinson 2000) as Remembering the past of Bluff Rock as queer, Asian and male, means that I am non-Indigenous people often means the often required to slip in and out of erasure or ignorance of present racial- whiteness. Remembering this past of ised privileges as non-Indigenous peo- white people killing Indigenous peoples ple. This remembering Schlunke argues, historically excludes my racialised pres- is itself part of a system of the “colonial ence as Asian. However, I make multiple taking of land [as] a ‘practical rear- connections with Schlunke’s autobiog- rangement” (Schlunke 2005:120). raphy through her queerness and white- ness experienced as racialised privi- It is the way these memories circulate as leges. Thus, although written Australian ways of dispossessing Indigenous peo- history is dominated by a black/white ples from their lands that is one of the binary, Schlunke reminds us that we book’s many strengths. It is not just that ought to think about how this history in- remembering are forms of white forget- forms and produces our present racial- ting of Indigenous massacres that is the ised privileges as non-Indigenous peo- central argument of this book, rather ple. By not engaging with this history as memories function also as ways of ‘prac- an autobiography, I could not as a tical dispossession’. This argument is de- queer Asian male reader have made veloped through an analysis of letters these multiple connections with white- written between white locals and land- ness and racialised privileges. owners at the time, such as Thomas Keating and Edward and Leonard Irby. This book complicates the impasse of Schlunke shows readers how these writ- the Aboriginal history wars, which as- ten accounts were born out of the si- sume and naturalise the process of white lencing of Indigenous resistance through knowingness and remembering of In- poison (see Heffernan’s account in 1857 digenous histories. These contested In- (Schlunke 2005:112). This book argues digenous histories, remembered through that the processes of practical rear- the professional egos of white male rangement of taking land and Indige- academics, are dominated by notions nous resistance that placed white set- of ‘historical truth’. Schlunke shows us tlers in “danger of being speared”, is si- how it is not the ‘truth’ that matters, but lenced through the performance of how this truth is articulated and remem- memory and the poisoning of flour bered in and through the privileges of (Schlunke 2005:112). Thus, remembering whiteness. The experience of remember- and the practicalities of dispossession go ing the past is itself always premised on hand-in-hand in a process that forgets experiencing the privileges of the pre- 2 HAN: BOOK REVIEW sent. Schlunke questions the whiteness of References her own writing: Am I writing white? This is the historical Attwood, B. M. 2005. Telling the truth threat of whiteness, its all-encompassing about Aboriginal history . Crows Nest: power to get me, to give me something I Allen & Unwin. may not even want. I can’t see the white Moreton-Robinson, A. 2000. Talkin' Up to except when it is contrasted with its own the White Woman: Indigenous shadows, but there is often too much Women and Feminism . St. Lucia: Uni- light for shadows to occur. I can’t be- versity of Queensland Press. lieve I am white. Perera, S. 2005. "Who Will I Become? The Chorus moans: GET REAL! (Schlunke Multiple Formations of Australian 2005:227) Whiteness." Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association This book unsettles us by locating our Journal 1: 30-40. family histories as intimate connections Schlunke, K. M. 2005. Bluff Rock : autobi- with ourselves and each other that is ography of a massacre . Fremantle: also a remembering of the past that si- Fremantle Arts Centre Press. multaneously forgets our racialised privi- Windschuttle, K. 2003. The fabrication of leges of the present. It is an important Aboriginal history . Sydney: Macleay reminder that as non-Indigenous Austra- Press. lians we must see our possession not only as a dispossession of Indigenous lands, but as a possession of words, emotions, and memories. Non-Indigenous Austra- lians must acknowledge the multiple forms of their racialised privileges in a way that does not remember a past of dispossession that happened, but re- members a past of dispossession that is happening. Author Note Alan Han is a doctoral candidate with The School of English, Media Studies and Art History, at the University of Queen- sland. His research interests include food and eating, critical race and whiteness studies, queer theory, gender studies, and cultural studies. His Honours thesis, completed at the University of Adelaide, critiqued Australian multiculturalism by examining how eating foods construct racial identities. His current research ex- plores Asian Australian and Asian Canadian masculinities through the lens of critical race and whiteness theory. 3 ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006 BOOK REVIEW DAMIEN W. RIGGS Alfred J. Lopez (Ed.) Postcolonial Hawley questions how norms of whiteness: A critical reader on race and femininity (which are implicitly racialised empire. Albany, SUNY Press, 2005, ISBN 0- as white) are often unwittingly taken up 7914-6361-3, pp. 261. in moments of cross-cultural drag. I first began to read this edited As well as this explicit focus on the collection whilst working on a special intersections of queer and race, many of issue of the International Journal of the chapters in the book evoke a queer Critical Psychology, which I was co- reading of whiteness that draws editing with Lorraine Johnson-Riordan on attention not only to the constitutive the topic of ‘White Terror/(Post)Empire’. fears associated with what we may We both found considerable utility in the understand as a peculiarly heterosexual approach to understanding Empire as white masculinity, but also to the ways in outlined by Lopez in his introductory which race is always already sexualised chapter, where he spends some time and gendered in multiple ways. interrogating how white hegemony always involves the construction of an In a chapter reminiscent of William ‘enemy other’ against which dominant Spurlin’s work on the queer iconography group members believe they must of Princess Diana, Diane Roberts defend themselves. In this sense, Lopez examines how it is that the Princess, both highlights how forms of Empire persist in before and after her death, projected a the face of moves towards paradoxically normative and abject decolonisation: when seen as a threat to image of heterosexual white femininity white hegemony, assertions of First that both reinforced the centrality of the Nation sovereignty are positioned within nuclear family, whilst also at times a logic of colonisation whereby directly undermining its supposedly a colonised people are seen as to blame priori status. Roberts calls for an account for colonisation itself. This logic continues of white femininity that acknowledges to appear within Australian public, the multiple ways in which it both props academic and political spheres, where up and challenges the binaries of Indigenous people (for example) good/bad, male/female and continue to be depicted as in need of white/black. ‘rescuing’ from benevolent whites, or as undeserving of reparation. Queer readings of whiteness (where queer refers to an injunction to reverse, Important also for my own work, Lopez subvert or otherwise destabilise and his contributors highlight how forms particular norms) appear in chapters by of whiteness are often taken up by those both Lopez himself, Kelen and Turcotte. historically positioned as ‘less-white’ – In focusing on the ‘wolf man’ case that those seen to possess less cultural capital is considered central to Freud’s than that held by white, middle-class, elaboration of psychoanalysis, Lopez able-bodied heterosexual men. John examines how both the case itself, and Hawley elaborates in his chapter how Freud’s work more broadly, display a norms of whiteness may often play out consistent denial of the ways in which within queer communities of colour. varying relationships to the norm of ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006 RIGGS: BOOK REVIEW white European masculinity during and In his chapter on the writing of between the two world wars were Mudrooroo, Turcotte focuses on the played out within Freud’s consulting uncanny effects that Mudrooroo’s work room. Whilst Lopez’ reading of the wolf produces (despite the ongoing man case is not perhaps as convincing questions of authenticity that surround as it could have been in its elaboration his position as an author). Turcotte of the racialised nature of the case, and highlights how narratives of the present in particular the ‘wolf man’s’ dreams, it always hold within them narratives of the nonetheless serves to demonstrate how past, and indeed that the two function it is that the therapeutic setting is simultaneously to produce an account shaped through a range of norms that, of Australia that strives to overcome the whether spoken of explicitly or not, uncanny nature of white belonging. shape the client/practitioner Mudrooroo’s work, he suggests, renders relationship. visible the workings of the past in the present by creating a narrative of Kelen takes up this ‘queer’ approach by decolonisation that, following Fanon, is focusing on the Australian anthem less about a reversal of colonial logic, ‘Advance Australia Fair’, where he and more about a radical rewriting of questions the contradictions that are colonial spaces. formative of the anthem itself. As he states: These, along with other important chapters by Imre, Sterr, Singh and Trimm, It’s the depth of contradiction in the provide an account of a certain present and official version of ‘Advance ‘postcolonial whiteness’ that is not Australia Fair’ (its ‘look at me I’m not limited to analyses of those sites typically here’ quality) that leaves some of those considered under the remit of who sing it [as white people] a little ‘postcolonial studies’, but rather extends uneasy afterward as to the question of what they’ve meant. But I think the postcolonial studies through an depth of that contradiction expresses engagement with work on Empire and the Australian condition (205). whiteness in order to develop a more intersectional, expansive account of the Here Kelen draws attention to the functions of racialised difference. Whilst problems that inhere to giving an my reference to ‘queer’ may seem account of Australia as a ‘fair’ nation in arbitrary (and whilst it indeed reflects my the face of ongoing histories of white own research interests on intersections of violence. Kelen thus questions the ‘queer race’), I nevertheless believe it temporal logic inscribed in the anthem, holds out that the chapters in the book which remains unclear as to whether it significantly queer a range of disciplinary constitutes a declarative statement approaches, and thus demonstrate how about the inherent fairness of the white they may usefully be brought into nation (a statement which is patently dialogue with one another. To speak of absurd), or an injunction to become a a ‘queer race’, much like to speak of a fair nation (or at least one that appears ‘postcolonial whiteness’, is to refuse a to be more fair). Kelen’s argument reads narrow framework for engagement, and notions of fairness as attempts at is to instead seek a broader set of masking histories of violence and thus references for what we consider to providing an account of white Australian constitute ‘terror’, ‘the political’ and history that creates a coherent, and indeed theoretical interventions violent-free, narrative. themselves. 2