TOBY MIu.ER EXPORTING TRUTH FROM ABORIGINAL AUSTRAUA IPORTIONS OF OUR PAST BECOME PRESENT AGAIN, WHERE ONLY THE MELANCHOLY LIGHT OF ORIGIN SHINES'

J don't think there can be any doubt that unnecessarily. Of course, we could look for Aborigines have been the most important the global trace of contemporary Australia Australian exporters of social theory and by a form of desperate content analysis. cultural production to the northern Adding up references to it in the Manhanan hemisphere over the past century. How fiction of Jay Mcinerney, for example: eight could one come to such a conclusion? in Bright Lights, Big City (986) if you count When Jock Given approached me to write the 1984 New York Post, none if you don't; this paper, he referred to a recent essay of four in Ransom (] 987); ten in Story ofMy Life mine. It began like this: 'When Australia (989) if you count each mention of Nell's, became modem, it ceased to be interesting'. three if you don't; and none in Brightness I ran the argument there that Aboriginal Falls (992). Or we could turn to the 1995 Australia had provided Europe with a 'Down Under' episode of The Stmpsons, in 'photographic negative' of itself. The which a State Department representative essence of the north, s~creted by the briefs the family on bilateral relations: 'As blllowtng engines and disputatious I'm sure you remember, in the late 1980s the parliaments of the modern, could be US experienced a short-lived infatuation secreted by examining 'the prediarnarue with Australian culture (this is accompanied realities of the Antipodean primordial' by a cartoon-slide of Paul Hogan as (Miller T 1994. 206-7). Once Australia was a 'Crocodile' Dundee]. For some bizarre sovereign state, and able to deny Aboriginal reason, the Aussies thought this would be a people citizenship, it was merely one more permanent thing. O( course it wasn't [the place filled with whitefellas. 'Australians' latter spoken before a slide of a boarded-up were transformed in northern hemisphere film theatre With 'Yahoo Serious Festival' on theory from dashing blacks living OUt of time the decrepit building].' into dull Anglo-Celts living out of place. Bur Alternatively, much could be said about today, the country is returned to the lists of the contributions made by the country's international intellectual pleasure. Lawrence principal passport-holders in this field. My Grossberg announces it as the site for own quick list, compiled from popular cultural studies on the cover of Stephen repute and academic citauonal texts follows, Muecke's book about Aborigmaliry and in as idiosyncratic an order as possible: WK cultural studies (1992) and elsewhere Hancock, Nick Cave, George Miller, Hedley (Grossberg 1994, 17), and postrnodern Bull, Fred Emery, Coral Bell, RW Connell, Aboriginal-style cover an provldes a Felix the Cat, Elizabeth Grosz/Gross, Martin marketing ploy for Routledge's greatest hits Indyk, Meaghan Morris, Joan Sutherland, of Australian cultural and media theory Dennis Altman, Patrick While, VG Childe, (Turner G 1993). Tony Bennett, Mudrooroo Nyoongah/ So I arrived here with that provocation, Mudrooroo/Mudrooroo Narrogin/Colin derived from a previous publishing folly. My Johnson,JiII Ker Conway, Errol Flynn, INXS, more general brief - to discuss the Colin Clark, Rolf Harris, Gillian Armstrong, B international circulation of Australian Wongar, Robert Hughes, CliveJames, Yothu sociocultural ideas - is subsumed somewhat Yindi, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Taussig, by this heritage, but not, I think, Alan Donagan, Bob/Roberr/RIV Hodge,

No 76- May 1995 7 EKporting Truth from Aboriginal Australia

Peter Weir, Gunther Kress, Air Supply, Elton make of this distant world? Durkheim Mayo, Kylie Minogue, Malcolm Williamson, provides half of the faux quotation that AL Burns, Fred Schepisl, julius Stone, Boris gives this essay a title. He saw the study of Frankel, Sidney Nolan, Rick Springfield, Aboriginal people as a way to make Graeme Turner, Tracey Moffatt, Paul Hogan, 'portions of our past become present again' MAK Halliday, Jane Campion, Judy 0961, 22). Europe's modernity had Wajcman, Wilfrid Thomas, John Passmore, weakened its version of the affective bonds andjack Davis. I do not seek to minimise the that provided the grout holding societies significance of their achievements or of together, in favour of an intense process of others who might be added (briefer individuation. Nevertheless, 'the ensemble residents such as Enoch Powell, John Fiske, of mental habits' clearly on view in black or the Bee Gees). I want to argue, however, Australia was still at work in Europe; that no set of nominated individuals submerged perhaps, but operant as exercises the significance outside Australia classjficatorv mechanisms for coordination that Aborigines have done, and continue to and hierarchisation (Durkheim & Mauss do, as a collectivity, via their uptake by 1970,88). Only the primitive, particularly its forms of social and cultural rheorisation Australian variety, could provide Benedict dedicated to understanding moderniry and with her desired 'laboratory within which irs post, we may study the dtversiry of human I wish to emphasise the following institutions' (1959, 17, 26, 33). And for limitation to the paper at this point. It is Freud, the 'savage and semi-savage races' negative critique. I am concerned here with are of 'peculiar interest for us, for we can the use of Aboriginaliry as a theoretical trope recognise in their psychic life a well­ by white people, not wirh the actual details preserved, early stage of our own of what could or could not be regrouped development'. His Totem and Taboo places retrospectively under that sign. I am writing, particular faith in combining knowledge of therefore, as an historian of white First Peoples from 'folklore' with 'the intellectual discourse outside Australia, not psychology of the neurotic', from analysis. of black thought itself. He goes off in search of correspondences If you turn to the principal European and between the two, and the 'youngest American sociocultural writers from the continent, namely Australia' offers a perfect 1820s to the 1960s - Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, instance via Aboriginal institutions and Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Marcel beliefs (1946, 3-5, 40). Mauss, Frederick Engels, Gaetano Mosca, AR Radcliffe-Brown, Ruth Benedict, Talcott SEARCHING FOR THE MODERN Parsons, Claude Levi-Strauss and Clifford John Hartley argues that the extermination Geertz are my arbitrarily selected sample of the Aboriginal people proposed by the here - you find Aboriginal Australians' likes of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1844, notions of human classification, duty and and taken up by populisr activity in New social organisation taken as critical keys to South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, was understanding lost truths of humanness actually more than a racism that marked out (something I first noted following a differences between white and black in a conversational aside from John Hartley). gruesome way. It was also a means of These truths are held to have been differentiating the colonists from Britain, an submerged in European and American expression of singularity that helped to modernity through the sweeping changes of bring a national identity into discourse. This industrialisation, urbanism, representative was part of the long haul to shift the signifier democracy and production-line culture. Not of 'Australians' to indicate 'white inhabitants' many of these theorists had much to do with rather than 'Aborigines', who instead come Australians face-co-face (Mauss, for to be known as 'our Aborigines' or example, acted as a translator between 'Aboriginal Australians'. They lost the master French and Australian troops during the signifier along the way. By 1951, the Herald Great War and called himself a museum and Weekly Times' Great Jubilee Book, ethnographer (Fournier 1993, 332; Mauss issued to commemorate the first half-century 1993, 7)); but nor did they need to for the of Federation, could respond to its question purposes of their work. So what did they 'Who are the Australians?' with a British!

8 Madia InlOIlllation Australia Toby Millet

European answer. The volume's only the developing area of social anthropology reference to Aborigines came 'for the in Britain, France and the Netherlands. record', listed alongside Chinese, Afghans Symbolic classjfactions were investigated and Indians as the country's 'full-blooded from China to Greece, in accordance with non-Europeans'. Conversely, generations of Aboriginal standards (Needham 1970, xxxi­ young Britons had their version of the ii), mission ciuilisatrtce enunciated in textbooks Elementary Forms examines 'the most that utilised the Empire's positive treatment primitive and simple religion which is ofAboriginal people as an index of us moral actually known'; simple in terms of straight­ superiority (Hartley 1992, 201·4; Stratton forward social organisation, and simple 1989, 133-4). Clearly, Aborigines were because it is sealed off from other forms of tesring grounds for Britain: to be cleared sacred life, unlike the leaky ecumenicism/ from their territories by colonial subjects conflict of European faiths. Durkheim bent on a project of nation-building via the defines his work as an attempt to explain an economical use of space and time, bur/and 'actual reality which is near to us, and which to be protected in 'hose territories by distant consequently is capable of affecting our governors dedicated to a project of empire­ ideas and our acts'. This 'reality is man, and building via {he moral management of those more precisely the man of toda y'. Aboriginal same coordinates. 'At home' (in Australia), ways of life are deemed 'better adapted than dealing brutally with the problem of the any other to lead to an understanding of the indigenous people became a meter of religious nature of man'. His choice is progress, of fitness for independence. 'Back determined by the promise that the home' (in Britain), showing clemency to premodern will enable him to 'find the Aboriginal people was a measure of common foundation of the religious life maturity, of fltness for world leadership. underneath the luxuriant vegetation' that Outside this specific imperial technology, overlays it in industrial society'S a complex dialectical play between heterogeneity and bizarre propensity for economics and government, Abortginaliry indlviduauon. Although "he lower religions' avant la lettre was critical for an are 'rudimentary and gross', that very fact understanding of the project of modernity. 'makes them instructive, for they thus Hegel regarded (black) Australians as become convenient for experiments' 0961, 'culturally inferior' and 'immature' even in 13, 17·8, 21). Across the political divide, the form oftheir geography 0988,163,162), Engels' theorisation of the origins of Durkheim's sociological classic The capitalist society draws heavily on Elementary Forms oftbe Religious Life, first comparative material that includes published in 1912, was based on Aboriginal Aboriginal tribes, whose legal system he material, specifically the Arunta people. This much admires 0978, 15-6, 46-51). is somewhat hidden in many English This unspollt terrain also provides translations, which leave our 'he subtitle, W material for the fin de steele Italian Systeme Totemtque en Australie (The Machiavellians, or elite theorists, such as Australtan System ofTo/ems) or render it as Mosca. His thesis of the inevitability of A Study in Religious Society. Durkheim's oligarchy draws on anthropological reports armchair account of totemisrn and the basis of Aboriginal life to stress not so much of religious forms of life remained the evolutionary superiorlry as the power of standard account of the phenomenon for imported knowledges, technologies, years. His explanation of how the social diseases and warfare to displace prior world of ritual imposes obligations on irs modes of production. This is the liberal side members towards venerated objects was to Mosca that seeks to counter notions of fundamental to theorising the strange innate white rule by reference [0 the relationship enacted between Christians and historical specifics of white domination the first day of the week, and then on to 0939,21-3). For Parsons, on the other hand, understanding Inrersublecnvlry in general there is a clear heuristic pleasure in equating terms (Radcliffe-Brown 1976, 123, 130). Aboriginal Australia with primitive forms of Durkheim's earlier work with Mauss (1970), social organisation, because of its economic also based on 'the Australians', established simplicity and kinship affinities. These agendas for theorisation and fieldwork in qualities make 'Australian society'

No 76- May 1995 9 Exporting Trulh from Aboriginal Australia undifferentiated, a sin for high-priests of the modernity to its unsteady successor. modern but also a useful measure of rheir Consider these four sites: own evolutionary narcissism 0966, 35-6, • Philip Kaufman's The Rigbl Stuff (983) 41). includes two spectacular encounters And for linguists and anthropologists between NASA astronauts and tribal across the world, 'Australians' has conrinued Australians. The first is a complex (0 signify black, not white,life (Dixon 1980). discussion over the relative merits of So when Radcliffe-Brown delivers the Henry Aboriginal and North American guidance Myers lecture to the Royal Anthropological systems; the second, a mysric momenr of Institute in 1945 on 'Religion and Society', salvation for Ed Harris's troubled capsule his discussion of rribal kinship is glossed as courtesy of the smoke from an Aboriginal an account of 'Australian society'. There is a ceremony. dual significance in this seemingly • Tracey Moffatt's films draw applause from unorthodox alignment of signifier and feminist theorists EAnn Kaplan (989) and signified. Firstly, Radcliffe-Brown is drawing Patricia Mellencamp, notably in the latter's conclusions about the structural homology brilliant, redemptive reclamation of the and aetiological intersection of the two avant-garde and history for women concepts in his tide. They are thought to directors of colour 0993-94). offer models for seeing 'religions in action' • Wim Wender's Until tbe End oftbe World elsewhere 0976, 169). In the process, (992) returns us to the pre-Psy<::bo days of differences between Aboriginal groups are Hollywood horror via a mad scientist who erased (Stratton 1989, 134-35). Secondly, is assisted by Aboriginal technicians in his and this is an implicit point, 'Australia' is of efforts to visualise dreams (ie black imerest insofar as it signifies 'Aboriginal'. Australian cosmology made palatable for The country's status as a white settler colony media mavens). promises little if anything for rhe domain of .At New York's Asia Sociery in 1988, Billy social theory. Once 'Australians' are white, Stockman and Michael Nelson of the they are truly uninteresting. Papunya Tula Arts cooperative construct a The disarticulation of the sign from irs 'sandpainung'. The Asia Society ships in referent undergoes a fascinating three tons of sand from Long Island to rearticulation in Australian sociology. assist in the production of central Desert Introductory texts for undergraduates often mimesis. But Stockman and Nelson prefer comprise valuable discussions of Aboriginal to paint on the masonite floor (Which is social conditions. But their theory sections nice and red) because rhe watered sand continue to be exegeses and distillations of does not develop the surface they are European social thought, minus the accustomed to working with. originary Context. In short, theorists of Nevertheless, the men consent to use the modemiry who relied on exported accounts introduced materials when admonished of Aboriginal life to undergird their work are by Asia Society officials that 'we imported to Australia sans their anchor. So it advertised sandpainring' (Myers 1994, becomes possible for Donald Edgar in 679-80, 690). Introduction 10 Australian Society to And black Australians signify something reference Durkheirn's Elementary as a Forms important in recent self-help technologies as means of knowing 'the emotional bonds to well. Consider rhe work of Marlo Morgan. which we attach moral ideals'. There is no She went to Australia because the US health indication that this book was grounded in system was not supporting her work for Aboriginal society. In fact, Edgar's exemplar 'weI/ness'. The immensely successful book of how contemporary Australian readers might detailing her experiences there with test Durkheim's seemingly transcendental Aboriginal people (23 weeks on the New finding is seeing what happens ifthese proto­ York Times Book Review best sellers' list in sociologists 'refuse ro stand up for God Save 1994-95) and its accompanying videotape the Queen' ()980, 94-5). Mutant Message Doumunder (993) are very enlightening; and I choose that word With careful abandon. For Morgan is a rruly redemptive, American soul. She reaches deep into the rich lode of Protestant desire

fO Media Information Australia Toby Miller and denial to mock her own secularity and my guts ... who was I really?' Such self­ pomp, leavening it with a primitivist examination is essential because of the spiritualism that can then be peddled on Aborigines' experience with meddling retreats for the terminally anxious (who are ministrations from Christians. Then she is also terminally affluent) at the 'Survival invited on a 'walkabout ... across Australia' Centre', where her reminiscences and (this is illustrated on the video by a sign prescriptions from Australia were recorded reading 'WARNING NOTHING AVAILABLE on tape. Tne video slick logos promoting her NEXT 1000 KILOMETRES'). Morgan explains company nave outline maps of Australia and that she cannot go because of bills and the USsuperimposed on one another and a governments and foreignness. But she is black kangaroo nestled against (one out of) then told she has been chosen: she needs cross-sections of teeth, buttes from John this experience if she is to develop as a Ford's Stagecoach (939) drive through person. On the walk, her feet are grievously Monument Valley, or perhaps the upper injured. BUI she pUIS up with bleeding, reaches of a cactus. The slick also indicates blisters, and intense heat. Now in the middle that although Morgan's 'education spans of a grand process of renewal, Morgan four continents and includes multiple transcends pain, 'walking around on these degrees' she encountered 'her most valuable stubs you're borrowing. They aren't really reachers not at the universities and clinics yours'. Fourteen hundred miles are covered but instead the primitive, illiterate Australian in four months: 'They unwound everything I Aborigine bush people of the wild outback stood for ... There isn't anything in me thar is desert'. She is recorded in a single-camera the same as it was then ... I don't eat the set-up in a medium shot that sometimes same, I don't look rhe same'. Each morning zooms uncertainly in to medium close-up: in rhe desert 'I would look our. And there's redolent of stand-up comedy or, perhaps, nothing out there. Really nothing', But given the narrative that unfolds, JMarried a blacks are excited about each day and what Monster from Outer Space (Gene Fowler Jr, to do. For them, 'every day is a wonderful 1958). day'. As they get up each morning, Morgan removes her watch at the Aboriginal people in the desert stand 'like a commencement of the video-lecture in satellite dish' and speak 'to the world': order to mimic Aboriginal time, undertakes persona nul/ius at work in terra nul/ius. to dig a hole in the stage to create a 'potty', She learns that 'You are not your body', an and then offers the following about going to insight that leads to loud applause from the Australia: 'I gave away everything I had and Cartesians in her 'Survival Centre' audience. left Kansas'. It was her first time as an adult 'You only have a body.... Let your self get mat she had not possessed the key to a door. out of the way'. Ego disappears. In the After initial inner-city encounters she process, Morgan learns from her categorises urban Aborigines as alcoholics. companions that all people have all talents White AUStralians respond to her critiques of and that it is 'very important to live in their neglect by saying 'Abos' do nor have a harmony with the universe'. No pollution European sense of lime, will not learn to has ever been caused by Aborigines, nor any read and write, and go 'walkabout', making environmental hazards. All materials that them unemployable. Marlo mocks her own they use 'can go back to the earth'. For these condescension as a person claiming to are non-judgmental, non-hierarchical understand life, money, and the self. Such people. Disputes are resolved by putting a notions are 'pretty asinine'. But the company person physically in the place of her succeeds and she feels very proud. adversary (a nice tribal instance of Gestalt When she meets tribal Aborigines, Morgan psychology and ideal communicative is required to undergo a huge rationality). Aborigines are 'like wonderful, transformation. They offer her 'a big rag ... wonderful children', bUI 'wise' as well. This and it was well-used' in order that she can be wisdom is contrasted with her own folly.She 'cleansed' by wearing no underclothing. As is a 'mutant' (their term for white people part of her initiation into Aboriginal ways, who do not eat naturally occurring food, she is made 'filthy'. She is undergoing have allergies to nature, and suffer mental 'testing' to go beyond behaviour and looks, illness). Unlike the mutants, tribal people to question 'in the very moral of my bones in routinely live ro 110. These remarkable

No 76- May 1995 11 Exporting Truth from Aboriginal Australia actuarial findings arise because Aborigines and postindustrial society as per the 'have avoided the Australian governmenr romanticism of Hegel and Marx (Miller D totally'. At this point. the tape cuts to a 1987). Looking back on the difflculries of graphic of black birds in flight, then back to unlversallslng about 'man' from a base in Morgan: 'J now see ... like an Aborigine'. ethnographic reportage, Geertz wonders And whereas '[he mutant response' to, for whether we can 'grasp him' via 'those example, a child's nightmares may be denial fantastic Australian marriage rituals'. (I of the dream's reality, the Aboriginal (and presume he is not referring to the late post-mutant) reaction is (Q get metaphysical Senator Murphy's legacy of the Family Law about it. Act.) In sync with the new particularism of Prayer is said for her 'on the day thar I was the postmodem, but still in the thrall of the released to go back TO my society'. But she is generality of classical theory, Geenz now thoroughly primordialised and has suggests that 'the cultural particularities of even 'developed a hoof' on the bottom of people - in their oddities' may reveal the her foot. Morgan 'felt beautiful' until she saw best possible trace 'of what ic is to be herself in the window of a store, 'at the level generically human'. In a notorious phrase, of a beggar'. Previously critical of street he avows: 'Every man has a right to create people begging, she now understands. The his own savage for his own purposes' 0973, prayer of departure had talked about 43, 347). And the new uptake of Mauss as a changing the mutants: 'they seem to scion of anti-depth perforrnativitv in his understand truth, but it'S buried'. The chief account of infinitely disposable masks of/as criticism of such figures is their the self shows little direct engagement wirh ephemerality. The Aborigines said of her, the Aboriginal ideas on personhood that are 'We have selected this mutant as our critical to his position (Mauss 1993, 12, for messenger', a bird 'to tell the world that the recent rediscovery, see Carrithers et aI1993). real people are leaving'. Her arms are This tendency for outsiders to find the upraised at this point, perhaps in praise to modern and the posrrnodern in black her publishing house. Australia, with white Australians proceeding What is going on here? to follow their theoretical lead minus its A projection back to Eden was integral to empirical underpinning, reaches its apogee the longing of the modem to know itself in the second half of my titular faux through a differentiation from the 'primitive'. quotation, with Jean Baudrillard's Put another way, the use of Aboriginal life to identification of 'rhe southern lands, where illustrate the teleological motion endorsing only the melancholy light of origin shines'. advanced industrial societies also contained He nominates 'Australia' as 'a kind of its share of melancholic nostalgia for spaceship' on an other-worldly orbit. Like a simpliciry. With the shift to the postmodern, true Hollywood NASA-man or 'Survival this idealisation reestablishes the citabiliry of Centre' graduate, Baudrillard manages to 'Australia', as we can see in the work of Levi­ connect 'the telepathic ecosystem of the Strauss. He regards 'the Australians' as Aborigines' with our 'hypermodern, 'backward on the economic level', but 'so far hyperreal future' (1990, 161, 164). ahead of the rest of humanity' in terms of For its pan, cultural studies' relentless harmonious social relationships that the quest for new l'ields to conquer helps in this complexity of their organisation can only be colonisation of Aboriginal life; with a comprehended via 'modern mathematics'. different intellectual agenda from modern The ties of marriage bonds and their social theory and psy-discourse, but using associated theorisation as law embody remarkably similar methods. The mammoth successful life management and represent (600-page) new book Cultural Politics the first speculations over what this entails represents a major play by Basil Blackwell to (Levi-Strauss 1983, 343). produce an undergraduate-style text that Similarly, Warlpiri art becomes a central uses cultural studies to explore non-media strut in Daniel Miller's reclamation of arts. Significantly for my purposes here, material culture as an inevitable form of authors Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon go objecrification, rather than something that is looking for {heir subtitle - Class, Gender, part of an alienating decline into industrial Race and tbe Postmodern World - from a base in Wales chat allows them to write

12 Media Information Australia TobV Miller about the rest of us. Specifically, their ethnography, one that essays a demonisation of 'the white middle class comprehensive engagement with an overall ethnographer' (never named or engaged way of life. Anthropology is fallen under the with) and their appropriation of Aboriginal metacrirical spell cast by textual analysis, literature (never considered in terms of its and the area's distributional lodestone - US theoretical/critical apparatus, just read from publishing - increasingly seeks cross­ Glamorgan) underwrites attempts to find out disciplinary sales fields combined with about the overall nature of 'CULTURE, American subject matter. We can see the POWER and SUBJECTIVITY' 0995, 490, intersection of these tendencies in the form 498). of two recent books by major North And they are not alone. Consider the American scholars: Fred Myers' Pintupt Modern Language Association, a US-based Country, Pintupi Self (1991) and Eric organisation of 32,000 litterateurs - what a Michaels' Bad Aboriginal Art (1994). The thought that is. Its flagship journal, PMLA, contrasts and connections between these recently published a theme issue on two books serve to summarise and 'Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition' exemplify what I have been trying to say dedicated to foregrounding the relationship throughout this article. of criticism to the self and its other. The Ptntupi Country may well be one of the introductory essay is illustrated with the last grand-scale ethnographic accounts of British theorist and photographer Vietor tribal Australia. Much has already been Burgin's 'double image ofAustralia's history' documented, and few groups continue from the invasion bicentenary. His Untitled hunting and gathering as a form of life. As I is comprised of two adjacent squares. One indicated above, intellectual fashion decrees has a white backdrop with a map of the need for self-reflexivity, autocritlque, Australia, coloured black, and '1788' in black and a new kind of fieldwork (time spent type. The other is a reverse print, with '1988' over the word-processor and the mirror). in white type (Hutcheon 1995,8). Here, the This is not to say that Myers' work is out of postcolonial is sharpening the politicised time (consider the feminist uptake by project of contemporary cultural critics, Weiner 1992, 98-130). It is very careful to simultaneously decentnng imperialism in theorise the self, both the one who writes favour of peripheral sites and focusing on and those who are written about. As well as how the" Western core has defined itself this, Myers overtly imports and refines social logocencrically via the otherness of colour. theory in the context of what he encounters, This tendency extends into a love of the acknowledging the uniqueness and the counter-indicative, evidenced by seemingly ordinariness of life in the desert. He refers to endless secondary references to the non­ 'Pintupi political theory', a memorable victim status of Aboriginal viewers of phrase indeed. (If you look at white television, such as the beliefs of young Australian works of 'political theory', audience members that African-American Aboriginal materials are sparse indeed, even situation comedy actors are Aboriginal, or when 'the primitive' is troped [Condren the fact that tribal communities interpret 1985; Miller JDB 1967,1981; for primitivism, Hollywood films on video against the grain see Bull 1977, 59-60).) Myers talks very (originally reported in Hodge & Tripp 1986, pointedly about how Pintupi theory 138-42, and Michaels 1994, 81-95; cited in excludes communicative ethics: political Fiske 1988, 316, 320; Fiske 1989, 57, 137, culture takes a neo-Wittgensteinian form 166; Fiske 1993, 128; Hay 1992, 361). that projects each experience into a Similarly, Sean Cubitt's readership in forthcoming posslbiliry, where precedent is Liverpool enables him to herald 'Warlpiri all, but is itself known through an experirnents with television in Western intersection with the moment at hand (1991, Australia' as 'Third Video', dedicated to 284-5). resistive communication via an intense Despite this careful work, his efforts drew localism that demonstrates the anomie, intense obloquy from Michaels (1987a, falsely individual address of 'Western lV' 1987b) in a multiply published review 0993, 173). article. This led to a point-by-point Another sign of the postrnodern: it's hard refutation (Myers 1987). That intellectual now to produce the old form of classic history is left untraced, however, with the

No 76 - May 1995 13 Exporting Truth from Aboriginal Australia latest reprint of 'If 'All Anthropologists Are instance of First World adventurism played Liars...', in Bad Aboriginal Art. The essay out on Aboriginal theory can there be than provides Dick Hebdige, of Valencia, an American anthropologist decreeing 'The California, by way of Birmingham and other Aboriginal Invention of Television'? The British centres, with a take-off point for latest (fifth) edition of Horace Newcomb's distinguishing Michaels' work from now-standard US textbook of readings on conventional social and cultural theory, with television is in some sense bound together Myers as his bad object. Hebdige finds 'a by Michaels' account of Central Australia, comprehensive critical agenda for cross­ even though the volume is remorselessly cultural communications research in the focused on the United States through 1990s' in the Michaels book (Hebdige 1994, exciting analyses of Rosanne, Northern x), This is not surprising; it is one more stage Exposure, Married with Children, and so on. in a lengthy history of First World people Newcomb's introduction claims that the writing about tribal Aboriginal forms of life Yuendumu community'S encounter with and then exporting this back home, with a television 'encompasses and capsulises [a subsequent elevation of status for splendid Americanism) every issue touched themselves and a renewal of critique for on in this collection'. Now Newcomb's academic theorlsarion. What surprises, project is essentially a North American brand given his own activities in this domain, is of left Leavisisrn, dedicated to 'the making of Hebdige's amnesia about systems of thought critics'. Michaels' essay is suited to this and forms of academic translation. project because it models the intrication of Committed to repeat a well-established past, 'the aesthetic and ideological, the cultural he welcomes the fact that Michaels' Warlpiri and social, the context of home and the fieldwork surpasses 'the status of a case context of nation, the application of study', which would amount (0 'a practical politics' (Newcomb 1994, 12-3). In diminution'. Instead of some 'poignant short, Michaels is replaying Durkheirn's footnote in the triumphalist history of findings on the essence of religion and social capitalist development and/or cultural life, this time transcending spiralling imperialism', Bad Aboriginal Art smokestacks and anomie loss of communiry demonstrates 'the general pertinence of to reveal the nature of television (not Aboriginal appropriation and adaptation society) to those living in the First World. strategies for anyone interested in And more than that, Michaels' deeply developing alternative models of TV moralistic stances model perfectly production, distribution, and reception'. Not Newcomb's claim that it is [he responsibility surprisingly, this heroisation tropes [he of critics [0 perform ethical exercises as part postmodern in its endorsement of self­ of their vocation to aesthetlcise from self­ reflexivity; specifically, 'the final coup de decreed vantage points on the cusp between grace' that Hebdige claims is delivered to the modern and its post (1994, 502). Myers' work for failing to meet this test of Bur, of course, Michaels represents a small cultural studies narcissism (Hebdige 1994, part of the very rich terrain of production xiii-xiv, xviii, xxiii-xxiv). This is, again, an work in the area, panicularly by comparison astonishing claim, given the pains that Myers with Neil Turner, Anmanari Nyaningu, and goes to in Pintupi Country to theorise his - Pitjantjatjara EVTV at Ernabella, or the own position. But it is the same kind of error achievements in the firsr days of CAAMA that armchair citarional practices routinely (Turner N 1990; Batty 1993a, 1993b; produce, and it matches the slide of the O'Regan 1993). Perhaps the most irnportant signifier that erased Aboriginality from the academic contribution to the export of these sources of modern social theory, precisely by ideas and practices comes from Faye negating the specificity of 'case studies'. Ginsburg's synthesis of Australian Postmodern cultural theory brings itself into Aboriginal media experiences and theories being via the very strategies that it claims to with those of other FirstPeoples (] 989, 1991, deplore. 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b). As she says, Mention of Michaels inevitably leads us to 'Aboriginal media has triggered interest his much-vaunted production work with the worldwide for indigenous groups that have Warlpiri people, and Francis )upurrurla in formed alliances around the production of particular, on indigenous media. What better their own media'. At the same time,

14 Meclia Information Australia Toby Miller

Westerners are 'fascinated by the seeming Westerners', He uses it as a conceit to pose disjunction of Aboriginal people ­ the questions that inform the remainder of stereotypically identified by their relatively his book: the dangers of foreign relevision, simple material culrure and distincrly non­ the impossibility of knowing what Western cosmology - working comfortably audiences make of texts, and the threats wirh the latest in satellite and video posed by cultural imports to indigenous technologies' (1993b, 92). Her work has culture; in short, dealing with the risks and helped ro bring ro international prominence promises of globallsed modernity. the ABC's Aboriginal Programs Unit. But We are reminded here of the provocation beyond that, it is significam that Philip Barry that EE Evans-Pritchard made about and Freda Glynn were joim recipients in sociologists who perused Ausrralian 1993 of Canada's prestigious McLuhan ethnographies for an understanding of medal and C$50,OOO prize for contributions modern life's other: 'rhe theoretical capiral to intemanonal media, in recognition of on which anthropologists today live is their work with Imparja Television. This is mainly the writings of people whose far more than an academic phenomenon: research was almost entirely literary' Aboriginal TV has generaled fearure articles (quoted in Needham 1970, xl), This is not in Rolling Stone and the former New Society the best way ro be. Returning to Hanley's (Ginsburg 1993a, 562). argument about rhe destrucrion of Al a theorencal level, Ginsburg's analysis Aboriginal people as a means of has also helped to situate Aboriginal differentiating colonial 'Australians' from dilemmas over the media in a way that their British betters, we can now see a connecrs with other fourth World issues and contrapuntal deployment of this troubled the very nature of the means and mode of national sign. lf the modern in Australia was communication in this fin de steele moment. announced by genocidal conduct - even as She suggests that indigenous media have it was being defined elsewhere in relation to been (mtsnmderstood in two ways: as a the victims of that behaviour - then the compromise of traditional custom in the face posrmodern finds a new national maruriry of electronic communication that pollutes declared by Paul Kearing through a former ways of life, and as the promise of supposed reconciliation with First People transcendence/renewal through utopian (Tyler 1994, 5-6). Costs as well as boons will contact over the ether wirh like-minded flow if we forget what rhis repetltlon others (Ginsburg 1993a, 560-61). Something involves. similar seems to be happening with rhe idealisarion by world environment REFERENCES movements of Aboriginal life and its Bauy, Philip, 1993a, 'Singing the Electric: Arcadian harmonies (Turner B 1986, 90-91). Aboriginal Television in Australia', in There is little room to develop these Channels oj Resistance: Global Television points further here. Clearly, a fine line has to and Local Empowerment, e d Tony be walked in engaging 'Australia' from Dowrnunt, BFI, London. elsewhere, between a sloppy appropriation --, 1993b, 'Who Told You We Wanted to that wilfully loosens the sign from its Make Our Own "TV? The Broadcasting in referent in the form of a continuing process Remote Aboriginal Communiries Scheme of logocentric white projection, and the and the Failure of Policy', Artllnk, 13, 1, 22· desire to give some extraordinary political, 24. theoretical, and aesthetic developments in Baudrillard, Jean, 1990, Cool Memories, trans First People's media their due significance. Chris Turner, Verso, London. In closing, we might exemplify this Benedict, Ruth, 1959, Pal/ems 0/ Culture, awkward oscillation by turning to that Houghton Mifflin, Boston. strangely esteemed text, John Tomlinson's Bull, Hedley, 1977, The Anarchical Society: A CuituralImpertaitsm (1991). Its fronuspiece, Study ofOrder in World Polltlcs, Macmillan, an image of Aboriginal people sitting London. outside a house watching TV, provides the ur·moment for Tomlinson. The photograph Carrithers, Michael, Collins, Steven & Lukes, Steven, eds, 1993, Tbe Category oj the 'immediately strikes an exotic note', because Person: Anthropology, Pbilosopby, History, 'Itlhese people are obvtously nor Cambridge UP, Cambridge.

No76- May 1995 15 Exporting Truth from Aborigil\8l Australia

Condren. Conal, 1985, 'Political Theory', in --, 1994b, 'Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Suroeys of Australian Politlca! Science, ed Discursive Space for Indigenous Media', Don Aitkin, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Cultural Anthropology, 9, 3, 365-82. Cubitt, Sean, 1993, Videograpby: Video Media Grossberg, Lawrence, 1994, 'Introduction: as Art and Culture, St Martin'S Press, New Bringin' It All Back Home - Pedagogy and York. Cultural Studies', in Between Borders: Dixon, RMW, 1980, The Languages of Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Australia, Cambridge UP, Cambridge. Studies, eds Henry A Giroux & Peter Mclaren, Routledge, New York. Durkheim, Emile, 1961, TheElementary Forms ojReligious Life, trans Joseph Ward Swain, Hanley, John, 1992, The Politics of Pictures: Collier, New York. The Creation of the Public in the Age of Popular Media, Routledge, London. --, & Mauss, Marcel, 1970, Primitive Classification, trans & ed Rodney Needham, Hay, James, 1992, 'Afterword', in Channels of Cohen & West, London. Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism, ed Roben CAllen, Edgar, Donald, 1980, Introduction to 2nd ed, University of North Carolina Press, Australian Society: A Sociological Chapel Hill. Perspective, Prentice Hall, Sydney. Hebdige, Dick, 1994, 'Foreword', in Bad Engels, Frederick, 1978, The Origin of the Aboriginal An, Eric Michaels, University of Family, Private Property and the State in Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Connection with the Researches ofLewis H Morgan. Foreign languages Press, Peking. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1988, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Fiske, John, 1988, Television Culture, Introduction: Reason in History, trans HB Routledge, London. Nisbet, Cambridge UP, Cambridge. --, 1989, Understanding Popular Culture, Hodge. Bob, & Tripp, David, 1986, Children Unwin Hyman, Boston. and Television, Polity Press, Cambridge. --, 1993. Power Plays, Power Works, Verso, Hutcheon, Linda, 1995, 'Introduction: London. Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition: Fournier, Marcel, 1993, 'Marcel Mauss ou Ie Complexities Abounding', PMLA, no, 1, 7­ Don de Sol', Archives Europeennes de 16. Soc iologie, 24, 2, 325-}8. Jordan, Glenn & Weedon, Chris, 1995, Cultural Freud, Sigmund, 1946, Totem and Taboo: Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Postmodern, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Savages and Neurotics, trans AA Brill, Kaplan. E Ann, 1989, 'Aborigines, Film and Vintage Books, New York. Moffatt's Night Cries- A Rural Tragedy. An Geertz, Clifford, 1973, The Interpretation of Outsider's Perspective', Bulletin cftbe Olive Cultures: Selected Essays, Basic Books, New Pink Society, I, 2, 13-17. York. Levi-Strauss, Cia ude, 1983, St uctural Ginsburg, Faye, 1989, 'In Whose Image? Anthropology, Volume II, trans Monlque Indigenous Media from Aboriginal Central Layton, University of Chicago Press, Ausrra lia ', Commission for Visual Chicago. Anthropology Review, 16-20. Mcinerney, Jay, 1986, Brigbt lights, Big City, --, 1991, 'Indigenous Media: Faustian Fontana, London. Contract or Global Village?', Cultural --, 1987. Ransom, Fontana, london. Anthropology, 6, 1, 92-112, --, 1989, Story ofMy Life, Penguin, london. --, 1993a, 'Aboriginal Media and [he Australian Imaginary', Public Culture, 5. 3, --, 1992, Brightness Falls, Bloomsbury, 557-78. London. --, 1993b, 'Station Identification: The Mauss, Marcel, 1993, 'A Category of the Human Aboriginal Programs Unit of the Australian Mind: the Norion of Person; the Notion of Broadcasting Corporation', Visual Self', trans WD Halls, in The Category ofthe Anthropology Review, 9, 2, 92-97. Person, Carrithers et al, eds, Cambridge UP, Cambridge. --, 1994a, 'Culture/Media', Anthropology Today, to, 2, 5-15. Mellencamp, Patricia, 1993-94, 'Haunted History: Tracey Moffatt and Julie Dash', Discourse, 16, 2, 127-63.

t6 Media Information Australia Toby Miller

Michaels, Eric, 1987a, 'Review of Fred Myers, Newcomb, Horace, ed, 1994a, Television: The Pintupi Culture, Pintupi Self', Canberra Critical View, 5th ed,Oxford UP, New York. Anthropology, 10, 1, 44-62. O'Regan, Tom, 1993, Australian Television --, 1987b, 'The Last of the Nomads, the Last Culture, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. of the Ethnographies or 'All Anthropologists Parsons, Talcott, 1966, Societies: Evolutionary Are Liars': A Review of Fred Myers, Pintupi and Comparattue Perspectives, Prentice­ Country. Ptntup! Se/.f. Mankind, 17, I, 34­ Hall, Englewood Cliffs. 46. Radcllffe-Brown, AR, 1976, Structure and --, 1994, Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Function In Primitiue Society: Essays and Media, and Tecbnological Horizons, Addresses, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis. Stratton, jon, 1989, 'A Question of Origins', Miller, Daniel, 1987, Material Culturea nd Mass Arena, 89, 133-51. Consumption, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Tomlinson, john, 1991, Cuttural lmperialism: Miller, JOB, 1967, The Nature of Politics, A Critical Introduction, PinIer Publishers, Penguin, Harmondsworrh. London. --, 1981, The World of States: Connected Turner, Bryan, 1986, Citizenship and Essays, Croom Helm, London. Capitalism: The Debate Over Reformism. Miller, Toby, 1994, 'When Australia Became Allen & Unwin, London. Modem', Continuum, 8, 2, 206·14. Turner, Graerne, ed, 1993, Nation, Culture, Mosca, Gaetano, 1939, The Ruling Class, trans Text: Australian CulturalandMedia Studies, Hannah 0 Kahn, rev & ed Arthur Livingston, Routledge, London. McGraw-Hill, New York. Turner, Neil, 1990, 'Pitchat and Beyond', Muecke, Stephen, 1992, Textual Spaces: Artline, 10, 1·2, 4}-45. Aboriginatity and Cultural Studies, Tyler, William, 1994, 'Crosslines: Aboriginality, University of New South Wales Press, Postmodernity and the Australian Stale', Sydney. Humanity and Society, 18, 1,4-21. Myers, Fred R, 1987, 'Representing Whom? Weiner, Annette B, 1992, Inalienable Privilege, Position, and Posturing" Canberra Possessions: The Paradox ofKeeping-While­ Anthropology, 10, 1.62-73. Giving, Universiry of California Press, --, 1991, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Selj Berkeley. Sentiment, Place. and Polttics Among Western Desert Aborigines, University of California Press, Berkeley. --, 1994, 'Culture-Making: Performing Toby Miller Is an Assistant Professor ofCinema Aboriginaliry at the Asia Society Gallery', Studies at New York University. Hispublications American Ethnologist, 21, 4, 679-99. include The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Cuhore, and the Postmodern Subject (Tbefohn Needham, Rodney, 1970, 'Introduction', in Hopkins UP, 1993) and (with Stuart Prlm/live Classification, Ourkheim & Mauss, Cunningham) Contemporary Australian Cohen & West, London. Television (UNSW Press, 1994).

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