Postscript and prelude
Metamute have an excellent article by Beth Povinelli on the ‘national emergency’, “Doing it for the Kids”. Here’s the piece I did for darkmatter, “The Materialisation of Race in Multiculture” (still forthcoming on their site).
Both of those turn around similar questions: of multiculturalism’s ostensible failure and what this precipitates, of the amplifications of the entrepreneurial subject (Beth’s focus) and (what interested me on this occasion) of the contract and notions of self-sufficient subjectivity (understandings of which are indebted to Beth’s previous writings).
But it seems necessary to focus at this juncture on the postcript to “Doing it for the Kids”, because these are the circumstances to be confronted, and they have to be confronted in the midst of a massive redeployment of affective economy around page-turnings, back-turnings, tears and healing.
This is the postscript:
On 26 November, the Howard government was soundly defeated in federal elections. In addition to losing the elections, Howard lost his parliamentary seat as did Mal Brough. The new Labor minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, has, however, refused to condemn the Howard Intervention. Instead she is investigating how the Intervention could be expanded to the other Australian states.
I’ll reiterate the background discussions, before getting onto that, because I promised I would write something additional on the ‘national emergency’ for V (and that postscript, yes, is the place to begin, again), and there’s a sense in which this urgently requires some connection to the specific terms of the state’s ‘apology’, lest we fall into a slumber.
To sharpen the point: there’s a reason why these discussions take as their theme and point of departure the question of multiculturalism’s failure. Because the question of this moment - as much postscript to a discussion of the ‘national emergency’ as it was prelude to it, and will be prelude to what comes - is whether one understand the elaboration of the exceptions as anomalies or concurrences, the unfolding of the actual terms of multiculturalism and its forms of recognition or some (thankfully temporary, if decade-long) aberration from it.
And how to wrap the questions of the ‘national emergency’, with its coincidences of mining, discipline and the apparent protection of children, with the ‘apology’ to the Stolen Generations, but also with questions of the transformation of work and borders more generally? Because without doing all of those things, my sense is that this discussion can be received as one about identity (an incitement to recognition, identity politics in other words) and not a critique of forms of affective identification, the constraint and deployment - as well as the differential temporalities of the life and death - of bodies.
So, the background notes and more:
The exasperated post at the time of the passing of the ‘national emergency’ legislation; ‘Ordinary Poverty and Sores’ (the talk given by Beth in Darwin late last year); the preliminary notes for the upcoming Sarai Reader on ‘Frontiers’ (themes of which unfolded out into the ‘failed states’ piece for metamute); the initial version of the intro to the darkmatter piece on multicult’s ‘failure’; Rebecca Stringer’s article “A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind” and some remarks.
And, very important was the whole discussion about (as influxus called it) normfare - see his post here.
(Back with the substantive post after lunch drinks, because I’ve been staring at this stuff for too long, and because there are no alcohol bans in London.)
Regarding yet another “failed state,” the recent response to the attempted killing of East Timur’s president Jose Ramos-Horta, an activist from the years of resistance against Indonasian occupation backed by the US and Australia:
Some are saying Timor is a failed state, that here the international community has been pouring all this money into Timor, and all they get out of it is chaos. I think those comments distort the situation.
…
But if you’re going to judge other states by that standard, you would have to say that, say, Australia or Indonesia or the US are much more of a failed state than Timor is, because those are countries that have been killing civilians overseas. Essentially— ”
(rest: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/15/east_timor_braces_for_potential_crisis)
and a thicker file on the 1991 mass killings in E. Timur by ndonasian forces, on the same website)
pomegranade [February 17, 2008 @ 2:38 am]
Whatever the merits of Povinelli’s article, a key assumption in her discussion of the nature of the NT Emergency Intervention revolves around her acceptance of a misinterpretation of CDEP. She claims that, “at the time of writing, the Government announced it would also abolish the Community Development Employment Programme on the grounds that income from it went to buying alcohol. This means that some 7,000 people, who currently do low-paid work keeping stores open and removing rubbish, will be declared
unemployed and expected to fulfil job search criteria, including perhaps having to move to areas where there is less unemployment. There is much, almost too much, that could be said about the derangement of liberalism that sees greater levels of impoverishment and suffering righteously tendered as the solution to already-unbearable levels of
destitution and anguish.”
The first problem with this description of what is/was happening with CDEP is that it is substantially out of whack with reality. Only a minority of the people being paid under CDEP were actually doing work. The majority were being paid to do nothing, or very little. Only a small minority were being paid to do things such as “keeping stores open.”
Secondly, “having to move to areas where there is less unemployment” is not prima facie evidence of discrimination, and, all things considered, for many people it would probably be a liberating experience.
But the most questionable of Povinelli’s assertions is the one which has it that the changes to CDEP will necessarily entail “greater levels of impoverishment and suffering”.
In the communities in which I work, the opposite has been the case. There has unquestionably been a significant shift of expenditure of welfare income away from grog/drugs/gambling and into food and the goods and services which sustain a reasonable existence, such as electricity, shelter, clothes and transport. This has been attested to by community leaders of both pro- and anti-Intervention persuasions, and also by the turn-over figures from the stores. I would suggest that we are clearly seeing less, not “greater”, levels of impoverishment and suffering.
Bob Durnan [February 17, 2008 @ 11:52 am]
Pom - I think the issues around Ramos-Horta and East Timor are more complicated than this. See the previous post. And those two political figures are notable for having split from Fretilin. I cannot say I am a fan.
Bob - the article you’re referring to is mine, not Beth’s.
I don’t care that there were some on CDEP who were not doing work. If they managed not to, more power to them. Work-for-the dole is not something I support, except insofar as it is possible to glean some additional income, though there was a sense in which it also functioned as a means of getting certain things done in remote communities that would not otherwise have happened. But, basically, it is a form of discipline, forced labour introduced, first for indig people, and then for all poor people. There’s some more on the history of CDEP here.
So, I’m critical, but not in the direction you are, obviously.
Secondly, having to move is not per se a problem of discrimination, perhaps. The principal issue is being compelled to move away from existing support networks, the removal of people from land so that it can be made available for more ‘productive’ uses, like mining and tourism.
And I doubt that moving to larger population centres is going to mean moving away from drugs, etc.
I’m no communitarian, but nor do I think the apparently free-floating, self-sufficient individual is what liberation means.
And there are those who are telling a very different story than you about the effects here. Here’s one.
s0metim3s [February 17, 2008 @ 3:29 pm]
The sense I got is that people are opposed to the intervention because it is humiliating, it takes away what minimal power they had, treats them like…well, you know what it treats them like. But people weren’t particularly happy about the situation before.
The permit system is probably the most agravating thing right now. This is the sort of thing that will backfire in the long term, I think. Sure, you get people to spend less on grog - great. That’s a very serious problem, people shouldn’t be blase’about it. But if you fix it by a system of discrimination and permits, that’s not likely to change people’s attitudes. It makes them more, not less dependent on the state. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen when the permit system is done away with.
It is amusing how this whole intervention is justified in terms of the Aborigines being so dependent - here, you’re dependent? sure, we’ll send in the army to make sure you look after your chidlren well. It would be a funny joke, except it isn’t.
The whole idea, though, of sitting there doing nothing forever collecting cheques - I don’t know, this is bad news. It doesn’t help you. It’s actually crushing, boring, people get desperate. The whole idea of work for the dole where you make people even more dependent and powerless by forcing them to work is awful, but people ought to be offered opportunities to develop themselves. They sure ask for them, all the time. It can be very hard to come up with those all by yourself, sittingin some station in the middle of the scrub. It’s hard to see this if you are a capable writer, live in a city full of fun and aggravating things, have a lot of skills (learned at a university, or through activism), work is just something that gets in the way and so on… Like, gainful unemployment for you and I is something very different from depressing, spirit-sapping unemployment for the mob.
TCO [February 19, 2008 @ 2:22 am]
hi ange, thanks the great posts, dont forget ben’s writing on the intervention / emergency and maybe some of the links at http://del.icio.us/dr.woooo/indigenous
life admin, has been getting on top of me, ( capital has been getting on top of my life more than usual or something… and the blog will come, but maybe not for a little bit )
vaughan
dr.woooo [February 19, 2008 @ 2:29 am]
Vaughan - don’t thank me. I worry that there is so little about that’s interesting, challenging, and so little from so few people.
Thiago - I’m not unfamiliar with lumpen boredom, though not felt it myself much. True, I have an almost infinite capacity to not be bored, and this comes from having certain skills. But there is a connection, obligation that runs between being a little bit articulate and finding ways to talk about these exercises in humiliation, paternalism.
But boredom, the crushing boredom you’re referring to, comes from the headfuck that this oscillation between injunctions to bourgeois self-sufficiency and the persistent threat (and reality) of coercion produce for everyone who, materially, is not bourgeois and so cannot pretend self-sufficiency because it’s not in their wallet, or cannot be put on their credit card.
s0metim3s [February 19, 2008 @ 3:43 am]