archive : s0metim3s

From Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas, by Gillian Cowlishaw, in the chapter titled “Enjoying Democracy”:

the paraphernalia of everyday life on a station was a compelling element in the pastoralists’ domination of their untutored workers; the mastery of pragmatic technology confirmed their grasp of the meaning of the world. It is technologies of governance, systems of political representation, of funding and accountability and practices known as democracy, which are now being taught with the same assumptions as were attached to farming technologies in an earlier time. These are the necessary tools for the Aboriginal people’s future, an invariant reality, a morally neutral common sense. Aborigines are now being enticed into exercising the same rights as whitefellas, rights which are supposed to ensure that we are all equal citizens.

Sharply ironic.

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.