A tale of two slaves

Recent time spent in Chile has prompted some thoughts about its position in relation to Australia. So what does it mean that Australia speaks the same language as the masters of globalisation, England and USA? Does this give Australia a privileged status in the South, or prevent it recognising its shared marginality with countries like Argentina or Chile?

One way of thinking about this is to imagine the scenario of two slaves:

There were two slaves, John and Juan. John is the descendent of a local family who had been slaves for many generations. Juan was captured during a raid on a foreign country and purchased in a local slave market.

While John and Juan were both equally good with their hands, they were quite different in important ways. Juan was by far the more handsome of the two. Having once been a freeman, Latin slave had elegant manners and style. However, Juan still had trouble understanding English and always felt a foreigner. Being an Englishman himself, John was much more confident, despite his crude manners.

Their master, Mr Bull, was a merchant with a thriving business selling and buying spices from overseas colonies. He was blessed with a beautiful daughter, Mary, who was the object of devotion by many young men in the town. Mr Bull and his daughter were callous towards their two slaves. They enjoyed throwing them bones at mealtime and laughed heartily as John and Juan scrambled after the scraps of food.

Both John and Juan were captivated by the beauty of the daughter. John even fantasised that one day he would be freed and could marry Mary. Any attention from Mary, even if was abusive, was taken as a sign of affection by John. ‘Get me a bag of cinnamon, boy’ she would shout, and he would feel honoured to be singled out for this important mission.

For Juan it was a different story. While he could well appreciate the beauty of Mary, he had no delusions that a day would come when he could ever win her heart, or gain acceptance in the Bull family. He knew he didn’t belong. Instead, he would content himself with the occasional small theft of food or wine. Sometimes he would be caught and whipped harshly. But he grew more clever and deceitful.

So the two slaves sit together in the evening, chewing on what bones were left for them. John says, ‘Hey Juan, you dirty Latin thief, pity you’re not smart enough to respect the ways of the Bulls and avoid the lash.’ Juan knew enough English to understand the meaning of these words. But rather than answer directly, he would dwell in his resentment, ‘You think you’re so special, being English. But in the end, we’re both scum in the eyes of the Bulls. At least I can see that.’

So John and Juan endure their bondage, divided from each other as much as from their masters. It’s a shame. Perhaps if they worked together they could collaborate on an escape—John’s understanding of the master tongue combined with Juan’s guile.

Can Matilda learn to tango?

Tale of two cities

	In New South Wales, commuters are being asked to imagine a 'Euro-style Metro' as the future horizon for Sydney's troubled transport system. 'Euro' here signifies a system which is slick, clean, efficient.
	While in Melbourne, The Age newspaper tried to publicise the transport woes with the image of the new train system in Delhi, India. It says:

AS MELBOURNE tinkers with its largely pre-World War II public transport system and puts up with congested roads, commuters in the Indian capital, New Delhi, are revelling in a state-of-the-art Metro

So what's it going to be? Euro or Indian? While Euro might be more familiar, I think there's more to learn on the train to Delhi.

Octave Mannoni

Octave Mannoni was a Lacanian psychoanalyst who used his experience in Madagascar to comment in the psychological experience of colonisation. His views are widely discredited as ill-informed and chauvinist. However, his prognostication about the future non-indigenous peoples in the South is worth a sober glance:

...it would not be over-bold to foresee in the distant future the development of a new kind of white or near-white humanity over almost the whole of the southern hemisphere of the ancient world, a type more different, psychologically, from that of the north than any of the northern peoples are from each other from east to west. If national psychologies remain as constant as appears to be the case, we can already forecast what the main characteristics of this new type will be: lack of originality and creativity, a distinct taste for feudal types of organisation, and a lively desire to avoid infection from the complexes of the northern hemisphere… the new white or near-white (white enough at any rate not to feel inferior in the southern hemisphere) human beings I have envisaged would on the whole be far less worthy products than are Europeans, unless as a result of having to grapple with fresh difficulties they acquired some qualities other than mere pride in the race of their birth.

Octave Mannoni Prospero And Caliban: The Psychology Of Colonization (trans. Pamela Powesland) Ann Arbor: University of Michegan Press, 1990, p. 128

There's always awkwardness in engaging in these terms of debate. The future of 'white peoples' evokes the racist discourse associated with laws such as the White Australia Policy. However, the argument is worth considering. According to Mannoni, the sense of superiority felt by colonists retards their development. They are complacent in their righteous culture and resist innovation.

Those of us in Australia who have just emerged from the Howard era might find an echo of truth in his analysis. The challenge now is to find sources of cultural change in the recent recognition of culpability. Rather than a simple squaring of accounts, it should be followed by a critical examination of the settler experience. If we are not returning back the land that we stole, what productive use are we going to find for this ill-gotten gain?

A 'Dirty Mile' through the enchanted forest

 Ilbijerri Theatre have developed a tour of Fitzroy's Gertrude Street, highlighting the Koori Sites of Significance. Based on a concept of the late Lisa Bellear, actors take the audience along time and space, from the original European contact in the Carlton Gardens to the infamous Charcoal Lane, the site of Archie Roach's song.

While there, audience members were given pieces of chalk and asked to leave messages. If you click on the image, you can get a larger version that will be easier to read.

It's a quite an intimate and visceral theatre, with audience being constantly herded along streets. Sometimes, the passersby look as though they could be extras, but that's Fitzroy for you.

The underlying story of repression and resilience. It's a powerful counterpoint to the commercial image of Gertrude Streets, which consistently evokes the European forest.

I imagine it's hard to get tickets for this season, but well worth the try.

Kosovo at last

Here's the Victorian Herald-Sun from 17 May 1999, when the Premier Jeff Kennett greeted refugees from Kosovo in the Albanian language. That was when Australians embraced these people and presented an image of this wide brown land as an open-hearted refuge for persecuted peoples.

We lost the plot for a while. The shock jocks and Pauline Hansen made sure the Kosovars did not outstay their welcome. Howard cultivated a xenophobia towards refugees. But now we have a 'new page', so let's hope we can recover that sense of welcome that we extended back in 1999.

And today, Kosovo will finally be granted independence. Albanians in Australia have fought long and hard for this day. Congratulations. The struggle of great figures like Ibrahim Rugova has been worth it. There are many challenges ahead, but destiny is now in your hands.

Urime!, Përgëzime!

Smooth the pillow?

Inge Glendinnen is a widely-respected intelligent writer who has described with great care and sensitivity the workings of cultures as distant from our own as the Aztecs. She was recently a strong supporter of the Federal Government 'intervention' in Northern Territory. Her post-Howard article in The Age is cause for some concern.

She writes about the harsh and violent conditions in the most remote Aboriginal communities. Invoking the term 'self-modernisation', she sees intervention as a matter of giving Aboriginal people the choice to either stay with their isolation or become more like everyone else. She admits, this might see the end of Aboriginal culture:

The next decade might see the end of that most obdurate element of Aboriginal "resistance": their determination, sustained since first contact, to remain themselves by living among themselves. Should that happen, it will become our duty to measure and mourn what we, and they, have lost.

It's an extremely sensitive issue, but lurking at the back of Glendinnen's remarks is the idea that the responsibility of whitefellas is to 'smooth the pillow of the dying race' -- expressing sadness at the loss of these people, but complying with a positivist model of civilisation and the ultimate dominance of Western culture.  That may seem harsh, but is there another way to look at it?

A beautiful sorry morning

On a cool summer morning, someone said 'sorry'. He spoke of 'non-indigenous' Australians as 'them'. He attributed total responsibility to government. It's an inspiring beginning, but where will we go from here?

Given the emotion of the day, what seemed most powerful about Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations was respectful silence that accompanied it. Despite the personal traumas experienced directly and witness associated with the policy of racial assimilation, there seemed little display of emotion in the actual presentation of the apology. Rudd’s faltering delivery was workmanlike. Bob Hawke would certainly have been in tears. For today, emotions can wait. Let’s get the business over first.

It’s a defining moment in the ‘new chapter’ of Australia. In laying blame for the Stolen Generation, Rudd was careful to exempt those who carried out the policies. Instead, he attributed responsibility to the parliament who framed the legislation. He ended by inviting the leader of the opposition to join him in a commission that would ‘change the way Australians think about themselves.’ While today is critical in the unfinished story of reconciliation, it is also a day for asserting the authority of government. Is this good for the culture of a nation? Should government be the only conduit for change?

One very reassuring aspect of Rudd’s speech is the way he addressed ‘non-indigenous Australians’. He spoke of ‘them’ in the third person, just as he had the ‘Indigenous Australians’. This was critical. If he has spoken of ‘us’, then it would have been another post-colonial confession admitting past wrongs but maintaining the dominant position. There was a relatively equal place in Rudd’s language for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Of course, this does not reflect the inequalities between the two—the economic superiority of whitefellas and the cultural richness of Indigenous Australians. But we can begin to think of them as in dialogue with each other.

In terms of Australia’s recent history, there was a sense of historic justice in the focus on the white Australian practice of stealing children from their families. In recent years, we’ve experienced a number of xenophobic scandals associated with acts like Tampa that have focused on disregard for children as the ultimate sign of being ‘unAustralian’. Yet here, at the core of Australian history, is an official practice of breaking apart families.

‘Turning the page together’ on a ‘new chapter’ in Australia’s history, it’s a wonderful morning for us all. It’s a good moment to start thinking anew about the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous identity.

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Melbourne Forecast
Issued at 4:50 am EDT on Wednesday 13 February 2008
Fine apart from a brief shower or two this morning. Partly cloudy with a moderate to occasionally fresh southerly wind.
Precis:       Clearing shower or two.            
City:         Max 20

The flame of civilization

 
I've just finished reading Tropical Truth, but Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso. It's an extremely contentious, but inspiring witness to the creative energies around the nexus of art and music in 20th century Brazil.

Like many other Brazilian artists, Veloso's work seems borne of the struggle against the exoticisation of the south.  Rather than present the South as primitive other to the rational North, he advocates a continuity of the rationalist project, albeit with a detour:

The great movement that carried the flame of civilization from the globe's warm regions into the cold of the northern hemisphere - thence on to Japan and the neocapitalist Asian tigers and neocommunist China - this movement is ripe for a detour. And it may have as its horizon a myth of Brazil - the American, Lusophonic, mestizo giant of the southern hemisphere.
Caetano Veloso Tropical Truth: A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil New York: De Capo Press, 2002 (orig. 1997), p. 324

There's a reasonable quota of Lusophone mysticism in the book. But it results in a dense creativity, woven in the dialogue between musicians and artists and through samba, Bossa Nova and Tropicalismo. How can we connect this to other creative energies in the South?