not the motorcycle diaries

Sitting down once again to some writing I am preparing for submission, I am bowled over by internal sound waves intoning the mantra of Sociology. Is. Bollocks. This might not be such a problem if I wasn’t (a) three months into my second year of a doctorate in sociology as well as (b) preparing said writing for submission to a sociology journal. I have always been somewhat sympathetic to the SIB view, but since my return from so-called ‘field work’ in Brazil and consequently my return to my writing I am overtaken by it sometimes to the point of intellectual-ethical paralysis. I think much of my newfound resistance comes from the gradual discovery (accelerated by my move to Sydney to start said doctorate, and the exposure that entailed) of philosophical writing that does not need to prop itself up with empirical evidence and endless justifications of the rigour of the method applied to obtain said evidence. As time has gone on I have become less and less enamoured of the idea that truth is found in objectivity, this of course being because objectivity is always situated and therefore not actually objective. The connotations of the ‘truth is objectivity’ notion are the egotistical claims to superior knowledge that sociologists all too often construct through matrices and numbers (and raise their students to aspire to), under the rubric of an alleged social science which can speak definitive truths based on the same scientific method that is applied to cultures in a petri dish. To this end I have been majorly influenced by Derrida and Foucault from a theoretical point of view, and Bent Flyvberg from a methodological one (but even then, the whole idea of methodology is starting to lose any of its lustre as the SIB mantra goes into its 157396th round).

Sure, I’m open to the idea that there are some universals, and that sociological knowledge is useful and important (for example, I think it is missing in the French state where it could probably assist in social planning - gathering social statistics based on ethnicity is apparently illegal, which the recent rioting might suggest is a bit silly). I just feel very pulled in the wrong direction by the requirements of official sociology: having to have this scientific method explicated thoroughly, having to justify your ideas based on thorough, concrete evidence (as though there is no space for your own thinking or your own stories, when of course all that methodological justification is just a forced legitimation of said own thinking anyway). Even though I deliberately do not espouse the truth-in-objective-rigour view, I still have to explain in pages and pages of justification why that is so, and I am bound by the sociological field in order to make that justification, which is just becoming exhausting, as I become more resolved that I am just not interested in answering to those particular gods. I am totally cool for sociology to want to have less narrative or theory in favour of more so-called rigour, it’s just that I think narrative/theory is arguably far less restrained and far more inspiring in its impact on social thought. The more I think about it, the more I think I need to change departments/disciplines. Sociology feels like a field whose utility is restricted to social planning and social policy, and I embarked on the PhD in a decided effort to move beyond all that. I have obviously thought that the field could accommodate thinking beyond that (and I totally dig sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Ghassan Hage, Anita Harris and the work of the sociologists who taught me in Adelaide) - but it seems I might serve and be served better in something like cultural studies.

Or maybe I’m just procrastinating.

Thursday November 3rd, the Guardian international edition. A brief column, the last in a pedestrian triptych of ‘international news’ items on page ten. Titled Terrorism alert leads Australia to toughen law, I was still tossing and turning about it at six o-clock the next morning, asssailed by flashbacks to my Year 11 Modern European History class (I was the nerdy one up the front, furiously taking notes during Schindler’s List).

[Australias] spy agencies received specific details about a terrorist attack on home soil. The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to give details of the threat yesterday, but said he was concerned about the information.The government has received specific intelligence and police information this week which gives cause for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat, Mr Howard said, in his most explicit warning ever to Australians.

Right so the words ‘potential terrorist threat’ are ‘explicit’ enough - no further information, questioning or debate is required to justify any action that is carried out in response.

The threat was credible enough to prompt Mr Howard to rush an urgent amendment to the country’s anti-terror laws through parliament to give authorities increased powers.

We are not told who made the threat or what it was. We are not allowed to judge for ourselves as to its credibility and what might be done in response. Instead, John Howard tells us that it is credible enough (his standards for judging this we also are not informed of) and therefore justifies his ‘urgent action’.

The senate will be recalled today so the change can immediately become law.

This is dictatorship. The Lower House of Parliament has become a tool to officialize the will of the Prime Minister, who decides when it shall sit and what it shall decide. It is a far cry from one of the more basic representative democratic notions, i.e. that there shall be a house of review which deliberates upon how proposed laws might affect the population according to a publically advertised timetable.

The amendment will change one word in a series of clauses, replacing ‘the’ with ‘a’ when referring to terrorist attacks.

Any unionist out there (if there are any left) will tell you that the most lethal clause in a job description is the one saying ‘and other duties as directed’. It is there so that your boss can make you do whatever they want under the guise of you consenting to it when you signed the contract. It gives them infinite power over you in the work relationship. This amendment works in a similar way - ensuring that anything vaguely disturbing to the governmental order can be designated as a terrorist act, and therefore prosecuted without recourse to any of the usual civil liberties of people under arrest and trial. Rushing through increased governmental powers in the context of ‘emergency’ is such a typical strategy for consolidating dictatorial power that it would be utterly boring if it wasn’t so threatening.

‘I know that sounds pedantic but in order to prosecute people you’ve got to do it legally and you’ve got to have the law on your side, Mr Howard said. The change means prosecutors would not have to identify a specific terrorist act, allowing them to make a case against people in the early stages of planning an attack.

Clearly, in Howard’s view of the world, if a law doesn’t allow you to do what you want, then just change it. The law is only there to serve your dictatorial ends and continue to make them appear popularly agreed upon. This is not democracy. It is just pretending.

That such a classic smoke-and-mirrors trick as this is able to go completely unquestioned (including by the ALP, who as far as I’m concerned might as well just amalgamate with the Coalition and save all of us the trouble of having to mark them separately on the ballot paper) attests to the frightening extent of manufactured consent (a la Chomsky) in Australia. Howard and co have gotten themselves consecutively elected by exploiting and amplifying xenophobic fears of mythical security threats. In so doing, and with full co-operation from the corporate media, they have installed the dictionary of understood words (a la Kundera)* into the popular vocabulary. They have gained full control of the legislative assembly, effectively allowing them to make whatever law they like, whenever they please and you can bet that they will all conform to an uncompromisingly neo-conservative, racist, narrow-minded agenda. As the Prime Minister, the only thing that Howard has to do is make his actions appear democratic = like a magic password, he just has to use the understood words to set the mechanics of democracy in motion (i.e. drafting legislation, amending legislation, recalling Parliament). Are Australians so comfortable and/or so disempowered that they’re just going to keep on letting it happen? Where will it end up?

Ah yes. I’m back in that stuffy classroom with an exam question before me. “The Nazi party was elected by democratic vote. Discuss.”

* like ‘terrorist’, ‘terrorist threat’, ‘border security’, ‘weapons of mass destruction’, ‘boat people’, ‘children overboard’ …