I’m having an interesting time trawling virtual and dusty papers from that fun period of 2002 - 2006 when immigration detention activism was all the rage. Do any readers know of/have any critiques from that time (within loosely ‘anti-detention’ activism/debates) regarding the work of groups like ChilOut and the Circles of Friends?
“A national framework for child protection is necessary, we can do better and must do better for the protection of our little children.” - Kevin Rudd.
Having worked with the child protection system I am much less excited about this comment than I should be were I to take the above comment at face value. A national framework has been advocated for years as a very basic policy intervention, and always seems to end up being hijacked for other violently paternalistic ends (if it’s not how such Interventions start off in the first place).
“Little children” really are the ultimate signifier into which to empty out all sorts of misdirected rubbish.
“Censorship and censorial debate are denials of our right and our capacity to explore and change our alienated and/or colonised selves and the discourse which continues to mystify our conditions.”
- Marica Langton, Well I Heard it on the Radio, and I Saw it on the Television …., 1989: 57.
I received the email below today which is funny for all sorts of reasons, not least that I had intended to go here today to protest the Mexican Government’s recent attacks on Zapatista territory; this also being the day that these protests were held.
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:49:52 -0600
From: Australian_Embassy_Mexico_City@dfat.gov.au
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Reply-to: embaustmex@yahoo.com.mx
Subject: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION - 24 NOVEMBER 2007 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (more…)
1. Rendition
and coming soon …
3. Battle in Seattle (perhaps some enterprising Australian director will propose “Woomera” in a few years time - if so I bags a cameo as cardigan wearing social worker with gin addiction).
It’s times like this that I understand why the Zapatistas identify the history of Indigenous struggle against annihilation as being as long as colonization. There’s no closed chapters. There are troubling moments where justice might be done, followed by its vigorous disavowal …
“The axiomatic distinction between the utopic on the one hand and the utopian on the other can be described in terms of the latter as a perversion, a rigidification of the former. The utopic is a disposition, a manner of speech, an attitude, a procedure in semiosis, even if that procedure necessarily bears a proximity to the Kristevan semanalyse, the semiotic critique of the semiotic. Utopia is a fixed form. This analysis flies in the face of that line of interpretation that sees Utopia as heteroglossic. The heterological character of the discourse characterises the utopic. Utopia is the monoglossic face of the utopic. In Kristevan terms it is thetic, according to the categories of Roland Barthes it is doxic, a monologic discourse invariably constructed in terms of ideas by which contradictory and inevitable exclusions are defined.” (…)
“The utopic is the disagreement that Utopia cannot sustain. Utopia is the dream of perfect control, of both culture and nature. The definitive totalitarianisms of the twentieth century have utopian motivations, motivations resulting in the figure of perfectibility. Utopia is spoken in the language of domination, and speaks it.” (…)
“The utopic is marked by an excess of signification, Utopia by its formalisation. In the totalised ideological mise-en-scene that is late capitalist language, the utopic is the space of the displaced discourse, the internal exile of the concept.”
- Bernhard Sachs, ‘In the General Gouvernement of Semiosis/Against Utopia: Utopic Articulation as Act’, The Office of Utopic Procedures, West Space, 2002.
It’s endlessly fascinating and frustrating to follow the e-debates going on about the apology. I’ve been idly watching the ones going on under news items on the ABC website and that of the Daily Telegraph (if I didn’t have a thesis to write, I just know I’d start up a website like this one).
I am so struck by the way in which ‘debates’ like these open up a space for white settler descended Australians to, seemingly unconsciously, pour out so much of their own hurt and bitterness: ‘My Mum was white and taken away too, where’s her apology?’, in other words, ‘I’ve been so hurt in my life and no one came to help. Where’s my apology?’, ‘Aboriginal kids were taken away because they were NEGLECTED. They are still being NEGLECTED.’, in other words, ‘I have been NEGLECTED. I feel NEGLECTED’. Or, ‘I didn’t do anything, why should I have to apologise?’, i.e. ‘OGOD PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME CONFRONT WHAT THIS MEANS I LIKED THAT JOHN HOWARD FELLOW MUCH BETTER’.
So many seem so unable to give any ground because they are so obsessed with holding onto their own victimage: my ‘personal property’ is painful, poisoned - but goddamn it it’s mineminemine.
Did somebody hear something? It was coming from the Opposition frontbench.
Before anyone thinks about heeding this call for John Howard style intervention, watch this.
Image: Gertrude Duby Blom with Lacandan friend, date unknown.
“We formed the first governmental expedition of the State of Chiapas to establish contact with the Lacandon Indians. A contact not to exploit them, nor to study them anthropologically. The mules carried very little of our things, the majority of the cargo were gifts for the Lacandon from the government. Our goal was to investigate the necessities of these remote Indians, to construct modern houses and to establish a relationship between them and the government.”
- Franz and Gertrude Blom, La Selva Lacandona, Vol. 1, p.69, 1955.
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