Thesis Abstract

Sovereign Hospitalities: liberal democracy’s economies of violence toward its “others”

Abstract
In and through debates around Indigenous land rights, immigration structures and refugee detention, this thesis attempts to unravel the racialised relationship between ‘sovereignty’ and ‘hospitality’ under Australian liberal democratic governments. I bring together two usually distinct methodologies, Whiteness theory and Derridean deconstruction, in order to critically challenge normative liberalism. Normative liberal theory designates hospitality as obedient to sovereignty both at the level of the body-politic as well as in the expression of the sovereign subject as ‘host’. Consequently, I argue that the positions available within this theory do not adequately account for the ambiguity of the interrelationship between the two by reducing hospitality to dominant liberal discourses, which, in turn, serves to politically support and privilege a particular form of ‘white’ sovereignty. Thus, shifting away from Agamben’s work on the ‘sovereign exception’ and ‘bare life’ (which I refer to later in the thesis), I utilise Derrida’s deconstruction to re-orient hospitality and sovereignty away from this normative liberal logic in an attempt to promote an alternative ‘ethical’ cultural politics.

Indigenous issues

why don’t people give a shit about Indigenous issues? They have dropped off the radar, unless it is to offer a fucking cliche or stereotypes.

e

Australia: global nuclear waste dump

Fuck! I am enraged! I haven’t posted for some time as I have been working my butt off teaching and trying to finish a draft of my final chapter, so that I can have a draft of my thesis. But this isn’t what has enraged me. It has exhausted me, but not angered me. No, I am angry because I live in a world that is absolutely predicated on racial segregation and marginalisation. All this talk of liberalism overcoming racial discrimination – able to accommodate and allow difference to florish – is bullshit.  In the course of researching for my work, I came across some information on plans to build a number of nuclear waste sites in remote Australia. Australia, as many people would know, is made up of a hell of a lot of desert area. In fact, at least 20% of Australia is classified as desert (I got this figure from the Federal government website), and the Desert Peoples Centre actually puts it closer to two thirds of our total land mass. Anyway, many Indigenous communities live here, with some 290 odd communities, comprising around 40, 000 people scattered across the red earth. In the Northern Territory there are a number of Aboriginal land councils (such as the Central Land Council and the Northern Land Council) that must negotiate the interests of the territory government and the federal government and the Traditional Owners of the land. So anyway, the point of this post is simply to highlight the violent effects of Australia’s plan to expand its nuclear power resources in order to combat climate change (nuclear power is a “cleaner” energy resource than others) for some of these communities. I am just going to cut and paste a small section of some draft material:

“Denaturalising the relationship between sovereignty and the nation-state and subsequently recognising the contingency of the nation-state as a central organising principle, and decision-making institutional apparatus in our times, is especially urgent in light of the continued attacks on Indigenous communities and land rights in the Northern Territory. In addition to the Northern Territory intervention in 2007 and individual cases involving disputes over mines (such as the McArthur River Mine), land rights in the Northern Territory have been undermined by plans initiated in 2005 by the Liberal Coalition government to authorise the dumping of nuclear waste in Australia under the “Global Nuclear Waste Dump” scheme. A legislative package including the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 (CRWMB) and amendments in 2006, as well as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 make it legal to deposit foreign nuclear waste in designated sites around Australia. A number of these sites are planned to be in the Northern Territory, where as earlier noted, approximately 50 per cent of land is owned by Indigenous Australians under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA). The Rudd Labor Government made an election promise to repeal this legislation, but at the time of writing this had not yet occurred. The legislation overrides the provisions of the ALRA, by subordinating Indigenous interests to national interests and economic demand. Interestingly, a discourse of environmentalism is deployed by government figures and advocates from the business community to promote the development and expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil for energy production; dumping waste on Indigenous lands becomes part of the solution to global warming. In a press release reviewing the government commissioned report Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia, former Prime Minister, John Howard, contended that nuclear power could provide “an effective response to our domestic and international environmental responsibilities” in terms of achieving a “lower emissions future”.

In “Section 3A, Part 1A – Nomination of Sites” of the CRWMB 2005, the decision making process is clearly indicated as hierarchal and residing – ultimately – with the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. At first, the clause states that only Crown land can be nominated by the Chief Minister, not Aboriginal Land, but this is immediately undermined with the sub-section noting that as long as written notification is given to the relevant Land Council the NT government can nominate any land. Again, white sovereignty places severe limitations on a land rights paradigm, subordinating it as a secondary mode of ownership and refusing the rights of the local communities in favour of the sovereignty of the nation-state:

(1) The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory may nominate land in the Northern Territory (other than Aboriginal land) as a potential site.

(1A) The Chief Minster of the Northern Territory must not nominate land under subsection (1) unless the Chief Minister, at least 3 months before making the nomination, given written notice to the Land council for the area in which the land is situated of the Chief Minister’s intention to nominate the land.

(2) A Land Council may nominate Aboriginal land in the area of the Land Council

as a potential site. “

velcro attached penises may be the way of the future ;)

So my dear friend at “fuckpoliteness” has come under the hammer for daring to say that the world would be a better place if men had “velcro-attached penises”. Her post has been attached to a BBC women’s hour discussion about misandry (aka, the hate of men) .  Her humour has been labelled violence and discussed as quivalent to the violence of male sexist “humour”.

I think this misses the point. To level out the political implications of sexist male humour (which is an everyday occurance and generally accepted), and this particular post is to fail to understand the different historical positions which inform contemporary situations. The humour deployed by fuckpoliteness is an attempt to subvert dominant power relations, whereas the “humour” used by men against women, or stereotyping women, is offensive and reaffirms the status-quo. This is a fundamental difference. Fuckpoliteness is challenging hegemony.

Goodnight!

-dredgirl

martha wainwright

martha wainwright: ‘bloody motherfucking arsehole’

Betraying the Patriarchy

I have been posting some short poems I have written. These particular poems are about love, but they are reflective of the violence of love, the gendered violence of love within patriarchal family structures. It occured to me that as I did this I felt that I was betraying someone or something. I felt a tremendous guilt, as if it was unfair to be saying ‘fuck you’ to the perpetrator of the violence, who in this instance is my father.

I feel guilt in betraying the patriarchal figure of my life. So I reflect on this and begin to think through the structural which extends beyond my personal situation, informing it but exceeding it. It is in thinking the larger system of what bell hooks calls “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” that I am able to release my guilt, or convert that guilty energy into a creative force for positive change.

I am learning to betray the patriarchy. I am learning how to fuck it up by telling its truths. There is always context to violence, the violence is always complicated. It is this that I want to get to, to unpick and understand, maybe even to forgive. I think that requires showing its full force, without pulling any punches.

-dredgirl

another poem…

today i listened to the air

and the sky was clear

blue

more blue than i can ever recall

even though

inside the home

behind the curtains

contained by the fibro walls

my mother’s crying

shook me

and the air vibrated with her wailing

and my tears fell without a sound

and my heart quietly folded

Music and Meaning: Dylan & DiFranco I

Ani Difranco is well known for her fiesty, feminist lyrics. I want to look at some of her music and her ‘love songs’, comparing them to a few of my favourite Bob Dylan love songs. Both Dylan and Difranco have at various times been regarded by their followers as political poets, singing songs against the grain, or establishment. Dylan never wanted this title, or so he claims, preferring to say that his poetry/lyrics transcend context and political situation, that they are more universal than particular. In the doco ‘No Direction Home’ we see how Dylan resisted and criticised any attempts to pin him down to a movement, whether it be the civil rights movement (which Joan Baez was involved in), or the folk music crowd. Difranco, on the other hand, proudly flaunted her political agenda, never claiming to speak for anything in a universalising manner, always recognising context, privilege and power relations in any given moment. This kind of reflects the way that the male position is often neutralised and universalised, or normalised, leaving dissident views to be regarded as partial and biased. The neutralisation of the male perspective veils over its investments and politics. In this way, I am less interested in whether or not Dylan’s music contains so-called ‘universal themes’, and more interested in the way his lyrics are informed by context and interpreted differently according to context. It also worries me that when people talk about Difranco as political and feminist this often is a criticism, a devaluing of her art and message. While Dylan can just have a ‘love song’ be a ‘love song’, Difranco must fight to be heard as anything other than an angry woman.

While Dylan is recognised for his protest music, he is also regarded highly for his love songs. His love songs are sometimes sweet, simple and beautiful, and at other times bitter, difficult and angry. Take, for example, “it ain’t me babe”: “You say you’re looking for someone, who will promise never to part, someone to close his eyes for you, someone to close his heart, someone who’d die for you and more, well, it ain’t me babe, no no, it ain’t me you’re looking for, babe”.

Or, “Don’t think Twice, It’s Alright”:

“I’m thinkin’ and wonderin’, walkin’ down the road/I once loved a woman, a child I’m told/I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul/don’t think twice it’s alright/so long honey babe/where I’m bound I can’t tell/Goodbye’s too good a word babe/So i’ll just say fare thee well/I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind/you coulda done better but I don’t mind/you just kinda wasted my precious time/but don’t think twice, it’s alright”.

In both of these examples, the male refuses to let the female possess him. He feels as though what she wants is to ‘have him’ completely, to deny him his freedom; she wants his soul not merely his heart, and she demands that he close his eyes and heart (presumably to others). His words express a frustration with this demand he feels “woman” places on him to be unconditional in love, to offer the world to her in love “to die for you and more”. He’ll only let her down, he says in “It ain’t me, babe”. It appears that gender roles and stereotypes inform the represenations here. The male experiences claustrophobia during what he perceives to be a woman strategising to own his heart, soul and freedom. The male must rebel, must break out of the attempts to confine and label.

Fuckpoliteness wrote that she experienced Leonard Cohen’s music as both beautiful and frustrating, saying that sometimes she thinks that in his music ” *woman* is locked in the role of temptress/muse…she’s the mythical, the beautiful, the source of sadness/loss, potentially loopy…she doesn’t have the same agency as him…she’s beauty and grace, temptation and pain, a ‘mystery’…what saps him of his strength, a source of temporary joy, of wonder, but bound to cause loss/grief/a stealing of strength…don’t stay in one place too long…” (for more go here) Dylan’s music presents me with a similar bind. I both love the music (I am a HUGE Dylan fan) and feel that I must suspend my criticism at times in order to understand his message, or read it from a position other than my own. There is a song by Dylan “All I really want to do” (here) in which Dylan speaks of not wanting to define or confine, analyse or categorise his object of attention, rather he wants to be “friends“. Whenever I hear this song, I always think back to Joni Mitchell’s song “All I Want” in which she sings that “All I really want our love to do is bring out the best in me and you”.

During a live recording at a gig, DiFranco speaks about how some of her older fans have criticised her for being “less political” in her music, to which she responds that she “got kinda distracted” and laughs. This raises interesting questions: is the love song political? Is feminism concerned with ‘love’? Should it be? My short answer is yes to all of these questions. While we know of feminism as a movement concerned with equal rights in the public domain – the workforce, the law etc – feminism (which, simply put, recognises the politicisation of gender and gender difference in a male-dominated world) also has a lot to say about love. Love is gendered and whilst we may experience it at a ‘personal’ or ‘private’ level (which is undeniable), it is also regulated by the public sphere (for example, in the past who could fall in love with who was regulated by the law, banning homosexuality). But is the love song political? One of my favourite lines from a love song comes from DiFranco: “There is strength in the difference between us, and comfort where we overlap”. But DiFranco is unafraid to confront the violence of love in patriarchy, writing of the cycles of domestic violence in “Out of Range” (here) and the objectification of woman and reduction to the body in “Gratitude” (here): “you changed the rules in an hour or two, i don’t know what you and your sisters do, but please don’t, please stop, this is not my obligation, what does my body have to do with my gratitude?”

Gotta run. If you happen to stumble over this blog site and feel like commenting please do! I am just starting to open these ideas up and would love a dialogue on them. More soon,

-dredgirl

Music and Meaning: the exclusion of women and the romantisation of men

So again, this post has come out of a discussion with fuckpoliteness. It concerns the way that men are allowed a special association with meaningfulness, depth and sincerity in music, poetry and really all art. We all know the cliche of the depressed, lonely male figure who pours his heart into his art, creating brilliant songs, poems, whatever. This man seems to be able to gain access to a realm of the emotional that women are excluded from, unable to attain for whatever reason. I will cite two immediate examples to get my thinking started. The first is a scene in the Bob Dylan-inspired film ‘I’m Not There’ (which is watchable for any Dylan fan). Dylan is sitting at a cafe with his wife and two friends (also a male/female couple). Dylan declares that women cannot be poets. His wife is flabbergasted, as is her female companion. It is remarkable that Dylan can make this comment given his professional and personal relationship with Joan Beaz. It is even more mindboggling given the popularity of the brilliant Joni Mitchell in the 1960s. The second example I want to open up concerns a writing by Nick Cave. Cave, in the forward to his ‘Love Songs’, goes through a list of musicians he believes come close to appreciating how to craft a love song. He mentions Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, The Dirty Three….a few others. All male. No women whatsoever. But it doesn’t end here. Not only are women absent from this list, but there is then a polemic example utilised to discuss the dangerously shallow lyrics of pop music when it deals with issues of love. The example is a Kylie Minogue song. On one level I agree with Cave’s point: in some respects women have been made to package their music in specific ways; to sell their sexiness before their message; or perhaps sexiness is their message (I am thinking of the pop tune with the line ‘don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me’). But it is a little insulting. Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Ani Difranco, Sinead O’Conner, Emmylou Harris, Beth Orton, Pat Banatar (‘Love is a Battlefield’)! Anyway, this is the start of a series that will read some of these male and female texts in detail.