The Duke of Conceptual Architecture

So, Mick Dodson provided a colourful start to his tenure as Australian of the Year by calling on the PM to change the date of Australia Day because Indigenous people see it as “invasion day”. The general idea being that changing the date would make our annual celebration of being Australian more inclusive. Unfortunately, the problem goes deeper than what the solution suggests.

Australia Day brings out and either fans the flames or remains indifferent to machismo-driven chauvinism. While reckless drinking is quite common around public holidays, the conservatism espoused during the Howard years has obviously given rise to the melding of chauvinism and machismo leading to violence. The comments by those participating in the riot reported on News Limited’s Gold Coast site (e.g. jane doe and Adam_Lavv) are telling in this respect. Far from making us feel “relaxed and comfortable”, I think the Howard years have made many more anxious and angry. Not that it is obvious from the riots, but I think that Howard’s idealising the form and unity of the family and the nation are so far from reality that it can only lead to disappointment for many. Research into domestic violence suggests that many men are overcompensating for the improving position of women in our society by turning to violence.¹ Their own sense of themsleves as men – as the head of the household – is undermined by the loss of what they expected to be a relatively privileged status. Violence allows them to feel as though they are reasserting such a privilege. I’m sure research into nationalistic violence provides a similar explanation.² But rather than address the contingencies associated with changing gender relations and increasing cultural pluralism, Howard would simply go further to idealise anachronistic models of family and nation. And in times of change, idealisations that appear to provide simple solutions to complex problems become even more forceful. Meaning the disappointment of reality can easily turn to anger. I think this is what we are witnessing.

For this reason it is an emptying out, rather than a filling in of collective notions that is needed. Rather than trying to fill the notion of nation with increasingly more and more characteristics representative of the population, we need to empty this concept of ethnicity and race. Otherwise we are faced with an unrealistic task of redefining the nation regularly (Daily? Weekly? Monthly?) in order to represent the changing demographics at an adequate resolution. In any case, excessive categorisation stifles the everyday creativity in which people play with and manipulate such categories through which new cultural forms emerge. Again, very similar things can be said about the family and one need only look at the opposing views on gay marriage and family formation to get some indication. I’m not suggesting that the nation or family be completely devoid of any content. Rather, they should be emptied of their cultural specificity.

Not that there are many specifics to ideas like the nation and family. Well, they are not obvious and explicit. In the conservative rhetoric they are quite formless, vague, viscous. On the one hand, this is probably a function of the difficulty (perhaps impossibility) of coming to a concrete definition of such ideas. On the other hand, the malleability of such concepts has political uses – it gives politicians chameleon-like qualities in that they are able to put on different colours depending on which vote they are trying to secure. And the reason why politicians are important actors in such debates is because such ideas are political – they are fundamental to how we organise ourselves collectively. However, such a situation leads to disproportionately morally loaded models of nation and family, where the virtue of those who adhere more closely to the model is praised while condemning as malignant those on the periphery. But even with our increasing awareness of the flaws with our patriotism, we still cling to Howard-like idealisations of the moral perfectness and purity of the nation. It’s achieved by using nostalgia to shift to the periphery what is actually at the centre of our ideas of patriotism any time such patriotism takes an ugly form. In more simple terms, it’s the ‘this-is-the-exception-not-the-rule’ excuse. Here’s a classic example from The Oz:

Once the embodiment of all things good about the country, Australia Day today became a scene of brawls and vandalism across NSW – with anger spreading from Shellharbour in the south to Port Macquarie in the north, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Even though the violence has “spread”, it is an ‘infection’, rather than something constitutive of Australia Day and Australian nationalism.

Two qualifications need to be given at this point. Firstly, I would never suggest violence is constitutive of our brand of nationalism or even praised when it does happen. However, its exceptional status obfuscates any connections with racism and hate or fear and anxiety. Secondly, this isn’t to suggest that our nationalism is inherently racist either. There are many people for whom their attachment to their country does not in principle exclude anyone. In any case, I’m not even sure we can call what we see racism any more – I don’t know if this term adequately captures what’s going on. Rather, it’s about the sorts of norms underpinning the way we seek to define that with which we identify. This is where the real problem lies.

What is evident in chauvinism is an exaggerated pride – an almost obsessive and neurotic love of country. Being a good Australian is about loving all things Australian and other Australians. The criteria for nationalism becomes the more personal and consuming attachments of loving and liking. We saw the positive version in many Howard speeches on Australian values and we see its negative in the anti-migrant hate slogans of some Australia Day revellers. The two versions – positive and negative – form a dialectic in which the central normative underpinning of nationalism becomes intimacy – I either love you or hate you (I may also remain indifferent, too). Given it’s impossible to love 20-odd million people,³ we end up with either a vacuous and meaningless love and celebration of everyone and everything or with plenty of enemies. Frankly, each alternative is as bad as the other because they both lack a distinctive facet of our having a sense of self and confidence to live in the world we’re in: respect.

Sure, modern notions of love also demand respect. But love is exclusive: it cannot be shared between too many people because of its emotional and psychological intensity. Moreover, it is difficult to love that which one doesn’t know. Being loved is about being known to another and reciprocating such sentiments through mutual disclosure and shared personal experiences. Basically, love excludes those not known and who have not personally shared experiences. Whenever love marks an other as an intimate, it simultaneously marks others as non-intimates. When the norms of love are transposed across relationships with strangers, it becomes unstable without the firm ground of intimacy. Loving a non-intimate is impossible without some abstraction of intimacy: a shared history and culture becomes a proxy for intimacy. Easily and mutually recognisable cultural forms become proxies for being known and grounds across which non-intimates may feel a sense of love. But, as with love between intimates, it excludes that which is not recognised – different cultural forms. And, we’re back to the familiar territory of a vacuous love and celebration of difference (“Oh, I just love Mauritians!”) or feeling threatened by it (“Stop being Mauritian or get out!”).⁴ Either way, the love in patriotism, let alone chauvinism, becomes dictatorial – it demands the other adhere to a recognisable form, lest they become an enemy, in which case they are reduced to a category. In the words of Richard Sennet, we end up with the tyranny of intimacy that demands cultural specificity and similitude. So long as love of country remains at its elevated and privileged position within our normative horizons, there can be no guarantee for respect and other virtues like dignity, compassion and tolerance will be easily poisoned and corrupted by hate.

But Dodson does have the right idea. What we need is recognition – not in the sense of re-cognising or identifying, but in the sense of appreciation. But, unlike Dodson, I do not believe that we need to simply recognise difference (e.g. being Indigenous or Mauritian). I believe there is a special case to be made for Indigenous people given the historical development of Australia, but this can only be coupled with attention to the ways in which we mutually recognise each other as people endowed with the capacity to be different. The circumstances of birth (i.e. race, sex) are not adequate grounds for respect.⁵ It’s what you do with your life that matters. Rather than pre-specifying a whole bunch of differences to be recognised, let people be different and trust that they are trying to do good in their own life, even if what they are doing may be unintelligible to us. This would lead us to a whole other discussion about the conditions under which people could most fruitfully lead dignified lives. Maybe we will one day lift our line of vision above the base and slowly dissolving categories with which we are already familiar and start walking towards something better and more interesting.

1. Anderson and Umberson’s paper, apart from presenting some compelling sociological explanations of their for domestic violence, also provide a good summary of related research [↩]
2. Noble’s paper on incivility suggests something in this direction [↩]
3. Interestingly, some Christian notions of love from the Middle Ages onwards advocate a universal attachment. The fact that such notions were often grounded in ideas of fraternity and friendship shows how the reality of establishing such relations are impossible in reality. [↩]
4. It should be noted that there is also the possibility of indifference. But when the normative reference points for being Australian are derived from intimacy, then indifference is tantamount to not being cared for; being invisible. [↩]
5. However, they are and have been fruitful territory for disrespect, which is why we still need anti-discriminatory legislation. [↩]