i've been meaning to say for some time now: your predictions on the situation in indonesia a year or so ago have turned out exactly right. me thinks there'll be australian soldiers in east timor in a weeks time. any thoughts?
> but the methane escaping from the dead cow that is postmodernism (get
well soon, Robert Hughes) is not arguing with Marxism because, in Oz,
the latter corpse can't even muster methane. Do you read Quadrant (a
right-wing fogeys-with-degrees rag, for all you Yancquis)? They don't
attack Marxism any more either. The whole left gets put under the
poststructuralist/postmodernist umbrella in these ravings, coz that's
the only enemy they see. Perhaps the weight of their bitter paranoia is
all that keeps the dead cow on its feet ... or perhaps they just want it
on its feet.<
a bit of both. who knows what postmodernism is? it certainly gets more play from people wanting to oppose it than anything else. but i was thinking of quadrant actually when i mentioned this (kramer being on the board, no?) combination of the enemy as postmodernism _and_ marxism. i suspect kramer et al think postmodernism is like marxism by stealth, and you must have been following the recent stoush over pybus' book on quadrant and the CIA, huh? the cold war is back, and this time, both marxists and 'pomos' are indistinguishable, at least to the right and the left has much more common cause now than it even needs, but has to find some way of responding to. and, in that, any complaints about those obscure pomos trampling on Truth doesn't really measure up. so, yes, perhaps the right's paranoia is exactly what it is, and so we could even say that the powers of old australia (pastoralists, english professors, and rural poets) have come together to exorcise this spectre which haunts australia... and that, whether true or not, is a powerful thing, not least because it sows the seeds of a revival. what better press than the paranoid rantings of ye olde australia?
>derrida's lecture in
>melbourne was precisely a way of working through the issues of justice
>and recompense and apologies -- all very significant issues in
>australian politics at the moment,
> I dare you to tell us precisely where that 'way of working through the
issues' has taken us, Ange<
a dare? but what do i get if i take up the dare? please tell me that your PLP candidate in the Victorian elections in a couple of weeks will biff delahunty. please?
(some thoughts, based on what i've been told of his lecture in melb and what i've read of derrida's on justice already.)
but here's my first answer, and you won't like it at all, since it's another question: where do you want it to take us? why look to derrida for anything other than some important provocations?
but on what i've gotten out of derrida's stuff on justice and recompense is this: that the struggle for justice is crucial and can never be reduced to or suborned by a measurable justice, usually and increasingly monetised. and, in a monetised world, how could it be any different? but what remains is still injustice, including the injustice of a thoroughly monetised existence. nothing startling, but i still find it interesting, not least for allowing us to remember that the govt should not only apologise and pay copious amounts of compensation for lands stolen, but that this injustice won't be at an end through that. in short, whilst this might allow non-indigeneous people here to reconcile ourselves to australian history, there's absolutely no reason to think that justice will have been served sufficient to entail the 'reconciliation' of indigenous people to that history*. it also makes me realise that for the duration of this 'reconciliation' process in australia (the last ten years or so), we've actually moved away from justice and not towards it. (reconciliation, for the unlocal, is the preferred term for what's been apparently going on in australia, and not even an apology seems to be forthcoming from the state. we are to have 'deep regrets' instead. according to the PM, it's acceptable for people to personally apologise, but not for the state and its reps, even though this resistance to an apology has been conducted through the claim that no one *personally* is responsible... an incoherence which passes for wisdom on the issue of racism in this country.) there are other things that derrida remarked on, much of which was a reprise of walter benjamin's notion of justice and history, some of which dealt with the list of what has been apologised for and what has not (such as dropping nuclear bombs on japan), and why that's so.
i guess derrida's remarks allow me to think on what's still left out (and perhaps excluded) by the system of justice we have at hand. and thinking on that, where do we go? where can we go? it's certainly not back into the comfort zone of thinking it'll all be dandy if the ALP gets elected, which unfortunately is what most of the audience was probably thinking on the issue of 'reconciliation'. and, hopefully it was a provocation that took at least some of those who weren't there for the aura of the event to a position more interesting than they were.
*did you see the excellent doco on the reconciliation study group the other night? excellent stuff, and i have to say, the yank had it in one: therapy sessions for white australians.
Angela _________