>you think, or what it is you disagree with about what I wrote.
I'm not sure how you interpret phrases such as 'i'm interested in..' and 'let's talk about' as disagreement? I don't disagree with much of what you've put forward in your letters, and indeed that's what I was interested in hearing more about. As it happens, this is obviously an area of expertise for you, and your answers have exhibited specialised knowledges and acumen of the situation. However, that doesn't mean that my questions - which are addressed to terms, to categories, to policy formulations, to status, and to techniques (and therefore eventually to constituted identity ) - don't hold a value as well. Questions are openings. Unpackings. Sites for discourse, for exploration, for rethinking. I'm wouldn't be asking them if I didn't think that this issue of detention centres and Australian policy on immigration wasn't vital. So I don't think that we are placed on sides of disagreement here, although we might have very different terms for understanding how to articulate our concerns.
I would venture that some of the terms are, as I said in an earlier post, placed into crisis by present conditions. For instance, I asked whether all 'illegal immigrants' are 'refugees'? I'm still thinking that some distinction can usefully be made between the two. If the condition of open borders is put into effect, does that mean that no screening takes place at all? Does this mean that people who are attempting to evade recognition as war criminals should be accepted with open arms? (to take a deliberately extreme example as a hypothetical test).
You questioned my phrasing thus:
>What is the discussion of the "management" of a "sudden increase in the
illegal immigrant population", >and a query of "alternative measures",
other than a discussion of a _problem_ which requires
>management?
My question was intended to address what the state is doing, how it constitutes the situation, and what other states are doing. I understand that states address populations via techniques of surveillance, management, and measure (re:Foucault's essay on 'Governmentality'). So I was describing that process. It was only an early question, in what I took to be a context of discussion where instances would be presented as examples. I believe that - and here the 'final solution of the Jewish problem' would serve as the absolute instance - states *manufacture* their so-called 'problem' populations. Moving on, I would be interested in drawing on notions of deterritorialised power. This would form part of a critique of state systems.
You added:
> True, you go on to suggest the West's complicity and/or responsibility
for, specifically,
>refugees from Iran and Iraq -- but it seems to me here that those
>specifically absented are Asian, and Chinese in particular -- given that
>Australian nationalism's perceptions of threat and raison d'etat are almost
>always China and Asia, I'm perhaps a little sensitive to that omission. And
If I was cursory in my address, it wasn't anything to get worried about. I'm happy to discuss any subjectivity you wish to highlight in the debate, and around any historically specific instance.
>Second, I did not say your position was odious, I specifically wrote that
it "suggests to
>me the strong possibility of a slippage to one or more of three rather odious
>discourses"
Excuse me for feeling somewhat implicated by you into that slippage.
>production of refugee subjects" means other than a claim about 'pull
>factors'
I didn't know what a 'pull factor' was, it's a new term to me. I think what you mean is a pull factor is something that's pulling people here, is that right? I don't really feel qualified to talk about why people might find Australia an attractive place to live. I wasn't attempting to describe that phenomena (although that might be fun. Can I start with beaches?) I was talking about how the West constitutes disenfranchised subjects and how immigration restrictions might be required to address that in future.
>consideration of what you find inflammatory as distinct from what I do here
>might be a matter for discussion rather than avoidance.
I think my long-ago use of the word 'inflammatory' was a moment of hyperbole. No doubt reflective of my perception that more incisive critiques of what is happening in Australia had already passed into public culture here. But it wasn't meant to be taken very seriously, y' know, and I don't think there's any reason to overweight it.
>> But what kind of articulation of Western responsibility for those refugees
>is emerging? Not much, > here in Australia.
>
>No, it isn't much at all. But the notion of responsibility is a little
>fraught IMO.
What is IMO a shorthand for? And I think the question of locating ethical responsibility is the question I'm most interested in. So if it's fraught...I guess that's ok.
Deborah