Hawke Research Institute
The Centre for Post-colonial Studies marked the 40th anniversary of the events of 1968 with a half-day symposium on Tuesday 9 December 2008 at Magill Campus.
Facilitator: Professor Pal Ahluwalia
Guest speakers:
Dr Stephen Atkinson
and
Dr Simon Robb
Jean-Luc Godard and the alienation revolution
As one of the greatest rule-flouting filmmakers in the history of cinema, Jean-Luc Godard
could be said to epitomise the spirit of the 1960s; particularly in his concern to reflect
in formal terms the themes progressed by the actions and words of his actors/characters and
the narratives they inhabit. Although he continues to work, and to question the history of
cinema, its conventions and the problematic relationships between word and image and language
and power, his best known work is arguably a creature of, and contributor to, the foment that
straddled the events of 1968. La Chinoise (1967), which tells the story of a Maoist student
cell resorting to violent action to advance the cause of revolutionary struggle, has been
seen as prescient of the protests that took place in May the following year. By
Tout va Bien
(1972, co-directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin), the story of a strike in a sausage factory, the
goal was to understand what remained after 1968 by taking apart the appearance of reality to
de-mystify the ideology of capitalism. Godard's Marxist dialectics, Brechtian alienation effects,
and primary palette continue to frame important spaces for contemplation. Yet watching in Australia
in 2008, the experience is infused with a wistful appreciation of Gallic invention, and disrupted
by the shocked disbelief that there was ever a time when students or audiences were quite so
politically engaged and universities still worth struggling against – and for.
Dr Helen Cameron
Oh how you've changed, Babe!
To state that universities in Australia and their students have changed in the last few decades would surprise nobody.
This paper compared Australian universities in the 1960s to those existing now. In general,
western societies in the 1950s saw only 3 per cent of the children of manual workers gaining access to university. Gender
remained a factor for some time in that that males from families where the father was from the professional, managerial
or white-collar occupations comprised around 70 per cent of university students in the 1960s. In 1963 a total of 69 074 students were enrolled in universities, and of this total figure,
only 17 180 were female, according to the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics.
By 1969 the proportion of females participating in university education had increased somewhat but was still well below
that of males. By comparison, university student numbers in Australia in 2006 had reached
984 146 and female students compromise over 50 per cent of total enrolments.
Associate Professor Peter
Bishop
Liberation from affluent society and the dialectics of utopia formation
1968 saw the temporary constellation, at a global level, of disparate theoretical positions and the momentary alliance of
diverse leftist activist groups around a complex and often problematic utopian vision. While a range of critiques of
capitalist society provided the gravitational pull that held this unlikely and inherently unstable alliance together,
it was given a momentum and trajectory through, albeit sometimes desperate, glimpses of alternatives: social, economic,
cultural and personal. In addition, with a discrediting of orthodox Marxist dogma about the agents and causes of revolutionary
change, new possibilities were being championed. The ideas of the Freudian-influenced Marxist, Herbert Marcuse, occupied a
critical place at the heart of much of this radical activity. I suggest it allows insight into the contradictions, possibilities
and limitations of radical utopia formation.
Associate Professor Rob Hattam
Critical theory and dharma bums – the case of Erich Fromm
Whist Marcuse is seen as the critical theorist of the 1968 student movement, especially in the US, his 'old' friend Erich Fromm,
who had officially retired by then, was still publishing his accessible form of critical theory. This paper
made a case for
the re-reading of Erich Fromm. Not only is Fromm's work central to the original intent of
the Frankfurt School, as defined in the
writings of Horkheimer, but he also made a significant contribution to the development of what we might now call a post-secular social
theory. Not only does his Freudian Marxism demonstrate a radical interdisciplinarity but, against the secularising
tendency of critical
theory, he also draws on religious influences and especially Buddhism. His work parallels the Beat poets of that era and as such he
might be understood as critical theorist and dharma bum.
A conference organised by HRISS and Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research, 5 December 2008, Amy Wheaton Building, Magill Campus
This conference reflects on the pedagogical challenges presented by 'new forms' of racism that are distorting our societies. The papers and discussion will provide new theorisations of racism and propose pedagogical tactics as a skilful response. The speakers will be:
(Anti)racism and Pedagogy Conference home
Assoc Prof Michael Roberts, Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide. 30 October, Magill Campus.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) affirms that it will set up a 'secular state'. This has been widely accepted in the international academic circuit. This assent is facile and reflects the arid, rational world in which so many scholars dwell. Their own universe of being is blind to the depths of religiosity and superstition that permeate Asian life-worlds. In Asia there is considerable cross-pollination in religious practice that enables Saivites, Buddhists and Christians to draw upon their various deities for support. 'Secularity' cannot be evaluated without reference to the conditions of experience within any society. This entails attentiveness to the 'embodied practices' of ordinary folk, especially those practices resorted to during moments of uncertainty. I will address this issue here by a focus on such LTTE activities as the Pongu Thamil (Tamil resurgence) pageants and the state rituals for their dead (the maaveerar, or 'great heroes'). My focus is upon iconographic evidence interpreted in the light of a secondary reading of contemporary work by anthropologists in India and Sri Lanka. As such, the study is rooted in empirical material and is not post-empiricist.
Michael Roberts is a Sri Lankan Australian and a Rhodes Scholar who has taught at the Dept of History at Peradeniya University and Dept of Anthropology, University of Adelaide. He is now an Adjunct Associate Professor at the latter institution. His special interests are in cultural anthropology and historical sociology. His research work tends to straddle the field of politics, history and culture, mainly with reference to Sri Lanka. His expertise encompasses social mobility, social history, agrarian and tenurial issues, peasant protest, popular culture, urban history, caste in South Asia, practices of cultural domination, and issues in ethnicity and nationalism. He has ventured occasionally to write on Indian socio-political history, Australian myth making and the sociology of cricket. His latest works are Sinhala consciousness in the Kandyan period, 1590s–1818 (2004) and the anthology called Essaying cricket: Sri Lanka and beyond (2006), both distributed by Vijitha Yapa Publications, Colombo.
David Theo Goldberg, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Presented by the Centre for Post-colonial Studies and the Flinders University Innovative Universities European Centre, 2 June, Magill Campus.
This seminar explored what happens to race and racism in the wake of neoliberalism. It addressed the logics of racial neoliberalisation as a set of technologies for managing demographic heterogeneities in the context of modernity's histories of globalisation. David Theo Goldberg directs the University of California Humanities Research Institute (www.uchri.org). He is also Professor of Comparative Literature and Criminology, Law and Society, as well as a Fellow of the Critical Theory Institute, at the University of California, Irvine. He has authored numerous books, including The racial state (Basil Blackwell, 2002) and Racist culture: philosophy and the politics of meaning (Basil Blackwell, 1993), and edited or co-edited many books, including Anatomy of racism (University of Minnesota Press 1990). His current monograph, The threat of race, will be published by Wiley-Blackwell in October 2008.
Barry Hindess, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, 3 June, Magill Campus.
This familiar phrase is usually understood as indicating that one has already experienced the topic under discussion and become bored with it. I use it as my title to flag the view, first, that all portions of humanity go through essentially the same historical stages, and, second, that the West went through the more recent stages before anyone else, and thus that, whatever our non-western contemporaries may now be experiencing, the West has already 'been there, done that'. This view also underlies the patronising assumption that many in the non-western world belong in the past of the western present, that they are likely to have a false impression of their own pasts, which are merely truncated or incomplete forms of the past of the West itself. This destructive view is commonly, but not always, associated with a sense of western superiority. It is one of the foundations of modern western cosmopolitanism. In this seminar, its destructiveness was taken as a given and the speaker aimed, rather, to explore its origins. He suggested that the most important of these are to be found in the early history of European imperialism.
A version of this seminar has been published in Postcolonial Studies, vol 11, no 2, 2008, pp 201–213. You can download the article there.
Barry Hindess is Professor of Political Science in the
Research School of Social Sciences at ANU. He has published widely in the
areas of social and political theory. His most recent works are Discourses
of power: from Hobbes to Foucault, Governing Australia: studies in
contemporary rationalities of government (with Mitchell Dean), Corruption
and democracy in Australia and Us and them: anti-elitism in Australia (with
Marian Sawer), and numerous papers on democracy, liberalism and empire, and
neo-liberalism.
Prof Pal Ahluwalia, Professor of Post-colonial Studies, delivered his inaugural professorial lecture on Wednesday 1 August 2007 in Bradley Forum, City West Campus. A large audience, including staff from all of South Australia's universities, were treated to a lively introduction by Vice Chancellor Peter Høj, a witty conclusion from PVC Michael Rowan and a passionate argument from Pal.
Pal argued that we 'modern' populations are shadowed by 'monsters' (reflected in our public knowledge systems by crude stereotypes of Others, for example the Islamic terrorist, or the dysfunctional Aboriginal community, or the Mumbai slum dweller) which confine and compromise our western culture. We have not moved on as far as we think from the world of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, which was replete with monsters and satyrs, and many of our monster figures have reappeared since the events of 9/11. It is possible, though, Pal argued, to develop a post-colonial ethical stance in order to produce non-coercive knowledge systems.
The Centre for Post-colonial Studies held the first of its annual series of masterclasses in June and July 2007. The classes were led by two international experts Prof Michael Dutton (Professor of Politics, Goldsmith College, University of London) and Prof Couze Venn (Theory, Culture and Society Centre, Nottingham Trent University) under the overall direction of Prof Pal Ahluwalia and Dr Norman Porter.
The aim of the 2007 masterclass was to develop a conceptual apparatus that fruitfully addresses the interrelationships between diaspora, identities, displacement and technology. Whilst the focus was on contemporary conditions and problems, the classes also elaborated theories that have a purchase for the study of these relationships in all periods and geographical areas.
Discussions in the classes began by problematising existing theorisations and methodologies for studying transcultural and diasporic processes and searched for alternative theoretical configurations. The discussions drew from developments in a variety of fields that bear upon the formation and refiguration of identities, such as communication and information theory, politics, philosophy, aesthetics and ethics. The classes were oriented towards developing a cross-disciplinary analytical apparatus and new theoretical understandings.
The participants of the masterclass are now collaborating on an edited collection.
By Michèle Nardelli
From UniSA News, May 2007
Professor Pal Ahluwalia’s latest research feeds his passion for understanding not only Africa but the post-colonial experience itself. He is exploring just how knowledge about sub-Saharan Africa is constructed, who has theorised about these cultures and how their views have been influenced by their own experience as members of a post-colonial society.
Pal Ahluwalia joined UniSA and the Hawke Research Institute as Chair and Professor of Post-colonial Studies this year but will spend part of the academic year at the University of California, San Diego in the ethnic studies department. ‘Some people might consider the stretch across two countries and two universities a bit mad but it also adds enormous scope to my research’, he said.
And while the research can be dense and complex, it is helping to make sense of the sociological and political developments in our modern and often troubled world.
He says post-colonial understandings and interpretations of society and history are a part of most modern experiences. When the dominant knowledge, and therefore view, of a people, a place and a history are essentially western, anthropological and post-colonial how do you discover a new perspective? Is there such a thing as pre-colonial knowledge? And how much have modern thinkers – the postmodernists and poststructuralists – themselves been operating in a post-colonial intellectual framework? These are tricky questions but they also inhabit powerful territory.
‘Post-colonial studies go hand in hand with understanding how we construct ideas about race and nationhood’, Prof Ahluwalia said. ‘It helps us to understand the rise and fall of racism in different parts of the world, why in some instances rebellions are considered a fight for freedom and in others, acts of terrorism. It also allows us to evaluate these developments within the political and social landscape.’
Prof Ahluwalia said Australian history offers some particularly interesting perspectives. ‘We are a nation established, and for a long time regarded, as a colony of Britain and at the same time we have grown and developed as a country exerting colonial style influence over our own Indigenous communities and those within our region such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Timor’, he said.
‘It is a fascinating mix and an interesting exercise to look at our national character through the dual lens of the colonised and the coloniser. We find it has often had us deploying double standards in our foreign policy. Racism has also been part and parcel of colonialism – because the practice of taking over a country or a people is made easier if those people can be portrayed as inferior or dependent. The infamous White Australia Policy may be off the books but modern statements about who decides who comes into Australia suggest the desire to control immigration on racial grounds is still not far from the surface.’
Prof Ahluwalia says post-colonial societies are by definition operating in the aftermath of the ‘takeover’. ‘Issues such as race, tensions between dominant and submissive culture, history and historical narratives, and national identity will continue to be influenced by colonisation for generations. There is no way back to a pre-colonial perspective.’
In June and July this year, Prof Ahluwalia will lead a masterclass at UniSA to examine transnational diasporas. This will draw together senior local and UK scholars to work on a book project.
He will also be working across disciplines within the Division of
Education Arts and Social Sciences. With Associate Professor Rob Hattam
and other colleagues, he will be researching reconciliation and
religion, analysing in particular the post 9/11 impacts on views of
Islam, Christianity and notions of violence and non-violence. He will
also collaborate with popular culture and communications specialist,
Associate Professor Gerry Bloustien to look at how history is presented
in museums and through popular culture.
