Abstract
In 1993, discussion began about the changing of Australia’s Constitution to reflect the existence of Indigenous people. The discussion collapsed with the ‘no’ vote in the referendum on the possible move to a republic. In 2011, an expert panel of Indigenous and non-indigenous scholars sat and recommended change for 2013. As I write, I am ashamed.
In 2015, Indigenous leaders wrote to the prime minister to say they wanted to advise on the terms of that change. Then Prime Minister Tony Abbot refused the existence of a ‘black process’. At the same time, celebrated Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes was being publically admonished for performing a ‘traditional dance’ on the football field. Adam Goodes, it was said, was behaving like a black man. In line with Freud’s discussion of shame as the exposure of genitals, I suggest, something cannot be seen in non-indigenous Australia, something for which the large part of the nation feels ashamed and something for which another part of Australia is dying.
This chapter is concerned with the non-act of re-writing the Australian Constitution to reflect the existence of Indigenous people as Indigenous people, that is, in the mode that they demand through the ‘black process’. I ask what is it that cannot be exposed in the contemporary nation called Australia? And what are the stakes of this exposure? The chapter will briefly map the process toward constitutional change in Australia, and examine the many sites of exposure that appeared in this process. The chapter will then consider whether Jacques Lacan is right in suggesting that one ‘never died of shame’, when in fact there is a great deal of death being produced in the efforts not to expose that which is shameful in non-indigenous Australia.
This work forms part of an ongoing conversation and publication with Prof Mark Mcmillan. So much of this thinking would not have been possible without his generosity and insights. The research is also made possible by funding by the Australian Research Council on two intersecting projects DE120102304 and DP130101399, which analyse the quality of remorse and the practices of resistances, recognition and reconciliation in Australia, South Africa and Northern Ireland. I thank my colleagues on these projects.
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Notes
- 1.
As quoted by J Brennan in Mabo.
- 2.
There is a plethora of references to the ways in which indigenous-settler relations manifested at this time. One of the most comprehensive and thoughtful articulations of the events and the politics of these events can be found in Wolfe (2014).
- 3.
I have elaborated this history of Australia in relation to the primal scene and the killings in depth in Rogers (2017).
- 4.
‘smooth the pillow of the dying breed’ or ‘smooth the dying pillow’ is the phrase commonly quoted from the Aboriginal Protectorate who indicated that policies to remove (whiter) children from their Indigenous parents were formed on the basis that the ‘indigenous race’ was dying out. See Bringing Them Home (1997).
- 5.
The deference with which constitutions are regarded in other, particularly colonial lands may resonate with the case of the Australian Constitution. However, South Africa’s Constitution, having been re-written, and indeed re-constituted in living memory of most South Africans, is a document that is perceived to be still ‘up for grabs’. Australia’s Constitution enjoys no such fluidity.
- 6.
This is akin to the status of ‘international law’ in Anne Orford’s discussion of its status as a receptacle for paternal transference (2004).
- 7.
The Term ‘Black Process’ in relation to constitutional recognition was articulated in a statement by Indigenous leaders Noel Pearson and Pat Dodson in an article in The Australian newspaper ‘Recognition: Patrick Dodson and Noel Pearson unite for cause’ addressed to the Australian Parliament, in July 2015. It was not the first time it had been used, but it may have been the first time non-indigenous Australia, more broadly, had noted its use.
- 8.
The Expert Panel was a group of Indigenous and non-indigenous people regarded as having expertise on the topic of constitutional change, and chosen with the idea that some of them would represent indigenous views. Changes recommended by the Expert Panel can be viewed in the Executive Summary of their report at www.recognise.org.au/about/expert-panel/ accessed 5 January 2016.
- 9.
Personal communication with Prof Mark Mcmillan, 25 July 2015.
- 10.
Statements on the non-readiness of the Australian public appeared largely as murmurings from the then Labour Government. Such statements then appeared in the Act of Recognition, 2013, and the organisation Recognise was subsequently commissioned to make non-indigenous Australia ready.
- 11.
This phrase has been used by several key figures who worked toward a post-apartheid South Africa and describe the ‘talks about talks’ as a crucial step in the pre-liberation period.
- 12.
As I write, there is a renewed push for migrants to take a test on ‘Australian values’ in order to be able to become Australian citizens. See Karp, Paul, ‘Malcolm Turnbull to add hurdles for “privilege” of Australian citizenship’ theguardian.com , 19 April 2017.
- 13.
As reflected in the desires and policy designs of the early and later settlers and their accompanying law and protocols.
- 14.
Australian Bureau of Statistics.
- 15.
Ghassan Hage gives a very thorough account of how the hierarchies of migrants aspiring to the supposed values of white Australia functions to enable this form of what he calls ‘governmental belonging’: ‘believing one has a right to contribute to its management’ (Hage 1998, 46).
- 16.
I am using the term ‘white Australians’ in line with Ghassan Hage’s argument that while a great deal of the population of Australia is not white at all, that whiteness is a status that all aspire to through the accumulation of cultural capital. For Hage, there is a white aristocracy operating in Australia, but ‘whiteness’ is imagined to be able to be accumulated through the means of, what he calls, the ‘spatial management’ of others (Hage 1998 see particularly Chaps. 1 and 2).
- 17.
The image of what Australia looks like is not so much baffling as disturbing when you look inside prisons. Twenty-five percent of the prison population in Australia are Indigenous, while they make up only 3 percent of the broader population. Indigenous people are more likely to go to prison than finish school. There is no capital punishment in Australia, but in 1996, the Deaths in Custody report found that 10.4 Indigenous people died in prison every year; in 1995, it was twenty-two people, and that number has increased. There have been ninety-six Aboriginal deaths in custody in the seven years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody completed its Report.
www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/indigenous-deaths-custody-report-summary.
Indigenous people are more likely to go to prison than finish school. As Grant says of the national anthem: ‘“Australians all let us rejoice.” What is there for us to rejoice about in our troubled history? “For we are young and free.” My people are some of the most incarcerated people on earth’ (Grant 2015).
- 18.
The Sorry Books are an initiative that emerged after conservative Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise for the policies of child removal of Indigenous people, which operated across the more than 100 years prior to his government. See Ahmed (2004) for a description of the inception and work of the Sorry Books.
- 19.
There is some controversy over these statistics as they are largely pedaled by the organization ‘Recognise’, which has a vested interest in indicating that it is doing its work effectively. However, anecdotally I would suggest that these statistics articulate with people who voice any interest in constitutional change. What is uncertain is exactly what they are in agreement with. ‘Recognition’ is the only term used, and it seems largely non-controversial amongst non-indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians, however, seem increasingly wary about such a gesture.
- 20.
Ahmed’s comments on the Sorry Books again give us some of the sense of urgency and passion for an official ‘apology’ (2004).
- 21.
Lacan says this: ‘Out of what knowledge is the law made? Once one has uncovered this knowledge it may happen that that changes. Knowledge falls to the rank of symptom seen from another perspective’ (2007, 186–187).
- 22.
‘Blushing’ for shame is Probyn’s description (2010), where Ahmed talks about shame being experienced on bodies ‘whose surfaces burn’ (2004, 103). She writes: ‘shame can be described as an intense and painful sensation that is bound up with how the self feels about itself, a self-feeling that is felt by and on the body’ (2004, 103).
- 23.
Lacan was very clear that there was no ‘Other to the Other’, hence we can only say that this location is a fantasy.
- 24.
I have discussed this dynamic precisely in terms of the history of the colonisation of Australia (Rogers 2017).
- 25.
For a more comprehensive distinction between constitutions and positive law (particularly in the context of South Africa, see Jaco Barnard-Naude (2017) ‘The Anxiety Provoked by the Double’ (forthcoming). My thanks to him for letting me read the drafts of this work.
- 26.
This might be considered a form of Lacanian jouissance, but the technicalities of that experience are too open to uncertainty for this claim here.
- 27.
As Brennan states: ‘contemporary Aborigines whose ancestors were denied the vote at the referendum approving the Constitution might assert their sovereignty by actions other than acquiescence, thereby calling into question the legitimacy of the Constitution’ (1995, 128).
- 28.
Further, the beginning of 2016 saw public and publicised refusals of the idea of constitutional change at all from Indigenous people see Graham (2016) https://newmatilda.com/2016/02/08/recognise-rejected-historic-meeting-500-black-leaders-unanimously-opposes-constitutional-recognition/
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Rogers, J.B. (2017). Shame, Pain and Melancholia for the Australian Constitution. In: Sheils, B., Walsh, J. (eds) Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63829-4_7
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