O apparently when Crikey links to you (for something which was really pretty ordinary, I have to say!), it blows all stats out of the water! Half of me is deeply grateful (hi to all those who’ve come by to say hi from crikey) and half of me knows that the little graph wordpress.com gives me each day is going to look a lot sadder from now on coz the scale’s been messed with. Still… I’m grateful.
I’m actually (when I’m not marking) just starting to read Derrida’s Given Time, which I know, should already be read before now. But expect some posts full of excerpts soon. The concept of the gift is kinda key to my thesis, so it’ll make for interesting reading, methinks, and hooks in rather nicely to the idea I and others have been kicking around of bodies and body politics being formed through contract…or are they? And I might even be able to find something to say about temporality! (I’m crossing fingers, because that’s chapter 4!).
But for today, I’m just going to feel a little horrible; my gut curls around itself and the lines between my brows won’t ease. Nor should they. As it turns out, the title of my last post was a little too accurate, as s0metim3s pointed out in the comments. Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley was yesterday (I think) acquitted not just of manslaughter but even of the assault of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004. He died of internal bleeding caused because his liver was split in half by his spine being shoved through it. Yet another death in custody that remains legally OK’d. I can’t think of much to say about it, really, except to point you here for some clear observations of the patterning of guilt and innocence, and to just repeat that there’s something truly hideous about the way that the innocence of ‘Australia/ns’ is earned and reiterated in and through death.
June 21, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Hmmm… I forgot to attach this to the above: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/northern-territory-grog-ban/2007/06/21/1182019254302.html
That’s right, we’ll take your land, your welfare payments, your alcohol because we really really want to help you. Great.
June 21, 2007 at 11:06 pm
I just watched Howard interviewed on Lateline – asked about whether he was declaring the NT a failed state and would therefore, like the Solomons, send the army in. Howard said something along the lines of “Well, mostly it will be the police; but the army will help with some things.” He also talked about “suspending” – so, really, it’s very much a de facto state of emergency that’s been declared. It’s assuming the proportions of the Tampa (or maybe more akin to the accusation that “They’re throwing their children overboard.”)
And it’s amazing that theories of causation which no one has thought to apply anywhere else and are pretty easy to discredit (alcohol, welfare, etc) miraculously become explanations for child abuse in this instance.
June 21, 2007 at 11:36 pm
“Akin to a national emergency,” Howard says on the SMH (link above), and yes, it looks like it is effectively a state of emergency with all the usual suspensions; I read <a href=”http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/21/1958547.htm” rel=”nofollow”>here</a> that Howard’s decided that constitutional ‘niceities’ are less important than children (well, okay, I kinda agree in the abstract, but his cynical deployment of it for these ends is horrifying, especially for a PM!) And I gather that it’s only because the NT is the NT that it’s even possible: actual states would require the state government to be on board. I hadn’t heard about the army: it makes my skin crawl. And yes, Larvatus Prodeo’s dubbed it ‘tampa 2007;’ I just hope they’re wrong even as it feels terribly realistic!
The horrible thing, like you say, is that they’re getting away with calling all those things causes only because it’s indigenous populations we’re talking about! I mean, seriously, a ban on X-rated porn? Isn’t half the argument against more severe censorship for, you know, ‘the rest of Australia’ that there’s “no link” between porn and sexual violence, let alone to kids? And whilst I’m willing to grant alcohol can be problematic, it’s problematic across the board, and has never been a ’cause’ of child sex abuse until now: some enormous proportion of violent crimes happen under the influence of alcohol, yet it takes a racialised population and the risk to the ‘innocence’ of children (so easily deployed, so sickeningly Victorian) to turn all these ’social vices’ into child-sex-abuse causes. ‘Bad’behaviour+race=child abuse? That seems to be the level of argument!
Forgive the slightly shrill tone… I’m slightly shrill with indignation (which is the bit I don’t apologise for!)