[SydPhil] MQ Philosophy Seminar on Tuesday the 8th of November: Joanne Faulkner (UNSW)

[Adam Hochman]

'Suffer Little Children': The Representation of Aboriginal Disadvantage through Images of Suffering Children, and the Wages of Spectacular Humanitarianism

Joanne Faulkner (UNSW)

Date: Tuesday, 8th of November
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Venue: W6A 107, Macquarie University

ABSTRACT: The past two decades have been punctuated by (three) scandals concerning Aboriginal childhood, which have served to draw a focus to a more protracted injustice to Australia's first nations peoples - even while, arguably, these scandals have also obscured that broader injustice. First was the HREOC inquiry into the stolen generations, the report of which was tabled in Parliament in 1997, revealing a history of removal and abuse previously unacknowledged by mainstream Australia. This was followed in 2007 by the Northern Territory intervention, a federal government 'emergency response' ostensibly to reports of widespread child sex abuse in remote Aboriginal communities, but which precipitated an overreach of government management of the lives of Aboriginal people. Most recently, in 2016, video footage of physical abuse of juveniles incarcerated in the Northern Territory that was aired by the national broadcaster has now triggered a royal commission. The regularity of this cycle of abuse and reaction prompts two questions: (1) why are wrongs to Indigenous peoples so frequently brought to crisis through the situation of their children?; and (2) why, each time there is a new inquiry undertaken or solution proposed, does the situation remain unchanged? This paper addresses these questions fundamentally, by examining an ambivalent enjoyment of suffering that motivates a focus on Aboriginal children as a vector of colonial violence. Specifically, with reference to Lacanian theory, I demonstrate that a certain formation of white colonial subjectivity draws upon the spectacle of abused and wounded Aboriginal children as a source of self-knowledge (or enjoyment). In the light of this analysis, it will be argued that the 'wages' of spectacular humanitarianism - enjoyment of a wound through which a national identity is continually reconstituted - must be acknowledged and 'returned' before anything proximate to healing might take place.

Joanne Faulkner is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies at the University of NSW. Her most recent book is Young and Free: [Post]colonial Ontologies of Childhood, Memory and History in Australia (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016). It examines the colonial imaginary in Australia through the persistent trope of lost, stolen, damaged and displaced childhood. She is also the author of Dead Letters to Nietzsche: Or the Necromantic Art of Reading Philosophy (Ohio UP, 2010), and The Importance of Being Innocent: Why We Worry About Children (Cambridge UP, 2011).

Contact: Adam Hochman (adam.hochman at mq.edu.au<mailto:adam.hochman at mq.edu.au>) or Mike Olson (michael.olson at mq.edu.au<mailto:michael.olson at mq.edu.au>)

A google calendar with details of other events in this series is available for viewing and subscription by following this link: https://goo.gl/56sotM


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Adam Hochman
Macquarie University Research Fellow

Department of Philosophy | W6A, Room 733
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia

Staff Profile | http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_philosophy/staff/adam_hochman/

Personal Website | adamhochman.com

Academia.edu Page | https://mq.academia.edu/AdamHochman

Philpapers Page | http://philpapers.org/profile/48626

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[Macquarie University]<http://mq.edu.au/>

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