Mediating Multiculturalism. Daniella Trimboli
intentions, but in fact there is no such thing as tolerant and intolerant practices: both perpetuate the same racist underpinnings (p. 93). ‘Those who execute [tolerant practices], “good” as they are, share and inhabit along with White “evil” nationalists the same imaginary position of power within a nation imagined as “theirs” […] They enact the same White nation fantasy’ (p. 79). In this sense, those fighting the cause of liberal multiculturalism cannot be easily distinguished from those that Hage terms ‘Hansonites’, or other white Australians with overtly racist attitudes. Hage recognises that Pauline Hanson and many of her supporters really believe they are not racist. Combining an approach of ethical reflexivity and a critique of inconspicuous deployments, Hage not only considers how nationalist practices embed these ideas but, importantly, how they incorporate the ideas of those he finds less racist. Namely, what are the conditions that constitute these supposed ‘more or less’ levels of racism? Similarly, Povinelli (2002, p. 52) suggests that instead of writing Hanson off as racist because her ideas seem repellent, we should, in fact, ponder them seriously.13 Both Hage and Povinelli are here pointing to the importance of what Gunew (2004) calls the ‘shifty work’ of multiculturalism, and our need to be persistently critical of it.
It is important, therefore, to carefully analyse the work that gets done in the name of multiculturalism and/or its counterpart cultural diversity. This is especially the case as multiculturalism and its related domains retain their status in the imagined community of contemporary Australia. A recent study conducted by Nikos Papastergiadis et al. (2015) at the University of Melbourne found that new migrants to Melbourne/Naarm and greater Victoria continue to use the language of multiculturalism, explicating a keen desire to become an active part of Australia’s multicultural society. The research indicates that the personal identities of many new migrants are intrinsically linked to the institutional construction of multiculturalism; how these migrants construct an understanding of their Australian subjectivity moves in and around this discourse. This relationship occurs in spite of multiculturalism’s critics and its waning popularity as a keystone governmental policy. Maree Pardy’s and Julian C. H. Lee’s (2011, p. 300) empirical research further supports this point, noting that Australian immigrants and refugees frequently ‘claim multiculturalism as their space’. Multiculturalism is viewed as the space in which they can attain belonging and identification with the nation, a type of guarantee for their future Australianness (pp. 300–301). I thus maintain the use of the term ‘multiculturalism’, positioning it as a prevalent contemporary phenomenon that cannot be overlooked.
The personal-public relationship involved in forming a multicultural subjectivity gives rise to another key aspect of my approach to the study of everyday multiculturalism, namely, the framing of everyday multiculturalism as interrelated to systematic or governmental realms. Some everyday multiculturalism scholars have a tendency to position everyday cultural encounters as removed from institutionalised frameworks of cultural difference. Paul O’Connor (2010, p. 526), for example, views everyday multiculturalism as ‘miles ahead’ of policy initiatives. This structure also arises in some discussions about the role of community-based or culturally diverse art as a cultural process emancipated from governmentality.14 In his analysis of cultural diversity in Britain, Araeen (2010a,b) argues that the ‘diversity of cultures’ and ‘diversity within’ art should be seen as two separate things, calling for a separation between art and other elements associated with cultural diversity, such as traditions and heritage. While Araeen feels diversity is a ‘fundamental’ rather than an ‘add-on’, he holds the idea of the ‘free-thinker’ close to his chest – believing that art has to be completely separated from culture and its institutions and policies to allow for truly creative and progressive works (Araeen 2010b, p. 18).
Cultural difference and multicultural interactions certainly occur beyond policy; however, this book argues that the distinction between these two realms cannot and should not be made so clearly. Trying to separate the culturally diverse artist or multicultural subject from institutions and/or policy overlooks the set of relations that pre-exist and exceed beyond the artist or multicultural person. Certainly, the checklist approach to cultural diversity creates a series of presuppositions for art practice and its outputs, but gaining an exterior of culture and its critique is, by definition, an impossible task. We can only come to know ‘ourselves’, after all, by giving the ‘I’ over to a set of terms which exist before and beyond us (Butler 1997a, pp. 196–97). A separation of any sort is, as Butler (2009, p. 44) writes, a ‘function of the relation, a brokering of difference, a negotiation in which I am bound to you in my separateness’. Furthermore, arguing that we need to separate things into distinct fields to find ‘true creativity’, or, as O’Connor (2010) argues, to analyse the ‘real’ realms of multiculturalism, fails to critically consider the productive work that occurs within the institutions of both art and multiculturalism. As Butler (2009, p. 149) outlines, institutions and the State are able to establish ‘ontological givens’ through certain operations of power, which are ‘precisely notions of subject, culture, identity, and religion’, and the versions of these often remain ‘uncontested’. The State and the institutions of multiculturalism should not be at the centre of analysis since power operates in ways and means that ‘precede and exceed’ (p. 146) it; but it is still an element that contributes to the assemblage of the ethnic subject and the wider terrain of cultural diversity. The everyday experiences of racism are not excluded to the realm of the individual or the personal – racist attacks are always validated by the dominant sociality to some degree, ‘either by other citizens or by various institutions, and especially those of the state’ (Tabar et al. 2010, p. 156).
Christopher Bowen’s (2011) speech, The Genius of Australian Multiculturalism, helps to illustrate the public-private entanglements within the discourse of multiculturalism and ultimately the multicultural body that I examine in this book. As the minister for immigration and citizenship under the former Gillard Labor government, Bowen addressed parliament to officially reinstate Australia as a multicultural nation. The speech is noticeably sanguine, exaggerating the successes of Australian multiculturalism and ignoring its problems and ultimately giving it no new vision or reassessment. Echoing John Howard’s 1999 agenda of ‘One Australia’, Bowen proclaims that the success of Australian multiculturalism is attributable to the way it allows other cultures to enjoy their own cultural values, but always ensures ‘respect for traditional Australian values’ is retained at its core. According to Bowen, this has allowed Australia to escape the perils that other multicultural nations, such as Canada, Germany and France, have experienced. Bowen suggests that the complex debate over language in Canada, the ‘parallel lives’ produced in Germany and the race riots in France have been the results of a lack of encouragement for integration and/or an ill-defined multicultural policy. This latter comparison with France is particularly disturbing since it was only recently that violent race riots occurred in the Southern-Sydney suburb of Cronulla.15 As I will argue in Chapter Five, racism was an underlying factor in the Cronulla riots, made explicit by the specific uses of the white male body during the public stand-off. By making a point of the tensions in other countries, but denying those present in Australia, Bowen perpetuates Australia’s long-standing denial of racism and its failure to acknowledge the history and contributions of non-white Australians to the country.
A comparison can be made to Hage’s (2002b, p. 9) argument regarding the lack of ethical consideration for Arab-Australians during the Gulf War. Hage describes how media reports of the war made no gesture towards the Arab-Australian community, an absence he attributes to the fact that the ethnic community was not ‘considered worthy of a pause’ (ibid.). The failure on the part of Bowen to include a pause for the on-the-ground tensions of multiculturalism indicates a repeated performance of an entrenched racism. Namely, he gives the nation a multicultural imaginary while simultaneously denying the everyday reality of the multicultural subjects that the imaginary claims to include. This denial or absence of a pause directly impacts the way ethnic bodies perceive themselves, and ultimately the choices they make from day to day. The empirical research carried out for the aforementioned HREOC (2003) project found, for example, that one of the significant reasons victims of racism do not report racist incidents is due to a belief that racism is accepted by the majority of Australians and the country’s