Identity Politics in Deconstruction

Calculating with the Incalculable

Carolyn D'Cruz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754662082
• eBook ISBN: 9781317119043
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Identity politics dominates the organisation of liberation movements today. This is the case whether fighting over one's birthright to a nation, such as in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict; lobbying for civil rights, such as in gay and lesbian campaigns for marriage; or struggling for citizenry recognition as currently experienced by asylum seekers. In this book Carolyn D'Cruz investigates the nexus between what David Birch describes as 'the seemingly impossible of high theory and the seemingly accessible possibilities of popular discourse', as encountered in liberation movements based on identity. D'Cruz reworks the logic of such movements through the unique combination of Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian discourse and Levinasian ethics. Moving both within and between the domains of philosophy, politics and 'postmodern culture' this book offers both a clear explication of complex philosophical issues and an understanding of how they relate to the political practicalities of everyday life.

Chapter One

‘What Matter Who’s Speaking?’1

Rhetorical question: A question to which no answer is expected

(The American Heritage Dictionary)

Rhetorical questions: asked not for information but to produce effect, as who cares? For nobody cares.

(The Concise Oxford Dictionary)

Identity politics cannot function without the underlying assumption that it very much matters who I am, who you are, and what possibilities are open to, or closed for, us in order to form a ‘we’. To ask the rhetorical question ‘What Matter Who’s Speaking?’ in a book about identity politics might therefore seem absurd. For the rhetorical register of the question – What matter? For it matters little – fosters a dismissive tone toward identity. Yet the grammatical pattern disallows the figurative meaning to gain precedence as the only meaning to the question. The literal meaning remains within the structure of the sentence.2 And, as anyone who has been active within identity politics would know, the propensity within such movements is to answer literally why it very much matters who is speaking. Advocates of identity politics might even suggest that only those who enjoy the privilege of not being marked by a marginalised identity can entertain the rhetorical register. To put this in the parlance of identity politics, supposedly only a white, middle class man can afford to attend to rhetoric and contemplate the undecidability between the two meanings inhering in the same sentence. In the realm of politics, so the logic goes, there is no time for attending to such undecidability. But, this undecidability is not only a grammatical issue; it is also a political one. As I argue in this chapter, each meaning might bear its own appropriateness within a specific context and order of analysis.

It is not easy, however, to attain a position from which to reflect upon the undecidability between the literal and figurative meanings of the question. More often than not, before confronting any other qualifying prerequisite to speak we must satisfy the criteria of bearing the marker of identity that is spoken about. So presumably, only women can speak about women’s issues, only those belonging to a specific ethnic minority can speak on behalf of that particular group, and so on. Following Foucault’s attention to the figurative meaning of the question, the present chapter reflects on the limiting, and sometimes dangerous, effects of categorically instituting such a prerequisite. This involves treating the status of the concrete speaking subject as secondary to the function of the speaking position from which a concrete subject finds that she or he must speak. In other words, the matter of speaking is to be examined first without a concrete ‘who’. Within Foucault’s archaeological analysis, the status of the concrete speaking subject is not at issue. At issue instead are the rules and procedures – which must be followed – that regulate discourse. Such rules and procedures must be in place before granting any concrete subject validity and legitimacy in speaking.

This chapter addresses the particular protocol of speaking rights by way of examining a specific debate about ‘Aboriginal’3 identities in Australia. The debate took place in the late 1992 and early 1993 issues of Oceania – a journal identifying itself with the ‘field of social and cultural anthropology [whose] primary regional orientation is to the indigenous peoples of Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, and South East Asia’.4 It erupted after a self-identified non-Aboriginal teacher of Aboriginal Studies, David Hollinsworth, attempted to evaluate various ‘discourses of Aboriginality … in terms of their apparent implications for Aboriginal political struggles’. Unsurprisingly, many participants in the debate question the legitimacy of Hollinsworth’s right to do so. At the same time, however, most participants themselves are seemingly intent on articulating a position regarding the merits of different definitions of Aboriginal identity and claims to authenticity. In various public spaces in Australia debates about both issues – the right to speak and the question concerning what constitutes authentic Aboriginal identity – occur with impassioned regularity. The issue also links, albeit it in a complex way, to the political goal for self-determination within Aboriginal communities. Self-determination requires self-representation, which suggests that a subjugated group must be allowed to speak on their own behalf. Lack of consultation and representation of Aboriginal people within government policies and practices has worsened rather than improved living conditions in these communities.5

The issue of representation and legitimacy also relates to the matter of determining the authenticity of Aboriginal art, where revelations of fraudulent artists not only dramatically drop the market value of the paintings at issue, but raise questions about what makes authenticity discernible. Similarly, in other contexts, questions of Aboriginal authenticity persistently arise when negotiating representations of Aboriginal people to various publics, whether they are portrayals of Aboriginal people in the media, film, museums, education curriculums and other aspects of cultural life. And as Aboriginal people are forced to continue the colonial legacy of negotiating with ‘official’ governmental definitions of their identity for bureaucratic purposes, there is no shortage of public opinion – particularly on talkback radio and letters to the editor in newspapers – pronouncing criterion for determining what ought to constitute an authentic Aboriginal person.

In all forms of this debate, there is a tendency to reduce the complexity of the issues at stake, firstly, to a choice between two polarised political positions: either it does matter who speaks or it does not. Of course, this matter is important, but there is an impulsive proclivity to reduce all argument to the identity of the subject doing the speaking. Before any further discussion about authenticity can take place it is worthwhile considering more closely the problems and issues conditioning the legitimacy of the speaking subject. The Oceania debate provides a fertile ground from which to do so, as the issues raised are as relevant to today’s history wars as discussed in Chapter Four as they are to examining everyday negotiations of Aboriginal identity in past, present and future discussions. It cannot be overstated that the present chapter reviews the Oceania debate by not taking up an either/or position over the matter of speaking. Rather it explores various positions from which subjects are constrained and enabled to speak when negotiating what Foucault calls the ‘formidable materiality of discourse’.6 In doing so, the debate on the matter of speaking and the related problem of authenticity will not be resolved to the binary positions that either it matters or it does not matter who speaks, or that Aboriginality means this or that. Rather the chapter is interested in how possibilities for political interventions can be multiplied and become more specified and understood in their singularity.

Speaking positions, power and knowledge

Some participants’ comments in the Oceania discussion suggest that the politics of speaking positions is, in fact, self-evident. Not surprisingly, a large point of contention centres on the right of non-Aboriginal people to speak about Aboriginal identities and issues. This effectively sets the frame from which to discuss the matter of speaking in terms that must connect the identity of the investigating subject with the identity of the object/subject in question. Put more simply, we cannot view the speaker as a disinterested or impartial observer of the issues in question. Accordingly, each speaker presumably enters some kind of power relationship with the investigated identity in the act of participating in the debate. Now this might seem obvious. Such recognition is evident in the widespread compulsion for speakers and writers to declare a list of their own identity markers – such as skin colour, gender, race, sexuality, political allegiance and so on – as some kind of shorthand signal for situating themselves and their knowledge claims in relation to others. (For instance, film theorist E. Ann Kaplan asks ‘How can I enter or approach the culture of Aborigines, as a white Anglo-Celt who has lived long in North America?’7)

Sometimes the declaration is used to problematise the speaking subject’s ‘right’ to speak about the particular identity in question (such as a non-Aboriginal person speaking about issues pertaining to Aboriginal identity); at other times, the declaration acts as some kind of verifier for what is being said. The former use of the declaration emphasises the desire not to speak on behalf of, or with authority about, another culture, and to recognise the imbalance of power relations in an encounter between dominant and marginalised identities. The latter use seemingly encourages the view that knowledge claims are reducible to, and locatable within, the ‘authenticity’ of a particular identity’s subjective experience. An extreme version of the latter use occurs when a speaking subject’s knowledge claims, concerning an alleged constitution of social reality, are evaluated on the basis of his or her identity markers. Unfortunately, these three issues concerning the speaking subject – the problem of speaking on behalf of, and about, others; the claim that knowledge can be reduced to a subject’s experience; and the claim that knowledge can be legitimated with recourse to the mere marker of an identity – are often left undifferentiated when debating the matter of representation within discourses of identity politics. This chapter aims to open ways for disentangling the conflation of these three positions.

The status of the speaking subject in the Oceania debate

In one form or another, each participant in the Oceania debate abides by the practice of ‘situating’ his or her knowledges by disclosing their own markers of identity, or at least their own perceived qualifications to contribute to, or refrain from, discussing Aboriginal authenticity. It seems that if the investigating subject’s identity coincides with the identity of the subject in question, then this person has a more legitimate perspective from which to speak. The following is a list of the forms in which participants disclose their identities:

As a non-Aboriginal person who has taught Aboriginal Studies to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal tertiary students, these arguments are of intense significance, professionally, personally, and politically.8

I believe that such a search and any conclusions reached must come from us, ourselves. We must determine our own identity within the parameters established by us.9

I could also question in itself the politics of a white person (like Hollinsworth) seeking to police the collective memories through which Aborigines invent and reclaim a measure of their authenticity.10

In calling upon Aborigines to undertake thoroughly the work of historicising themselves … it is axiomatic that in the production of their history Aborigines do not embrace the generalised and one-dimensional history created by non-Aboriginal historians or anthropologists but instead follow the practice of those Aboriginal autobiographers who have more ably engaged with the complex specificity of their pasts.11

For my part, I shall not presume to advise Aboriginal people about how to articulate an identity. . .12

I do not consider my position as an educated white bourgeois woman, sharing more of the experiences of the do-gooders and blow-ins than of the Blacks in Bourke, Katherine, Redfern, or Arnhem Land, as a disabling analytical perspective, especially in relation to issues of racism.13

These declarations – though quite varied – supposedly situate each author’s qualifications, or political suitability, for entering the matter concerning ‘the means of claiming, contesting and authenticating Aboriginal identity’.14

Ironically, Hollinsworth investigates the very category seen as legitimising one’s speaking position (‘Aboriginality’) for its possible exclusionary boundaries. Crucially, however, the exclusions to which the debate directs its attention concern Aboriginal inscriptions of identity only; some Aboriginal identities are perceived to bear greater claims to authenticity than others. This issue prompts Hollinsworth to open the discussion. His aim is to question various ‘discourses’ that attempt to define what constitutes a person’s Aboriginality, as he believes that some definitions in circulation have a tendency to create a hierarchy of Aboriginal authenticity. For example, he claims that many urban Aborigines have experienced instances in which their own identities are considered less authentic than rural Aborigines. Of course contesting the authenticity of Aboriginal identity is not only a problem for some of the students Hollinsworth engages with as a teacher in Aboriginal studies. Such contestations repeatedly air on talkback radio and appear in letters to the editor in the popular press. Needless to say, refutations of authenticity help fuel the racist rhetoric of conservative lobbyists whose mission is to abolish welfare provisions for Aboriginal people, whom they do not consider to be ‘real’ Aborigines. As Hollinsworth remarks, ‘the means of claiming, contesting and authenticating Aboriginal identity are central to both the future of Aboriginal Studies as an academic area of study and to political and ideological struggles over Australian nationalism and the position of indigenous peoples within it’.15 For Hollinsworth then his professional, personal and political stakes regarding the issue compel him to speak. In suspending a verdict over whether Hollinsworth had the right to do so – that is the right to speak about definitions of Aboriginal identity – let us first see if we can shift the terms of the debate by employing Foucault’s tools for an archaeological analysis of discourse.16 This will better position us to reconsider the status of the speaking subject.

An archaeological approach to ‘r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘What Matter Who’s Speaking?’
• 2 Between Experience and Epistemology
• 3 Choosing One’s Heritage: Between philosophy and politics
• 4 Truth, Law and Justice: Responding to the stolen generations in the disadjusted time of the present
• 5 Welcome Stranger: Democracy ‘to come’, Autoimmunity and Hospitality
• Bibliography
• Index