[csaa-forum] FW: ::fibreculture:: The politics of emotion / Aspirations in the suburbs

[Danny Butt]

Hi all,

I can imagine most of the Australians on this list are in a state of shock
:7, but nevertheless I'd be interested to hear the on-the-ground reactions
to the, uh, "commanding" performance by Howard over the weekend, and what it
means for Australian culture or its study. I hope Brett doesn't mind me
forwarding this from Fibreculture, but it was one of the most insightful
discussions I've come across - relevant to this group, and worthy of wider
exposure. There are also some parallels to be drawn in the prevailing
political mood perhaps with the terribly sad news of Derrida - I'm thinking
of the awful attacks on his work from Chomsky, the Cambridge people etc.
that seem motivated by a similar register of fear that Howard plays upon so
ruthlessly. Being good, or right, is obviously less important than being
familiar.

------ Forwarded Message
From: Brett Neilson <b.neilson at uws.edu.au>
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 11:48:46 +1000
To: <fibreculture at lists.myspinach.org>
Subject: ::fibreculture:: Sad news overnight

Sad news overnight, the death of Jacques Derrida.

On that other altogether more tired and predictable business, I'll post a
piece (written a few days back) that was published in the Italian newspaper
_Il Manifesto_ yesterday, 9 October.

Available in Italian at:
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/09-Ottobre-2004/art42.html


There's another sum-up piece that I wrote last night, but I'll post that
when it's published in a few days time.



The politics of emotion.
Aspirations in the suburbs. And ours?

BRETT NEILSON

It would be foolish to believe that an election in Australia could alter
the current course of global power. Nor does anyone in Australia seriously
expect that a change of government would change life on the ground much at
all. Yet, at the international level, the contest between Howard and Latham
(due to be decided on 9 October) could have effects as significant of those
of the Spanish election of March 2004. If the Labor Party candidate, Mark
Latham, wins, the 800 or so Australian troops in Iraq will be withdrawn by
Christmas. This would be the first withdrawal by a coalition-of-the-willing
country that has been in Iraq since the beginning of the current U.S.-led
invasion. But nobody in Australia is discussing this possibility, least of
all Latham himself. Rather, the talk is about the traditional issues that
divide the political parties in Australia: health, education, taxes,
interest rates, and economic management. Like the question of refugees and
border control, which virtually decided the last election, the issue of war
has disappeared in the last days of the campaign, overshadowed by domestic
issues and cynical attempts to micro-reward swing voters.

The reticence of the Labor Party to advertise its policy on Iraq, like its
kinder approach to refugees, stems from its attempt to win back a number of
marginal seats, usually located on the fringes of Australia's cities. These
largely working class areas had always voted Labor, at least until 1996
when they voted for the conservative John Howard, who has maintained a
stronghold on national politics ever since. Often dubbed the 'aspirational
classes,' the populace of these areas is typically disinvested in the
processes of representative democracy, concerned about their opportunities
for social and economic betterment, susceptible to the affective claims of
nationalism, and harsh in their attitudes to refugees (although many were
migrants to Australia themselves). The moderate Latham, 43 years-old and
Australia's closest answer to a third-way politician, himself grew up in
one of these areas: the vast suburban sprawl of Western Sydney. And his
predominant rhetoric, which speaks of erecting a 'ladder of opportunity'
for all Australians, appeals to these 'aspirational' values. Tuned to the
findings of focus groups and opinion polls, Latham's message has gradually
been stripped of all reference to the war, border control, or contentious
issues such as gay marriage. And the result is boring politics, a campaign
of social engineering (with the promised expenditures carefully matched by
Howard at every step) that has failed to capture the attention (let alone
the imagination) of the voters.

The problem for Labor is how to win back the 'aspirational' suburban seats
without alienating their other base: the middle class, university educated
constituencies who generally live closer to the city centres. These groups
also deserted the Labor Party in the election of November 2001, fleeing
mainly to the Greens (a party allied to the likes of Daniel Cohn Bendit and
Joshka Fischer) when Kim Beasley, the former Labor leader, attempted to
match Howard's rhetoric on security and border control in the wake of 11
September. But this time around, the desertion to the Greens is unlikely to
affect only the Labor vote. There are also many people who live in affluent
conservative seats who are threatening to vote Green to protest Howard's
pro-Bush stance on the war, refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol, and brutal
treatment of asylum seekers. Derisively labeled 'doctors' wives' by
conservative spin doctors, these voters are unlikely to shift the balance
of power in the lower house. But they do threaten to give the Greens more
leverage in the upper house, a factor that would make life difficult for
the major party that wins office (so much so that Howard has struck a deal
with the Christianity-based party Family First to minimize this effect).

It is at this level that the contest in Australia is most interesting. Not
because the policies of the Greens, which often take the form of an
anti-Americanism with strong nationalist/protectionist implications, are
particularly novel, but because the hate that circulates for Howard, and in
particular for his position on Iraq, is the strongest emotional force that
traverses the electorate. Such feeling is unlikely to pierce through the
elaborate apparatus of image construction, swing vote capture, and focus
group policy-making that has become the disease of majoritarian politics.
But it carries a lesson, even for those of us committed to a
post-representative democracy that does not take the seizure of political
power at the level of the nation-state as its primary objective. If Latham
is unlikely to win, it is not because his message fails to resonate with
the 'aspirational' voters he has targeted. Rather it is because, in a media
saturated culture, the emotional modulation of voters tends to outweigh
their openness to arguments of truth and falsity. Fear, insecurity, and
precariousness are the order of the day. And this is what the conservative
side of politics, in Australia as elsewhere, has manipulated through a
skilful exploitation of the relations between sense and sensitivity. If the
left is to respond, it must find something more than a leader who can win a
debate but is unable to win an election.



Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle ... and Other Tales of
Counterglobalization
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/N/neilson_free.html

  


::posted on ::fibreculture:: mailinglist for australasian
::critical internet theory, culture and research
::(un) subscribe info and archive: http://www.fibreculture.org
::please send announcements to separate mailinglist:
:: http://lists.myspinach.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fibreculture-announce

------ End of Forwarded Message