[csaa-forum] Howard's new Tampa

[Mark Gibson]

> I take back what i wrote earlier on this list about Noel Pearson. This is
> really interesting:
> 
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/stories/2007/1955255.htm
> 
> cheers
> 
> Paul Magee

Thanks for that reference Paul. I hadn't caught it before. Yes, a
fascinating speech. A much more reflective Pearson than on Lateline or which
we usually see in other media grabs. It's particularly good on the
complexity of his relation with the progressive left (the 'us' generally
taken for granted on this list). There's a very sharp para on this 'us' in
Pearson's Griffith Review piece referenced at the same web address:

"They empathise with the plight of Indigenous people who face racism
and other real injuries; they acknowledge what has happened through history
and recognise that the present is not unconnected with the past. They
understand the hypocrisy of the prescription to forget the past, especially
in a country whose most famous lapidary exhortation reads: Lest We Forget.
But at some point empathy and acknowledgement turn into moral superiority,
and the relative failures of one¹s cultural and political opponents become
the basis of accusations of insensitivity or racism. At this point, race
becomes a useful club to beat the Neanderthals from the right, and racism
serves the cultural and political purposes of the progressive accuser rather
than the humanity of those subjected to it."

Is that not a fairly accurate characterisation? In questions after the
speech, Pearson admits to feeling 'despicable' sometimes in casting
aspersions on progressives (given that they at least care, where generally
the conservatives do not). But ultimately, he says, the progressive position
has 'done us no good'. For me, that's the challenge we need to respond to.
We need to think before seeing this as just another opportunity to embroider
our anti-Howard demonology.

There are a lot of parallels in all this with debates we've had in cultural
studies. It's worth comparing Pearson's term for the progressive left, the
'morally vain' (one which he admits is 'hard') with Ian Hunter's criticisms,
over a decade ago, of 'moral notables'. Going right back to the beginnings
of cultural studies, it also resonates with Richard Hoggart's
characterisation in 1957 of the 'middle class Marxist', who 'part pities and
part patronises working-class people beyond any semblance of reality'.
There's a great piece by Melissa Gregg on this, drawing in discussion of
Howardism, in International Journal of CS 10.1.

Mark