[csaa-forum] a possible letter from CSAA about the Howard/Brough intervention

[Paul.Magee]

Dear All,

Sorry to take a while to respond to the suggestion of a CSAA letter to Howard/Rudd; I’ve been on hols. As President this would be an appropriate thing for me to do. Yet much as I appreciate Stephen’s suggestion, backed up by a few people now, I’m disinclined to follow it up. This is for a number of reasons:

The first, is that I’m not convinced that such a letter, to either leader, would have any impact on their actions. That’s not an overwhelming reason, however, as it might still be a good thing for us as an association to take public stands. 

The real reason is that I don’t think unanimity is the best place for us to be at the moment. Partially this is because I don’t believe we actually have unanimity on this issue. I mean, I could write a letter against the intervention, but then again, I’m got some pretty weird ideas, as many of you know. I’m not sure you’d all want me putting the name of your association to them. I might sound trite here, but actually this is precisely my point. If I were to draft the sort of document that averaged out the opinions of all of us, I think we’d lose much of the value of what we, as Cultural Studies scholars, have to offer on this, or any other political issue – the freedom and experience to say, from an informed perspective, exactly what one thinks. We, as a discipline, have allowed freedom of expression more than most others and it often produces exciting work. On the other hand, I don’t think we’ve ever done consensus particularly well. Not that we’ve tried all that often. It’s not what we’re trained for.

I think we should particularly avoid unanimity when it comes to a wedge issue designed, as Mark pointed out, to make firm stances appear foolish. I’d rather we treat this association as a space in which we disagree on and debate over issues that are contentious, precisely on the grounds that we don’t necessarily have all these things in common. In other words, I think the CSAA should be a space for risky thinking – seeing what happens when you throw an idea that you’ve thought long and hard on out there. I’m delighted that CSAA forum has taken on this character over the last week. Here's to disagreement, and feedack!

I think that the real possibility for political action for CSAA members at this particular moment is much closer to hand than Parliament House. The election’s looming and we, those of us who are teachers in particular, have a very real capacity to have impact upon one of the Howard government’s most vulnerable support bases: the young. I won’t rehearse the distressing statistics on Australian youth’s support of the Co-alition. I’d rather focus on the fact that we’re in a very good position to make them think very hard about it. Maggie Nolan’s suggestion, on this list, that we incorporate issues like Mal Brough into our teaching strikes me as a great one. Teaching that way is risky of course, ‘cause you can often, in the heat of the issue, get the facts wrong, and you can also often fall into the trap of preaching, when the real challenge is to persuade people to think. That’s also where I think the politics of this list come into play. The discussions and disagreements we have in spaces like this list inform our teaching, not to mention our general interaction with other minds. So too can the valuable resources people have been putting forward all week. This is a good thing - though the issue itself, like so many Howard issues, is so distressing and many of the political manouvres are so disgraceful. We should be confronting them. CS has been far too reticent in the past – with notable exceptions of course – about applying its various methodologies and expertises to Australian parliamentary politics. Maybe we took Foucault’s comments about the “Head of the King” in the History of Sexuality too seriously. Or maybe we shied away from what is an inherently risky endeavour. Either way, I want to call - in lieu of a letter to politicians who can’t read - for us to use this forum as a space for discussion of each and every upcoming political ploy over the next few months. I’d particularly like to see people sending in more links to good resources. 

This is where we do our real political work, right here in the so called ivory walls. They're not any more. The democratisation of the Australian university system, these last 30 years (we've gone from 2% of school leavers attending Uni, to something more like 30%), has also vastly increased our potential political power. Let's focus it. 

In sum, I suggest we fly under the radar, and rely on the fact that the true politicians are the teachers, 'cause they're closer to the future.

best

Paul


Dr. Paul Magee

President, Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
Lecturer in Creative Reading
School of Creative Communication
University of Canberra
ACT 2601
02 6201 2402

Australian Government Higher Education (CRICOS) 
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