GCST2607 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: White Australia Policy, Carmen Rupe, Antipodean Resistance
25 May 2018
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Week 1: BODIES, SEXUALITIES, IDENTITIES:
• Rise of populist Ethno-nationalism globally
o Vigilante Posters Melbourne 2016
o Antipodean Resistance describes itself as a youth organisation that opposes "substance
abuse, homosexuality, and all other rotten, irresponsible distractions laid before us by
Jews and globalists elites"
• Freedom of speech
o Key principles invoked by populist politicians on behalf of powerful groups to condone
homophobic, racist and transphobic acts in public discourse and everyday violence
o Principle designed to guarantee the freedom to engage in the forms of cultural activism
and critique we see in important queer events such as Mardi Gras parade/festival
• Meaghan Morris (Key figure in AUS cultural studies)
o Speech codes should not be treated as laws, but practical advice about "how to make
everyone feel equally included, values and able to participate" in 'big diverse social
spaces densely populated by strangers and open to the world'
o Sticks and stones and stereotypes (Meagan Morris 1997 article, course reader)
o "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me"
o Language is a social bound
o Meaning depends on how we use language in all the varying situations of life
o Powers of language - rhythm, tone, accent, pitch and rhyme
o How something is said affects us as much as who said it and why
• Stereotypes
o Said to 'take away a person's individuality'
o Also intensely isolating
o Scapegoating -> 'publicly punishing people for breaking the rules so the rest of us know
what they are'
• Carmen Rupe (story)
o Various factors combined to constitute the conditions of her life
o These mainly served to maintain a certain governing order (white, heterosexual) and
image of national belonging
o Words were operative here: reports being called various terms of abuse
o Power is enacted, not just by the police, but through everyday, mundane acts: there is a
'microphysics of power'
o "White Australia Policy" - trans women of colour were discriminated
• Working Categories
o Trans -> proposed as umbrella term for a range of variations in gender
identity/expression, irrespective of sexuality
o Sexuality -> usually taken to refer to the sex/gender of one's desired partners
('irrespective of gender expression')
o Gender/Sexuality -> analytically distinct, but interconnected in complex ways, both in
lived experience and historically. (can be mutually informing, quite fixed and distinct,
and each of different importance to different people)
• Contested names and identities
o How we relate to slurs/attributions of 'sickness' is a significant question
o Insisting on the essential rightness or wrongness of slurs/categories can fence people
in… y reinforing the power of ertain words to hurt people
o How particular words are used
o Bodies are really complicated
o How we inhabit those identities/categories, what we make of them, is a practical
challenge (requiring strength, creativity, intelligence, diversity, sensitivity, bravery)
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