Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T09:38:37.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

White Blindfolds and Black Armbands: The Uses of Whiteness Theory for Reading Australian Cultural Production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Carole Ferrier
Get access

Extract

Analyses or descriptions of the history of race relations (and cultural production) in what has been called Australia for about a hundred years, have frequently been informed by two orientations that might be simply categorised as the white blindfold and the black armband positions. In many cases, these two mindsets can be observed in other Western cultures although the interaction between them, and the society around them, gets played out differently in particular places at particular times.

Type
Research Article
Information
Queensland Review , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 42 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Some of the same oppositions and dichotomies can be observed (functioning with further differences) in non-Western cultures. To take this up is beyond the scope of this short paper, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that such connections and comparisons are an essential part of an adequate account.Google Scholar

2 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 3rd edition (1901; New York: Norton, 1995): 27–8.Google Scholar

3 Winant, Howard, ‘;Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary US Racial Politics,’ in Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, Linda C Powell and L Mun Wong, eds, Off White: Readings on Race, Power and Society (New York: Routledge, 1997): 43.Google Scholar

4 Winant, 42.Google Scholar

5 See the argument by bell hooks for the use of this term in preference to racism in ‘Postmodern Blackness’ in Walter Truett Anderson, ed, The Fontana Post-Modernism Reader (London: Fontana, 1996): 116.Google Scholar

6 Frankenberg, Ruth, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (London: Routledge and Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993): 171.Google Scholar

7 Davies, Carol Boyce, Women, Black, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (London: Routledge and Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994): 16–17.Google Scholar

8 Trees, Kathryn, ‘Langford, Ruby's Everyday Songlines’, Approaches to Don't Take Your Love to Town, ed. van Toorn, Penny, May 1998, http.z/www.uq.edu/-encferri.Google Scholar

9 Langford 1988: 91.Google Scholar

10 Lucashenko, Melissa, Steam Pigs (St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1997): 145–6.Google Scholar

11 Lucashenko: 147.Google Scholar

12 Frankenberg, , Chapter 6, passim.Google Scholar

13 Frankenberg: 140.Google Scholar

14 Frankenberg: 169–70.Google Scholar

15 Frankenberg: 188.Google Scholar

16 Frankenberg: 137.Google Scholar

17 Langford 1988: 91.Google Scholar

18 Anderson, Bob, ‘Justice or Reconciliation’, in Carole Ferrier and Rebecca Pelan, eds, The Point of Change (Australian Studies Centre, English Department, University of Queensland: 1998): 47.Google Scholar

19 Said, Edward, ‘Orientalism’, in Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Literary Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, [1994]1998): 874.Google Scholar

20 Henry Louis Gates, Black Literature and Literary Theory (New York: Methuen, 1984): 5.Google Scholar

21 Hyllus Maris and Sonia Borg, Women of the Sun (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1985).Google Scholar

22 See Jennings, Karen and Hollinsworth, David, ‘Shy Maids and Wanton Strumpets’, Hecate 13.2 (1987/8): 129–133. Tracey Moffatt, Nice coloured girls, videorecording produced, directed and written by Moffatt (Darlinghurst, N.S.W.: Australian Film Institute, 1987).Google Scholar

23 See, among other discussions of this, Jo Robertson, ‘Making Sense’, Hecate 18.1 (1992): 117–130.Google Scholar

24 See Audrey Evans' stories in Hecate 24.1 (1998): 165–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Lucashenko: 245.Google Scholar

26 Hecate 14.1 (1988): 32.Google Scholar

27 Langford: 269.Google Scholar

28 Lucashenko: 6, 20.Google Scholar

29 Lucashenko: 64, 191.Google Scholar

30 For discussion of some of these, see Carole Ferrier, ‘Aboriginal Women's Narratives’, in Ferrier, , ed, Gender, Politics and Fiction: Twentieth Century Australian Women's Novels, 2nd edition (St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1993): 200–218.Google Scholar

31 Wright, Alexis, Plains of Promise (St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1997): 134.Google Scholar

32 Ganter, Regina, ‘Living an Immoral Life: “Coloured” Women and the Paternalistic State’ in Hecate 24.1 (1998).Google Scholar

33 Duff, Alan, What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted? (Milsons Point, NSW: Random House, 1996). This is the second novel in Duffs trilogy focusing upon the Heke family. Racism in relation to Asians is frequently articulated by the Maori character, Jake Heke; Duff appears to think that this will be read in their favour, and when I asked him about it at a conference responded that they were some of the best workers and the best capitalists.Google Scholar

34 Wright: 133.Google Scholar

35 Lucashenko: 233–4.Google Scholar

36 Lucashenko: 146.Google Scholar

37 I discussed some of the problems of this in ‘On “Not Doing Too Much On Black Women Writers”,’ Hecate 14.2 (1988): 107–109.Google Scholar

38 Rivkin and Ryan: 855.Google Scholar

39 Rivkin and Ryan: 855.Google Scholar

40 Butler, Judith, ‘Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of “Postmodernism”’ in Butler, and Scott, Joan W., eds, Feminists Theorise the Political (Routledge: New York and London): 16.Google Scholar

41 Fine et al. ., Preface, xii.Google Scholar

42 Frankenberg, , 1.Google Scholar