Below is a talk I gave at the Sydney Anarchist Bookfair earlier this month, Notes Toward a Critique of Autonomy. It’s ‘notes toward’ because it is not a polished synthesis/analysis, but more in the spirit of throwing ideas out there.
Thanks to the organisers of the bookfair, including Jura Bookshop and Black Rose Anarchist Library, for having me. It was such a fantastic event, full of interesting and challenging ideas.
Filed under General personal writings
One of my few PhD fieldwork regrets is that I didn’t take the time to learn Yolŋu sign language. I had the great fortune of having a beer conversation with two long term researchers in this area last night, Dany Adone and Bentley James. Adone and Maypilama (2013) define Yolŋu sign language as both an alternate and primary sign language. It is used on a daily basis on the Homelands, as a way to talk to each other from a distance (when out of hearing range), as a way to communicate when out hunting (when you want to be quiet for obvious reasons), and as a means to communicate things you just don’t want others to hear. Children also often use it just because. My little gaminyarr, for example, tells the most hilarious stories in sign-language, made all the more funny on account of her overly exaggerated manner of signing.
Anyway, the other day Bentley shared with me the hand-sign for the idiom buthuru-dumuk, and I found it a little big bit more than curious. Buthuru-dumuk (literally ‘ears-blunt’), is a Yolŋu-matha idiom used to refer to people who behave in an unthinking or unfeeling manner (and who upset or affront others as a result). It has connotations of being insensate, ignorant and unaware. The hand-sign for buthuru-dumuk, however, is comprised of three separate hand-signs: the sign for liya (head), the sign for mokuy (ghost, evil spirit) and the sign for watu (dog). Head + ghost/evil spirit + dog = buthuru dhumuk. How could one not find this impossibly curious?
Filed under Incidental
Over the last few months a number of people have asked if I can recommend a few texts on anarchism or anarchist political philosophy. Recommending texts is hard, so I’m just going to list a few of my favourites instead. I recognise that these may not be everyone’s cup of tea, so I invite others to share their own favourite anarchist texts in the comments below. If there is a substantial response I’ll compile a short bibliography and post it at a later date. So here’s goes as I like to say:
Errico Malatesta †
1995, The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924-1931.
This would be a wonderful text to start with for someone who hasn’t read anything on anarchism before. It is a short volume of essays and letters in Malatesta’s no-nonsense, stoic style. I love Malatesta’s earnest economy of words more than anything, and his ability to communicate key ideas in plain English with little fuss. (It’s no secret I have a giant mega crush on Malatesta.) I really super love this text.
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (aka Peter Kropotkin) ††
1902, Mutual Aid: A factor in evolution.
Epic, earnest and awesome. Kropotkin put forward an alternative view on species survival, beyond claims of competition and ‘natural’ hierarchy presupposed at the time. In a way, Kropotkin is to competitive interpretations of Darwinism what Proudhon is to the competitive presuppositions about human nature that underlie ‘classic’ social contract theory. (Kropotkin also led an amazing life – he was a Prince after all! – and he is worth reading for this reason too.)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon †††
1851, General idea of the revolution in the Nineteenth Century
This is an odd text, but one of my favourites. It’s odd because it doesn’t necessarily address the ‘revolution’ as one might expect and also because it is quite disjointed. I think of it as a series of essays elaborating his thought and position on key concepts – on key areas or topics of interest anarchists – from the social contract, property relations and the division of labour to social organisation-as-governance, authority and social order. Actually, I think this is my current favourite text at the moment, now I think of it (not least because it is productive to ‘think through’ ethnography with).
Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940). ††††
1931, 1934 Living my life, published in two volumes.
2006 [1983] Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution.
I couldn’t choose just one. I can’t tell you how influential Goldman’s writing has been on my own thought, politics and life. There is not a week goes by where I don’t think of her work in some way for whatever reason. One of the many things I find compelling about her writing is her fierce sense of compassion and uncompromising humanity. She was such an incredible woman – such an admirable anarchist and such an incredibly strong feminist. Both these texts are very accessible and one needn’t have any background knowledge to follow and appreciate them. The first is her autobiography.
† The wiki-entry on Malatesta can be found here.
†† The wiki-entry for Kropotkin can be found here.
††† The wiki-entry for Proudhon can be found here. I’ve written about Proudhon a number of times hereon in the past. A quick search should find the relevant posts.
†††† The wiki-entry for Goldman can be found here.
Filed under Current social issues
This month is the 7th anniversary of Mutiny Zine! Mutiny are an anarchist collective based in Sydney. The zine that they produce explores ideas about anarchist thought and practice, as well as different avenues of disobedience and resistance. Mutiny are also closely associated with Jura Books, which is well worth a visit if you ever happen to find yourself in Sydney-town.
The following piece – which is based on a previous post hereon – appears in the latest Issue of Mutiny Zine, # 69. Thank you to the Mutiny crew for the opportunity to share info and stories about Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and institutionalised racism, and congratulations on your 7th anniversary – keeping a radical project alive for this length of time is no small feat.
Imprisonment, Deaths in Custody and the NT Intervention
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On the evening of January 4th, Kwementyaye joined a large group of friends in the vicinity of Flynn Oval, which is approximately 5kms from the centre of town in Alice Springs.
Constable Gareth Evans began walking towards the group, wanting “to see if they had any information about an alleged fight at the shops.” [i] When he was half way across the oval, however, one of the young women in the group shouted out to the others and they all began to disperse. Constable Evans called for back-up on his radio and began to pursue the group on foot. He jumped a fence and began to jog after a smaller breakaway group of five or six. At the back of that group was Kwementyaye, “and when he got close to a large iron gate beside the school, he slipped on the bitumen or dirt and fell.” When Kwementyaye got up, he had a cut above his left eye, described as a “laceration above his eyes that had burst. There was fresh blood around the cut but it wasn’t gushing or dripping down his face.”
After this initial “fall” Kwementyaye got to his feet and allegedly started swearing. Constable Evans then allegedly gave him a direction to “take a step back” which Kwementyaye allegedly ignored. Constable Evans then “pushed him in the chest with an open left hand, causing him to stumble and fall into the gate, before falling forward.” Kwementyaye was then secured on the ground using a three point hold position, which involves placing one knee on the side of his shoulder and securing his right hand behind his back. Keep in mind that Kwementyaye was not even suspected of having committed a crime. He was taken into Protective Custody because he was deemed too intoxicated to look after himself.
Upon arrival Kwementyaye was placed in an observation cell with two other men. Approximately thirty minutes later he was ordered to come out from the cell to join four or five other detainees who were being processed in reception. On the way into the corridor towards reception, Kwementyaye swayed slightly, turned back and grabbed the door handle, appearing then to lean in to get his shirt that was left on a bench. Constable Evans noticed that Kwementyaye wasn’t following behind the others and “he took him by his wrist to escort him to reception. While Kwementyaye was being escorted his legs went out from under him and he fell forward onto the floor.”
Kwementyaye was then dragged by Constable Evans into the reception area where he was left sprawled out on the floor. A number of other detainees were being processed around him. Kwementyaye lay on the floor for several minutes before Constable Evans “took a pen and applied pressure to his fingernail to see if he would respond to a pain stimulus, a technique he learnt while working as a security officer at a Hospital.” CCTV footage shows that Constable Evans left Kwementyaye lying face down on the ground as he walked away.
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* * *
At one stage Kwementyaye was clearly emotionally distressed and can be seen on the CCTV footage to be sobbing and groaning. He was incapable of taking his own shoes off and he lay on the floor barely moving while another detainee took them off for him at the request of police. The CCTV shows Kwementyaye lying on the floor for several minutes while several officers walk around him, concerning themselves with the other things. As he lay there, police were joined by Sergeant William McDonell, who was performing the role of Watch House Commander. He appeared untroubled by Kwementyaye’s state, in spite of observing a smear of blood on the reception floor caused by a laceration above Kwementyaye’s right eye. Sergeant McDonnell merely cleaned up the blood smear, asked who Kwementyaye was and ordered him to get up. Kwementyaye did not respond, but Sen Sgt McDonnell was then distracted by another detainee and he left the area.
After repeated commands from Constable Evans to get up, Kwementyaye managed with some difficulty to lift his weight up onto the bench seat, but he was obviously unsteady and lacked control of his faculties. Soon after he sat down on the bench, he got up and leant against the wall. “He was then sat back down, firmly but fairly by Constable Evans.” Kwementyaye stood up again, but this time, “instead of firmly guiding him again or giving him a stern verbal direction, Constable Evans pushed him hard with an open hand and sent him sprawling backwards into the wall.”
After the push, Kwementyaye “looked upset and picked up a blue plastic property box that was between him and another prisoner. He did so in a drunken manner, and the plastic box was easily taken from him by an older man seated beside him who was being processed as a protective custody.” Constable Evans looked relatively unperturbed and motioned for Kwementyaye to put the box down. Kwementyaye stood up with a clenched fist, although his arm and fist stayed down by his side. In response, Constable Evans “grabbed him by the arm and slung him towards the reception counter with undue vigour, causing Kwementyaye to hit his arm and head on that surface.”
* * *
* * *
Kwementyaye was then spread out on the ground and searched by Constable Evans, assisted by Constable Blansjaar and Constable Grey. It is apparent from the CCTV footage that where his head was positioned, a small pool of blood formed from the leaking wound above his eye brow. Kwementyaye was then carried face down to Cell 9 by the three officers, with one on each arm and one picking up his legs. Prison officer Parker hurriedly threw a mattress into the cell on an awkward angle which stretched diagonally across the two concrete slabs in the room, and Kwementyaye was placed faced down at the same angle without anyone moving the mattress into a more comfortable position.
When Kwementyaye was carried along the corridor, blood from the head wound fell in droplets on the floor. That drew the attention of four or five sober prisoners in cell 16 who saw the blood and called out to the officers, telling them that the man they saw should be taken to hospital. After being placed on his mattress Kwementyaye was left alone in Cell 9. What happened next was captured on CCTV. Seconds after being placed on the mattress, he rolled onto his back and hit his head on the concrete bench. A minute later he attempted to stand up but fell hard onto the bench, hitting his head again. At 10.14pm, he attempted to sit up but fell and landed face down with his head and chest on the bench and the rest of his body on the floor.
Soon after Kwementyaye was placed into Cell 9, Prison officer Parker began a series of brief but regular checks, which involved her standing in the corridor and looking in to confirm that he was breathing. Prisoners in Cell 16 were watching from their vantage point and, once again, expressed their concern that Kwementyaye needed immediate medical care. In her own words, this was Prison officer Parker’s response: “I just turned around and I might have been out of line when I said it but I just turned and said, ‘Well, youse all carry on like this when youse are drunk,’ and you know, ‘And when youse are sober you just want to be nice to us,’ then I – I think I’ve walked off.”
At around 11pm the evening Watch House shift changed over to the overnight shift.
Over the next two hours, the two officers on duty rarely left their desks; only three cell checks were done by Constables O’Keefe and Kershaw. In evidence they admitted being distracted from their duties ‘by various things, including an iphone, an ipod and the internet.’ The officers also failed to respond to the distress calls made by prisoners in Cell 16, who could see and hear that Kwementyaye was in trouble.
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* * *
At 11.44pm, prisoner Warren McDonald activated the call button in his cell. It is clear from CCTV footage that he and other prisoners were looking across to Kwementyaye in Cell 9. The Coroner writes that, “it is likely that the prisoners in Cell 16 were seeing Kwementyaye in the last moments he was alive and at the last opportunity police had to save his life. I heard from Warren and Kyle McDonald and from Mr Impu that they could hear distressing noises from Cell 9, described by the men as coughing, gasping and choking. A review of CCTV footage shows that the last movement of Kwementyaye’s body was a very slight twitching of his limbs, at 11.42pm, just two minutes before the call button was activated.”
The call rang three times over several minutes. Constable O’Keefe answered the call a few minutes later, however, he hung up the receiver, “because when he glanced up at the CCTV screen in front of him and could see that the prisoners in cell 16 were seated back on their mattresses.”
The prisoners gave evidence that they also tried to get the attention of police on more than one occasion, by calling out. The report notes that, Officer Kershaw had “shut the door between the corridor and reception area, in order to block out the noise of a prisoner who was at the end of the row of cells where Kwementyaye was housed.”
When Sen. Sgt Barram returned to the Watch House at 1.30am, he commenced a round of cell checks and at 1.41 am, he noticed that Kwementyaye had not moved from the position he had last seen him in at 11pm. The Watch House Commander moved straight to Cell 9, entered it and found that Kwementyaye was not breathing. He yelled for an ambulance to be called and commenced CPR, but his body was cold. According to the Coroner’s report, “he had probably passed away around two hours earlier.”
In October 2012 Deputy Chief Minister Robyn Lambley ruled out taking disciplinary action against any of the Police officers involved. This is the story of so many Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. All the facts and figures in the world cannot account for this level of institutionalised racism. There is nothing post- about colonialism in Australia.
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[i] All in-line quotations taken from the Coroner’s Report: http://www.nt.gov.au/justice/courtsupp/coroner/inquestlist.shtml
[ii] Chris Cunneen (2011)
[iii] Jon Altman & Melinda Hinkson (2012)
Filed under Current social issues, Indigenous Rights
The Gove Land Rights case – Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd, (1971) 17 FLR 141 – was the first litigation on Native Title in Australia. Justice Blackburn ruled against the Yolngu claimants on a number of issues, rejecting the doctrine of Aboriginal Title in favor of terra nullius. His ruling says a great deal about the Balanda (white people, European) concept of ‘private property’ and the social relations that comprise it.
‘I think that property, in its many forms, generally implies the right to use or enjoy, the right to exclude others, and the right to alienate. I do not say that all these rights must co-exist before there can be a proprietary interest, or deny that each of them may be subject to qualifications. But by this standard I do not think that I can characterize the relationship of the clan to the land as proprietary.
It makes little sense to say that the clan has the right to use or enjoy the land. Its members have a right, and so do members of other clans, to use and enjoy the land of their own clan and other land also. The greatest extent to which it is true that the clan as such has the right to use and enjoy the clan territory is that the clan may, in a sense in which other clans may not (save with permission or under special rules), perform ritual ceremonies on the land. That the clan has a duty to the land-to care for it-is another matter. This is not without parallels in our law, which sometimes imposes duties of such a kind on a proprietor. But this resemblance is not, or at any rate is only in a very slight degree, an indication of a proprietary interest.
The clan’s right to exclude others is not apparent: indeed it is denied by the existence of the claims of the plaintiffs represented by Daymbalipu. Again, the greatest extent to which this right can be said to exist is in the realm of ritual. But it was never suggested that ritual rules ever excluded members of other clans completely from clan territory; the exclusion was only from sites. The right to alienate is expressly repudiated by the plaintiffs in their statement of claim.
In my opinion, therefore, there is so little resemblance between property, as our law, or what I know of any other law, understands that term, and the claims of the plaintiffs for their clans, that I must hold that these claims are not in the nature of proprietary interests.
That disposes of the question in general terms, but it is proper also to consider the applicability of the Lands Acquisition Act 1955-1966. That Act does not define “property” but defines ” interest,” in relation to land, as “(a) a legal or equitable estate or interest in the land; or (b) a right, power or privilege over, or in connexion with, the land” (s. 5 (1)). The earlier Act had substantially the same definition, applied to “land,” with the inclusion of the word “easement.”
The Solicitor-General submitted shortly (the point, in his submission, did not require extensive argument) that the Act does not apply to any interest other than one already known to the law of property at the time when the Act was passed. It therefore could not protect the plaintiffs’ interests. I do not think I need decide the theoretical question whether a proprietary interest of a new kind which was created, or held to exist, after the passing of the Act, would be protected by it. Mr. Woodward submitted that the words “right, power, or privilege over, or in connexion with, the land” were wide enough to cover “communal native title” which was shown by the evidence to be vested in the Rirratjingu and the Gumatj in respect of the land attributed to their respective clans. With respect, I think this is begging the question. It amounts to saying that whenever aboriginal natives are found in occupation of land under a system which does not recognize private property in land, that is “communal native title,” and that that alone is sufficient to attract the protection of the words “right, power, or privilege over, or in connexion with, the land” in the Act.’
– Federal Law Report, Milirrpum and other v. Nabalco Pty. Ltd and the Commonwealth of Australia (1971, pp. 272-273)
As fellow anthropologist Jamie Coates remarked today, you need to be writer – not just an ethnographer – to write good ethnography. And gracious me, does Sahlins write beautifully sometimes.
‘There is a link,’ [Mauss] wrote, ‘a continuity, between hostile relations and the provision of reciprocal prestations. Exchanges are peacefully resolved wards and wards are the result of unsuccessful transactions’ (1969, p. 67; cf. 1943, p. 136).
But this implication of The Gift is, I think, even broader than external relations and transactions. In posing the internal fragility of the segmentary societies, their constituted decomposition, The Gift transposes the classic alternative of war and trade from the periphery to the very center of social life, and from the occasional episode to the continuous presence.
This is the supreme importance of Mauss’s return to nature, from which it follows that primitive society is at war with Warre, and that all their dealings are treaties of peace. All the exchanges, that is to say, must bear in their material design some political burden of reconciliation.
[ . . . ]
And from this comes, in turn, all the basic principles of an economics properly anthropological, including the one in particular at the heart of succeeding chapters: that every exchange, as it embodies some coefficient of sociability, cannot be understood in its material terms apart from its social terms.’
– Sahlins (quoting Mauss in part) 1972: 182-183.
Filed under Anthropological Awesome
An anthropology blog celebrating the social nature of knowledge-production within the academy. (I write about anthropology and stuff.)
Fieldnotes & Footnotes 