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April 26, 2004
I've been arguing for a critical regionalism that would be in opposition to those glinty-eyed, hard-hearted punishers who love to place life in a straitjacket.
An example of critical regionalism:
Sidney Nolan, Bathers, 1943
My argument is that such a regionalism offers possibilities for a good positive response to the negative effects of global economic flows on our ways of life, and the way the neo-liberal market is constructing our national identity:
Hou Leong,An Australian (Crocodile Dundee) 1994
Of course, that critical regionalsim is not how Canberra sees culture. There has been an ongoing refashioning of our national identity by the Canberra politicians. Despite all the talk about economics being the main game, Canberra has been deeply interested in culture thoughout the 1990s. Canberra has searched for something to hold the nation together to counter the way their engineered economic reforms of the 1980s ripped the guts out of our social democratic way of life. The country was fracturing under the growing inequality from the global economic flows. It became a divided nation.
So we have the cultural/history wars about national identity, which have been waged about the republic, an apology to Aboriginal Australia for past wrongs, refugees, and the affirmation of the US-Australian alliance. Coupled to this has been a sidelining of multicultural diversity in favour of a conservative mainstream monoculture that is defined as commonsense Australian, with its disdain and contempt for the innercity cultural elites who tell us what our cultural identity is.
This conservative political shift---by both political parties (eg.,the Coalition and the ALP)---is a response to globalization. It redefines our national culture in terms of national unity and social cohesion, and it attacks that which divides us. "Us" is always left unclear because citizenship is never mentioned. "Us" is about what binds and unifies the nation.
What binds the nation in a global world?
Fraternity as mateship. What is mateship? It is our dominant values that underpin and constitute Australian nationalism. These are the ones that are part of a long tradition founded on the beaches of Gallipoli in 1915. It is that enduring legacy that acts as a unifying link in our chain of identity and memory.
William Longstaff, Menin Gate at midnight, 1927
This cultural conservatism excludes those who do not fight in the name of social cohesion and unity, and it has little time for surrealism's expression of the horrors of war:
James Gleeson, The sower, 1944
In the face of this retrenched and defensive cultural conservatism we can affirm our regional diversity:
Tracey Moffat, The movie star: David Gulpillil on Bondi Beach, 1985
A critical regionalism show how diversity constitutes national identity.
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