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92 Pages·2017·7.81 MB·English

NUMBER 8, 2017
» CHRIS ANDREWS » IEN ANG » PETER ANSTEY
» JOY DAMOUSI » NICHOLAS EVANS » JOHN FITZGERALD
» JANE LYDON » PETER McNEIL
THE JOURNAL OF THE AUSTR ALI AN ACADEMY OF THE HUM ANITIES
THE ACADEMY COUNCIL
President
John Fitzgerald
Honorary Secretary
Elizabeth Minchin
Honorary Treasurer W It is my pleasure to welcome you to the
Richard Waterhouse
eighth issue of the Australian Academy of the
Vice-Presidents
Elizabeth Minchin e Humanities’ flagship publication, Humanities
Ian Lilley
Australia, edited by Emeritus Professors
Editor l
Graham Tulloch c Elizabeth Webby am faha and Graham Tulloch
International Secretary faha. This publication is one of the many ways
Ian Lilley o
in which our Academy supports excellence
Immediate Past President
Lesley Johnson AM m in the humanities and communicates their
Ordinary Members
value to the public. It showcases some of the
Joy Damousi
Bridget Griffen-Foley most exciting current work of humanities
e
Jane Lydon
researchers throughout Australia.
Graham Oppy
Graeme Turner For almost fifty years, the Academy has
been dedicated to advancing scholarship and
CONTACT DETAILS
For further information about the Australian promoting understanding of the humanities
Academy of the Humanities, contact us:
across our education and research sectors,
Email
[email protected] and in the broader community. Founded
Web by Royal Charter in 1969, the Academy now
www.humanities.org.au
comprises close to six hundred Fellows elected
Telephone
([phone] on the basis of the excellence and impact
of their scholarship. Our Fellows have been
EDITORIAL/PRODUCTION
Academy Editor recognised nationally and internationally
Elizabeth Webby AM (2009–2016)
for outstanding work in the disciplines of
Graham Tulloch (2016– )
Designer archaeology, art, Asian and European studies,
Gillian Cosgrove
classical and modern literature, cultural and
Printed by
CanPrint, Canberra communication studies, language and linguistics,
Cover illustration philosophy, musicology, history and religion.
Detail, Ridiculous Taste or the Ladies
Humanities Australia draws on the ideas
Absurdity. Oil on canvas painted on the
reverse of a possible signboard, 84 × 52 cm, and inspiration of its Fellows and others
c. 1780. Kulturen, Lund, Sweden, KM 15580.
in the community with an interest in the
© 2017 Australian Academy of the Humanities
humanities. It aims to demonstrate that an
and individual contributors
understanding of cultures and communities,
ISSN 1837–8064
of how people experience the world and
Funding for the production of this publication their place in it, have a major role to play in
has been provided by the Australian
Government through the Department of discussions about Australia and its future.
Education.
We hope you enjoy the selection of essays,
The views expressed in this publication do not
stories and poems presented here – a small taste of
necessarily reflect the views of the Department
of Education or the Australian Academy of the the quality, range and depth of research currently
Humanities.
under way in the humanities in Australia. ¶
The illustrations and certain identified
inclusions in the text are held under separate
copyright and may not be reproduced in any
form without the permission of the respective JOHN FITZGERALD faha
copyright holders. Every reasonable effort President, Australian Academy
has been made to contact relevant copyright of the Humanities, 2014–
holders for illustrative material in this journal.
Where this has not proved possible, the
copyright holders are invited to contact the
publisher.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)
Humanities Australia
04
ELIZABETH WEBBY & GRAHAM TULLOCH
Editors’ Introduction
06
CHRIS ANDREWS

Pacific Rim
08
JOHN FITZGERALD

Academic Freedom and the Contemporary University:
Lessons from China
23
IEN ANG
Smart Engagement with Asia
34
NICHOLAS EVANS

Ngûrrahmalkwonawoniyan: Listening Here
45
JANE LYDON
Empathy and the Myall Creek Massacre:
Images, Humanitarianism and Empire
57
PETER McNEIL
Macaroni Men and Eighteenth-Century Fashion Culture:
‘The Vulgar Tongue’
72
JOY DAMOUSI
Australian League of Nations Union and War Refugees:
Internationalism and Humanitarianism, 1930–39
80
PETER ANSTEY
A Very Principled Project
86
CHRIS ANDREWS
Two Bridges
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)
»
ELIZABETH WEBBY & GRAHAM TULLOCH
Once again it is a pleasure to welcome readers the knowledge that the liberties we enjoy in the
to a new issue of Humanities Australia and a academy play an important role in the life of the
sample of the outstanding research and writing community at large.’
being carried out by Australian humanities The second day of the symposium was largely
scholars. While the contributors to this issue devoted to highlighting three interdisciplinary
come from a broad range of the disciplines reports produced under the Academy’s auspices
represented in the Academy, including linguistics, as part of the Securing Australia’s Future (SAF)
philosophy, the arts, history and Asian studies, program, a multidisciplinary research initiative
some common themes have emerged, especially of the Australian Council of Learned Academies
in relation to questions of human rights, both in (ACOLA), funded by the Australian Research
the past and today. Council (ARC). We include here Ien Ang’s outline
Those who attended the Academy’s 2016 of the report produced by the expert working
symposium, ‘Asia Australia: Transnational group she chaired, Smart Engagement with
Connections’, at the State Library Victoria, Asia: Leveraging Language, Research and Culture
greatly appreciated the annual Academy Lecture (2015). As she notes, this report ‘was a unique
given by our current President, John Fitzgerald. opportunity for humanities scholars to work
We present an expanded version of his lecture together with other researchers — scientists and
here, under the title ‘Academic Freedom and social scientists — on a topic of crucial importance
the Contemporary University: Lessons from for Australia’s future prosperity and security,
China’. Fitzgerald draws attention to the Western allowing them to conduct evidence-based research
concept of academic freedom, noting that this and generate interdisciplinary findings to support
‘sits uneasily alongside the immense resources policy development.’ The report focuses on three
invested in contemporary universities charged areas — ‘languages and linguistic competencies,
with driving innovation, industry, and business research and research collaboration, and cultural
in highly competitive national and international diplomacy and relations’ — highlighting problems
markets.’  As a leading scholar of contemporary in all of them that urgently need addressing.
China, he stresses in particular the limitations If Australians know less than is desirable of
placed on academic freedom in China, arguing Asian languages and cultures, their knowledge
that this has implications for Australian of Australia’s indigenous languages and cultures
(above)
universities as their links with China increase. is even smaller. Nicholas Evans draws attention
Academy
In concluding, he reiterates our ‘need to talk to this in discussing his current ARC Australian
Secretariat,
Canberra, Australia. about values’: ‘We have a duty to speak out about Laureate Fellowship project, ‘The Wellsprings of
contemporary risks to academic freedom, in Linguistic Diversity’. As he notes, over thousands
PHOTO: AAH ARCHIVES
04 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)
of years our ‘indigenous cultures developed a Humanitarian issues return in Joy Damousi’s
diverse mosaic of over three hundred languages’, essay, ‘Australian League of Nations Union
but, today, these languages are ‘invisible and and War Refugees: Internationalism and
inaudible in the public sphere’. His essay gives Humanitarianism, 1930–39’, which focuses on the
an account of some of the links between activities of local branches of this Union, formed
language, culture and country as well as showing to promote the values and aims of the League of
how indigenous cultures were fascinated by Nations, in response to the growing number of
language, as seen in the metalinguistic terms, international refugees. As she argues, members
practices and products they developed. While aimed ‘to foster within Australia an international
deploring the loss of so many indigenous and humanitarian outlook towards the plight
languages since 1788, he is optimistic about of war refugees during the interwar years’. In
the ways in which new technologies are aiding doing so, they put pressure on the Australian
language recording and retrieval. government ‘to change its international policy
For those colonising Australia, indigenous and accept more refugees from Europe’, pushing
linguistic achievements were certainly invisible; it ‘into a sphere of independent international
many saw Aboriginal peoples as no better diplomacy and relations — one less governed by
than animals and treated them accordingly. Imperial interests — a move which was required if
In ‘Empathy and the Myall Creek Massacre: a more open immigration policy was to develop.’
Images, Humanitarianism and Empire’, Jane In ‘A Very Principled Project’, philosopher
Lydon discusses reports of this 1838 massacre, Peter Anstey takes us back to the early modern
looking in particular at an engraving by ‘Phiz’, period, ‘the age of the Scientific Revolution
‘Australian Aborigines Slaughtered by Convicts’, and the Enlightenment’, a time when ‘almost
published in the 1841 edition of a highly popular everyone was talking about principles, arguing
work, The Chronicles of Crime; or, The New for them, arguing from them, assuming them,
Newgate Calendar. She notes the links between and using them.’ His essay draws on research
humanitarian reactions to Myall Creek and the carried out from 2012 to 2016 for his ARC Future
British antislavery movement, pointing out Fellowship project, ‘The Nature and Status of
similarities between ‘Phiz’s’ representation of Principles in Early Modern Philosophy’, and
the ‘upraised, shackled hands of the Aboriginal reminds us of how fundamental the notion of
people’ and Josiah Wedgwood’s widely circulated principles is to a period that laid the foundations
antislavery logo. Both, as she says, stress ‘the of our modern way of thinking.
innocence and vulnerability of the victims — We are also delighted to include in this issue
but also their passivity and need to be helped two new poems by one of our newer Fellows,
by the white humanitarian.’ Chris Andrews, who is a widely published poet
Today, when a striking image can achieve as well as an internationally-known researcher
world-wide circulation in a matter of minutes, it and translator. ¶
is fascinating to see evidence of how such images
circulated internationally in the eighteenth ELIZABETH WEBBY am faha
and nineteenth centuries. Like the Wedgwood Editor, Australian Academy
logo, an image satirising fashionable hairstyles of the Humanities, 2009–16

appeared in many different countries in different

forms. This is only one of the insights to be found

in Peter McNeil’s ‘Macaroni Men and Eighteenth-
Century Fashion Culture: “The Vulgar Tongue”’. GRAHAM TULLOCH faha
If you have ever been puzzled why the term Editor, Australian Academy
‘macaroni’ appears in the well-known rhyme of the Humanities, 2016–
‘Yankee Doodle’, McNeil provides the answer, as

well as explaining the seeming incongruity of the

same word being used for both a type of pasta and
a mode of dress. He even finds an Australian link,
since Sir Joseph Banks was apparently one of the
‘macaroni’ men.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 05
»
CHRIS ANDREWS
(above)
Shipping containers
PHOTO: CC0 1.0
UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY.
CHRIS ANDREWS faha teaches at Western Sydney University. He has
published two books of poems: Cut Lunch (Indigo 2002) and Lime
Green Chair (Waywiser 2012). He has also translated books of Latin
American fiction, most recently César Aira’s Ema, the Captive (New
Directions, 2016).

06 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)
Pacific Rim
To a lone tourist at a loose end
in this city of funiculars
a sprayed wall says: Lift your head Princess,
your crown’s about to fall. There’s a dog
asleep in a thicket of footsteps,
a boarded-up Palace of Rubber,
and a well-presented man who rides
the microbuses tenaciously
expounding the merits of a comb.
It’s the evening of the holiday,
and the people, whether built for pain
or giggles, crowd the foreshore to watch
the gold sovereign drop into the slot
and bring on the slow train of starlight.
A bath toy famously lost at sea
fetches up bleached and incognito.
Lavish foam of the swash comes seething
in over the ragged backwash foam.
There’s a stack of Hanjin containers
painted a red that goes on glowing
deep into dusk, an almost empty
artspace in a disappearing jail,
a fuchsia riot, a hummingbird’s
precision sipping, and a mother
of infant twins who used to be glad
of her gift for deep sleep downloading
a seismograph app for her smartphone.
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) HHuummaanniittiieess AAuussttrraalliiaa 0077
Academic Freedom

and the
Contemporary
University
»
JOHN FITZGERALD
administrators are aware of the war-like language
INTRODUCTION
that university administrators in China resort
It’s time we started talking about values. In the to when they condemn the kind of free and
Academy of the Humanities we need to be clear open critical inquiry that we take for granted in
about what our values are and whether they still the humanities and social sciences in Australia.
matter in order to recognise and respond to the Nor is it clear that Australian administrators are
challenges they face in the present era. aware of the constraints under which humanities
It is not immediately clear, for example, and social science disciplines operate in that
that academic freedom carries the weight it country or of the performance appraisal systems
once carried in our universities. The inherited used to police them.
Western ideal of the solitary mendicant scholar, So it falls to the Academy to identify the
free to roam without interference and speak values that we consider important, and to
truth to the prelate and the prince, sits uneasily discover the values that others proclaim and
alongside the immense resources invested practice in their national higher education
in contemporary universities charged with systems, in order to stress-test our academic
driving innovation, industry, and business in institutions to ensure they are sufficiently
highly competitive national and international robust and resilient to uphold the values that we
markets. Still, while the roles of universities are consider important when they deal with systems
more diverse and the challenges to freedom erected on values different from our own.
more diffuse in the twenty-first century, the In the case of China, we need to start talking
Academy’s commitment to free and open critical about values in order to draw attention to what
inquiry in the arts and humanities remains no it is that distinguishes the university sector from
less important today than in the mid-twelfth other national players in the Australia-China
century when the Constitutio Habita was drafted relationship. For some decades now, Australia’s
in Bologna. relations with China have been conducted
(above) The inherited values of the Academy are through an informal compact under which
Montage using thrown into sharp relief by the rise of China each side agrees to leave its values at the door.
image of statue of and the growing impact of an academic model Australians value freedom, equality and the
Confucius (p. 16).
in which freedom plays little part. Awareness rule of law. The Government of China values
PATTERN VIA FREEPIK: of the values embedded in China’s academic proletarian dictatorship, authoritarian hierarchy,
<WWW.FREEPIK.
COM/FREE-VECTOR/ system is essential for gaining clarity about our and rule by the Party rather than by law. Under
ABSTRACT-GEOMETRIC-
PATTERN_778321.HTM>. own. It is not clear that Australia’s university the compact, Australia and China agree to
08 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)
respect and to set aside the others’ professed Institutes in Australian universities.4 A lot of
values in order to focus on shared interests in money is at stake.
expanding trade and investment.1 Academic freedom is also at stake. Our
Generally speaking, the agreement to set universities’ institutional arrangements with
values aside for the sake of trade and investment universities in authoritarian states such as China
presents few problems. Miners, farmers, place academic freedom at risk both as an ideal
investors, lawyers, architects, tourism operators and as a set of institutional practices. In the
and so on go about their business trading in past these risks were negligible. In transitional
goods and services for mutual profit as they do moments such as the present, when China is
with many other countries that do not share the asserting its values globally and the United States
same values. And so it has always been. appears to be retreating into its shell, risks to
Unlike mining companies or agribusinesses, the freedoms that we take for granted are real,
however, universities deal in values and one of pressing, and substantial.
their core values is academic freedom. China My argument is laid out in five parts: first,
does not permit free and open critical inquiry touching on the meaning and the institutional
in its higher education system. In fact China’s foundations of academic freedom; second,
education and research systems are arms of considering the transformations that Australian
government and the Government of China is universities have undergone as institutions
openly hostile to the idea of academic freedom. over the past three decades and what these
Australian universities are independent bodies mean for academic freedom; third, arguing that
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES THAT LEAVE THEIR VALUES AT THE DOOR ARGUABLY
NEGLECT THEIR DUTIES AND PLACE THEIR REPUTATIONS AT RISK.
that highlight academic freedom in their charters these institutional developments have reduced
and their routine practices. These differences our capacity to identify and manage risks in
are not trivial ones when university partners international engagements involving teaching
from Australia and China come together and research with authoritarian states such as
to transact agreements for mutual benefit. China; fourth, identifying the risks associated
Academic freedom carries duties, including the with housing Confucius Institutes on Australian
‘duty to speak out for what one believes to be campuses; and, in conclusion, proposing a
true’ and an accompanying recognition that it is number of mitigating strategies.
fundamentally ‘wrong to remain silent’ in face of
assaults on freedom.2 Australian universities that
THE MEANING AND INSTITUTIONAL
leave their values at the door arguably neglect
FOUNDATIONS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM
their duties and place their reputations at risk.
Australian university councils and executives Academic freedom is a variant of wider freedoms
often transact business with China as if there associated with the liberal democratic order,
were little to distinguish their dealings from including freedom of thought and expression,
those involving agribusiness or the resources freedom of religious belief, and freedom of
industry. The results have been impressive. assembly.5 The particular history of academic
China accounts for more international freedom is bound up with the history of the
students in Australia than any other country academy no less than with the genealogy
in an industry that contributes twenty billion of freedom. From the self-governing studia
dollars to national GDP each year.3 The erected on the model of corporate guilds, in
People’s Republic is also partner to hundreds of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe, to the
discrete research collaborations in the Science, twenty-first-century university fashioned on
Technology, Engineering and Maths disciplines the commercial corporation, the practice of
across Australia and is the focus of ten specialist academic freedom has been inseparable from the
research centres and a dozen Confucius institutions in which it is embedded. There has
The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017) Humanities Australia 09
(right)
Library shelving
on a curved wall.
PHOTO: CC0 1.0
UNIVERSAL, PIXABAY.
never been a time when the corporate powers exhort their colleagues to shun silence and be
of the university have not lived in tension with bold ‘in speaking truth’ in recognition that a
the freedom of individual scholars to teach and freedom rarely exercised was a freedom readily
to discover. As a corporate entity, the university surrendered.6
is both an enabling condition for freedom of In the tension between the corporate powers
expression and discovery, and an institutional of the university and the freedom of scholars
restraint on the exercise of that freedom. Within to speak truth to power we find the European
this tension lies the dynamic value that we call origins of the two ‘levels of insulation’ that
academic freedom. Ronald Dworkin associates with academic
Similarly, institutional constraints on freedom in the contemporary university: the
academic freedom are as old as the university. In insulation of the university from external
medieval and early modern Europe, the exercise political authority and economic power, on
of corporate discipline over scholarly fellows the one hand, and the insulation of teachers
was considered essential for resolving quarrels and researchers from undue interference
with local authorities in defence of university by university administrators on the other.
autonomy, itself a condition of freedom. In Echoing findings of US Supreme Court rulings,
early universities, historian Richard Hofstadter Dworkin argues that maintaining these two
records, masters were expected to take oaths of structural barriers, or layers of insulation, not
loyalty to their institution and to keep university only preserves academic freedom but serves
secrets. Senior masters regulated and restricted freedom more broadly: ‘academic freedom plays
the teaching and scholarship of their fellows an important ethical role not just in the lives of
more often than ecclesiastical authorities ever the few people it protects, but in the life of the
did. And many universities ‘adopted statutes and community more generally.’ It establishes and
ordinances affecting almost every conceivable supports the ‘duty to speak out for what one
facet of academic life, from trivial details of dress believes to be true’ and the associated ethical
to the subjects and methods of lectures and belief that it is ‘wrong to remain silent.’ The
disputations.’ Still, masters would periodically imperative to speak out on matters of scholarly
10 Humanities Australia The Journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 8 (2017)