Quarterly Essay: Whitefella Jump Up

By Germaine Greer, Melbourne: Black Inc, 2003, 120 pages, paperback, $12.95. Reviewed by Mitchell Rolls in the November 2003 issue.

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Greer writes her essay, so she tell us, not as a scholar, academic, or someone with specialist knowledge seeking career advancement, but as 'an elderly Australian laywoman' (pp 1-2) seeking to joggle discourse she finds wearisome on to new paths. This disingenuous aw-shucks modesty is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the essay reads as if it is indeed written by a layperson. Secondly, if Greer was not all those things she disavows for this essay it is difficult to imagine who if anyone would have published it. For the most part, the essay is nonsense. Where it does raise challenging and contentious current issues Greer does not appear to realise how provocative she is being.

The Australia Greer evokes is one wrenched from unreconstructed stereotypes of yesteryear. Her script, roughly torn from the pages of Lawson, makes it a wonder that settler-Australians have survived at all. We come from stock so befuddled by alcohol that rare moments of sobriety were spent searching for more. Our sense of civic duty and pride only extended so far as building more hotels. When we were not drinking or planning our next bender, we were suiciding or attempting it. We continue to loathe ourselves, the outback, and the land of our abode. The native flora we find abhorrent. When not finding pleasure in the bottle it is in a seaside suburbia voided of all native plants. Our 'forefathers', one and all, were ignorant, deluded and desperate (pp 6-14). We are linguistic imbeciles, and take pride in that. Whereas Greer, the cosmopolitan sophisticate, can pronounce flawlessly (one presumes) the Italian and French names for their cities and regions, we are unable to do so (p 47). Perhaps our inebriation discomposes our tongues. Our pursuits are secular, acquisitive and hedonistic (p 54). The psychosocial maladies besetting settler-Australians are a consequence of our 'dead-heart', itself a consequence of knowing the country is not ours and therefore we cannot love it (p 7). We are the guilty inheritors of another's land (p 14), and remain forever aliens in our birthplace (p 15). This is the alleged problem that Greer is addressing. Not, she stresses, 'the Aborigine problem', whatever it is she means by that tortured phrase. And like so many of those who diagnose supposed afflictions infecting settler-Australians, and, more generally, western psyches and cultures--spiritual emptiness, materialism, environmental degradation, alienated selves--Greer seeks remedies in Aboriginal cultures. Her concern is to press Aborigines into service as healing unguents for the ailing Australian self. Also, like most of the work that seeks some form of healing for western selves in Aboriginal cultures and beliefs, Greer's too finds Aboriginality in the form of an idealised traditional image. Despite finding fault with notions of authenticity and criticism of anthropological interest in the cultural esotery of desert dwellers (p 22), Greer's primal experience of Aboriginality, the place where she could discover 'what had been hidden from' her in order to 'jump the gulf that divided white and black' took place not in urban Australia but in the bed of the Todd River in Alice Springs (p 22). Greer's Aborigines are not urban, or middle-class, or English-only speakers. Rather, to be an Aborigine is to have a skin name, to hunt and cook shellfish and eat witchetty grubs (p 23), to be a naked wanderer dutifully following the religious instruction to roam (p 25), to live in one's traditional country for lives have no meaning beyond it (p 56), to marry across language groups (p 56), to perform ceremonies and corroborees (p 56), and to speak several languages (p 56). Suturing this catalogue of anthropological furphies together is an evocation of New Age mysticism. For Greer, authentic Aboriginality remains hidebound to knowledge of country, language, and 'deepest secrets' (p 15). Homage to Aboriginality as New Age noble savage extends throughout. Aborigines emerge as the learned bearers of all wisdom: 'every Aboriginal adult is a teacher' (p 16), they are a peaceful people who live in harmony with each other, and rather than showing hostility to whites they always in the first instance seek to establish relationships of equality (pp 43, 56).

Greer is at her most provocative, challenging and interesting in her argument that Aboriginality is not something innate or racial, but instead a cultural construction, a nationality, an inevitable outgrowth of country (pp 15, 18-19, 71-2). Consequentially it is an identity, or way of identifying, that is open to everyone, both black and white. Whites, just like Aborigines, can learn to be Aboriginal. Greer provides a number of examples of whites who have become Aborigines through some form of initiatory learning (pp 42-3), and hints that she too, with her talismanic skin name (p 23), love of the country and linguistic competence in European languages, is an Aborigine. The notion of Aboriginality as a cultural construction is not new, and it enjoys considerable support. Aboriginality as an outgrowth of country has also been explored elsewhere, and its raising here is useful. Nevertheless, many Aborigines now vehemently reject any attempt to unshackle identity from biology. This significant cohort seek strenuously to deny claims of Aboriginality to people who cannot authenticate their autochthonous biological heritage to the extent of contesting identities through the courts. Furthermore, many Aborigines (at least those with public voices and within academia) subscribe to the notion that one's genetic heritage determines one's ontology. Whereas an Aboriginal person may have to learn certain things, it is their biology that gives them the capacity to do so. Whites, irrespective of whatever learning, training and experience they have or undergo, are genetically incapable of indigenous knowing. These arguments enjoy currency and support. They also need contesting. Greer, however, appears to be unaware of them. According to Greer, Aborigines are only too willing to adopt settler-Australians as brethren.

However, what exactly Greer means by Aboriginality is not clear. As on many issues here, she is contradictory, obfuscatory and confused. Despite rejecting the notion of Aboriginality as a cluster of inherited traits and behaviours, she elsewhere stresses the 'multitude of blood ties' that bind Aborigines and settler-Australians (p 39). Or perhaps Aboriginality is simply an expression of the continent itself (p 72). And this raises another issue. Greer presents herself as a seer, yet the gist of her argument has been made many times before. The Jindyworobaks sought a revitalised nationalism and regional aesthetic in Aboriginal attributes, as did the modernist painter Margaret Preston in a campaign spanning decades. Les Murray too has made similar observations, albeit with greater sophistication, subtlety and a good deal less ignorance. Greer's main thesis of turning to Aborigines, indeed turning Aboriginal, in order to address the alienation from self and country allegedly experienced by settler-Australians is also found in a number of New Age and quasi Jungian publications. Besides dubious speculation on the influence of Aborigines on settler-Australian behaviours and traits--our 'evasiveness', abhorrence of confrontation, love of yarning, sex segregation at social events, all allegedly arising from Aboriginal influence--the essay offers nothing particularly insightful.

It is also pitted with asinine statements. According to Greer the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team is named after the Maori (p 62) (it's not), during World War II 'the Japanese invaded the Northern Territory' (p 75) (they didn't), there are now more Aborigines than ever before (p 64) (most probably false), no Aborigines have ever inveighed against the rush of new claimants of Aboriginality (p 63) (utter nonsense), and one could go on and on. Greer admits to doing little research for this essay (apparently one only does research for purposes of qualification, a job or promotion (pp 1-2) and it shows. It is also a shame, for Greer is capable of coherent, intelligent argument. She is capable of analysis that can joggle discourse on to new paths or into new areas. This essay, however, in its untutored dalliance with contested and sensitive issues shows only contempt for its subject.

Citation

• Mitchell Rolls. 'Review: Quarterly Essay: Whitefella Jump Up by Germaine Greer' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), November 2003. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 22 May 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• Is Aboriginality at the core of Australia's identity?
  
  In this remarkable essay, Germaine Greer challenges white Australians to come to terms with thier past and present relationship with the indigenous community. Greer discusses Australia's culture today, the current reconciliation process and the white guilt that she believes is destroying Australia. Her essay is a fresh, unexpected and superbly written argument that will shock and delight.

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