Well, as I noted on another thread about Germaine Greer, I’ve bought and now read On Rage. I’d like this post to stick to discussion of the merits of her arguments, which I continue to think has been something largely absent from most of the debate to date. I also think that very few people who’ve rushed into print have actually read her book, and instead taken the odd comment here or there that she’s made in the course of promoting it and projected all sorts of things onto her.
Even those who have seem to be reacting to parts instead of the whole - for instance, Marcia Langton, describing the remarks about her in the book as an “astonishing attack on me”. That’s quite odd, because Langton is being challenged rather than attacked in the book - challenged to agree with Greer’s view that - on the basis of the evidence - the literal appropriation of Indigenous women’s bodies by white men, something Greer documents with footnoted citations from both historians and contemporary sources - is part of the reason for Indigenous male rage. All the rest of what Langton says - accusations of “a 1970s style argument”, a “panoply of protest slogans deployed as social theory” and so on - unless I’m missing something, appears misdirected, or at least based on inference rather than the text itself. On p. 88 of the book, any reasonable reader would see that Langton is not the one being accused of “collusion” with the state, what she took umbrage at, and that in fact the point being made is that the differential impacts of gender on the colonised is still used by whitefellas as a lever to avoid responsibility and to divide people. There’s a disagreement of view, but not an accusation, and it hardly justifies Langton’s claim that the essay is “racist”.
What Greer is doing in On Rage is a provocation to the degree that it’s asking a range of people differently positioned within Australian culture to reflect on the totality of what has occurred and how ineffectual slogans are - and there are slogans within the talk of the “responsibilities” crew as well - in the absence of both understanding and a genuine coming to terms with the parade of extraordinary horrors that is the story of Indigenous dispossession. Greer’s essay doesn’t make for comfortable reading, and that’s the point. Langton may be justified in taking umbrage at some of the things Greer has said in the course of promoting it, and I can quite understand that, but I think in this instance it’s vital to separate the force and quality of the argument in the text itself from the personality of its author. Much of what has been published and said elsewhere, for instance in Greer’s Sydney Morning Herald op/ed adds to (and in a way detracts from) the argument in the book, rather than reproduces it. Greer might be her own worst enemy in this case, but that doesn’t absolve her interlocutors from reacting with their own rage, or at least spleen.
Unfortunately, and again here Greer is not an innocent in all this, I need to dispose of the “howlers” claim before moving to address the substantive arguments in On Rage. There’s been commentary on a previous thread about errors of fact in some other articles Greer has written over the years. But some of the factual inaccuracies - such as the claim that Bob Katter has a following in the Northern Territory are not in the book itself, but made in interviews by Greer. I could only find two errors in the text itself - the claim about the absence of younger Indigenous men at the apology on February 13 2008, and a slip where Katter is said to have been a Commonwealth rather than a State Minister. I suspect the first is an artefact of watching television coverage from outside Australia, but it doesn’t imply that distance devalues everything she says. It’s clear, for instance, that she does maintain contact with Indigenous people. The second, I think, is most likely an error that is easy to make when writing - and raises the issue mentioned here in the context of very slack editing and fact-checking at Melbourne University Press, which is a real worry and calls into question the rhetoric from Louise Adler and Glyn Davis about its role.
So while I think the whole question of why Greer herself attracts such personalised loud denunciation (and I find it hard to believe that any male Professor would be described as a “bint” and a “termagant”, for instance) is an important one, and one that throws its own (pretty unfavourable) light on aspects of Australian culture, I don’t want to discuss that further here - it was considered on this earlier thread.
I want to focus on what Greer actually has to say about rage. As she pointed out when interviewed by Leigh Sales on Lateline last week, in one respect, she’s reflecting on rage itself. It’s a good rule of thought, I think, not to do so in the absence of a concrete context, but to some degree anyway, her phenomenology of rage can stand on its own merits - though in practice it’s closely intertwined with a historical aetiology of rage in colonised hunter gatherer populations. Indeed, Bob Katter is mentioned because he’s relevant - he articulates rage on behalf of a particular group - farmers who he thinks have been dispossessed in their own way (whether Katter is right is of course neither here nor there, but it’s true to say he is representing pain in a real fashion). Greer questions what motivates Katter - who must know he is tilting at windmills - and wonders whether he thinks of himself as somehow sacrificing himself for “his” people. That’s a relevant question because she points to a range of clinical studies which show that extreme anger and rage are incredibly deleterious to human well-being. That’s because it’s turned against oneself - the position from which one expresses rage is an inarticulate one - one deprived of power, one dispossessed from the ability to negotiate - a last and futile act of resistance which eats up and destroys the self, and which is far too often turned against those closest to the self.
[Greer remarks that women tend to grieve while men rage. That may be true, and probably is, but it’s unclear whether she recognises this as a cultural artefact. Perhaps the biggest problem I have with the essay - and one which commentators like Langton have rightly highlighted - is a certain essentialisation of gender that’s not really foregrounded.]
Greer points to the prevalence of suicide among young rural white men, something Katter has made one of his causes. That leads her onto a consideration of the differences as well as the similiarities between white and Indigenous male despair and rage. Without diminishing the reality of the suffering of rural folk who have seen a way of life torn away by forces much greater than they can seemingly influence, she notes what life possibilities and resources remain to them, which are absent in the case of Indigenous dispossession. She is right to see dispossession as a secular and continuing process rather than a once-off act, and also rightly pings the casual intermingling of disparate cultural groups, which has a lot to do with much of the “dysfunction” Noel Pearson complains of in North Queensland - and it was going on as recently as the 1970s - Palm Island, too, being an effective dumping ground. That’s something I’ve heard myself from Murri people I’ve known.
I don’t actually want to follow her argument step by step, because my hope is that people will read the book itself and consider it on its merits, which are considerable - it’s well argued and passionately written. She doesn’t make this exact analogy, but the story she tells - of how Indigenous women were actually essential to the “frontier” and “progress” - as chattels, sexual objects, servants and how the Stolen Generation was a state action to re-impose norms against miscegenation among other motivations - reminded me of a post Mark wrote here last year on Charles Taylor’s characterisation of Native Americans as having suffered “culture death”:
A culture’s disappearing means that a people’s situation is so changed that the actions that had crucial significance are no longer possible in that radical sense. It is not just that you may be forbidden to try them and may be severely punished for attempting to do so; but worse, you can no longer even try them. You can’t draw lines or die while trying to defend them. You find yourself in a circumstance where, as Lear puts it, “the very acts themselves have ceased to make sense.”
Greer argues that hunters can’t survive in the absence of gatherers - and the gatherers had effectively been appropriated by white men, even if the whitefellas refused to recognise the kinship and cultural obligations of the women they took. She quotes the well respected Indigenous scholar Judy Atkinson on this:
Sexual violence, as well as physical violence, was rampant on the frontier. What must also be named is that the experiences of colonisation were different for Aboriginal women in comparison with Aboriginal men. This created tension and dichotomy in relationships between Aboriginal men and women that continues into the present.
According to Greer, this is the elephant in the room.
And the sexual violence of white men is still effaced and denied - she asks why the evidence that much of the sexual violence against girls in remote communities was perpetrated by transient white men and often in an organised fashion was totally absent from the justification of the Northern Territory intervention. Greer’s focus on Indigenous male rage is a gender aware anthropology of the discarding of Black men as useless by the colonisers, while Black women were to be used. It’s not unreasonable to believe that this dynamic continues to do its vicious work, although one can see why discussion of it provokes such affect. But it’s certainly not the case that Greer is in any way either justifying the incredible rates of self-harm and violence or that she’s somehow betraying feminism by focusing on the differential effects on Indigenous men of dispossession and cultural death. Much of what she is doing is just asking questions about the displacement of responsibility - if the reason for heavy drinking is disinhibition to allow rage to express itself, disinhibition driven by hopelessness and cultural death, will taking away the bottle salve all ills?
Finally, it’s also clear that Greer is not writing a prescriptive or a policy text. She’s arguing that a political structure needs to be created that brings all Indigenous people to the table, and that we all need to confront a whole range of things in our present as well as in our past which we would very much rather not see. In making this argument, she is in effect suggesting that incitements to responsibility and a fictional mutuality (as I’ve discussed previously) are forms of a displacement of a deeper and very painful wound that many of us - Black and White - don’t want opened. But we need to face our demons. All of us. Rightly she’s not prescriptive about how we do that. But she does insist that we do.
Mark wrote in the post on “The great Australian silence” I referenced earlier:
Recognition of your interlocutor in their own uniqueness and difference is, after all, a precondition without which there can be no meaningful reconciliation whatsoever.
Is it too much to ask anyone who professes concern about the condition of Indigenous Australians to try to see what the world might look like from their point of view?
Elsewhere: We’ve already linked to Legal Eagle’s post, but since then the comments thread at Skepticlawyer has developed quite a bit and makes for an interesting read.
Kim please stop jerking our chain. Greer as an anarchist was fine. Her thesis about black rage is fine. Whats fucking terribly wrong here is her recent self-outing as a ‘Marxist’.
That’s whats seriously wrong here.
What decent democratic or libertarian socialist can defend her vile red-fascism now?
I ask you. Authoritarian socialism is so last century.
What did I just say about engaging with the arguments and leaving aside ad fem stuff?
Sounds different in emphasis to the SMH article. I can’t really say anything else until I’ve read it! Might be a while, as I’m on maternity leave, I’ve got to restrain myself from buying more books.
I guess, LE, at 20 bucks, it’s cheaper than some. Very small book too - literally - a quick if very unsettling read. But I think we need unsettling, and all the assumptions on these issues - including those that are the new Pearson/Mundine/etc orthodoxy - need shaking up.
That’s a relevant question because she points to a range of clinical studies which show that extreme anger and rage are incredibly deleterious to human well-being. That’s because it’s turned against oneself - the position from which one expresses rage is an inarticulate one - one deprived of power, one dispossessed from the ability to negotiate - a last and futile act of resistance which eats up and destroys the self, and which is far too often turned against those closest to the self.
It is much more than just some “psychological issues” Kim and given your comments I’m suspect Greer is also aware of this. In my view Greer is hitting on something very important here but most people seem to be interpreting it within a mentalistic frame of reference. It goes much deeper than how we think, sustained rage and violence can have extremely detrimental effects on cognition and behavior. It can also pave the way for a whole range of physiological changes that increase the risks for cardiovascular conditions, cancer, depression, psychosis, will exacerbate virtually any chronic inflammatory condition, and at a stretch, though there is some suggestive data on this, probably increases the likelihood and severity of diabetes.
Obviously I can’t go into all of this here, a very long and complicated story. I must stress though that until we get away from thinking about these problems solely within a mentalist frame of reference we are not going to adequately address these issues. I wish someone of the calibre of the S. Aus. psychiatrist Jon Jurideni would get involved in the policy debate because he is well across these issues and understands these at levels of analysis that the general Aus public has little or no awareness of.
In all this concepts like “individual responsibility”(the Right) and “self determination”(the Left) are largely vacuous and without merit. These are concepts that will become useful in the future but at present we are confronted with a population of individuals whose life history makes changing their behavior so difficult and problematic that we must completely rethink this issue. Given the known association of low serotonin and stress response dysregulation with significant trauma in life, particularly when such trauma occurs during childhood, and that these changes are strongly associated with violence and depression, I will even go so far as to suggest that psychiatric drug based interventions will be a very necessary but not sufficient strategy in an unfortunately large number of aboriginals.
Greer has made us think again. Great, very much needed, particularly given the Rudd govt, like the Howard govt, doesn’t have a clue about how to handle the problem. I congratulate Greer for that and I hope it brings forth the relevant professionals into the fray.
John, I think you’re right, on the first bit anyway, not necessarily on psychological interventions, but I don’t want to take that bit up. In practice she is trying to show how rage is both a damaging psychological condition and one that is the direct consequence of social and historical factors. But she doesn’t make the physiological and cultural arguments mesh as well as they might.
Like LE, I’m now going to have to wait until I’ve read it in its entirety (it’s not available in any bookshop in Britain). I’m assuming the Clarence Thomas howler was inserted by the SMH, and perhaps the provocation argument as well.
Bloody newspapers. Bloggers get fact-checked by their readers, newspapers get fact-checked… oh, never mind.
Clarence Thomas certainly doesn’t get a mention in the book, SL!
There is a serious problem with bad or non-existent editing and sub-editing in this country, that’s for sure.
Why do McCarthyists always have to turn up at these threads? The topic is about anything but what the lying rodent suggests it’s about. It’s not about Greer’s personal politics, but about whether or not an adequate description/prescription is being offered as to a major Australian and wider human problem of being.
I have not read the actual book. Does this exclude me from comment?
If so, disregard following and move to next post.
If not…
Firstly, genocide, and rape and several other modes of violence, seem always employed consciously and/or unconsciously against subject populations. The idea is to end resistance by breaking the individual and collective spirit. Eventually the self loathing and self surveillance become self perpetuating and hence a social system based upon neurosis is entrenched. Even down to the repressive tolerance of institutionalised social welfare system.
This our current stage of history, as a species. It involves a still prevalent misuse of anger and its expression, out of ignorance; i.e. false cconsciousness.
A real power kick is unleashed, accessible to weaker members of a conquering group under the new suite of power relations that denies the competent of the subjugated group any inputs. A means of social reproduction/reification is set upon which an entire system operates on institutionalsed absurdity, where the overtly unfair crushing of a victim group ( even if healthy ) rather even than a rational consideration of economic efficiency itself, since the issue is actually distribution of power wealth and sexual access. In the end, all social relations seem to become an offshoot under a dominant rationale. And without meaning to over determine, Dominance, rather than cooperativeness, seems the underlying and habituated principle replicated.
With indigenes, if violence has been the “norm’( also a norm in working class groups within the class ridden settler society, that have had the most regular contact with aborigines ), then how can it be expected that a destructive tradition passed down over several generations now, could be considered as anything else but “normal”, by those inscribed with self defeating traits.
Could be “reform”, which the unemployed know about; be a variation of sado economics and the economy of plenty? That experience, mild tho’ it be by comparison, allows even some of us an insight into what it might mean to be black.
paul, I’m more than happy with any comment on what I’ve presented as being the arguments in the book, and any valid tangents therefrom. Remembering that I haven’t tried to summarise the argument with rigour or reproduce in its entirety - I really think the book itself is worth the read, and I hope as others who choose to do so, we can have a well informed conversation of a higher quality than some of the personalised and dichotomised ones the publicity has provoked.
Well done again, Kim, stick with it. I have not read the book, but I would just like to add the following about the debate surrounding it. Hope this is a “valid tangent”!
When I was at the bookshop the other day, I was astonished to see that Germaine’s essay is a very small pink book, and is actually part of series of essays published by MUP, including Kosky on ecstasy, d’Alpuget on longing, and Malouf on experience. See here:
http://www.mup.com.au/
Two women and two gays, yes? Perhaps MUP was intending to give us the existential meditations of four classic “outsiders” on the big questions, and perhaps Germaine, expected to write on rage in women, decided to do the less obvious and write on rage in aboriginal men. Good on her, she never shied from the hard questions.
For those with some historical perspective on the way Greer is treated in this country, you would know that The Australian newspaper has been running a jihad against Greer for the past decade, sneering madly at her in editorials, publishing the worst possible photos of her, and running multiple op/eds against her. She is an icon of The Left, and must be destroyed. Other lefty icons like Mick Dodson have been similarly victimised by the Oz (for example, by publishing a full page spread on his $350,000 home in Canberra where he works, gasp, what is this black man doing living in suburbia!).
On a previous thread, someone wondered where all the hate for Germaine comes from, and whether it is really wide-spread. It comes courtesy of the slavering idealogues at the Oz and is not at all representative, in my view. Most people don’t give a damn, but for those who are engaged, women of a certain age love Germaine for her typically Australian way of shouting and laughing, and her incisive intelligence, and many younger women are amazed at her forthrightness and enjoy her slamdunking the silly dusty old men around her.
I laughed out loud when it was reported that an Oz journo pretended to apologise to her for trying to grab her attention, and she snapped back “no, you’re not!”. The report noted that she was “holding a glass of wine”. Really.
As for Marcia Langton’s “reply”, I have never met an angrier woman than Marcia, who has been given plenty of space in the media and academe to lash out at white Australia, especially in the pages of The Australian. Marcia’s towering rage is unusual, and interesting, in a black woman, and over the Howard years her star has risen, not least through patronage by the Australian newspaper, who no doubt invited her to blow off at Greer publicly. Like Pearson, Marcia rages like a good little Hayekian at times, so she is on board. Good for ratings. I wonder if she realises how she is being used?
My comment got away from me, and on reflection, its totally OT!
But the question does arise for me (prompted by Greer’s essay, through Kim’s review): where is female aboriginal rage?
Is Marcia the only one shouting?
Germaine Greer is on 3RRR talking to Tony Biggs, right now. Stream from rrr.org.au
“Why do McCarthyists always have to turn up at these threads? The topic is about anything but what the lying rodent suggests it’s about.” - Paul
Way to go Paul. Using terms like that about them will really make McCarthyists see the error of their ways - not.
Oh, and grace it’s a bit ridiculous to complain of the way Greer is “victimised” when she clearly goes out of her way to court it (of course it is hard to think of anyone less like a victim).
She loves being a shit-stirrer, and good on her for it because we need them. We need them to stir us from our complacency even when they’re dead wrong, issue which I think she often is (though perhaps not on this issue).
It’s just that when you stir shit you have no right to complain of the smell. She doesn’t, neither should you.
This is perhaps a little off-topic, but I think it relates to what Greer was writing about. (Not having read the essay, I’m just guessing.)
I spent many years in the Army, as a cartographer, and I remember being quite repelled by something a workmate said about a field trip (to the counrty around Marla Bore, I think) the squadron had been on: “There’s nothing quite like rooting a jin against a shithouse door.” (And this bloke was married! I guess I’m a bit straight-laced.) Actually, it still disgusts me, 25 years later, so I can understand why Aboriginal men are filled with rage.
I can’t help wondering if the concept of post traumatic stress disorder is more helpful than rage. Rage is more of a symptom. (Of course, On PTHD would not be a very evocative book title)
grace and dd, please refrain from further discussion of Greer’s motivations and personality on this thread. The other one’s still open, as indicated in the post, if you want to have that conversation.
Good for Germaine bringing up RAGE.
Some individuals rage at the fact some people have supportive, fairly consistent in their ways, parents…parents who have the money…or at least the compassion & responsible attitude to support their kids learning, interests…help pay for their education & such…others don’t get the same support, so it possibly pisses them off.
They feel that bitterness anger welling below everytime they see somebody else being praised for achieving when in their hearts they know they are just as capable but have to spend so much time dealing w/ the emotional ride that comes w/ family angst, frustration w/ parental inconsistencies, race issues, working at a young age, abuse…&/or the loss of parents/guardians…even forced separation (I went thru this myself so I can empathise w/ the Aborigines who had family disruptions).
Add to that the prejudices directed at them…& pervailing stereotypes & perceptions…knowing/sensing that some people think you’re a lesser person due to circumstances beyond your control (I was a child in a divorced family in the early 60s, looked down by some in those days, people treat you differently, some like you have a disease…the same occurred at school due to my chronic asthma and too oft hospitalisation)…imagine what it’s like to come from broken families & you haven’t got the skin color goin’ for you?.
Say you have what is perceived as a physical abnormality…we know how Humans love to finger-point in order to make themselves seem more desirable…hope others don’t pick up on their oddities/quirks…imagine if that so called “abnormality” is pretty obvious (in my case it was a slightly hunched back partially due to my thinness of frame & height shooting up so quickly & bending over due to asthma etc…& I’ll tell ya, some girls & their wee male followers can be downright cruel with their taunting & facial expressions)…it must be dreadful for an Aboriginal person to watch & listen to the taunts of idiots like Howard (tone of voice, obvious hostility during certain speeches…followed years later by this condescending, paternalistic “we use soldiers cause we care” approach…I mean f*ck me, how gullible & stupid & unaware does he think people are?…after all the “intentional negligence” & bashing by the Howard supporting media did he really think people were gonna fall for that BS?).
Add to that the looks & “tut tut”s Aborigines must receive in bars…or if a tourist passes by a home & sees litter around & turns their nose up…or the ignorance of cow cockies as they use Aborigines for cheap labour whilst making jokes about their women or work pace at their expense…or hearing comments made by influential Nat Party supporters whilst trying to swim in the public pool along the lines of “Any Abo that thinks they can setup camp on my property & go for a land rights decision is going to get it right between the eyes” (I witnessed that exchange out in a rural town…that sentiment was commonplace)…
I’ve got a visible twitch…over the years i’ve learnt to deal w/ the occasional DUMB, RUDE, IGNORANT comment from ocker bast*rds in this country who should know better considering how filthy, smelly, ugly & stupid most of them are. The way I had to deal w/ the other things I mentioned above.
But ya see, I still RAGE now & then. The past abuse by peers & adults & sense of being screwed over on the parent security front whilst others had the security & consistency that provided them w/ peace of mind & time to gain/achieve sometimes lit a FIRE in me…I wish it hadn’t… but don’t forget, children/adolescents FEEL more than they rationalise…as the foundations are built…& constant stress/anxiety in a child can construct different neural pathways than in those who live a more secure, consistent life
…& add to that the frustration of realising down the road I had a chemically addled brain in tandem w/ the building of some weak character foundations, unstable that was hindering my career prospects (which can lead to income problems & self-medication)…& being told repeatedly by cocky arseh*les I had undesirable behavioural patterns & response mechanisms (sometimes it was the fact I’d lived in various countries & the response was to a cultural way of acting rather than being a flaw or such…but it gets confusing)…imagine what it must be like for an Aboriginal who doesn’t speak as fluently as some might like, employers demand…or if they tend to look at the floor, avoid your gaze & that might be considered as lacking confidence? After awhile certain comments directed at that Aboriginal might drive them to STARE at you hard…in pride…& anger.
And sometimes when i’m feeling low…& see others being rewarded & promoted as some kinda freakin’ HEROES & CAPITALIST GODS, and find out that they rarely had hurdles to overcome…& come from RICH families & TOFF schools…& have the looks that make journos & agents & dopey younguns looking to conform crawl, kneel at their altar…I feel that FRUSTRATION welling up…and i might turn to the bottle to alter my mood…well, at least in the past…less so now.
There are those days when sometimes the frustration just won’t go away…and it only takes someone looking at me in a disrespectful way for the bubbling of lava to begin if it’s that kinda day…or hearing some manager or boss talk condescendingly to an exhausted, powerless worker (done plenty of sh*t labour intensive jobs as a youngun to know how bosses can be…& even teachers can be treated like children)…or watch on TV some banking pr*ck walk away w/ a sh*t-ar*ed grin & millions after helping mates rip off thousands of small investors & pensioners & mortgage payers…or read about some corporate mobster not paying their fair share of tax and in the process be praised by an obsequious media &/or politicians…or see some mongrel pick on a small animal…or see/hear someone nick your ideas w/out giving you due credit knowing that due to their privileged position they can get away w/ it (the workplace is full of it)…or hear some woman fart on about what a victim she is because she can’t have an abortion, a career, a husband, a lesbian girlfriend, a husband who cleans house, a baby w/ maternity leave & enuff time to shop til she drops & have a “day of beauty” all at once as tho she didn’t realise that plenty of women around the world are lucky if they have a healthy baby, access to water & consistent food sources…the list goes on…
& so I start to feel that lava rising…those eyes bulging…that blood pressure rising…feel that HULK-like RAGE comin’…feel the urge to throw some CORRUPT POLITICIAN or GREEDY CEO or BSing JOURNO or lying after killing MILITARY LEADER like a doll across the room…I feel the BEAR roaring inside…
but…over the years i’ve learnt to redirect much of that energy. Do meditation. Write as an act of catharsis…turn off the drink tap if I feel myself gettin’ too agro…go for a walk…or hit the exercycle. Put on comedy shows…or uplifting music. Scream into a pillow.
I’m one of the lucky ones. I made enuff money, did enuff satisfying work, have a HOME & loving wife & supportive friends…now…& have made up w/ my parents (to a degree…old enuff to know that you can’t blame parents forever…you’ve got to look beyond YOUR situation & try to walk in their shoes too)…and i realise that the education i did receive…& the colour of my skin did give me advantages…JUST ENUFF to crawl out of the hole. If we can put aside these prejudices & provide OPPORTUNITIEs & look beyond skin colour…we might just…
but then there’s the RAGE BELOW…that which SEETHES. The history of negative experiences…& genetic memories.
And the idiots who still refer to the APOLOGY as “token symbolism”.
Yep, the RAGE must be pretty intense for some Aborigines. Ignore it at your peril Australia.
N’
PS Good topic Kim.
Mark, my only response is that I regretted using the word “victim” the minute I posted, and dd is only doing what comes naturally…
grace, I know dd was responding to your comment, but I’m just suggesting we move on from that tangent now. Thanks!
I can’t help wondering if the concept of post traumatic stress disorder is more helpful than rage. Rage is more of a symptom. (Of course, On PTHD would not be a very evocative book title
Yes, and when this occurs in early childhood it may precipitate a range of disorders that tend to come under the banner BPD: borderline personality disorder. In the USA they are currently trialling propranolol for PTSD and it is having some remarkably good results.
The problem with psychiatric drugs is that these tend to be used as a first resort and then nothing is done. However it is clear that for a great many conditions the initial use of psychoactive drugs can be very effective in getting the patient moving in the right direction. Thereafter however it is imperative to institute a range of other measures with the long term goal being to move the patient off the drugs. That is one reason why I mentioned Jon Jurideni, he is probably the most vocal critic of drug based therapies by psychiatrists and I his concerns. Nonetheless in circumstances such as many aborigines face it could be a very valuable first step.
Rage has a recognised and legitimate place in many societies.
For example, in Malay and Indonesian cultures, the practice is called “running amok”.
It is said that the man running amok is expressing his sense of impotence and shame at having his honour taken away. Often running amok is a form of assisted suicide.
Perhaps Greer has done everyone a service by giving this behaviour a name.
But a word of caution: running amok is characterised by more or less indicriminate public behaviour.
Aboriginal men, on the other hand, tend to commit violence on women and children in private. This looks less like rage than revenge.
Perhaps if Aboriginal men took their rage out on some white men…
And John Pilger is presently in Melbourne for the writers festival.
It is always difficult to figure out who causes more outrageous rage. Germs or John.
Love ‘em both.
An interesting experiment on primates found that aggression is typically aimed at those perceived to be lower on the social hierarchy. Eg. It is typically believed that administering Testosterone will increase violent behavior. Not entirely true, in primates when this experimental paradigm is employed the violence is directed towards those lower on the pecking order. Hence aboriginal men are being only being what they are: primates. Even studies on racism have highlighted this trend. In the US the opposition to migrants comes from the demographic sectors that perceive the new migrants as being a direct threat to them.
nice post Kim, i’m looking forward to this essay. two songs have jumped into my mind while reading this, the first was Ted Egan’s ‘The Drover’s Boy’, which i’ve seen described as a tribute to aboriginal stockwomen, but is a bit too brutal to be just a tribute, and a Judy Small song that i think was called ‘Don’t disturb your father’ which i’ve only ever heard in concert, and before i ever knew what PTSD was, but which reminded me of some of my friends fathers who were veterans.
Ciao
John Hasenkam @ 25, I have no idea what your point is. Can you please attempt to rewrite your post into something resembling sense? I’m specifically referring to sentences 1 through 6.
(an explanation of when Aboriginal men have ever been ‘administered testosterone’ would also be appreciated thanks)
Amidst all the spite and claptrap, John Hasenkamp’s insight stands out like beacon. At last someone has moved the subject on a step. A pity Katz and several others hadn’t read his post. It would have answered their questions as to why certain folk behave as they do; what FORMED them as humans!!
Some of the stuff in this thread is so self-indulgent, over-egged and knee jerk reactionary as to even cause someone like Miranda Devine to blanche.
Get off yourselves, some of you!
As for young white men killing themselves in the rural areas. Probably has alot to do w/ intolerance. I wouldn’t be surprised if some are gay. Plenty of those communities are as WIDE THINKING as Rush Limbaugh on a bad day. The conversation is generally abrupt, dull, restricted, unimaginative, ocker, dry, & riddled w/ comments that criticise or take the piss out of “pooftas”, “urbanites”, outsiders (anyone not conforming to the town ways…unless they’ve been there a good long time & are NEEDED for their services…or have a real hard back & good sense of dry humour).
Some older men in rural areas, even in some city areas, spend inordinate amounts of time ripping the bark of those young fellas they don’t see as working to their standard…& they fart on about how much they do & work continually…as tho needing to justify their existance. Most white men in the rural areas have a distorted view of how hard they work. Some of that work is valuable…but there’s plenty of griping & acting HARD. And taking welfare whilst pretending they don’t…& finger-pointing at some Aborigines…or highly uneducated, poor families who are stamped as the “criminal types…good for nothing…dole bludgers”. There’s alot of deceiving oneself out there.
Some men direct their rage at groups like the Aborigines because they fear them. For various reasons. It’s sad. And it does relate partially to fear of “dispossession”…& not wanting to feel like THE INVADER. Footy & fighting contributes too. Sometimes.
Take the obsession w/ weather (understandable considering how much income & corresponding self-worth is related to it out there)…the general lack of cultural diversity (that’s obviously changing in some areas)…the sense of ISOLATION & boredom…the predictability…the constant griping & HARD (lacking compassion) attitudes of the white elders…sometimes even the women…even black women…the intolerance…& the LOOKS & critical words that come if a fella even begins to show signs of DIFFERENCE…and then you’ve got the FEELING of never escaping…and letting the oldies/folk down if you do think about taking off…& then seeing young men in other places by way of the TV/AUSTAR/visits etc. living freer, seemingly under less pressure & obligation…well, it’s not surprising that a young man can lose it…show RAGE…be knocked down/criticised/humiliated…& then head to the shed w/ a rope.
That INDIVIDUAL RAGE can also feed on group rage…it’s a feeling of solidarity…a justification for rage…an opportunity for the animal in men to bellow…shake fists…sometimes act out violence “in the name of…”. But I think you’ll find that the RAGE begins as a personal one. And no drug or STAMP such as “borderline personality” will banish it.
Opportunities to SPEAK help. To be listened to…guided without condescending attitudes. Opportunities to be RESPECTED help. A hand that does not continually moralise & judge helps. Compliments help. Deep relationships/love help. As does some luck. A secure place to live. And the opportunity to get an education & make money. And the learning of alternative ways such as meditation & yoga…or sitting by the fire w/ positive, wise, storytelling elders…or going for a LONG walk/marathon…& feeling valued by workmates & part of a community. Not being ripped off by those w/ more privileged positions…& being taught about con-artists. After-school tutoring by kind but firm coaches & teachers helps (I’ve seen it). Learning about the POSITIVES of your culture/family helps. Spending time experiencing different cultures w/out those judgemental looks everyday helps.
That’s why the media need to get their sh*t together & stop working for political & business interests who make a buck out of creating DIVISION/CHASMS & racial conflict & driving people off their farms & land.
This is a HARSH land full of many HARSH people. History & even refugee intake has sometimes determined that. Add greed (think 80s business types & just about everybody the last decade, particularly those who SELL themselves continually American Corporate style or yap on about THE MARKETS & INVESTMENT homes all the time) & continually “knocking” & “taking the piss” & comparisons of TOUGHNESS & constant yapping on of “hard yakka…mate I work so hard”…it can drive an individual into a cage of RAGE…
Then take away compassion (shock jocks, knee-jerk & racist polies, agro pensioners/baby boomers verbally attacking youth, refugee camps like gulags)…& then you’ve got HIGH FLYERS gettin’ away w/ murder on a daily basis & media justifying it & invoking “mate, she’ll be right” or “suck it up…just get on with your own business…makin’ money is good” sh*t…and off the mongrels walk into the sunset…
whilst the average fella sees his superannuation go down the gurgler…again. Or his land is taken by some bank whose manager he’s never met…not permitted to speak to…or his land is invaded by soldiers…and he’s described as a “potential pedophile” & the bit of work he has is stopped & referred to as “welfare work”…& legislation of politicians FAR FAR AWAY determines he needs to go to the city if he needs a drink (and the irony is he was one who rarely drank…but now…in protest…)…& after years of working w/ OK whiteys on stations & such he’s told his pension will be controlled…again.
And the young white farmer & his Dad are told, “nope your crops aren’t good enuff for ethanol…only BIG CORPORATIONS & wealthy farmers get access…you’re not one of THE CHOSEN few”…and so the debt gets worse…& once the media HYPE the “land rights grab” that young fella is a RAGIN’ for himself & the depressed, deeply lined, hard workin’ (some do) Dad he sees slumped in the chair. And he learns to hate the Aborigines he thinks are rorting him, the taxpayer…those who might come for his land.
And never learns that the media are full of sh*t. Stirring again.
It’s not surprising that individuals rage…& then look for GROUPS to rage with. Some are right on their doorstep. Their tribe. Their people. Their community. Their political party.
If you had little to do w/ the so called “prosperity” & feel you have little chance of ever doing so…then your rage can be mighty intense.
N’
Nick,
You have completely misunderstood my point. That being: people in a state of rage are either consciously or unconsciously directing their rage. The T experiments proffer one possible explanation as to why aboriginal women and children are subject to so much abuse: in hunter gatherer societies, and in ours not so very long ago, men unequivocally are at the top of pecking order. In relation to immigration issues it is interesting to note that the most violent opposition to immigrants often comes from those immediately above them in the socio-economic ladder.
These problems are extremely difficult and complex to understand, let alone find solutions for. The history of psychology and psychiatry is largely one of failure and the reason for that is dead simple: these professions are trying correct problems in the most complex things in the known universe: us. Single cause explanations of human behavior are often doomed to fail. The current frame of reference for approaching these problems is woefully inadequate. On this forum it is impossible for me to put forward all the potentially relevant factors, that would be an extremely long post. More like an essay approaching 5,000 words. And that would just be an introduction.
OK, back on topic. I’ll try and stay unnaturally on the issues.
I grew up in an outback town with a sizeable aboriginal population. I lit out for the big smoke just as soon as I could and have never, in 38 years, been back. These places are sinks of poverty and ignorance for black and white alike, but it is indeed the blacks who got the worst of it.
I’m not sure its true to say that black mens’ problems stem from anger but there is no denying they have a right to be angry. Their women, though, have a right to be much angrier still.
I’ve yet to read Germaine’s ‘essay’ - her words on the Lateline interview - and am wondering if any significant indigenous male voices have said anything. I’ve got plenty of time for Marcia and agree that her rage is useful and probably speaks for many. I admit to being surprised a few years ago when boxer Anthony Mundine was voted overwelmingly by NAIDOC participants as their most popular and respected first Australian. It suggests to me that a professional in the field of controlled violence/rage who can also give voice to his concerns for the fate of his people ad infinitum, much to the disdain of many other Australians, has something in common with Greers. Can we get the man a copy?
I read Greer’s book in the bookshop, sorry Greer, I couldn’t help myself and it is a quick (but interesting) read. Great summary of the themes here Kim too, by the way. I agree with what Greer is arguing/raising in her book but I still find it uncomfortable to see domestic violence, at its most brutal, explained as the rage of men hurt/humiliated by oppressions/circumstances which are hurting equally women of that same community. Eg. domestic violence in farming communities, domestic violence in poor urban communities etc. I believe explanations for domestic violence must always include a big role for personal responsibility.
Note to self: you like the “/” too much.
Sit in a unit of any Queensland detention centre while a State of Origin game is on. You won’t ever doubt the rage, violence, and strident hostility there. With your eyes shut it’ll take your breath away. Then check how many caucasian and non-caucasian faces are there.
Sit in any house in Queensland and you’ll see the same.
But this is perfectly normal. We all feel that way about New South Welshpeople. For did they not spawn John Howard and Philip Ruddock and how many times have we seen rage, violence and strident hostility directed towards them on this very website?
Thanks John @ 30
You shifted a mile from:
“Hence aboriginal men are being only being what they are: primates.”
To:
“The T experiments proffer one possible explanation:”
Regarding your earlier post @ 5 (I haven’t read the booklet just yet either), have you read Greer’s SMH op/ed, linked to from the post? She makes very clear she’s aware of the physiological effects of rage/sustained rage.
That’s probably an exaggeration, GregM, and not true of everyone in any case. But this is to miss the whole point - not ritualised rage as in football matches - which is itself a socially sanctioned disinhibition probably allowing a lot of steam to be let off which comes from other sources, nor strong feelings in politics. Note that in the latter case most people will feel obliged to make an argument.
What Greer is talking about is rage that is all-consuming, that results in actual violence and self harm and which is more or less a permanent condition.
Queensland supporters and Howard “haters” both spend most of their life at work or with their friends and/or family quite happily going about their business. It’s a completely different phenomenon. Political violence is very rare in this country.
It’s not particularly helpful in my view to blur the distinctions rather than sharpen them here, and I’m not sure why you’re trying to do so. Greer’s book itself makes them quite clear.
Ps - thanks to everyone who said they appreciated the review!
And do you have any evidence that this is not also true of most Aboriginal men, other than your self-referential point of Germaine Greer’s opinion, of course?
Blue milk, I agree about personal responsibility but I think what she’s trying to do is say that this is necessary but not sufficient.
For two reasons:
1. We need to understand why these behaviours occur with such frequency and how they link to other forms of harmful behaviour;
2. Just demanding ‘responsibility’ can be a cop out, if it’s not accompanied by an understanding that more is going on than individual pathology, and that ‘responsibility’ doesn’t magically wish away ‘dysfunction’ in the absence of all sorts of other preconditions including mutuality.
GregM at 40, the men she’s talking about are the ones who live on remote communities who spend all their time on the grog or otherwise intoxicating themselves. It’s not middle class urban domestic violence she’s discussing.
And if you read the book - although again I can see how it’s come across differently - I think it’s pretty clear she’s not talking about “all Aboriginal men” - at least not all the time. It would be useful, as I’m suggesting, for people to read it and also to do some work of thought to appreciate the argument rather than just mesh it in with all sorts of dichotomies in which these issues are usually framed.
Great post Kim. Keep up the good work.
Cheers, adrian!
Interestingly, I think this is the first actual review of Greer’s book to appear anywhere. I’m open to correction. But surely all the papers would have had review copies?
How many pages disd she devote to the well-known toxicology of alcohol then Kim? Maybe that’s all she needs to write about. You give enough alcohol to most men and quite a few women and they pretty quickly lose impulse control and become violent towards anyone around them, including their partners and children. You don’t need one hundred pages to write about that. And you don’t need any elaborate, contrived and fake theories about dispossession to explain it.
But that would bring her too close to Noel Pearson wouldn’t it? He’s quite unqualified to speak on the topic being an just an Aboriginal male and therefore not in the league of experience and knowledge to speak authoritavely as Greer is.
Why are all the white men allowed to have brothels and “adult” porn shops?
Why doesn’t anybody say anything about this revolting degradation of indigenous and non-indigenous women?
(If indigenous men opened up brothels or porn “shops”, like white men, they would be shot).
Why do we women have to be subjected to harassing offensive billboards encouraging white men to have “longest-lasting” sex as if we are just shattle?
Why the silence in government, academia and media?
Is the silence because all the white males, who run the government, academia and media, going to the brothels?
How have academic women been silenced? How have all women been silenced?
How have we all been bought off?
Why are we all walking around denying our own feelings and intuition that things going on around us are all grotesquely wrong, intimidating and offensive in this supposedly free and democratic country?
Why are we covering up for our depraved white ruling-class? (Aren’t white men supposed to be the civilised ones?) Why aren’t government, media and academia outraged and stopping the basic raping of women in brothels, who are 99% victims of child abuse or child sexual abuse. And therefore highly traumatised women.
How is it allowed that men are allowed to walk into a brothel and have “sex” with our sick, compliant Australian women for a couple of dollars?
How can our “civilised” white men call that civilised?
I’m looking forward to a review in the SMH tomorrow, written by Paul Sheehan or Michael Duffy no doubt.
Otherwise they’ll just ignore it.
Thank you for your passionate post Leo. It’s not affect-laden at all and that is all-important.
But to answer your question, Well not all of them. It’s probably true of most of them. But there must be one or two among them who don’t go to the brothels, at least not regularly.
I think you’re on to something there Leo. Do you reckon you could knock out a quick one hundred page essay on white male depravity. I’m sure it will be controversial.
And a best seller.
GregM, I’m interested in discussing the book she did write, not the one you’d like her or someone else to have written. And please spare us the snark when you disagree with someone else. It’s quite possible to disagree without laying on the sarcasm.
Somebody should have told Greer about sparing the snark when she wrote about the Bali bombing, Kim. But then, as you have rightly pointed out, that’s what free speech is about, of which you are a champion and about which her detractors don’t have the slightest notion.
I hpope that you will be prepared to stand by your stated beliefs on free speech and not abandon them because they have suddenly beconme inconvenient. After all Greer’s right to free speech is indivisible from mine, isn’t it.
Regarding your earlier post @ 5 (I haven’t read the booklet just yet either), have you read Greer’s SMH op/ed, linked to from the post? She makes very clear she’s aware of the physiological effects of rage/sustained rage.
I just read it. She touches on the issues but goes no further, which is appropriate for the medium. However I don’t think she is that aware, she appears to relying primarily on the source Mind. What I don’t understand though is that upon recognising this aspect of the problem she does not elaborate upon it.
For example, one study found that persons who had experienced a cumulative total of 4 years of major depression had lost up to 20% of their hippocampus, this being a region of the brain that is involved in a great many functions, in particular memory and, most importantly, modulation of the stress response axis(techo term: HPA axis). It is well known that even a single major depressive episode makes another more likely and this shrinkage of the hippocampus may explain why because it is believed that hippocampus can have a dampening effect on the stress response. In fact antidepressants show some unusual properties: they increase neurogenesis and reduce the stress hormone cortisol. As it happens the hippocampus is one region of the brain that is strongly fed by neurogenesis, just under it is a region called the dentate gyrus, which keeps spitting out neural stem cells. These then migrate to the hippocampus and become functional there, or at least under best conditions 50% will, most just die(though there are many strategies we can use to increase the survival rate). Unfortunately though the stress hormone cortisol is not only great at killing existing neurons, it can very much inhibit neurogenesis. The same sort of dynamics is present in mice, monkeys, and us.
Now this is where Greer goes seriously wrong: she is not using the data from Mind to as a means to gain insight into solutions she is using it to buttress her “male aborigines are severely damaged and consequently enraged” argument. In fact her argument is extremely fatalistic because there is nothing that can be done about what happened x number of years ago. I’m not even sure about her point about moral authority because my impression is that male aborigines still very much “call the shots” in aboriginal communities.
It is also interesting to note that the public discussion about this essay focuses more on Greer than aborigines. That is an indictment on all of us, we appear more concerned with her argument than aborigines.
She states in the op ed piece:
When an insult or threat is perceived, long before the cortex can bring judgment to bear, the part of the brain called the amygdala sends out the rage signal.
—-
For a full and readable account of these dynamics read Joseph Le Doux(a former doyen on such matters): The Emotional Brain
She is correct about the dynamics here but again fails to realise the particular significance this has for aborigines. The frontal lobes, which do the work the inhibiting the amyygaloid complex, can be severely impacted by sustained stress. In fact some studies even suggest that in severe depression the neocortex can go on “holidays”, so it is not surprising to find cognitive deficits arising in depression. The other very important issue here is that the key region of the frontal lobes involved in this inhibition, the orbitofrontal cortices, lie at the very front of the brain and is amongst the last to mature. Aborigines experiencing trauma, chronic malnutrition, and lack of learning opportunities, will have a very high risk of those frontal lobes never maturing to their full potential. That is, their life experience not only makes them very vulnerable to sustained rage, it also can potentially make it very difficult for them to control their rage. For example,
J Affect Disord. 2008 Jul;109(1-2):107-16.
Gray matter reduction associated with psychopathology and cognitive dysfunction in unipolar depression: a voxel-based morphometry study.
Mol Psychiatry. 2007 Apr;12(4):360-6. Epub 2006 Dec 5.
Fronto-limbic brain structures in suicidal and non-suicidal female patients with major depressive disorder.
At a personal level I have 3 disabilities that have resulted in a great deal of discrimination against me, so much so that in these days I very much keep to myself. But I am happy because I don’t take peoples’ opinions that seriously. I learnt long ago that most of the time our opinions about others are for the most part just spurious conjectures. As one wit quipped: we spend too much time trying to impress people we don’t know and don’t even like.
Nick, I did not shift as you suggest, I was simply trying to keep it short and sweet.
Paul, thanks for the kind observation, perhaps the above will reveal why I am trying to find another way to understand this.
Greg, perhaps it is reaching the stage where you are “jumping the snark”?
GregM, don’t be obtuse, please. I’ve specifically said I don’t want a rerun of debates about Greer’s personality and motives and other work on this thread. The other thread is still open for that purpose. It’s not a matter of “free speech”, but of respecting the intention to keep this thread on topic.
You’re quite right Kim. So back on topic. How many pages in her essay did she devote to the well-known toxicology of alcohol? This is a serious question and as you’ll appreciate I’m highly unlikely to ever read her book so I won’t find the answer from it. And yet for the reasons I have given it requires a serious answer.
Has she addressed that issue at all in her essay?
Sadly I can’t give you an accurate report, GregM, because I lent my copy to a friend today! I don’t know if some sort of page count would prove anything one way or the other, though. However, my recollection, not having a copy before me any more, is that she introduces the point about alcoholism very early in the essay, and makes a specific comparison between the reasons why Indigenous males and non-Indigenous Australians drink, and points out that the violence is often worse with Indigenous men and much more prevalent (again my recollection is that there are footnoted references to public health studies). I recall also that she pointed to documentation of Indigenous men acting out extreme violence while stoned on marijuana, which is not usually known as a drug that provokes latent violence!
She’s very well aware of the damage alcohol does and refers to that, but she’s not writing a medical treatise, so I don’t know that she goes into “toxicology”, although I’m not personally sure what that word means!
The thrust of the argument is that the violence is not just provoked by the grog, and there’s a reasonably logical and convincing argument to demonstrate that’s so, which I’m sure a statistical study could demonstrate - along the same lines of the figures she cites about the over-representation of Indigenous men in prison. That’s not ascribed to racism in policing or sentencing, but to actual higher levels of violence among Indigenous men.
By the way, you may be interested to know that she quotes Pearson with approval on at least one occasion. Where she questions Pearson, it’s his contention (or what appears to be his contention) that removing or restricting access to grog will remove the causes of violence. She also refers to the very common practice of smuggling grog into “dry” areas which has been going on for years and years, and which is perpetrated by whites.
I don’t think it’s as simple as “Greer v. Pearson” as you seem to imply.