Tag Archive for 'Germaine Greer'

Germaine Greer trashed in The Monthly

Published
by
Kim
2 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Media, Politics and Women
. 245 Comments

I don’t know what qualifications you need to be a public intellectual. I think you get such a gig because readers of The Age have voted for you, or something. But apparently playwright Louis Nowra is one.

In 2007, he wrote a short book, Bad Dreaming, which to put it mildly, met with some legitimate criticism. Nowra, disavowing the work of Indigenous women, took it on himself to solve all the problems of Indigenous Australia himself. Last month, he published what could reasonably be described as a laudatory piece on the life and character of one Tony Abbott in The Monthly.

He’s now followed that up with an amazing rant about Germaine Greer, to be published in the same mag on Friday. Allegedly, it’s to mark the fourtieth anniversary of the publication of Greer’s The Female Eunuch.

You can get a taste of it from this article in The Independent:

In the essay… Nowra not only attacks Greer’s work, but criticises her appearance, her character and even her sanity. “She will do anything to get noticed,” he says, adding that when Greer appeared on the reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother, she looked like “a befuddled and exhausted old woman” who reminded him of “my demented grandmother”.

Yet Nowra has the gall to accuse Greer of misogyny. Nowra says that Greer doesn’t understand “what makes women tick” and that her work is too “middle class”. Presumably he is immune to such criticisms because:

Nowra… lives a studiedly bohemian life with his writer wife, Mandy Sayer, in Sydney’s red-light area, Kings Cross…

To allege that because women still wear make-up, Greer’s work had no value at the time it was written is risible.

This is not the first *controversial* editorial decision Monthly editor Ben Naparstek has made. What possessed him to commission such a piece of abusive raving? Were there not any women who might have written a fair and measured reflection on Greer’s influential book? To build sales? I won’t be giving him the satisfaction of buying a copy. I’ve already read more than enough of Nowra’s “intellectual” contribution.

Elsewhere: tigtog at Hoyden and [H/T Gummo] Philippa Martyr at Quadrant.

On Rage: Germaine Greer reviewed

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Australiana, Culture, Disasters, Feminism, Howardia, Indigenous, Policy, Race, Sexuality, Sociology and Women
. 111 Comments

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.

Continue reading ‘On Rage: Germaine Greer reviewed’

On Rage: Raging against Germaine

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 7 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, History, Indigenous, Masculinity, Media, Politics and Race
. 232 Comments

As a bit of a follow up to the discussion of Germaine Greer’s latest book On Rage here, I was interested to see Gary Sauer-Thompson observe that most of the reaction (and there’s been tons of it) to her writing and various speeches and appearances in the press has completely avoided the issues she actually raises, and concentrated on interweaving loud denunciations of her – and claims that she’s irrelevant – with already well established “media narratives”. If she’s in fact got nothing of relevance to say, as one of our commenters observed, you have to wonder why all the energy expended.

Her book hasn’t hit the shelves in Brisneyland as far as I can tell, but I’m awaiting it with interest. There’s a taste of what’s to come at Public Opinion.

Continue reading ‘On Rage: Raging against Germaine’

Mutual obligation and Indigenous policy

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Culture, Education, Ethics, Health, History, Howardia, Indigenous, Politics, Poverty and Race
. 15 Comments

In the wake of discussion of Andrew Forrest’s proposal for the creation of 50 000 full time jobs for Indigenous Australians (discussed here at LP) and Germaine Greer’s remarks on the continuing force of history in shaping Indigenous responses to state initiatives (discussed here and see the video of last night’s Q&A), I thought it was worth linking to a paper prepared for the Australian Education Union by UTS Indigenous academics Larissa Behrendt and Ruth McCausland. The specific topic they examine is welfare quarantining and schooling outcomes. I’d recommend anyone interested read the whole thing, but the abstract has also been posted at Australian Policy Online.

As well as discussing the philosophy of mutual obligation (referred to as John Howard’s most significant legacy to social policy), the authors point to the lack of an evidence base for most policy initiatives in this area – something almost totally lacking in the research which justified Noel Pearson’s proposals for “family commissions” in Cape York, which is now being held up as a model for the rest of Australia. This appears inconsistent with Jenny Macklin’s disclaimers of ideological motivation and claims that evidence and “what works” would be the criterion for Indigenous policy. They also point to several studies which demonstrate that parental responsibility in sending kids to schools is at best only one factor in school attendance and outcomes, with the quality of schooling and child health also being very important variables.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that most policy initiatives in this area are at best blunt instruments. It also suggests that they are being driven by a new orthodoxy – arguments about “personal responsibility” and “social norms” being more assertion than evidence based. Most tellingly, perhaps, and here Greer’s comments are important too, is the suggestion that the obligation is almost entirely one sided and thus lacking in mutuality – and that the state is failing to put in place the preconditions for such experiments to have much chance of providing enduring outcomes. That doesn’t leave me feeling me feeling very hopeful about the prospects of closing the gap.

Q&A plug: Marcus Westbury and Germaine Greer

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 7 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc, Indigenous, Media, Policy and Race
. 46 Comments

Occasional guest poster at LP, Marcus Westbury, is on Q&A tonight – ABC1 at 9.30pm. Let’s hope he can get a word in between the pompous comedy stylings of Greg Sheridan, and the litterateur/Macquarie Bank shill Bob Carr.

Germaine Greer will also be a guest. Greer has just released a new essay in book form – On Rage, which I’m very much looking forward to reading. I was interested to see her obvious frustration last night in a Lateline interview with Leigh Sales at the difficulty of articulating any position that goes beyond tired dichotomies on Indigenous Policy and the NT intervention (including those which claim to transcend tired dichotomies). Or perhaps it would be better to say the inability to hear any heterodox position. I suspect a lot of the rage directed at Greer herself comes from an inability to comprehend or recognise any thought that doesn’t follow the predictable grooves of a “debate”, and indeed any call for reflection on issues and stories a lot of us would rather not face. So it’ll be interesting to watch her in this format too.