Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present ns064827t

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Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present
2. Contesting the Future: Indian Ethnic Politics and the Competing Moral Discourses of Nonracialism and Multiracialism inSouth Africa
3. Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law: Reconciling Popular Western Images of Australian Aborigines
4. De-Moralizing Economies: African Socialism, Scientific Capitalism and the Moral Politics of “Structural Adjustment"
5. Trouble in the Kitchen: Totalitarianism, Love, and Resistance to Authority
6. A Global Affair: Nationalism and Internationalism as Cultural and Moral Practices

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Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present

Sally Falk Moore, Editor

American Ethnological Society Monograph Series, Number 5 Donald L. Donham, Series Editor

Copyright © 1993 by the American Anthropological Association All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-913167-60-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present / Sally Falk Moore, editor. p. cm.— American Ethnological Society monograph series ; no. 5) Includes bibliographical references. . ISBN 0-913167-60-6

172—dc20 93-33898 1. Political ethics. 2. Political anthropology. I. Moore, Sally Falk 1924— . Il. Series.

JA79.M595 1993

CIP

Copies may be ordered from: American Anthropological Association 4350 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 640 Arlington, VA 22203

Contents 1 Introduction: Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present

Sally Falk Moore, Harvard University 1

2 Contesting the Future: Indian Ethnic Politics and the Competing Moral Discourses of Nonracialism and Multiracialism in South Africa

Paul E. H. Dhalla, Harvard University 17 3 Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law: Reconciling Popular Western Images of Australian Aborigines

Eve Darian-Smith, University of Chicago 55

4 De-Moralizing Economies: African Socialism, Scientific Capitalism and the Moral Politics of “Structural Adjustment”

James Ferguson, University of California, Irvine 78 5 Trouble in the Kitchen: Totalitarianism, Love,

and Resistance to Authority |

John Borneman, Cornell University 93 6 A Global Affair: Nationalism and Internationalism as Cultural and Moral Practices

‘Liisa Malkki, University of California, Irvine 119

1

Introduction: Moralizing States and the © Ethnography of the Present SALLY FALK MOORE

Harvard University Society also consecrates things, especially ideas. —Emile Durkheim, 1912

It can be done. Attributing moral significance to political ideas is one way to sacralize them and remove them from the category of the debatable. But the attempt probably fails as often as it succeeds. A public

may not accept the verities presented, however thick the moral gloss. Even when the stage has been carefully set and an officialized version of reality is mounted for all to see, hortatory political moralizing may

generate as much doubt as faith. |

Sometimes the ideological content of such presentations is drawn from the rich resources ofa presumed “traditional” culture. Nationalism and ethnic ideology are among its present preoccupying forms (for a recent anthropological comparison, see Kapferer 1988). Since such political discourse expresses (while it, in fact, constructs) what everyone already “knows,” it generates “metaphors of boundedness, continuity and homogeneity” (Handler 1988:8). But moralizing political ideologies do not, by any means, always confine themselves to the discourse of tradition. Some value-defining ideological communications are explicitly innovative and consciously imposed. Recent socialist and communist states and less recent colonial situations epitomize the more extreme _ forms of these insertions. But even in these cases, new-style moralizing is often accompanied by pious allusions to presumed, deep, preexisting, moral commonalities. Social theorists and politicians alike habitually tend to “greatly overstate the degree of shared value commitments” in society (Lukes 1975:298).

1

In the academy, this tendency to totalizing overstatement is encour-

aged by the precept that the more economical the analysis, the more brilliant the appeal. If, in a society, the “total set of relations” can be

2 Moralizing States demonstrated to “unite, at a given period, the discursive practices,” and

if they can be characterized by a single concept, perhaps by what Foucault calls an “episteme,” the intellectual effrontery of compressing so much into so small a semantic container is dazzling (1972:191). So it is, too, for political mobilizers (officials or dissidents) who, like the social

theorists they sometimes resemble, often find it important to create “summarizing occasions” and “moralizing moments.” There are great communicative advantages in succinct presentations that quickly label the total situation and give a moral tone to a political position. This book is about such cultural labels. Politically presented cultural labels are calculated to catapult the political mobilizer’s versions of reality (along with themselves) into a state of public acceptance. Laitin conceives it this

way: “Competing social forces with different interests vie to associate themselves with a cultural framework and to make their framework the relevant one to inform political discourse” (1986:92). These attempts

sometimes “succeed.” But many fail. ,

That ideological messages are sent obviously does not mean that

the signals have the desired effect. “Even people who talk as though they

fully endorsed and agreed upon the ideals of national unity do not necessarily mean the same things by it” (Herzfeld 1987:152). One does not have to have read Derrida to know that messages may be received

quite differently from the way they are intended. It is a matter of everyday experience. New communications are inserted in a field of already existing thought. Other ideas (or skeptical attitudes) may already be firmly installed in the conceptual space for which the new

messages are destined. :

What follows for the anthropologist is that there are seldom simple answers to questions about the meaning and consequences of political

statements. A very large field of data can be relevant, much of it not appearing political on the surface, some of it not on the surface at all. The scope of what feeds into ideas of “the political” is large, and, the worse for theoretical definitions, its form is variable. The work of estab-

lishing public meanings and legitimizing social action is continuous, never achieved once and for alland never undertaken in toto, fora whole “system,” but rather situationally. To conceive of the matter as a simple duality in which assertions of power and reactions to it (thought of only as submission or opposition) are all that need be paid attention to is a

crude construction. It reduces to two perspectives what is often an intricate, nuanced, and ambiguous ongoing process. Present anthropological reassessments of the cultural content of the colonial encounter are instructive in this regard. The dominator/dominated dichotomy was patently on the political surface, and differences of culture were clearly identified with differences of power. Yet there is

Introduction 3 much more to be said about working out of the complex ideological/cultural content of the relationship than a simple notion of imposed foreign ideas might suggest (e.g., see Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Dirks 1987; Moore 1986, 1992; Thomas 1989, 1991). These illustrate at length and in detail that the colonial encounter was not an uncomplicated matter on either side. There were many quite different communications of ideas and exchanges of things in both directions. The conqueror’s forms were

often appropriated and turned to unforeseen indigenous uses. The ideology of the colonizer was not a simple package, conveyed every- Where in a uniform manner and context; there were many different components transmitted in many different circumstances. And on the indigenous side, a lack of direct political contention by no means neces-

sarily bespoke consent or consensus. a

In the Comaroffs’ interpretation of the colonial history of southern African peoples, their “resistance,” “protest,” and “symbolic struggle” are seen to have assumed many shapes (Comaroff 1985; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991). That such multiform expressions exist widely argues that an uninflected conception of “resistance” has limited theoretical usefulness. That conclusion has critical implications for equally oversimple reading of any supposedly dominant “ideology.” The classifica-

tion of political ideas into only two categories, dominance and resistance, gives analytic life to a mythic reduction of the complexity and multifacetedness of human thought. There can be many more than two

_ sides, many more than two postures, many more than two ideas of

“reality.” — ,

In introducing their two-volume history on what they call “the colonization of Tswana consciousness” (1991:191), the Comaroffs approach with characteristic aplomb the luxuriant intellectual forest that has grown around the idea of the ideological and propose their own list _ of definitions. They enter with a hatchet and a saw. They cut and chop and amend and fashion a newly defined object out of the salvaged parts of previous theoretical works to suit their own analytic problem. They redefine “ideology” as “an articulate world view,” and “hegemony” as the attitudes and ideas that are tacit, taken for granted, and even submerged below the level of consciousness (1991:31, 314, 323, 329). Then

| they blur the divide by indicating that the ideological and the hegemonic are operationally interdigitated. Elements of the one can easily flow into the other.

For obvious reasons, articulated worldviews have always been easier to describe and address in ethnography than are submerged assumptions and veiled and displaced protests. That political thought can remain latent, whether as an unarticulated aspect of a worldview or as an unexpressed alternative vision, has long been apparent. What is

4 Moralizing States less clear is an ethnographic question: how to devise reliable ways of identifying submerged and unconscious conceptions that have political import long before they erupt into the level of articulateness and action. By the time the Berlin Walls fall the latent has become manifest. Durk-

heim himself hastened to point out that the “cult” associated with the French Revolution soon collapsed (1961:245). Political ideas are not always easy to consecrate, at least not durably. However, moral principle is often invoked in the attempt. The papers assembled here are about the making of just such high-minded claims in contemporary settings, about a variety of attempts to capture the public political imagination by tapping into its wells of moral conscience. Today, in the industrial world and beyond, there are many contenders in the public arena striving to have their say in what Habermas thinks of as the process of collective “will formation” (1979:186). There is enormous variation in the work of constructing a public vision of the political. Such particularistic differences of invented form, authorship, location, and effect attract more and more anthropological com-

mentary as the idea of ethnography as current history becomes more prominent in the literature. In keeping with other current work, this volume addresses such particularities. And it does so to expose some of the plural visions that feed into the large-scale political arena. This represents a break with many classical anthropological habits of thought. The focus here is not on constructing the profile of any cultural whole or on sketching its general coherence and systemic consistency; instead, the emphasis is on multiple visions of a passing historical moment, on variability, and on contestation. This breaks with the past by concentrating on a particular kind of temporally specific ethnographic fragment, on episodes that are excerpted from what seem to be large processes of historical transforma-

tion. All the writers use instance-data, time-bound diagnostic events, commentaries, or acts-of-constituting-objects as their points of departure (for a theoretical discussion of these techniques, see Moore 1987, 1989, and 1993). Some of the materials analyzed come from ethnographic

observation, from seeing people act and from talking with them, but there is no hesitation about using other sources, works of literature, art, films, newspaper articles, and speeches. The papers show that a multiplicity of ideological perspectives can come into view even in a brief analysis of a limited event or commentary. Far from displaying a single and unambiguous moral-ideological position occupying the whole of the ethnographic field, each paper makes a point of juxtaposing contrasting contemporaneous stances in the same domain, sometimes even in the same communication.

Introduction 5 Neither custom as given nor structure as reproduced nor culture writ large is the theoretical fulcrum of discussion when the project is so conceived. Events and commentaries are not used the way they often have been in anthropology, simply as “instances and exemplifications” of the form or order of a system (Thomas 1989:118). Nor is there any totalizing ambition involved. What is described in each paper is a small, “telling” part of a local scene that strongly hints at a number of deep-

running but divergent attitudes. Each account tells its story as both present consequence and potential cause, so that one reads the observed moment as a set of happenings between a recent past and a near future.

: In other words, the occasions, opinions, and images reported are firmly located (and dislocated) in our time. Film-fantasy, songs, stories, art in shop windows, political speeches, disinformative pamphlets, tabloid newspaper articles, and official interoffice memos all are vivid and of this moment, in Africa, in the United States, in Australia, and in Germany. They shock and surprise. By providing unexpected images within a political world we thought we knew, these papers carry forward’some

aspects of the defamiliarizing project of anthropology called for by Marcus and Fischer (1986). -

Submerged in all these accounts of local goings-on (or commentar-

ies-on) is an awareness of the surrounding world, an idea of a larger political context “known” to the actors. The consciousness of a bigger world expands the conceptual boundaries of each case. Policymakers propose strategies, newspapers fan the fires of ethnic fear, dissidents deride the regimes under which they live. In each instance, while local political moralizing is in focus, the blurry image of a larger world is in the background. That implies comparison and underscores an awareness of alternatives, both as an ethnographic fact about the actors and as an analytic perspective of the writers. The inference that perhaps things _ need not be as they are figures as a subtext.

The theoretical emphasis is therefore on possibility, on the ex-

, pressed signs of plasticity and instability in the political arena. The evidence consists largely of what people say about the parts of the political domain that concern them. The analytic task is to show what this running commentary signifies.

Who Knows What Is in the “Political Unconscious”? And How Do They Know? The analytic issues involved in engaging invisible material are complex and technically treacherous. Worse, ideology and causality are by no means in unoccupied intellectual territory. Social and political

6 Moralizing States theorists have long been voluble on both subjects, from Marx's “false consciousness” to Gramsci’s “hegemony” to Bourdieu’s “habitus.” How, in the political realm, is the difference between what is consciously

recognized and what is not at a level of collective awareness to be addressed by an ethnographer? Is the concept of a collective unconscious or a political unconscious illuminating or misleading? Is it a license for

the interpreter to be creative, or are there some rules of evidence involved (Habermas 1987:354-355; Jameson 1981; Lévi-Strauss 1963:281)? It is one thing to subscribe to Freudian views of the unconscious in

individual histories and applaud the therapeutic value of uncovering such material. It is quite another to assume that what is collectively unquestioned in the political realm has all of the same characteristics. Whatis publicly unchallenged may be repressed ina political rather than

a psychological sense. The politically uncontested is not necessarily unknown to consciousness. Questioning may often be too dangerous, or it may seem pointless. To be sure, as Bourdieu has so elegantly put it, a case can be made that “every established order tends to produce... the

naturalization of its own arbitrariness” (1977:164). But is political thought in modern mass society always an “established order” in that .

SO.

sense? Is the hegemonic so firmly established and so clearly discernible? To have a tendency to “naturalize” is not invariably to succeed in doing

When ideology is the issue, what is the object of analysis? Object figures here in two senses. What is the thing being analyzed? And what is the objective of analysis? Is the analysis of political ideology to be focused on analyzing systematic misrecognitions, on uncovering a collective political unconscious to which the insightful (read intellectual) supposedly has privileged access, or is the analysis to focus on what is manifestly visible and audible, asking how it was formed, what could it mean to those who use it, and what effects it has? The two questions might elicit the same response if they were both open-ended and innocent of political history, but they are not. Critical theory, with its strongly

Eurocentric focus and its emancipatory mission, has had a long history of assuming that the political unconscious has certain preoccupations and that these are known or knowable. Critical theory also presumes that it can somehow transcend the historical contextuality of its own knowledge. Anthropology, withits strongly non-European focus and its long history of working among colonized peoples, has recently become acutely self-conscious about the extent to which its own past perspectives have been historically formed. This has now produced a remark-

ably intense preoccupation with the colonial period and a set of concomitant self-conscious discomforts and doubts about how to proceed with the “ethnography of the present.”

Introduction 7 Just in Time: Situating Political Ideas in Temporal

_ Perspective Given that the ideas that feed and shape political thoughtin modern mass society are drawn from exceedingly varied sources, what is to be made analytically of the pieces once they are juxtaposed? Together they constitute a complex assemblage, a kind of ongoing historical collage. How is this complex, diverse, changing field of activities and ideas to be approached ethnographically? One thing is certain. The whole of “the

ideological” in this broadest sense cannot be encompassed as a totality. Nor can the whole of the social context be apprehended. Anthropology has come a long way from a time when it was thought that the total “culture” of a people could be grasped and described by one diligent ethnographer after limited exposure. That was an early professional illusion. The totality of the political is as unencompassable. Like the “economic,” the “political” is a dimension of most social activity, not a separate domain. But the analysis of specific occasions when political

ideas are expressed is another matter. These can be inspected and addressed. By definition, official public occasions provide the most easily accessible, commonplace instances of political statement that can be dissected to expose their inner logic. But more colorful, unexpected political commentary is often found lodged in the informal domains of everyday life and in the medium of popular culture. Those messages

that are not presented and labeled as “political” are often the most politically revealing. For the ethnographer, both kinds of political representations, official and unofficial, are free gifts. They are local cultural texts on social meaning. As such, they are also layered, coded puzzles. All of the cases in this book present attempts to impose frameworks of understanding, to insist on certain logics of political conception. Yet in every case the potentiality (or presence) of contestation is also suggested, both by the ethnographic context and by the analysis. The likely long-term outcome is not clear. Evaluating the effectiveness of these multiple currents and countercurrents is not possible within the scope of the materials addressed. This limitation is particularly evident if one asks about the place of these particular “moments of statement” in the projected life history of a political arena or in the trajectory of an ongoing political enterprise—in other words, if one asks causal questions.

Given the temporal limitations that restrict the ethnography of “current history,” case studies in this mode can seldom be pushed very far in the direction of causal analysis, since that involves prediction, a talent for which anthropology is not noted. However, there are some

8 Moralizing States situations that nevertheless invite attention to causality, namely, instances that describe explicit causal intentions. Not infrequently, politi-

cal representations encapsulate plans for the future. Proposals for political redefinition or for legislation are instances explicitly directed

toward shaping the future. A bias toward studying people trying to “make the future” distinguishes the contributions presented here from an anthropology oriented toward persons who are most occupied with

“maintaining the traditional.” This makes visible a kind of temporal"historical" consciousness that now infuses fieldwork, and has produced time-conscious ways of writing, even where historical sequences are not

the central problematic. | Social “Wholes”: Unitary Systems or Diverse Composites? Anthropology has had no shortage of systematic totalizers. Totalizing can be seen in many guises from Ruth Benedict through Malinowski © and Radcliffe-Brown and the other British structuralists to the French and American Marxists, and even including some of the aficionados of cultural interpretation in their more inclusive moods. But for ananalysis to extrapolate from a cluster of common symbols, customary practices,

and normative rules to a putative social “whole” legitimated by its “ideology” can be a circular reading of ideologies that make just those claims. The analysis may become captive of its analytic object. For the totalizing ethnographer doing fieldwork, there is a tempta-

tion to enlarge from the observed “event” or “instance,” to see the ethnographic fragment as an exemplification of some backgrounded, yet

integrated, social or cultural whole. Such a conception of the matter agerandizes the importance of the ethnographic observation and makes the logic of the part the logic of the whole. Occasionally it is warranted, — but often it is not. Surely social analysis should not always be treated as an exercise in fractal geometry. Once you have seen one village you have not necessarily seen them all. And, furthermore, magnitude and multiplication are seldom the only differences between small- and large-scale

entities. The instance may indeed be a clue to some processes and structures on the larger scale, but the nature of the connections must be demonstrated, not assumed. A skeptical attitude toward unitary theoretical totalizing, toward totalizing as “magnification,” is not a rejection of inquiry into the large scale. The totalized, unitary social whole is a theoretical construct imagined for heuristic purposes. The large-scale is something else. It is simply a larger set of ethnographically ascertainable facts, a larger living field

Introduction 9 of inquiry. Aspects of the large scale must be attended, weighed, and taken into account in ethnographic work (for an earlier discussion of this _ topic,see Barth 1978). However, given present anthropological methods, the large scale can seldom be considered with the same depth of ethnographic knowledge as the local, the part, the segment, the instance. That limitation of technique does not in any way diminish the importance of

the large scale in the life of small social fields. And, reasoning in the opposite direction, surely the large scale is not itself “knowable” without reference to the aggregation of smaller entities—the semi-autonomous _ social fields—that compose it. Any more narrowly conceived totalism

: or localism would arbitrarily limit the scope of the ethnographic project. But it is by no means always clear how to give the large scale its due without inordinately simplifying its character. Marxist analyses in anthropology tend to give priority to examining what Donham has recently called “the continuance of productive in-

equalities” or “the reproduction schemata of various forms of power/ideology” (1990:204, 205). That familiar functional fusion of power, ideology, and reproduction makes a compressed reference to many phenomena at once. “Dominance” refers both to the site of political power and to “dominant” (i.e., pervasive) forms of thought. “Reproduction” is also doubly used, in that ideology is said to “reproduce” (i.e., to reflect) the productive inequalities synchronically, as well as to “reproduce” them in the sense of repeating those inequalities by perpetuating them diachronically. That verbal shorthand gives those phenomena the appearance of operational inseparability and congruent effect. But in ethnographic fact they may (or may not) be mutually reinforcing and reiterative. These circumstances vary at different historical moments.

Such abstractions are not suited to addressing diversity, uncertainty, and transformation. They produce conceptual models suited to static or,

at the very least, enduring systems of coherent elements. Is it metho_ dologically sound to presume in advance that such systems are always bound to appear on the ethnographic landscape? This book is about what, at least in the short run, appear to be unstable political scenes, about contests for ideological supremacy, about an approach that, if I understand him, is more like what Donham , calls “historicity,” the analysis of “possible divided interests, of uneasy compromises, of unpredictable conflict” (1990:206). Dominance is not unquestioned, and reproduction is not certain. And what of ideology? In these circumstances, should ideologies be thought of as the apparently prevalent “systems of belief” that animate the “whole”? Surely the public arena today (let alone that in other times and places) is full of ideological artifacts to which some are committed and others are not, in varying degrees. Even in the so-called homogene-

10 Moralizing States ous societies of classical ethnography it is not clear that men and women

saw it all “the same way,” let alone the old and the young. There is ubiquitous evidence of what Tambiah calls the “multiple orientations to reality” of which any individual is capable (1990:92). Nevertheless, as we all know, gestures of apparent compliance to the culturally correct

can be exacted without necessarily signifying agreement. Conceptual diversity is often hidden for good reason. In those circumstances, the dogged search for manifestations of ideological commonality always succeeds, but itis never enough. Alternative ideas can still be waiting in the garage, ready to go. An ethnography that is attentive to such possibilities may also be awake and watching when change emerges. Intimations of potential transformations must be counted as part of present

political realities. | : In their preoccupation with moralizing in politics, the papers presented here treat the cultural constructedness and the “interestedness”

of the discourse as a given. They assume that they are dealing with symbols and inventions and interpretations and “misrecognitions” (as see Bourdieu 1977). Marx’s idea of “false consciousness” and the revisions that have followed would require that these categories be understood within the schemata of the totalizing models they were designed to illuminate. The papers here avoid those grand constructs of social theory, although a familiarity with that literature is evident. They are not solely focused on the ideological “representation” of presumed-tobe-extant “systems.” Their intention is to open up questions about the creation of political cultures.

That “opening up” is being done here with limited situational material. Thus the technique of analysis involves being willing to hold important variables in suspense. An incident (or other ethnographic evidence) is described in brief. Although the material is acknowledged

to be a small piece “of the action,” ethnographically speaking, the character of the backgrounded field into which it “fits” is not fully defined. Most of the available models that would fill in the blank “background” are heavily loaded with static totalizing and systemic assumptions; hence they are avoided. Problems in relation to the analytic language seem almost inevitable. Very often a totalizing model is embedded in the very definition of ideology. In discussing the “colonization of the lifeworld” Habermas contends that “in place of ‘false consciousness’ we today have a ‘fragmented consciousness’ that blocks enlightenment” (1987:355). One may accept the idea of fragmentation, but are the fragments actually divided institutionally as Habermas sees them? Lefort puts it functionally, saying that political ideologies are by definition vehicles for dissimulation, that their work is to constitute “displacements of discourse” (1986:189).

Introduction 11 But displaced discourse is surely not only a phenomenon of politics. And

if such displacements are general aspects of symbolic representation, how does noting the displacement illuminate politics in particular? Donham defines ideologies as “systems of belief that uphold sectional interests while appearing to express general ones,” but he also says, citing E. P. Thompson, that, “unless we make a fairly low estimate of human intelligence and equate ideology simply with trickery and false consciousness, we have to admit that ideologies are, in some sense, true,

at least partially so, or they could not serve as ideologies” (Donham . 1990:49, 68). He also asserts that ideology never plays its role perfectly (1990:69). Given all these modifications, ideology’s role is obviously being reconsidered. And the totalizing models themselves?

. To do what is proposed here, to think in terms of social and cultural fields as complex composites, is a theoretical corrective. It serves as a way of reopening questions, of reversing the tendency to totalize in a unitary manner, a tendency that is embedded in the idea that “a society” has “a culture” describable as a logically coherent system. The very idea of a complex, moving, transformable composite poses questions about composition, about the elements of which the aggregate is composed. What, if anything, can drive the aggregate, and what, if anything, moves its components separately? The elements chosen for attention in any such sociocomposite are, of course, theoretical categories, not simply empirical-factual ones. Thus the same ethnographic locale might well be analyzed a number of different ways, as composed of various clusters

of cultural ideas, or various categories of persons, or diverse kinds activities.

The idea of the “whole” as composite (at whatever level or of whatever content) is suited to a complex ethnography preoccupied with

diversity and transformation. It does not preclude attention to the possibility that some sectors of the composite “whole” may be much more controlling than others, or that there may be institutional arrangements that cross-cut the whole, that there may be pervasively held ideas or practices. But what is pervasive or not, and who is powerful or not,

and the extent to which there are systemlike connections should be raised as a question, not assumed in advance. In favor of the continued

. production of small-scale local studies of the kind done by ethnographers, it could be argued that the “residual” phenomena that are not “systemwide” ata particular time can reveal the limits of the “systemic” more clearly than any study of the mainstream alone. Thus, if witnessing the historical process is what the ethnographer is conceived to be doing, what are “merely” local and sectoral phenomena are often theoretically consequential.

12 Moralizing States The Papers The papers in this volume have to do with the recent “present,” with certain dramatic instances of public rationalizing in politics today. The

authors do not claim to have transcended the historically formed perspectives of our time. More modestly, and less optimistically, they see themselves as part of, and partisan in, current political discourses. Methodologically, they proceed in the ethnographic tradition of taking careful note of what is literally visible and audible, describing what is presented as political truth. However, the ironic point of the exercise is always in the contrary implications associated with what is represented. These “truths” uttered by politicians and other public figures say some-

thing, but they also deny something. Often the denials underline the very things that are denied, rather than succeeding in banishing them. Many of those contrary implications are visible and embedded in the ongoing social life that is the context of these political pronouncements. In that case, the obviousness and undeniability of what is denied makes __. it difficult to relegate this material to a collective unconscious. That is not to say that there are not some cultural-political matters of which no

one is consciously aware, but these papers, and recent events in the

fully submerged. :

world, make it clear that what is not mentioned is not necessarily really

There is certainly no lack of raw material for analysis. Political figures have the habit of moralizing shamelessly in public. Around the world, heads of state can be heard proclaiming the broad principles and grand visions of social reality that they say underlie their policies. The

, critiques of officialdom put forward by others are often countermoralizings sung in the same key. What is to be made of such high-flown programmatic declarations? Are there really causal links between the stated principles and the practical activities of state agencies and political

activists? And even if the connection exists, is that juncture between statements and action ethnographically visible? Accessible? The answer is variable. In some circumstances cause-and-effect connections seem capable of demonstration, but there are many other situations in which

the efficacy of statements of ideas and their place in a chain of social causality are difficult to establish. It is certainly easier to say narrowly that a set of public statements is an attempt to constitute an ideology, to represent reality in a certain way, but it is often much more difficult to demonstrate what practical force such representations have in the arena of action.

The authors show instances in which public communications about particular current issues can be read as strong efforts to configure more

Introduction 13 than the definitions of a general political morality. These representations are about ideas, but ideas intended to have practical political force. And

_ there is often more than one view on the table. Paul Dhalla depicts the poignant and extreme ideological dilemma confronting Indian South Africans today, the several conflicting alternative futures (optimistically

conceived by some as choices) that lie before them. The moralizing discourse of nonracialism has set the stage, but the drama has not yet fully unfolded. Whether the Indians can define themselves as a political group without appearing to challenge nonracialism is a serious ques-

tion. Some favor remaining a pressure group and closing ranks. Others are deeply opposed to any such move. South Africa is an arena in which personal futures are clearly tangled with constitutional structures. Nowhere could the linkage between small-scale anthropology and large-

scale politics and law be more persuasively demonstrated than in this remarkably lucid paper. Minority populations elsewhere find their situations equally determined by the way majority populations think about them. Eve DarianSmith provides a subtle and incisive commentary on the romantic, sentimental “traditional, tribal” conception of the Australian aborigine that lies behind various legal protections of their rural land rights and also underpins various chic appreciations of their artistic talents, as it simultaneously tends to distract from a more painful understanding of

the way the aborigines actually live in conditions of deep poverty and social misery in cities. With considerable originality, she uses three visual images of aborigines to approach the conceptual politics that inform Australian attitudes and policies. The simultaneity of very dif-

ferent visions is evident. :

A window on the cultural formation of political ideas at the transnational level is provided by James Ferguson. He writes on public policy legitimations in the African milieu, those provided by the World Bank’s chief economist and those used by African national leaders. He contrasts the current technocratic rationalism of international development with an indigenous African political logic. The international agencies stress

an economistic necessity; the Africans stress the imperative of human social relations. Ferguson describes the impersonal logic of costs that is used to justify both structural adjustment and the exportation of envi-

ronmentally damaging activity to the poor nations of the world. He compares that with the moralizing logic of humane sociality often used __ by African political leaders to legitimize their own regimes. Ferguson has no illusions about the African governments that have stifled political opposition, often violently, and have made some African political leaders extraordinarily rich in very poor countries. His concern is not with

those practices, but with the striking differences between the World

14 Moralizing States Bank and its African clients in the publicly stated logic of legitimation. The cost argument is pitted against an argument about what is moral in human political affairs. Ferguson’s instances are obviously selective, but the importance of the difference in the moral basis of argument is a case Ferguson makes very well, and it is deeply shocking.

In our time, as is well known, the political settings in which the public discourse has sometimes been most humane have often been given to the most callous practices. John Borneman addresses reactions to the East German regime in its heyday, linking facets of the moralizing self-presentation of the state with styles of dissidence and resistance

generated against it. He does not rest there. Examining the textual content of the axis of authority and rebellion both as an acerb literary critic and as an anthropologist, he examines writings ranging from those of George Orwell to Jeane Kirkpatrick. He shows how the language of domesticity, family, and sexuality has been transposed into the realm of

public political imagery on all sides. He notes how the expression of dissidence by certain poets and artists in East Germany ultimately forced the self-legitimating moralizing state to show its hand, to show that its

authority, in fact, rested on direct coercion. Borneman also describes how dissenters who must live under a regime they oppose and who take the risk of speaking their opposition publicly may nevertheless also be implicated in acts of complicity. The double-edged moral and interpretive issues he points to, the double-thinks we are used to, are complex,

provocative, and analyzed with a welcome disdain for disciplinary

boundaries. And ina paper that shows what astonishingly different uses different political communities may have for the same message, Liisa Malkki describes the concept of a “community of nations” as it figures in the plot of a Bob Hope film, and as it figures also in the political imagination

of the residents of a refugee camp in East Africa. The sentimentalized

notion of the existence of a harmonious family of nations in the film seems to be nothing but a wishful sweetening of the sour realities of international hostility, competition, and conflict as we know them, a pretext for a Hollywood story line, not to be taken too seriously. But to a group of Hutu refugees from Burundi who have lived for years in a camp in Tanzania, the international community is benign and real. United Nation representatives have visited them and heard their complaints. The Hutu know there are international laws about exiles and refugees. The dream of the Hutu in the camp is eventually to be made the rightful residents and rulers of Burundi. They look in a vague and ’ nonpractical way to the idea that the nations of the world will ultimately

bring their enemies to justice and restore the Hutu to their proper political roles. Thus does the imagined international community figure

Introduction 15 in very different fantasies in very different places, and Liisa Malkki skillfully reminds those who would address the analysis of ideology that what sounds the same is not the same for everyone. In describing these current and recent versions of political moralizing, the authors are occupied with regions whose political problems are matters of strong contemporary interest, whose affairs are anything but

“settled,” and whose ideologies are anything but unanimously held. Often the links between public statements (legitimating or critical) and particular practical operations (existing or envisioned), although trace-

_ able in part, are far from completely so. Much depends on what will happenin the future. A sense of contingency and uncertainty necessarily turns the interpretation of such contemporaneous political texts into a selective, hence motivated, exercise. In this volume, the motivation is to analyze moralizing political theses ina manner that shows their internal connections with oppositional critiques as well as, by implication, the

critical stance of the writer. The political rationales and their internal critiques are twisted together as in a double helix, constituting the

present.”

template for the production of self-irony in the very act of self-legitimation. These papers will be catalysts for an enlarged “ethnography of the

SALLY FALK Moore is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. She is the author of Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980 (1986) and other books and articles.

References Cited | Barth, Fredrik, ed. . | | 1978 Scale and Social Organization. Oslo: Universitetsfort, John Grieg, Beren. Bourdiew, Pierre

1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. Comaroff, Jean 1985 Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff 1991 Of Revelation and Revolution. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dirks, Nicholas B.

1987 The Hollow Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Donham, Donald L. 1990 History, Power, Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

16 Moralizing States Durkheim, Emile 1961[1912] The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Collier Books.

Foucault, Michel .

1972 The Archeology of Knowledge. A. M. Sheridan Smith, trans. New York: _ Harper. Habermas, Jurgen 1987 The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 2. Boston: Beacon Press.

Handler, Richard |

1988 Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Herzfeld, Michael | 1989 Anthropology through the Looking Glass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |

Jameson, Fredric 1981 The Political Unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kapferer, Bruce 1988 Legends of People, Myths of State. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Insti-

tution Press. :

Laitin, David D. 1986 Hegemony and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lefort, Claude 1986 The Political Forms of Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: M.LT. Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1963 Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Lukes, Steven 1975 Political Ritual and Social Integration. Sociology 9:289-308. Marcus, George, and Michael M. J. Fischer

Press. , “

1986 Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago

Moore, Sally Falk |

~ 1986 Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro, 18801980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987 Explaining the Present: Theoretical Dilemmas in Processual Ethnogra-

phy. American Ethnologist 14(4):727-751

1989 “Giving, Lending and Selling: Property Transactions between Non-Agnates in a Kin-Based Society.” In Law in Colonial Africa. Richard Roberts and Kristin Mann, eds. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. 1992 Treating Law as Knowledge: Telling Colonial Officers What to Say to

Review 26(1):11-46. ,

Africans about Running “Their Own” Native Courts. Law and Society 1993 The Ethnography of the Present and the Analysis of Process. In Assessing Cultural Anthropology. Robert Borofsky, ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1990 Magic, Science Religion and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Nicholas

1989 Out of Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991 Entangled Objects. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Contesting the Future: Indian Ethnic Politics and the Competing Moral Discourses of Nonracialism and Multiracialism in South Africa PAULE.H.DHALLA | Harvard University

_ _ Introduction In the early months of 1990, two pamphlets expressing anti-Indian sentiments circulated through the South African cities of Durban and

Johannesburg. The pamphlets, which appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of violent attacks on Indians, received front-page coverage in South Africa’s Indian newspapers and provoked considerable concern within the country’s Indian “community.”? The first pam-

phlet, issued anonymously in Zulu and circulated primarily in the African townships of KwaMashu and Umlazi near Durban (in January

and February 1990), claimed that thousands of Indians were being

| _ brought secretly from India to South Africa to take over the jobs of , Africans.? The pamphlet accused the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), led at the time by an Indian (Jay Naidoo), of organ-

izing strikes among African workers to encourage employers to hire Indian workers instead (Naran and Ismail 1990:1; The Leader [article] 1990a:1; Naran 1990a:1; Pillay 1990c:2). The second pamphlet, falsely issued in the name of the African National Congress (ANC) and widely circulated in Johannesburg’s central business district and in the African townships outside the city (in March and April 1990), claimed that the South African government purchased the AIDS virus from Israel for one billion rands and began using it in 1986 “as a genocidal weapon against

us [Africans]” (as quoted in Naran 1990b:1). The pamphlet further claimed that “Indian women, and not white women, have the anti-body 17

18 Moralizing States to the AIDS virus. To stop us ever catching AIDS, all we have to do is have sex with an Indian woman” (as quoted in Naran 1990b:1; see also The Leader [article] 1990b:1; Pillay 1990a:2).

Despite their obvious absurdity, these pamphlets are interesting. Calculated to evoke negative stereotypes and resonate with certain anxieties, the pamphlets suggest the tactical use of fear in manipulating opinion and behavior. Members of the ANC have even accused government security forces of intentionally circulating the pamphlets to bolster Indian support for the governing National Party by playing on their fear of Africans and their anxiety in an uncertain and contested future (Naran and Ismail 1990:1; Naran 1990b:1; Naran 1990a:1; Pillay 1990a:1; see also Moodley 1990:2; Pillay 1990b:5). The press coverage of the pamphlets

contributes to a situation in which tales of racial violence are endemic. :

Told and retold, such tales compound the fear and anxiety from which they arise. As Kogila Moodley notes, in South Africa, “the repetition of exaggerated stories of rape and looting, common in the folk history of

Indians but reported with the authenticity of personal experience, cre- } ates a climate of fear and apprehension concerning Africans. This is abetted almost weekly by reports of break-ins of Africans into Indian homes, and by stories of terrorization of Indians by Africans” (1980:231-

232). The Indian press intensifies this climate of fear with a litany of sensational headlines and front-page stories often describing such incidents in explicit detail. Such tales of violence conjure powerful images froma symbolic past

and project them into an uncertain future. Stories told about the pamphlets, for example, are often accompanied by references to theinfamous _ 1949 riots in Durban in which Africans attacked Indians.‘ These riots— "crystalised in the Indian psyche" (Meer 1989:147)—have an important place in the collective memory of Indian South Africans and are much

mythologized today. Discussing the pamphlets with me, one Indian woman expressed her fears about the future with the following story: During the 1949 riots, many Indian women were raped by Africans. Some Indian girls were kidnapped and carried away to the “bush.” They had to live there with Africans. ... Sometimes we see one of those women today, grown-up. They are just like Africans now. They live like Africans. They are not like us now. They are not Indians anymore.

This fear of “disappearing” as an identifiable community in South Africa—either through assimilation or expulsion—was exploited in the anti-Indian pamphlets. Stories about the pamphlets, told with a touch of apocalyptic prophecy, at once express and generate anxiety in an uncertain and contested future. These and other tales of violence convey ideas about tomorrow that reflect the preoccupations of today (see Thornton

Contesting the Future 19 1990). Told repeatedly, such stories constitute conjectures about the future that may be invoked to justify particular actions and opinions in _ the present. In this way, tales of racial violence become, to use Vincent Crapanzano’s phrase, part of the “rhetoric of the future” (1985:42). According to Crapanzano: Violence ... always has a narrative dimension: the stories we tell about it—the reports, descriptions, and confessions. ... We incorporate it in familiar genres. We present it or, better, re-present it in images that resonate with other images—the images of past stories and tales. .. . We participate

; in our stories, identify with the protagonists we create, or disengage our- selves from them. .. . For the listener and the storyteller the stories and tales of violence are a kind of rehearsal for stories and tales of the future, which may have to be lived as well as told. [1985:238]

In South Africa, tales of racial violence play into a highly charged political context in which the future is being contested. Itis in this context that moralizing “rhetoric of the future”—rhetoric that makes tactical use

of hope and fear—is invoked by interested parties with competing visions of the future. Such visions are themselves articulated in terms of competing moral discourses about what constitutes the just society and how such a society should be created. As expressions of people’s hopes and dreams and fears, these visions of tomorrow illuminate much that

is significant about today. As an indication of how people view the contemporary situation, “conjectures about the future thus become an

implicit part of the understanding of the present,” notes Sally Falk Moore. “Assumptions about what lies ahead,” she adds, “are visible in current models” (1987:727; see also Moore 1993 [forthcoming]; Thornton

1991).

_ The Metaconflict in South Africa Everyone agrees that South Africa is a divided society. There is less

agreement about how it is divided. The South African government's multiracial view generally yields four main demographic categories: Africans, Whites, Coloreds, and Indians.° A Black Consciousness view,

however, acknowledges only two categories: Whites, who are privileged, and Blacks, who are oppressed. In this case, the “Black” category

includes Africans, Indians, and Coloreds alike as common victims of political oppression.® An Africanist view recognizes two very different categories: indigenous Africans, to whom the country is said to legitimately belong, and “settlers,” who have come from overseas. Settlers include Whites, Indians, and sometimes even Coloreds.’ Finally, a non-

20 Moralizing States racial view of South African society refuses to recognize any divisions on the basis of race and ethnicity. All racial and ethnic categories and identities in South Africa are the product of apartheid, and as such, they can have no legitimacy in any future “nonracial democracy.” These competing views of the divisions in South African society are part of what Donald Horowitz calls the metaconflict, “the conflict over the nature of the conflict” or, put another way, “the conflict of ideologies and visions” (1991:2, 34). As much as South Africa is divided along racial lines, it is also “divided along ideological lines—tines that demarcate fundamental differences in how the society ought properly to be understood and organized” (1991:2). Drawing on the work of Pierre du Toit, Horowitz argues that in severely divided societies “contenders for

_ power are engaged in a contest for hegemony based on competing models of the regime they prefer” (1991:33). In such societies, according to du Toit, there is no “community of consent about the basic structure

of the society,” and “the opposing parties do not share a common perceptual frame through which to assess societal conflict” (as quoted in Horowitz 1991:33). This is what Horowitz means by the conflict about . the nature of the conflict, or, to use his term, the metaconflict.

Nonracialism and Multiracialism We have no Whites; we have no Blacks. We only have South Africans. —wNelson Mandela’

Although South African society is characterized by a multiplicity of competing ideologies and visions, perhaps the most important aspect of the metaconflict is the contest between the competing visions of nonracialism and multiracialism (Horowitz 1991:33). One is the mirror image of

the other: nonracialism “is averse to official formulations based on ascriptive groups,” whereas multiracialism “is averse to the abandon-

ment of group identities” (Horowitz 1991:33). Nonracialism is associated with the opposition; multiracialism, with the government. “In opposing the regime, it became routine to oppose its definitions, its categories, its assumptions, its visions” (1991:22). Thus, “the government’s emphasis

on racial categories ... made group-based arrangements anathema to , the opposition” (Horowitz 1991:15). Speaking in 1959, Robert Sobukwe, the first president of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), explained: To use the term “multiracialism” implies that there are such basic insuper- | able differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democratic apartheid. That to us is racialism multiplied, which probably is what the

Contesting the Future 21 _ term truly connotes. We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans for the Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African

1978:195] ; nonracialism : ,

, majority being regarded as an African. We guarantee no minority rights, because we think in terms of individuals, not groups. [as quoted in Gerhart

Echoing Sobukwe, activist Neville Alexander declared in 1983 that

means that we reject the concept of “race,” that we deny the existence of “races” and thus oppose all actions, practices, beliefs and policies based on the concept of “race.” If in practice (and in theory) we continue to use the word non-racial as though we believe that South Africa is inhabited by four so-called “races,” we are still trapped in multi-racialism, and thus in racial-

ism. [Alexander 1983:8] :

Viewed historically, the ANC’s own rejection of group-based political thinking clearly occurred as a reaction to the policies of the govern-

ment. As Theodor Hanf notes, the ANC had itself been organized plurally “based on collaboration between Africans, Indians and Whites as different but like-minded groups” (Hanf 1989:108). Even the Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People in 1955 and signed by the ANC (among others), is not, strictly speaking, a nonracial document. It states, for example, that “South Africa belongs to all who live in

, it, black and white,” and it recognizes the existence of what it calls “national groups and races,” which, it declares, “shall have equal rights” in a democratic South Africa. Although the ANC continues to invoke the

Freedom Charter in articulating its vision of the future, in 1969 the organization’s Revolutionary Program explicitly rejected multiracialism and advocated instead the creation of what it called a “nonracial democracy” (Horowitz 1991:4). It was not until 1985, however, that the ANC _ “formally adopted non-racialismat all levels: from the grass-roots to its

top policy-making body,” when “the decision was taken to open the National Executive Committee to people of all races” (Frederikse 1990:242)." According to Hanf, “it was government policy—the unilateral definition of groups, the manipulation and ascription of ethnicity—

that induced the ANC to reject all group formulas, regardless of their nature and reason, as expression and symbol of a system of oppression” (Hanf 1989:108).

Nonracialism, then, goes beyond nondiscrimination. “At a minimum it means that race and ethnicity can have no officially recognized part in public life and, for some, also that those affiliations should play no part, even informally, in political alignments or collective action” (Horowitz 1991:28). In the nonracial South Africa thus envisioned, it

22 Moralizing States would be morally—and perhaps even legally—unacceptable either to advocate ethnic concerns or to organize politically along ethnic lines. The ANC’s Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa states, for example, that “the incitement of ethnic or regional exclusiveness . . . shall be outlawed in a non-racial South Africa” (ANC 1990b:66).!? Pub-

lications such as Joining the ANC proclaim that the organization is “anti-racist and against any form of ethnic exclusivism or chauvinism” (ANC 1990a:52). Statements such as these have been interpreted by

Horowitz and others to mean that ethnically based political parties might become unlawful under an ANC government (1991:156).

Nonracialism and the Suppression of Ethnicity What is implied by the goal of a nonracial South Africa? In a very real sense, then, it seems that “the nonracial society is the plural society’s analogue to the utopian aspiration for a classless society” (Horowitz 1991:28). Both suggest the negation of the existing social order by advocating the elimination of the very categories—"race" in the plural society, and “class” in the capitalist society—on which hierarchy and domina-

tion are built. |

James Scott, in his Domination and the Arts of Resistance, says that this

kind of reciprocal ideological negation is not unusual in severely divided societies. As he explains, “If the logic of a pattern of domination is to bring about the complete atomization and surveillance of the subordi-

nates, this logic encounters a reciprocal resistance from below” (1990:128). Thus, the multiracialism associated with apartheid encounters the nonracialism of the opposition. One reifies and exploits ethnic difference, whereas the other denies the salience of ethnicity altogether

(see Kapferer 1988). |

Scott further suggests that the “members of a dissident subordinate subculture can act informally to foster a high degree of conformity to standards that violate dominant norms” (1990:129). In South Africa, where the expression of racial or ethnic “difference” is associated with

multiracialism and apartheid, such expressions of difference may be suppressed to give credence to the goal of nonracialism. “What is being policed by pressures for conformity within the subordinate group are ... a wide range of practices that damage the collective interest of the subordinates as they see it” (Scott 1990:130). In this way, ideological uniformity is encouraged in the name of “the struggle.” The result in South Africa is that “nonracial has eclipsed multiracial as the norm for the entire extraparliamentary opposition” (Horowitz 1991:17).

Contesting the Future 23 Nonracialism and Indian Party Politics | “Indians?” Are there any “Indians” in South Africa? I think it is time some bright graduate examine and explore the idea for a Master’s or Doctoral thesis. I think there aren’t any “Indians” in South Africa. [Docrat 1991:15]

South Africans of Indian origin form a distinctive constituency in this country. ...Weremaina distinctive constituency and we must therefore be represented in our own right at the multi-party talks [on South Africa’s future]. [Cassim 1991:6]

“Can you describe yourself as ‘Indian’ in the South African context and still claim to be non-racial?” (The Indicator 1991:17). Questions like

this are being addressed to the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) and the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC), political parties that have for many years led members of the Indian community in their opposition to apartheid. The NIC and the TIC have long been political allies of the African National Congress, as well as vocal advocates of a nonracial South Africa. However, particularly since the unbanning of the ANC in February of 1990, the NIC and the TIC, as ethnically based political parties, have come under considerable pressure to disband in conformance with the objectives of nonracialism (to which they themselves claim to adhere). This has provoked an existential crisis of sorts within the NIC and the TIC, which are, by definition, racially based parties that, paradoxically, advocate nonracialism and in so doing raise questions

about their own right to exist. Calls for the NIC and the TIC to disband have provoked consider-

able public debate in the Indian press over the legitimacy and the necessity of organizations claiming to represent the particular political

interests of Indian South Africans. This debate highlights issues of Indian ethnic “identity” in relation to nonracialism and raises questions regarding the political future of Indians in an officially nonracial South

Africa. : -

The Case against Indian Ethnic Politics As journalist Fawzia Moodley has noted, “for the ANC, which , claims to be a non-racial political organisation, the continued existence of the two Indian Congresses is problematic” (1991:4). Indian political

parties, regardless of their political orientation, represent an implicit challenge to the ideology of nonracialism insofar as their very existence seems to lend credence to the government’s ideology of multiracialism. This is an old point of contention. When the Natal Indian Congress was revived in 1971, nonracial membership, although eventually rejected as

24 Moralizing States “impractical,” was considered on the grounds that “it would give verity to [the organization’s] underlying principle of non-racialism” (Meer 1972a:6). Following the revival of the Transvaal Indian Congress in 1983, the publicity secretary for the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO), Ishmael Mkhabela, remarked that “from our point of view any ethnically-based organisation by Indians, coloreds or Zulus is directly in line with Pretoria’s policy of apartheid. We find the decision to reactivate an ethnically-based organisation a retrogressive step” (as quoted in Work In Progress 1983a:3). Put another way: “Since we are working towards creating a unitary, non-racial, democratic society then surely the process of struggle should encompass these aims. ... We cannot fight ethnicity with ethnic organisations” (Work in Progress 1983b:18; see also 1983c; 1983d).

A similar argument is made by Singh and Vawda (1988), who focus on what they see as an incongruence between the objectives of nonracialism and the kind of language used in NIC publications and official statements. In their critical “examination of NIC discourse,” Singh and Vawda identify what they refer to derisively as “frequent lapses into the images of multi-racialism” (1988:6). By appealing explicitly to Indian South Africans, the NIC fails to avoid “the dangers of reproducing and reinforcing ethnicity” (1988:10). The NIC, they argue, “does not address the question of how the ‘Indian’ as an essentialist political category will

be transformed within the context of a de-ethnicised unified South African community” (1988:12).

Echoes of these and other arguments are apparent in more recent remarks concerning the continued existence of the NIC and the TIC in the wake of the 1990 unbanning of the African National Congress. Indian columnist Pat Poovalingam writes: Strangely enough, the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses, which used loudly to condemn ethnic political affiliation, appear to want to perpetuate political apartheid. Sure, they contend that they want to be recognised as being part of the ANC. But as a separate racially structured political grouping claiming to represent an ethnic minority. [1991:14]

To Poovalingam, it makes no sense to pursue the goal of nonracialism in racially based organizations. Desai et al. (1991) make a similar case. Arguing that “the NIC activist, bathed in ethnic thinking, becomes a captive of it,” they conclude that only “non-racial organisations can facilitate non-racial struggle” (1991:30).

Others argue that the NIC and the TIC have simply outlived their usefulness; in a nonracial and democratic South Africa, Indians will be targeted as voters just like other South Africans. Since Indians have a

: choice of nonethnic parties, they neither require nor warrant political

Contesting the Future 25 parties claiming to represent specifically Indian interests. This is the view of Indian politician Mewa Ramgobin. He writes: The current conditions, with the unbanning of the ANC, have altered the entire political spectrum of “resistance politics.” We are about to enter party politics with power through the ballot box as the objective. . . . The ANC as

a political vehicle will be engrossed in the politics of power. That's the reality. South Africans of Indian origin will be targeted as voters. They are already being targeted by the ANC, the National Party, Inkatha, the PAC and Azapo. There is nothing wrong with this. [1991:6]

Ramgobin, who was himself largely responsible for the revival of the NIC in 1971 and who remains (as of early 1992) the organization’s vice president, argues that “it is important for us not to constantly live in the past. Looking into the future demands of us to begin the process of galvanising all South Africans to adapt to the new world. Faith ina worthwhile ideal, like non-racialism, is not enough. We have to give substance to it” (1991:6). In a non-racial South Africa, Ramgobin says, the Indian community has a right to “exist as a minority group.” But it has no right to “expect separate political organisations,” nor does it have

the right to “expect a separate political dispensation as a minority group” (as quoted in Moodley 1991:4; see also Pillay 1991a:2). For some, then, the existence of the two Indian congresses is morally unacceptable because the expression of ethnicity in political terms violates the principle of nonracialism and by implication associates Indians

with multiracialism, that is, with the ideology of apartheid (e.g., Singh and Vawda 1988). When Indians organize ethnically and discuss their

future as an ethnic group, they invite charges of exclusivity. When Indians are perceived as ambivalent about majority rule, they are accused of inviting African animosity and of undermining their own future in a nonracial democratic South Africa. Poovalingam writes: | People of Indian culture ought to know more than anyone else how ethnic separatism results in violence. In South Africa, the future holds problems enough without creating extra perils for people grouped on lines of ethnic-

ity. The TIC and the NIC support the ANC. To the extent that these organisations are perceived by black or for that matter other South Africans

as representing members of “the Indian community,” to that extent the “Indians” will be seen at worst the enemies and at best the opponents of Inkatha and the PAC and Azapo. Political passions run high everywhere; in South Africa even more so. Does anyone want to cause anti-Indian feelings among Zulus? On the other hand, if there is no separate “Indian” political organisation ... the hazards of ethnic political identification will be removed. The dangers implicit in ethnic political polarisation will be minimised. Those who expose the one million South Africans of Indian origin to political hostility based on race, nationality or ethnicity, do them very great harm. [1991:14]

26 Moralizing States In this line of reasoning, the expression of ethnic identity and exclusivity inevitably invites ethnic conflict; thus, it is both morally irresponsible and politically foolish for Indians to organize along ethnic lines.

Others question the extent to which one can even speak about specifically “Indian interests” with regard to such a diverse group of people. Many are critical of political parties that claim to speak on behalf of the “Indian community” asifit were a homogenous constituency with only ethnically defined interests (e.g., Singh and Vawda 1988).

The Case for Indian Ethnic Politics Opposing those who question the legitimacy of ethnically based political parties are many who find it not only ironic but also distressing that the NIC and the TIC are under considerable pressure to disband in

conformance with a nonracial vision that they themselves had advocated in their alliance with the ANC (Pillay 1991a:1; 1991b:3). Former NIC executive member A. H. Randeree has noted that “the NIC finds itself in the position it is today largely because of its loyalty to the ANC. It will be easy to disband the NIC but,” he asks, “will it be the right thing to do?” (1991:6). The unbanning of the ANC is “no reason for the NIC to put up its shutters,” says Randeree (1991:6). He disputes the contention that the existence of Indian political organizations necessarily contradicts the principle of nonracialism. He writes: I disagree with the view that to mobilise the Indian sector in support of the

ANC in the forthcoming elections is racialism. I also cannot agree that acknowledging the existence of ethnicity is racialism. Ethnicity is a reality of the human race and has to be recognised as a fact of life. Any attempts to suppress ethnicity must, like apartheid, fail in the end. [1991:6]

Randeree argues that the NIC has earned its right to exist even in a formally nonracial South Africa because of its alliance with the ANC and its consistent opposition to racial domination. In a passionate defense of the NIC, he exclaims: The NIC is not a social club. ... Its history is the history of the people’s struggle against racial domination. .. . Is it not a fact that the NIC played a crucial role in advancing the internal struggle over the past 10 years? Is it not a fact that the NIC helped to advance the cause of the banned ANC during this period? It is tragedy that the ANC has failed to publicly defend the actions of these committed members of the struggle. [1991:6]

Many Indian members of the ANC apparently agree with Randeree. One ANC executive member, Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, notes that “with

Contesting the Future | 27 the NIC’s 100th anniversary [in 1994] just a few years away it [is] important that its leading role and the sacrifice of its members in the struggle against oppression be ‘honoured and respected’ rather than wiped out” (as paraphrased in Moodley 1991:4). He points out that, “notwithstanding their close allegiance to the ANC, both the NIC and TIC are independent political entities and it [is] not for the ANC but their

own constituencies to decide on the fate of the two organisations” (as

paraphrased in Moodley 1991:4). In this view, Indian voters alone should determine the future of the NIC and the TIC. By not consulting the Indian electorate in its debate over whether or not to disband, many

argue that the NIC leadership has “betrayed its constituency and its own , democratic ideals,” and in so doing, it has left the Indian community, “for perhaps the very first time, voiceless” (The Leader [editorial] 1991b:6; see also The Leader [article] 1991a:10; Pillay 1991b:3). .

A member of the more politically conservative Solidarity Party in the Indian House of Delegates (HOD),'* Mohammed Farouk Cassim, elaborates on this point. “South Africans of Indian origin form a distinctive constituency in this country,” and “we must therefore be represented inour own right at the multi-party talks” on South Africa’s future (Cassim 1991:6).

To my mind it is an artificial debate having to justify the right to be represented. It is advantageous to have the multi-party conference [on _' South Africa’s future] as representative as possible. Ethnic and minority issues must not be swept under the carpet in an atmosphere of euphoria. These things, like a bad penny, will return to undermine future peace and prosperity. [1991:6]

In this view, disbanding ethnically based political parties in the name of nonracialism denies ethnic groups, as legitimate constituencies,

the right to political representation. Declaring South Africa nonracial does not make it so. As Cassim puts it, “ethnicity cannot be wished away”, (1991:6). Cassim’s argument in support of Indian political representation centers on the issue of minority rights, which, he argues, must

be formally secured to avoid a tyranny of the majority.’ , Throughout the world ethnic minorities very quickly perceive a policy of aggrandisement on the part of dominant groups: the best jobs; the highest positions; the finest opportunities are monopolised by the dominant group. Minority groups are visibly discriminated against, and without adequate

1991:6] ,

representation they are victimised in every conceivable way. [Cassim

As white domination recedes into the past, the specter of black domination looms. Cassim asks, “What is the point of stepping out of

28 Moralizing States hell only to find one’s self in deeper hell?” (1991:6). That Indians and Africans suffered together under apartheid does not mean that their present economic and political interests are necessarily congruent. Without adequate consideration to the rights of minorities, Indians will find, “as in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, that one set of rulers was succeeded by another with no greater merit than the first” (Cassim 1991:6).

The idea of explicit constitutional provisions for the protection of minority rights has, however, been categorically rejected by the ANC as well as the PAC and AZAPO. Such provisions would necessarily require

the acknowledgment of race and ethnicity and, as such, would be inconsistent with the discourse of nonracialism. As noted earlier, “the government’s emphasis on racial categories” under apartheid has made “group-based arrangements anathema to the opposition” (Horowitz 1991:15). Sobukwe’s dictum that “we guarantee no minority rights,

because we think:in terms of individuals, not groups,” remains the official policy of the ANC, the PAC, and AZAPO (as quoted in Gerhart 1978:195).

The attitude of these organizations toward minority rights and their refusal to acknowledge the salience of ethnicity worries many Indians. An editorial entitled “Facing Realities’ —from the Durban-based Indian paper, The Leader—argues that “we require a positive change in attitude toward minority rights and declare that besides a democratic constitution and a bill of individual rights, we need to understand ethnic fears and learn from ethnic conflicts still rampant in both the capitalist and socialist sectors of the world” (The Leader [editorial] 1991a:6). The mes-

sage was reiterated two weeks later: Ethnic minorities the world over have fears of the majority. In South Africa too the African National Congress must bear that fully in mind and create a culture of tolerance which will remove the minority fears for all times. Our first task is to get rid of the existing minority domination and then to give our country a democratic constitution with a bill of individual rights. But —

that is only the laying of the foundation. On a solid foundation we must build the edifice of mutual trust so that the smallest minority should have no fears from any majority. We want to build in South Africa stability and create lasting peace, both so essential in making all minorities feel at home in their own country and then we can declare with confidence that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white” and to all her national groups, big and small. [The Leader (article) 1991c:6; see also 1991b:4]

There is a concern among some Indians that if ethnically based political parties are banned in an officially nonracial South Africa, the cultural expression of ethnicity might itself be suppressed and the maintenance of ethnic group boundaries challenged. As already noted, the ANC’s Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa states

Contesting the Future 29 that “the incitement of ethnic or regional exclusiveness ... shall be outlawed” (ANC 1990b:66), and publications such as Joining the ANC _ proclaim that the organization is “against any form of ethnic exclusivism or chauvinism” (ANC 1990a:52). Such pronouncements leave many unanswered questions: What constitutes ethnic exclusivism, and what

measures will be taken to discourage it? Will there be demands for integration, and if so, how will “integration” be defined? If demands for integration are made, by what measures will they be enforced?

- Assimilation and Pluralism I told the Kenya Indian Congress in July 1962... that “cocktail integration is not enough. You must be prepared to revise some of your long-established conceptions. For instance, an integrated community can lead to inter-marriage between members of that community—and why not?” There was widespread reaction from Asians’® against these remarks, but I was not disappointed in that. The more people speak publicly about such matters, the better.’

| : —Tom Mboya

~ (former Kenyan minister for _ justice and constitutional affairs)

About seventy years have elapsed since the first Asians came to Uganda, _ but, despite that length of time, the Asian community has continued to ' live in a world of its own to the extent that the Africans in this country have, for example, hardly been able to marry Asian girls.’® You [Asians] must now come out and identify yourselves with Ugandan Africans. You must go with them and stop isolating yourselves . .. I want to see Africans marrying Asians and vice versa. I will attend those weddings myself.

| —Idi Amin

, -. (former president of Uganda)

_ South Africans of Indian origin are aware that Indian “integration,” in parts of east Africa after independence, was defined as “assimilation” and that “specific African demands tended to be related to the question

of racial inter-marriage” (Thompson 1975:46). Depluralization— through forced assimilation or expulsion—became at times a goal of the

state, justified in terms of nation building. In Uganda in 1972, for example, President Idi Amin ordered the wholesale expulsion of Indians from the country for, among other reasons, “not integrating, not allowing their daughters to marry Africans” (Vassanji 1989:244; see also Amin 1972:3; Balachandran 1981:324; Gupta 1975:137; Ocaya-Lakidi 1975:96; Pain 1975:189; Thompson 1975:46-47; Twaddle 1975:12).” In Zanzibar, similar demands for Indian integration were accompanied by govern-

30 Moralizing States ment legislation sanctioning acts of “forced marriage” or “official rape” (see Balachandran 1981:324; Bharati 1972:111; Clayton 1981:123-124; Y. Ghai and D. Ghai 1971:17-18; Gupta 1975:137; Martin 1978:68-72; Nai-

paul 1978:121; Pain 1975:189; Rothchild 1973:300-309; Tandon and

Raphael 1984:8; Vassanji 1989:240). , The Zanzibar government came nearest to demanding complete assimilation. And characteristically it is in the sphere of marriage that the government there applied most pressure. President Karume brought pressure on

the Asian community to encourage the marriage of their daughters to Africans and a decree passed in 1970 dispensed with the necessity for the consent of both parties to the marriage.*! [Y. Ghai and D. Ghai 1971:17-18]

Enforcing his presidential decree, Karume announced, on 1 May 1970, that 11 people had been deported from Zanzibar for “hindering the implementation of intermarriage” (Rothchild 1973:303, n. 53; see also Nationalist 2 May 1970:8). Then, in September 1970, Karume attempted to implement his stand by forcing four Zanzibari girls of Persian origin to marry African Government officials. When the girls’ male relatives protested vigorously (stating that the girls were opposed to the marriages), the men were sentenced to jail and whipping. A People’s Court found them guilty of acting against a Presidential Decree.”* [Rothchild 1973:303]

These examples indicate a clear lack of consensus in postcolonial east Africa as to “what the term ‘integration’ implied” (Gupta 1975:129). “No term has been so much abused as ‘integration’ in discussion of race relations in Eastern Africa. Indeed, its very vagueness is the source of its

most explosive potential in verbal dialectics” (Tandon and Raphael 1984:8). As interpreted in east Africa, integration “can take the form either of pluralism, where each group retains its cultural and social _ institutions, or assimilation, where the cultures mix and merge, with the dominance in most cases of the culture of the majority group” (Y. Ghai and D. Ghai 1971:17). Thompson makes the same point with regard to ideas about integration in east Africa, noting that pluralism and assimiJation represent “two extremes of interpretation” (1975:46). Pluralism, in J. S. Furnivall’s classic formulation, involves “different sections of the community living side but separately, within the same political unit... mixing but not combining” (as quoted in Morris 1968:161, 167).* Assimi-

lation, according to Hilda Kuper, “is largely a reciprocal of political dominance” in which “those who are supposed to assimilate the culture of others are in fact expected to subordinate the culture that was their

own” (Kuper 1969:251; see also Thompson 1975:46).

Contesting the Future 31 _ In postcolonial east Africa, competing and contradictory visions of the just society—one emphasizing assimilation, the other pluralism— _ . led to “a serious misunderstanding about what is meant by or involved in integration” (Y. Ghai and D. Ghai 1971:17). In Uganda, for example, Indians “reacted with horror at the suggestion for accelerated intermar-

riage made at the Asian conference convened by President Amin in December 1971" (Thompson 1975:47). "What shocked Indian opinion most was that, as in the case of Zanzibar where some Asian girls were forced to marry Africans, General Amin wanted forcibly to marry an Asian widow" (Gupta 1975:137; see also Balachandran 1981:324).”* In-

dian leaders in Uganda responded to Amin’s speech by arguing that “opposition to inter-caste, inter-tribal, inter-communal and inter-racial marriages is a familiar phenomenon to be encountered in any society in any country of the world” (Asian Leaders 1972:27; see also Twaddle 1975:12). In Uganda, Indian integration clearly implied assimilation,

with “even the expulsion itself effortlessly justified in terms of their failure to ‘integrate’ ” (Thompson 1975:46). As Michael Twaddle has commented, the “Asians were not being asked to integrate but to annihilate themselves and it was hardly surprising that their leaders ... should have retorted that marriage is a voluntary matter” (1975:12).*

What is the relevance of all this for the Indians who are today contemplating their future in a nonracial South Africa? Indian South Africans are acutely conscious that, as Paul Theroux put it, “a collection

of clippings from East African papers regarding the Asians is a little chamber of horrors” (1967:47).%° Incidents involving Indians in east Africa have always received substantial press coverage in South African

Indian newspapers. This is as true today as it was 20 years ago. Most Indians in South Africa identify on some level with the Indian “diaspora,” and references to the position of Indians in other parts of that diaspora—especially to postcolonial east Africa—are common when Indians discuss their future in a majority-ruled South Africa.”” Most are

aware of the significant historical, political, and demographic differences between Indians in east Africa and Indians in South Africa that

make it impossible to draw conclusions about one on the basis of experience in the other.” And yet, it is not uncommon to hear Indians in South Africa ask “What is the guarantee that things are not going to

happen here the way they did in east Africa?” As Moodley notes, in contemporary South Africa, “the Indian press frequently editorializes on this deep-seated fear of historical repetitions” with references to the attacks on Indians by the postcolonial governments of Zanzibar and Uganda (1980:233).

In the polarized political discourse of contemporary South Africa, nonracialism is sometimes spoken about as if it implied assimilation;

32 Moralizing States multiracialism, as if it were synonymous with pluralism. Assimilation

involves “processes that lead to greater homogeneity in society,” whereas pluralism is characterized by “conditions that produce sustained ethnic differentiation and continued heterogeneity” (Abramson 1980:150). “The goal of assimilation represents loss of group identity,

typically through complete acceptance by the dominant group and through intermarriage” (Abramson 1980:154), whereas marriage in plural societies “tends to take place within the group as an effective means of maintaining its cultural distinctiveness” (Heer 1980:513). The conflation of nonracialism with assimilation serves to heighten Indian anxiety about their future as an identifiable community in South African society, an anxiety compounded by references to the plight of Indians in postcolonial east Africa.

Nonracialism and Indian Identity The clannishness of the Location—the fact that Tamils married Tamils, Calcuttias Calcuttias, Malays Malays, Koknies Koknies, Khojas Khojas, Memons Memons, Hindu Gujaratis Hindu Gujaratis and Muslim Gujaratis Muslim Gujaratis—was absurd and regrettable. The whites set up barriers but we, in our own petty way, set up barriers as well. [Naidoo 1990:127]

Jay Naidoo’s reflections on life in an Indian “group area” in South Africa highlight the significance of caste and sectarian divisions among

Indian South Africans and the endogamy associated with such divisions.”? In a similar vein, Agehananda Bharati recalls a story he heard told often by Indians in east Africa. The story, a conversation between Tom Mboya (then Kenyan minister for justice and constitutional affairs) and Jawaharlal Nehru (then prime minister of India), is about caste and

racial endogamy: “Mr. Mboya asked Mr. Nehru how he thought the Asians could be accepted as Africans if they did not marry with Africans? To this Nehru is supposed to have said: ‘we do not even marry each other, why should we marry non-Indians?’ ” (Bharati 1972:160).°° As Sally Falk Moore notes, however, “what matters in the analysis

of pluralism is not just cultural difference, but the larger system of political and economic differences into which any particular cultural difference is fitted and given consequence” (1989:37; see Comaroff 1989; Cooper and Stoler 1989; Vail 1989; Wallerstein 1991). In South Africa and

in colonial British east Africa, a rigid system of racial stratification reinforced any cultural tendency toward endogamy by making race an

indicator of, and qualification for, privilege and status. Citizenship conferred very little, as differential rights and access to resources was

Contesting the Future 33 determined on the basis of racial classification. In South Africa, for example, race determined where one could live, where one could do _ business, whom one could marry, and what one was called. The legislation that regulated the system included the Group Areas Act (1966), the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953), the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949), the Immorality Amendment Act (1950), and, most elementally, the Population Registration Act (1950).*? Through this and other legislation, apartheid constituted a system of structured inequal-

ity: “Indian” and “Colored” were interstitial categories, or middle groups, ranked below “White” and above “African” in social, economic,

and political terms. Ann Stoler has examined ways in which colonial authority and racial distinctions were fundamentally structured in gendered terms by focusing on the “management of European sexual activity, reproduction and marriage as it articulated with the racial politics of colonial rule” (1989b:635). “The very categories of ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’ were secured through forms of sexual control which defined the domestic arrangements of Europeans” (Stoler 1989b:635). Sexual control was “a

! fundamental class and racial marker implicated in a wider set of relations of power” and used “for reproducing a colonial elite and for restricting its membership,” in short, “for safeguarding European privilege and power” (Stoler 1989b:635; see also 1989a, 1991, 1992).

_ Indians in colonial British east Africa, like their counterparts in contemporary South Africa, occupied an ambiguous position between

~ “colonizer” and “colonized.” As an interstitial category, or middle group, in a politically imposed racial hierarchy, they became no less interested than the dominant Europeans in securing the racial boundaries by which they were distinguished (and distinguished themselves)

from those they were ranked above (or perceived themselves to be ranked above). Bharati (1972) and Dennis Pain (1975) have commented on how attempts to accomplish this through the management of sexual activity, reproduction, and marriage became a point of contention between Indians and Africans in colonial and postcolonial east Africa. With regard to the Africans, the Asians saw themselves as structurally superior.* With the prevalence of hypergamy in almost all horizontally divided societies, including India itself, it is not surprising to find that out of a number of African-Asian marriages, I know only of Asian men marrying Africans. When Amin began his tirades on Asian exclusiveness and the need for intermarriage, he was clear that he meant African men marrying

Asian women. ... Indeed, quite a few Asian girls were captured for this purpose in a way reminiscent of the equivalent status conflict in Zanzibar.

[Pain 1975:189] ,

34 Moralizing States In terms of perceived stratification systems seen from the relative point of view of different groups in the society, one of the best indices is the attitude to intermarriage between groups and strata. . .. Where politics are concentrated in the hands of men, statements concerning other groups permitting or prohibiting the men of one’s own group marrying girls from the other groups may best be interpreted as political statements of superiority and inferiority. [Pain 1975:189, 190]°°

In South Africa, as in east Africa, there have been virtually no marriages between Indians and Africans, although there was never any prohibitive legislation (Moodley 1975:256, 1980:228). The Immorality Act prohibited marriage between those classified as “White” and those classified as members of any one of the three “Black” groups (whether

African, Indian, or Colored). Marriage among the various “Black” groups (e.g., between Indians and Africans) was never legally restricted.** Kogila Moodley recalls, however, that “as a result of a rare African-Indian union in a rural community [in South Africa], representations were known to be made by some Indians to the government, requesting legislation similar to the Immorality Act to prevent such marriages” (1975:256). Such is the degree of antipathy among Indians in

South Africa toward intermarriage with Africans. Moodley adds, “Whatever sexual contact does exist between Indians and Africans usually takes place between Moslem Indian men and African women” (1975:256). The antipathy of Indians toward marriage with Africans is illustrated by the following story set in east Africa, which, as Moodley notes, is told frequently in South Africa, “with varying emphases,” and “has virtually become part of the folklore.” A wealthy merchant in East Africa answered his door one evening to find two young Africans. Upon enquiring the purpose of their visit, he was told that one of them had come to ask for the hand of the merchant's daughter in marriage. With due decorum and considered coolness, the merchant called the visitors into the livingroom, offered them a drink, and called in his daughter. The proposition was then put to her. Respectfully she replied that she had nothing against it if the gentleman would take care of her and if she were to have her parents’ permission. The merchant then told the young man that, in accordance with tradition, it would only be correct for him to bring his parents to make a formal approach. That night, after the guests left, the family packed its belongings and fled the country. [Moodley 1980:228]

In South Africa, “this story, in its numerous variations, is used to underline the need for presence of mind and tact in dealing with such situations, as well as to emphasize the chances that this could occur close to home” (Moodley 1980:228). As Moodley notes, Indian fear of assimi-

lation through intermarriage is “a prevalent theme which recurs when

Contesting the Future 35 discussing prospects for the group’s future” in South Africa. She adds that “in subjective importance it exceeds concern for prospects of the _ group’s economic well-being and political freedom. ‘Will we be able to maintain our identity?’ becomes the crucial focus” (1980:228). Such fears are not far below the surface of Indian concern about the

protection of minority rights in South Africa. As NIC member Kumi Naidoo notes, “when you go to people’s houses, they ask you, ‘What guarantee do we Indians have that when the blacks take over, we won't get booted out?’ ” (as quoted in Frederikse 1990:20). It is precisely this kind of fear—the fear of disappearing as a community either through _ assimilation or through expulsion—that was exploited by the anti-In-

, dian pamphlets. And it is this fear about an uncertain future that is sometimes invoked to justify the continued existence of Indian political organizations in South Africa. An editorial in The Leader emphasizes this point: The fact is, the majority of Indians are riddled with nervousness and anxiety about the future. It is a problem heightened by the fact that ours is a proud

history of engagement and resistance to apartheid. Now suddenly events

| seem to be overtaking a community who find themselves rudderless and

even worse, for perhaps the very first time, voiceless. Who will speak for the Indians? Who will represent them? Casting our eyes around for possible leaders, the landscape looks bleak. The HOD is discredited and disgraced. The ANC too much of an unknown and the NIC seems to have betrayed its constituency and its own democratic ideals. But it is vital that the Indian ' community participate as an entity in the negotiations. There are legitimate ~ concerns about Indian culture, religion and social values that need to be

| voiced. ... The Indian community must be mobilised and politically directed towards full participation in negotiating South Africa’s future. ... This can only be done by an Indian organisation working, for now, exclusively within the Indian community.... I don’t say that the ANC is not worthy of support, only that the realities demand that we address our problems ourselves, so that we may take forward those people among us | who are yet afraid ... and there are many. [The Leader (editorial) 1991b:6]

Contesting the Future Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future, . And time future contained in time past. , —T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (1935)

The future “is marked by contingency ... and all the anxiety that comes with the experience of contingency” (Crapanzano 1985:44). The future is contingent at least partly because it is contested. All this raises questions about the uncertain relationship between conscious intention

36 Moralizing States and eventual outcome. Moore notes that “by trying to ‘fix’ the outcome, Whether through legislation, or through strategic transactions .. . various parties to the scene of action are contesting control over their today and tomorrow” (1993 [forthcoming]). But, of course, the results of such

contests are unpredictable. Intention can never fully control consequence. This element of uncertainty—of contingency—is an important part of social life (e.g., Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1979; Gilsenan 1985; Moore 1975, 1978).

Anthropologists and historians have been intermittently preoccupied with the contemporary—and often political—uses of history. Some excellent work has demonstrated how the past is continually reinterpreted—even “invented”—with concern for the present as well as for how the past may be invoked to justify the actions and conditions of the present (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; A. Kuper 1988; but see also Herzfeld 1991:12-13; Kapferer 1988:209-211). Much less attention has

been directed to ideas about the future and what they say about the present—that is, to how our ideas about tomorrow reflect the preoccupations of today as well as how conjectures about the future may be invoked to justify the actions and opinions of the present (Crapanzano 1985; Moore 1987, 1993 [forthcoming]; Thornton 1991).

Our ideas about the future, like our ideas about the past, are continually reshaped and restructured in terms of the present. In other words, contemporary concerns affect both how we interpret the past and how we envision the future. Just as our notions of the past and the future are affected by the concerns of the present, so too are contemporary concerns themselves influenced by our memories of the past and our expectations of the future. In this way, our ideas about yesterday and tomorrow play a powerful part in constituting our today. One might say, then, that the past and the future at once structure, and are structured by, the present. An analytic orientation toward the future may reveal much about the present given that much of the present is spent thinking about and planning for the future. In this sense, tomorrow is an important part of today.

The debate within the Indian community over the future of the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress highlights just some of the ways in which apprehensions about the future, which are based.on the experiences of the past, condition actions taken and opinions held in the present. An editorial in the Post Natal illustrates this observation: As history beckons South Africa into an exciting yet unpredictable future, the South African Indian community finds itself divided about its political future. Although a tiny minority, the Indian community here has played a

Contesting the Future 37 leading role in the struggle for liberation. . . . However, despite the community’s glorious history of resistance, atrocious deeds such as mass evictions

under the Group Areas Act, the unfortunate 1949 [anti-Indian] riots [in Durban], and the expulsion of Indians by Uganda’s Idi Amin, have left their

scars on the Indian community's psyche. Thus, as much as Indians hate white domination, many are terrified of black domination and majority rule,

given the events of the past. It is against this background that the debate about the future role of the [Natal and Transvaal] Indian Congresses has

raged. [Post Natal (editorial) 1991:14]

This debate about the future of two Indian political parties is itself set against an ideological contest between the competing visions, or to . use Foucault’s language, the competing discourses, of nonracialism and multiracialism in contemporary South Africa.

The Moral Authority of Two Competing Discourses As Foucault has demonstrated, discursive statements make certain

claims to knowledge and authority. Moreover, “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures” (1972:216). One such procedure (at least potentially) involves making a moral claim to discursive authority through conscious and intentional association with an unambiguously “good” cause and with the (esteemed) individuals and institutions that champion such a cause.* Even ina society like

South Africa—a society so apparently dominated by the politics of power—the ability to claim the moral high ground confers some signifi-

cant advantages. Once achieved, discursive authority amounts to control over the definition of the situation and, thus, to control over the framework of discussion (see Asad 1979:621; Humphreys 1985:251-257).

, In South Africa, nonracialism makes a moral claim to discursive authority on the basis of its association with the anti-apartheid move-

ment. With nonracialism, “the regime’s contention that ascriptive groups are the building blocks of the society is met with the contention that they cannot and should not be regarded as components of a good

social order at all” (Horowitz 1991:28). The implication is that the morally good society is the society free from distinctions on the basis of race and ethnicity. Multiracialism makes a moral counterclaim to dis-

cursive authority by appealing for the protection of minority rights. Advocates of multiracialism attempt to morally justify the necessity of explicit constitutional provisions for the protection of such rights by

referring to the salience of ethnicity as an ongoing political reality. Minority rights appeals capitalize on the fear and anxiety associated

38 Moralizing States with an uncertain and contested future. The example of the anti-Indian pamphlets suggests the tactical use of such fear in manipulating opinion and behavior by evoking negative stereotypes. Anxiety about the future is compounded by tales of racial violence: the frequent references to the expulsion of Indians from Uganda, the “forced marriages” in Zanzibar, stories about the 1949 anti-Indian riots in South Africa, and so on. Such tales of violence themselves become part of the “rhetoric of the future” (Crapanzano 1985:42).

This kind of rhetoric is invoked by interested parties contesting the future. The debate around the competing discourses of nonracialism and multiracialism in South Africa is really about contested visions of the just society, and it leaves one to ponder “to what extent the construction

of a polity is an act of conscious imagination” (Moore 1989:44; see Anderson 1983). The rhetoric of these competing visions is strikingly polarized and calculated to condition the political decisions of today. But

competing intentions and contested visions lead to indeterminate consequences and unpredictable futures. Utopian fantasies of a nonracial society are countered by apocalyptic warnings of racially motivated retribution. A positive vision illuminated by hope is juxtaposed against a negative vision darkened by fear and anxiety.

PAUL E. H. DHALLA is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at

Harvard University. He holds an A.M. (1992) in social anthropology from . Harvard and a B.S.F.S. (1989) in international affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC.

Notes. |

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank Professors Sally Falk Moore, Nur Yalman, Stanley J. Tambiah, and Michael Herzfeld at Harvard for their guidance

and encouragement throughout the preparation of this paper. I also wish to acknowledge the thoughtful comments on various drafts from Jean Goh, Tim Reiniger, Debbie Yelon, Norbert Peabody, and Nishani Naidoo. In South Africa,

I have benefited from the advice of Surendra Bhana, Yogin Devan, C. G. Henning, Nad Murugan, Robert Thornton, and countless others. I owe special thanks to my host families in the Indian townships of Durban and Johannesburg for their kindness and gracious hospitality during my periods of fieldwork. My research has been supported by an International Predissertation Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Ford Foundation; by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and by a Predissertation Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation. The generous support of these organizations is greatly appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Sally Falk Moore forinviting me to participate in the panel “Moralizing

Contesting the Future 39 States” at the 1992 American Ethnological Society Annual Meeting where I presented an earlier version of this paper. 1. People from the Indian subcontinent have lived in South Africa since 1860, when indentured laborers were first brought from India (Madras and Calcutta) to work on the sugar plantations of Natal (Beall 1990; Freund 1991). These were soon followed by merchants from Gujarat (Padayachee and Morell 1991). There are today about 1 million South Africans of Indian origin: 70 percent

trace their origin to indentured laborers. |

2. The importation of indentured labor ended in 1911, and by 1913 the further immigration of Indians into South Africa was severely restricted. Legislation prohibiting the entry of wives from India took effect in 1956, and thereafter Indian immigration into South Africa virtually ceased (see Bhana 1991; Bhana ~ and Brain 1990; Bhana and Pachai 1984; Calpin 1949; Henning 1989; Huttenback 1966, 1971; H. Kuper 1960; Palmer 1957; Swan 1985; Tinker 1974, 1976, 1977). 3. The major Indian newspapers in South Africa are: The Leader (Durban), the Post Natal (Durban), the Sunday Tribune Herald (Durban), The Indicator (Johannesburg), the Lenasta Times Johannesburg), and the Sunday Times Extra (Johannesburg). All are weekly papers, with the exception of The Indicator, which

is biweekly, and the Lenasia Times, which is monthly. All are published in English. 4. On the 1949 riots, see Kirk 1983; L. Kuper 1965:289-306; Maraj 1985; Meer 1989:147-149; K. Moodley 1980:229-233; Nowbath 1949, n.d.(a), n.d.(b); Union of South Africa 1949; Webb and Kirkwood 1949. Of related interest, see also Hughes 1987; Ladlau 1975; van den Berghe 1962.

5. The racial composition of South Africa is approximately as follows: 24

million Africans (73%); 5 million Whites (15%); 3 million Coloreds (9%); and 1 million Indians (3%). The population of South Africa (including the so-called national homelands) is about 33 million. 6. TheSouth African Students Organisation (SASO) Policy Manifesto of 1971

defined black consciousness as “an attitude of mind, a way of life,” in which blacks see themselves as “self-defined and not as defined by others.” This requires, above all, “group cohesion and solidarity,” defined broadly to include Africans, Indians, and Coloreds, to maximize collective black economic and political power (SASO, as quoted in Gerhart 1978:272). According to Steven Biko, “Being black is not a matter of pigmentation—being black is a reflection of a mental attitude” (1978:48). Any politically oppressed group (Africans, Indians, and Coloreds) may be considered “black” if its members identify themselves as such. “We are oppressed not as individuals, not as Zulus, Xhosas, Vendas or Indians. We are oppressed because we are black. We must use that very concept to unite ourselves and to respond as a cohesive group” (Biko 1978:97). For an assessment of black consciousness in South Africa, see Fatton 1986; Gerhart 1978; Hirschmann 1990; Leatt et al. 1986:105-119. For a sample of Indian perspectives on black consciousness, see Joosub 1972; Meer 1972a, 1972b; Sookdeo 1988. 7. Inthe Africanist view, according to James Mndaweni: the land belongs to the indigenous masses—that must be accepted. .. . The Freedom Charter says the land belongs to everybody—I mean, that’s totally

wrong because the land should belong to the people of the country, the indigenous masses. ... Now if you take the arrival of the settlers—that is, the white people in South Africa—to say those people are part and parcel of our country, it’s a distortion of history. The Black people are the owners of the land . .. people who are black like myself, and colored people. The

40 Moralizing States colored people are the people of Africa because they emanate from Africa. [as quoted in Frederikse 1990:232] 8. For example, Horowitz outlines 12 competing “ideal-type perspectives” in his analysis of the metaconflict in South Africa (1991:3-8). See also Leatt et al. 1986.

9. Quoted from the cover of Julie Frederikse’s The Unbreakable Thread:

Non-Racialism in South Africa (1990). ;

10. Following the anti-Indian riots of 1949 in Durban, “efforts by African and Indian leaders had led the alliance between the ANC and the South African

Indian Congress, a partnership into which some coloreds were later drawn through the South African Colored Peoples’ Organisation” (Gerhart 1978:279).

11. After the ANC’s National Consultative Conference held in Kabwe, Zambia, in 1985, the organization’s newly elected National Executive Conference Committee consisted of 25 Africans, 2 Coloreds, 2 Indians, and 1 white (Frederikse 1990:242). After the ANC’s national conference held in Durban in July 1991, the organization’s newly elected National Executive Committee included 33 Africans, 7 Indians, 7 whites, and 3 Coloreds (Sparks 1991:11). 12. Paragraph (i) of the ANC’s Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa requires that “the state and all social institutions shall be under a constitutional duty to eradicate race discrimination in all its forms,” and paragraph (k) provides that “the advocacy or practice of racism, fascism, Nazism or the incitement of ethnic or regional exclusiveness or hatred shall be outlawed.”

Paragraph (m) states that “all parties which conform to the provisions of | paragraphs (i) and (k) shall have the legal right to exist and to take part in the political life of the country” (ANC 1990b:66; emphasis added; see also ANC

1990c).

13. The Natal Indian Congress (NIC), founded by Gandhi in 1894, is 18 years older than the African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912 (see. Gandhi 1954; Huttenback 1971; Swan 1985).

14. The House of Delegates (HOD), along with the House of Representatives (HOR) and the House of Assembly (HOA), are, respectively, the

Indian, Colored, and White chambers in the Tricameral Parliament of South

Africa. A product of the 1983 constitution, the HOD as an institution enjoys little support among the constituency it claims to represent. In the 1984 elections, only

20.3% of registered Indian voters cast ballots (Lemon 1990:144; Magyar 1989:180). The situation remained essentially unchanged in the 1989 elections,

when 23.7% of registered Indian voters went to the polls (Lemon 1990:147).The two main political parties in the HOD are Solidarity and the National People’s Party. For an analysis of Indian participation in the 1984 elections, see Ginwala 1985; Lemon 1985; Magyar 1986. On the 1983 constitution, see also du Toit and _ Theron 1988; Lemon 1990; Magyar 1984, 1989; Moodley 1989; Omar 1988; South Africa 1983. Recent surveys of social and political opinion include Charney 1991; Institute for Black Research 1990; Meer and Reynolds 1985; Rajab and Chohan

1987. -

15. Neither the NIC nor the TIC, however, support the idea of minorityrights provisions. 16. “Asian,” as it is used in east Africa, is synonymous with “Indian” as it is used in South Africa. Both refer to migrants (and the descendants of migrants) from India and Pakistan. Migration from India to South Africa had virtually

ceased before the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, whereas substantial migration to east Africa continued for some time after the creation of Pakistan.

Contesting the Future 41 This may account for the use of “Asian” in east Africa and “Indian” in South Africa. On the history of Indians in east Africa, see Delf 1963; D. Ghai and Y. Ghai 1970, 1971; Gregory 1971, 1981; Hollingsworth 1960; Kala 1980; Mangat 1969; Seidenberg 1983; Ramchandani 1980; Twaddle 1990. 17. From Mboya’s book Freedom and After (1963:109).

Amin 1972:3).

18. From Speech by His Excellency the President of Uganda to the Asian Conference held on 8th December 1971 at the Uganda International Conference Centre (see

19. Idi Amin, as quoted in Ocaya-Lakidi 1975:96; first quoted in Uganda

Argus, 6 October 1972. 20. Amin issued the expulsion order on 4 August 1972. Indians were given 90 days to leave the country. As James Read notes:

the expulsion legislation refers specifically to the racial factor; it is terse, simply amending the Immigration Act 1969 by cancelling as from 9 August 1972 every entry permit or certificate of residence issued under the Act “to any person who is of Asian origin, extraction or descent and who isa subject or citizen” of one of the four scheduled countries (UK, India, Pakistan and

Bangladesh). [1975:201]

Adams and Bristow note that “later in August he [Amin] added that the Ugandan-citizen Asians must also leave, but an international uproar caused him to rescind this order. However, it soon became clear to the citizens that, though they might legally remain in Uganda, they would be viewed as unwanted aliens” (Adams and Bristow 1979:192). Of Uganda’s total Indian population of 74,308 in 1969, Ugandan citizens formed more than one-third (26,657); most of the rest were British citizens (36,593) and Indian citizens (8,890). At the “Asian Conference” in Kampala on 8 December 1971, Amin announced that 12,000 unproc‘essed applications by Indians for Ugandan citizenship had been canceled (Read 1975:193, 201-202). On the expulsion of Indians from Uganda, see also Bhatia 1973; Adams and Bristow 1978; Kramer 1980; Mamdani 1973; Mazrui 1975; Melady 1976; Naipaul 1984; O’Brien 1972, 1973; Ramchandani 1976. 21. See also Martin 1978:69-70. According to Rothchild, “On various occasions, Karume told Asian and Arab parents that they should promote intermar-

riage with Africans, and he threatened to deport any parent who sent his daughter abroad to get married or who stood in the way of his child’s marriage to a member of another race” (Rothchild 1973:303; see also Reporter, 9 February 1968, p. 13; Nationalist, 29 January 1968, p. 1; Daily Nation, 29 January 1968, p. 24, 1 March 1968, p. 36). 22. See also Clayton 1981:123-124; East African Standard, 8 September 1970,

p. 1, 9 September 1970, p. 1; Martin 1978:70-72. Rothchild reports: “The announcement of the forced marriages was followed by a barrage of protestations from organized women’s, Muslim and Hindu groups, as well as newspaper | editors and concerned individuals throughout East Africa” (1973:303; see also East African Standard, 11 September 1970, p. 3; 16 September 1970, p. 7; 19 September 1970, p. 4; 29 September 1970, p. 6; 1 October 1970, p. 1; Daily Nation, 3 October 1970, pp. 1, 6, 28; editorials in the East African Standard, 11 September

1970, p. 8; 19 September 1970, p. 4). Nevertheless, “during the furore over the forced marriages in Zanzibar, a number of letters to the editor in Kenya papers supported Karume” (Rothchild 1973:304; see also East African Standard, 3 October 1970, p. 6; 15 October 1970, p. 4; 16 October 1970, p. 10; Daily Nation, 19 October 1970, p. 6). On the same issue, “Kenya members of Parliament were,

42 Moralizing States however, divided in their opinions” (Rothchild 1973:303; see also Daily Nation,

5 October 1970, pp. 1, 24; 13 October 1970, p. 3; East African Standard, 19 September 1970, p. 4). 23. On pluralism, see, for example, Furnivall 1939, 1948; L. Kuper 1969a, 1969b; Lofchie 1969; Maybury-Lewis 1984; Moore 1989; Morris 1956, 1957b,

1967a; Smith 1965, 1969a, 1969b, 1984; Tambiah 1989b; van den Berghe 1969. 24. According to Gupta, the woman in question, having learned of Amin’s intentions, fled Uganda in early 1972 (Gupta 1975:137, n. 32). 25. Shiva Naipaul writes: “The Asian is the eternal ‘other’. Consequently,

the African demands his destruction—often expressed as a demand for his ‘integration’. It is not accidental that the sexual inaccessibility of Asian women

excites so much rancor. Asian integration has to be physical, to be liberal. Nothing else will do” (1978:121).

26. See, for example, the following east African newspapers and periodicals: Daily Nation (Nairobi), East African Standard (Nairobi), Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), Reporter (Nairobi), Transition (Kampala), Uganda Argus (Kampala). 27. References are sometimes also made to the plight of Indians elsewhere in the diaspora. For example, recent events in Fiji (the military coups in May and

September 1987 and new constitutional limitations on the political rights of Indian Fijians) received substantial press coverage in the South African Indian newspapers. 28. For useful (but dated) comparative studies of the position of Indians in } east Africa and South Africa, see H. Kuper 1969; van den Berghe 1970.

29. There are many studies highlighting caste and sectarian divisions among Indians in South Africa (Arkin et al. 1989; Calpin 1949; Hey 1962; H. Kuper 1960, 1967; Meer 1969, 1985; Rambiritch and van den Berghe 1961; van den Berghe 1964; Woods 1954) and in east Africa (Bharati 1967, 1972; D. Ghai and Y. Ghai 1970, 1971; J. Kuper 1979; Morris 1957a, 1959, 1967b, 1968; Pocock

1955, 1957). On central Africa, see F. Dotson and L. Dotson 1963, 1968. More general statements include Clarke et al. 1990; Firth 1957; Mayer 1967. 30. Bharati later confirmed with Mboya that “the tale is not a legend: the

conversation did take place” (1972:160). -

31. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality Amendment Act were both repealed in 1985. The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act was repealed in 1990. The Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act (generally considered the cornerstone of apartheid) were both repealed in 1991.

However, according to the 1991-92 Race Relations Survey, “critics of the government pointed out that the Population Registration Act Repeal Act provided for the abolition of race classification only for South Africans born after its enactment. People already classified in the population register on the basis of

Relations 1992:457). | race would remain racially classified until the present racially based constitution

was replaced by a nonracial constitution” (South African Institute of Race | 32. See Bharati (1972:164-166, 264) on the aesthetics of skin color among

Indians (especially the association of dark skin with “low caste” and “loose morals”) and its relationship to racial prejudice against Africans; see also Bharati (1972:161-163) on the negative attitudes of indians toward mixed Afro-Indian offspring. 33. André Béteille elaborates on this point with his comparison of “caste”

and “race” in relation to gender. He argues that “inequalities of caste are illuminated in the same way as those of race by a consideration of gender. There

Contesting the Future 43 are two aspects of the problem. There is, firstly, the sexual use and abuse of women, ... seen in its most extreme form in the treatment of women of the lowest rank by men of the highest. ... There is, in addition, the unremitting concern with the purity of women at the top” (Béteille 1990:491; see also Yalman 1963, 1967:58-59; Tambiah 1985, 1989a). 34. Since the Group Areas Act determined where one could live on the basis of one’s racial classification, mixed marriages among “Blacks” (Africans, Indians, Coloreds), although not legally restricted, would nevertheless affect one’s

residential options. | | 35. For Foucault:

doctrine involves the utterances of speakers in the sense that doctrine is,

- permanently, the sign, the manifestation and the instrument of a prior adherence—adherence to a class, to a social or racial status; to a nationality or an interest, to a struggle, a revolt, resistance or acceptance. Doctrine links individuals to certain types of utterances while consequently barring them from all others. Doctrine effects a dual subjection, that of speaking subjects

to discourse, and that of discourse to the group, at least virtually, of

speakers. [1972:226] |

In terms of Herzfeld’s “social poetics,” the issue is the relationship between rhetoric and identity in the constitution of meaning (see Herzfeld 1985, 1991:92, 268-269, n. 11).

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3

_ Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law: Reconciling Popular Western Images of Australian Aborigines* EVE DARIAN-SMITH |

- University of Chicago |

_ Introduction a ; There are no easy resolutions to the injustices committed against Aborigines in contemporary Australia. This may seem obvious, but in Australia’s current political climate, everyone, including the prime minister, the activist, the mine owner, and the conservationist, is looking for an'easy solution—a treaty, a settlement, a token plot of land, compensation, legislation, a national flag, a local anthem. I am not going to offer an alternative solution. What I will argue is that, under the prevailing

public conceptions of Aborigines, no feasible solution may ever be reached. Australian society has backed itself into a corner. Genuine efforts for reform have been unsuccessful because Aboriginality’ is defined and given significance in Australian society in the context of its colonial heritage and history of past legal injustices.’ It is as “if we were afraid to conceive of the Other in the time of our own thought” (Foucault

1972:12).

This historical perspective implicitly rationalizes non-Aborigines’ “racist claims to an imaginary superiority” (Wendt 1980:27). More spe-

cifically, it creates a symbolic and temporal boundary by which to measure Aborigines’ intrinsic legal difference (Minow 1990:9-11). Law is central to the construction of current ideologies and moral thinking.

Aborigines are, quite reasonably, thought of as culturally different. White Australians in positions of power allow cultural difference to *This essay was written in 1991 and so predates the Australian High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision. This was a threshold case recognizing a new form of “native title” to land for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and as a consequence has altered Australia’s current political and social environment with respect to Aboriginal issues. 95

56 Moralizing States Be - ; 2, V Be Cy, ae 204

a >i tfSoh f At Os , aeSe\ 7aees‘ | Get. i Sawin Geo SMa Ue

ia ae 7% Dy a 4 Ve a ios: Ge eal Edt No i Can Se. i ; SE ee ed cout » a & ‘e ee eg ‘i oe % ee — Famed i é ro ; 2 ee Figure 1 The Conciliation, 1840, by Benjamin Duterrau. Oil on canvas, 119 x 168 cm. Reprinted with permission from Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

support the way law defines Aborigines. This has far-reaching effects.

Opportunities for effective reform are limited when Aborigines are legally denied a place in the present urban context and thus denied access to city-based media, education, and political processes. My paper aims to show how this denial is implemented at three junctures where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal values have created varying and contradictory images of Aboriginality.

What Aborigines? In Australia, according to the 1986 census, there were 227,645 Aborigines, 1.5 percent of the total national population. The majority live in

the less populous states of Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. However, according to the government's 1991 Royal Commission, the image of a “rural” as opposed to an “urban” Aborigine

is largely a stereotype. Most Aborigines do not live in the “bush” of Australia’s vast open deserts and plains, contrary to media representations. Only one-third of the black population live permanently on

Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law 57 outstations as isolated communities. The majority move “between cities

and the country at different stages of their lives” (Royal Commission 1991a:I, 39). It is becoming increasingly apparent that the urban envi-

ronment plays a central role in shaping the identity of Australia’s

Aboriginal peoples. ,

Yet representing Aborigines in large city contexts is clearly problematic for the non-Aboriginal population. Melbourne’s small numbers of Aborigines constitute only 0.2 percent of the city’s 3.5 million people. Sydney’s Aboriginal community is much more prominent and is largely concentrated in the inner-city suburb of Redfern. Curiously, Redfern has

been described as both a “self-sustaining ethnic community” and “a place where shops and entertainment venues close early . .. and where taxi drivers are reluctant to work after dark” (Melbourne Age, 23 April 1990).4 These conflicting descriptions point to the representational contradictions I am seeking to examine. On the one hand, the media represent Aborigines not only as a “self-sustaining” community, but also as active participants in politics who thus resist the passive roles that have

been constructed for them in the past. And it is correct to say that Aborigines have forced a national commission to investigate Aboriginal deaths in custody, contested land rights, published books, recorded rock songs, and opened art galleries. Aborigines—if only some Aborigines—

are clearly working a modern capitalist system. Implicit within this image is an underlying belief that, given the right conditions, future tensions between Aborigines and non-Aborigines can be resolved. On the other hand, there is a concurrent representation of Aborigines as “traditional,” “tribal,” and “premodern.” The mysticism of the Dreamtime in abstract art, the irrationality of land claims on grounds to appease a serpent spirit, the incoherence of black deaths in custody by shoelaces and belts, the incapacity for blacks to live “civilly” in the city, these are the countervailing images that Aboriginality presents to the white Australian public. Here, Aborigines apparently live in a separate geographical, psychological, and political world, a world that is unprogressive and anachronistic in relation to the encompassing white civilization. In the context of this representation, there is little serious hope for future cultural harmony and resolution of political differences between Aborigines and non-Aborigines. How is it possible for Aborigines to be conceived as similar and different, rational and irrational, modern and primitive? Are these pictures contradictory, or are they different perspectives pivoting on the same axis of construction of Aboriginality as the Other in Australian society? What do these contradictions suggest about ideological and moral responses to Aboriginal culture, by the individual, by the state? And how do they relate—if at all—to the future of Aboriginal social

58 Moralizing States equality? In this paper, I propose to examine how Aboriginality func-

tions for non-Aboriginal society as a constructed image of cultural difference. Of course this is not to imply that Aborigines are passive members of society or that Aborigines and white Australians function as monolithic units.’ However, what Iam concerned with is identifying and analyzing how all Aborigines, irrespective of their level of activism, are being culturally defined and so politically constrained by the processes of non-Aboriginal legal administration.

Aboriginality and Morality , Returning to Melbourne during the summer of 1991, I was struck by how popular enthusiasm for Aboriginal issues, or more specifically for Aboriginality, had entered the public domain. This enthusiasm was

different in tone from many of the bitter attacks on the government raised by pro-Aboriginal groups in 1988, the year of Australia’s bicentennial celebration of the European “takeover.” Rather, this excitement was positive, energetic, almost self-congratulatory. Its underlying message was that some white Australians were finally taking a stand and learning to appreciate Australia’s unique traditional peoples. Triggered by the injustices of Australia’s colonial heritage, non-Aboriginal sincerity gushed forth in the genuine outpourings of moral indignation and outrage. I do not intend to criticize or dampen this enthusiasm or to question its integrity. What I am trying to explore goes beyond this immediate

level of individual moral response activated by guilt—or absence of guilt—for historical injustices toward Aborigines. I want to try to unravel the political strategies that work behind these current ideologies and that have made it both possible and desirable for some people to express moral outrage and cross-cultural affinity. Attending land rights rallies, adopting Aboriginal site names, reading Aboriginal literature, listening to Aboriginal concerts, and studying Aboriginal history suggest how people can get caught up in a bustle of moral excitement, without ever coming any closer to righting the social injustices that motivated their initial reaction. Projected morality clouds larger political strategies. The more intense the desire to act on moral principles, the more one imposes white values and state assumptions on Aboriginal minorities. A moral stand allows individuals to rationalize their own positions and to claim seeming independence from institutional structures. Yet such independence is false, for all morality, be it a reinforcement of, or challenge to, that

promulgated by the legal code, must subsist within the overarching

Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law 59 frames of social rationalities and governing ideologies. Each person can choose his or her moral stance, but the choice is limited. The “state,” its administration, its power of social control, lives within the people who live within it. The legal system plays a crucial mediating role between

| action. - ,

institutional political strategies and the particularities of individual

Aboriginality and the Law Prevailing law in Australia locates the Other within a rigid (but not completely inflexible) frame of intrinsic difference.* The Other is con-

structed through various interrelated social, historical, and juridical levels of meaning that can only be distinguished artificially for purposes _ of analysis. Here, Iam isolating law as the principal focus of discussion because of the vital role it plays in developing, refining, and coordinating popular white Australian images of Aboriginality.

Law, by nature, defends the status quo by providing a primary institutional mechanism through which cultural conflict is condensed,

interpreted, understood, and necessarily contained. Law uses a bounded vocabulary that “ends up contributing to rather than challenging assigned categories of difference that manifest social prejudice and misunderstanding” (Minow 1990:9). Law creates a theoretically neutral rationale to define the Other, superimposes an ethical and social distance between the parties, and in effect orchestrates the narration of cultural interaction (Wickham 1989). In this way, the “legal wrong . .. makes it possible to have a show-down without necessarily acknowledging the deeper long-term motives or objectives which may accompany such action” (Moore 1978:109). Understanding how law defines Aborigines is central to positioning images of Aboriginality within the dominant social order. As laws change, so, too, does the imagery. And as images change, reflecting a shift in the public usage of particular constructions of Aboriginality, the effectiveness and practice of the law in turn adjust.

Three Images of Aboriginality Although my analysis is centered in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this must be understood within the historical context of the preceding

decade in which occurred a broad shift in public attitudes toward Aborigines. The decade began with hope of improving fractured relations between blacks and whites. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs had been running for five years, and Aboriginal issues were gaining

60 Moralizing States much publicity in their own right and in conjunction with rising national

and international environmental and heritage concerns. Aborigines were being taken seriously in politics. However, by the end of the 1980s, prevailing attitudes had shifted dramatically. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs had proven grossly unsuccessful and politically incom-

petent. Further, government promises of financial and proprietary compensation to Aborigines had not been kept, and Aboriginal health, welfare, education, and general social status had not improved.’ Within this historical context, the first image of Aboriginality that I ~ will examine resides in white Australia’s apparent appreciation of Aboriginal art. This appreciation suggests a new optimistic understanding by whites of black culture. Against this presumption of hope is set a second dark image of Aboriginal despair, that of 99 blacks dying in custody. This image is bleak for the future of Aborigines and for nonAborigines seeking to improve relations. The third imageis that of a 1991

land rights victory by the Aboriginal Jawoyn people for the protection of their sacred Bula Bula serpent spirit at Kakadu National Park. The resulting public perception—at least superficially—is one of newfound Aboriginal political power and influence. Arguably, popular images resulting from Aboriginal art, Aboriginal death, and Aboriginal defense of spiritual claims are not comparable. The first involves popular aesthetics, whereas the second raises very

serious legal and humanitarian problems. However, I am primarily concerned not with each issue’s ethical gravity, but rather with the long-term public impact and the relationship to dominant interest groups in Australian society. Untangling some of the comparative implications lying within and between these three images paints a bigger picture than could be extracted from consideration of any one in isolation.

Images of Optimism: Aboriginal Art’s Appreciation and Success In the last decade the elite art gallery clientele has become overtly

interested in Aboriginal art, and local and international markets in Aboriginal art have boomed. The National Gallery of the state of Victoria appointed its first Aboriginal art curator in 1981. Since then, the collec-

tion of Aboriginal paintings has grown steadily. Taking over from the State Museum as purchasing authority, the Gallery has firmly indicated that Aboriginal art is no longer an anthropological artifact, but part of the national fine art heritage. This perception has wide acceptance, and black art is featured in corporate collections, decorates (with deep unex-

Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law 61

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David Jones Department Store Men’s Department, 1991, Bourke St. Mall, Melbourne, Australia. Reprinted with permission.

amined irony) mining company foyers, and now greets, in the form of a 196-square-meter floor mural, visitors to Canberra’s new parliament house. Moreover, Aboriginal art is not confined to so-called high culture. Its motifs appear on many commodities and have become accessible to almost every white Australian who watches TV, shops at the supermarket, travels by public transport, and buys wallpaper, giftwrap, socks, or spectacle frames (see, generally, Price 1989). Judith Ryan, the Victorian National Gallery curator of Aboriginal art, told me she believed that racism is breaking down, and that Aboriginal art is an effective tool in this process (interview with the author,

8 July 1991). This view is repetitively reinforced in the rhetoric of innumerable articles, books, critiques, and public discussions on Aboriginal art by white Australians. There is a moral investment in showing that non-Aborigines have now come of age, since being able to respect black art suggests we respect and appreciate Aboriginal people. Aboriginality in art has come to represent, in a remarkable sense, Aborigines themselves. The paradoxical moral and political logic of equating art with people appeared on the back sports page of the Melbourne daily newspaper, the Herald-Sun: “There has been a lot of blinkered thinking in football for so many years. But, much like Aboriginal art in recent

62 Moralizing States _ § can’ a FR } eeSe F oeea Oe pee ee : - Coe Ce ee io oe. ace ESHOP 2 i Cz@ee Ores We os oh Node a: ee CN eg pe

eee a A ee (ean: © Wee CSSA ee ee Ey pees ee

ee Wo fe ue oe oo .)l —-— le ‘a Ce Sei=« Atleast ol Cherie ( Blancand Rhine ~ Riesling with an

excelent depth of maturing rich fruit and

a soft finish. ie

Figure 4 Ocher label design, d’Arenberg Wines, 1989. Reprinted with permission from d’Arenberg Wines.

64 Moralizing States

Figure 5 Australian one-dollar bill, 1966. David Malangi, Central Amhem Land. Reprinted with permission from Royal Reserve Bank.

the art theorist Norman Bryson crisply put it, “what is at stake is a discovery of a politics of vision” (1988:107). Aboriginal art, in the National Gallery or ona cornflakes box, is not politically neutral. It constitutes prejudice by reconfirming the social and legal preconditions by which bias against Aborigines can be considered legitimate. And it does so by steeping the purchase of black art with moral authority in what James Clifford has called a “salvaging” operation (Clifford and Marcus 1986:113; McKnight 1990:60). In other words, black art is bought because

it represents for Westerners the illusion of a traditional Aboriginal heritage. It functions to lock contemporary Aborigines into a historical

as well as an ideological past, enhanced by a romanticism of their community artistic experience and production.’ But there is a further dynamic and complex process taking place that is unique to Australian

Aboriginal art. Because the bright dots and swirling styles of some modern Aboriginal art are so recognizably different from what has been understood as “traditional art,” its purchase also speaks to the Aboriginal future. A buyer can get a bit of the “real thing” and at the same time invest in the illusion of an optimistic Aboriginal future contained in the happy synthetic colors that Western art markets have prescribed.

This image of optimism and hope is clung to strongly by white Australians against conflicting media images of Aboriginal deprivation, despair, and poverty. It is the non-Aboriginal defense against personal as well as international accusations of racial discrimination. Aboriginal

art has been deliberately interpreted in this way to counterpoise the

Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law 65 Figure 6

aeons a ae A stamp issue entitled “Abo-

oh re riginal Australia” was re-

EEG het §= «ga leased by Australia Post in Serta! «© aa ae commemoration of the Interi a Ge @=—S national Year for the World’s ic: a see © Indigenous Peoples. Austraco ee Se ~=— lia Post writes, “The final set Aye = ~—SOséof stamps reflects the dyna-

oo re mism and vitality of Aborigi-

ee meet? «=| gan painting in 1988. His lat-

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ay anessneasnnnnvenenssensscses and ceremonial life associ-

saat at quired by Australia Post, 1993. Below: Ngarrgooran Country, Hector Jandany; ac-

quired by Australia Post,

1993. Thanks to Australia Post

for permission to reproduce the stamps.

Path Reunite guccoanghas oo

—_— > Bee

66 Moralizing States darker, more fundamental differences internalized in the Australian legal system that demarcates “us” and “them.” Championing Aboriginal art is a popular, attractive, and effective way of pretending material differences do not exist. Abstract dots and swirls create social distance. Aboriginal art, aboveall else, symbolizes for white society an identifiable boundary and thus a relationship of cultural difference and, implicitly, continued domination. This brings into question anthropologist Fred

Myers’ judgment that “it is a happy historical circumstance that the beauty of visual organization in the [art] forms themselves is one that speaks to contemporary Western tastes” (Myers 1989:192). On the contrary, we have provoked Aboriginal art to speak, and witha very specific message.

Images of Despair—Aboriginal Deaths in Custody On 9 May 1991, The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report was tabled in the Australian federal parliament and the

final report was released. The five hefty volumes set out the facts surrounding the deaths of 99 Aborigines in jails between 1980 and 1989. It made 339 (reasonable, vague, and largely ineffectual) recommendations for future prevention. The three-year commission cost more than $30 million. So far, despite findings of custodial negligence and breaches of internal police regulations, only one $50 fine has been imposed against a custodian of a black prisoner.

, It is anticipated that the Report will do very little to change current circumstances. In fact, deaths in custody have increased since its publi-

cation. Young black men and women hanging from jail air vents by shoelaces, bandages, sheets, and shredded towels present a brutal and powerful image of Aboriginal existence in the present politicaland social _

order. In the context of the Report, deaths epitomize the breadth of Aboriginal despair, a legal system of gross inequalities, and a bleak

| future for social harmony between blacks and whites. The commis-

sioner, Elliott Johnston QC, wrote: .

very frankly when I started upon my work in this Commission I had some knowledge of the way in which broad policy had evolved to the detriment of the Aboriginal people and some idea of the consequences. But, until I examined the files of the people who had died and the other material which has come before the Commission and listened to Aboriginal people speaking, I had no conception of the degree of pin-pricking domination, abuse of personal power, utter paternalism, open contempt and total indifference with which so many Aboriginal people were visited on a day to day basis.

[Royal Commission 1991:1, 20]

Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law 67 The reasons given for the deaths are confusing; the generalizations , are contradictory. “One cannot point to a common thread of abuse, neglect or racism that is common to these deaths.” “However,” the Report continues, “an examination of the lives of the 99 shows that facts associated in every case with their Aboriginality played a significant and

in most cases dominant role in their being in custody and dying in custody” (Royal Commission 1991:I, 1). Still, there was no finding “that the deaths were the product of deliberate violence or brutality by police or prison officers” (Royal Commission 1991:I, 3). The Commissioner’s

reason for the disproportionate number of Aboriginal deaths was the disproportionate number of Aborigines in custody. Apparently, Aborigines do not receive higher sentences than white prisoners but come into custody 29 times more often than non-Aborigines. The Report amounts to a policy statement on the current positioning of Aboriginal peoples in Australian society. As the Commissioner viewed it, there are three essential prerequisites to the empowerment of Aboriginal society: (1) the desire, will, and capacity of Aboriginal people

to control their own lives; (2) economic assistance from the broader society; and (3) the guaranteed right to self-determination and maintenance of cultural identity. The Report’s stated thrust is directed “towards the empowerment of Aboriginal society on the basis of their deeply held desire, their demonstrated capacity, their democratic right to exercise, according to circumstances, maximum control over their own lives and that of their communities” (Royal Commission 1991:1, 22).

This is a noble and worthy goal, but one pauses at the words “their demonstrated capacity” both because of the difficulties for Aborigines to demonstrate capacity in an environment of depression and prejudice and because of the illusory neutrality as to who will ultimately arbitrate

that capacity. oo

_ Aboriginal deaths in custody are a tragic and horrifying phenome-

non. No other issue involving Aboriginality has so united public concern , by both blacks and whites in an effort to achieve the same ends and stop future deaths. Aboriginal deaths have affected the whole of society and

represent a national disgrace that undermines the myth of equality in law, democracy, police authority, and public accountability. But there are no clear solutions, and in the meantime, talk surrounding black and white confrontation continues to emphasize cultural differences. The Report officially states that whites have in the past denied blacks their culture, and reconciliation will eventuate only if Aborigines have the will to wrestle it back. Aboriginal spokespeople support this commentary of discord. Both sides speaks of “culture” as if it is fixed, static, timeless, traditional, and capable of possession. One of the unfortunate results of stressing cultural difference as central to the conflict is that

68 Moralizing States Aborigines contribute to the provisioning of an excuse for whites. This allows the inadequate protection offered by the Australian legal system to be more easily translated into a narrative of seemingly insurmountable differences between “us” and “them,” too complex for any legal code. In other words, Aboriginal suicide can be more naturally labeled bizarre and explained as peculiar to Aboriginal culture. From this perspective, white Australians are in a position to throw up their hands and

ask what more could we have done in the circumstances. Stressing Aboriginality as traditional and culturally different reduces non-Aboriginal blame, glosses over institutionalized prejudice in the law, keeps

the parties at a distance, and neatly predetermines barriers to mutual

understanding. The deaths crisis necessarily creates an image of Aboriginality as intrinsically different from white society—necessarily, Iargue, because for non-Aborigines to accept Aboriginal people as social

imperfect.

and political equals would first require an acknowledgment that the current process of law and legally endorsed morality are fundamentally .

White Australians are in despair at Aboriginal despair. In a confused way, this intermingles with feelings of resentment by some nonAborigines of Aborigines and of the government’s almost obsequious — treatment of certain black issues.’° The Report expressly states that

non-Aborigines should feel guilt at the apparent inability to effect change. This sense of guilt and frustration neatly fits in with thinking about Aborigines as just too culturally different to ever fully participate in modern society.

Images of Expediency—Aboriginal Rights in Sacred Sites in Kakadu National Park The Aboriginal land rights movement, more than any other area of contact between blacks and whites in Australia, directly confronts the authority of the Australian legal structure. Clearly, Aboriginal art and Aboriginal deaths in custody contribute to the total relationship between black and white Australians and influence the political dynamics of the land rights movement." However, Aboriginal land claims highlight the gaps between public ideological responses to Aboriginal people and the actual treatment of Aborigines in law. This is why land rights claims, quite apart from the economic factors involved, remain the central focus of controversy between black and white Australians.” Aboriginal land rights contain a paradox. Land claims, to be suc-

cessful, must set Aborigines apart as having a unique historical and cultural claim. Yet land rights seek to instate Aboriginal equality and

Aboriginality, Morality, and the Law 69

Figure 7 The Age, 8 May 1991. Thanks to Bruce Petty and The Age for permission to reproduce the cartoon.

provide opportunities for them to participate in modern society on an equal basis. These tensions are reproduced at the level of state legislation. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, 1976; the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, 1983, of New South Wales; and the recently

enacted Queensland Aboriginal Land Act, 1991, all strongly privilege land claims presented by “traditional” as opposed to “urban” Aborigines. To have standing, an applicant must bridge past and present and prove both a historical association and a current spiritual bond with the land in question (see Brennan 1991). The Jawoyn people’s land claim in Kakadu National Park” vividly illustrates the ways that Aborigines are constrained by political and legal processes. Because of the Jawoyn people's past experience with unsuccessful land claims they were well aware that the Kakadu claim had to be based on their mystical, spiritual, and intangible relationship to the land. I am not questioning the integrity of the Jawoyn people's claim or discounting the strong arguments of their counsel, Fransesca Merlan and Jan Keen, who claimed that the Bula Bula spirit was a changing evolving myth that should be respected as such in Australian society.

What I want to stress is that Aboriginal legal actions must take a

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