The postcolonial ghost story

Ken Gelder

Jane Jacobs

pp. 179-199

in: Peter Buse, Andrew Stott (eds), Ghosts, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Let us begin by noting that Australia's postcolonial condition is for the most part a consequence of claims made upon it — land claims, compensation claims, and so on — by its Aboriginal people.* It would be possible to describe Aboriginal people at this point in Australia's modern history as charismatic, in their capacity to mobilize forces much larger than their "minority" status would suggest. When a claim is made on a sacred site, this feature is especially apparent: a government can look forward to losing millions of dollars through legal procedures that invariably bring together a 'smorgasbord" (as one newspaper described it) of interest groups over a protracted period of time. In this climate, Aborigines certainly continue to receive sympathy for what they do not have — good health, adequate housing, and so on — and yet at the same time they draw resentment from white Australians because they seem to be claiming more than their "fair share". We have elsewhere described this double-headed view of Aborigines as "postcolonial racism" — a form of racism which sees Aborigines as lacking on the one hand, and yet appearing on the other hand to have too much: too much land, too much national attention, too much "effect".¹ It is surely a strange irony to hear white Australians these days — including some maverick Federal politicians — describing Aborigines as more franchised, more favoured, than they are.