In
academic circles Other has
come to be something of a dirty word. To say that Australians see
an Other in Asia does not mean we celebrate our differences, that
we delight in each other’s our Otherness. It means that we see
a negative difference loaded against Asia and Asians. Others are the
outgroup — we are the ingroup.
But does the
concept of Otherness necessarily have to entail negativity? Without
an Other to define one’s self against there can be no sense of
self, of identity. It is only by some kind of engagement with the
Other that we find how Other the Other is to us. Without this engagement
we can not come to understand our own culture and traditions, we can
not know our own selves. I would therefore argue that the construct
of Other is, in part, a necessary thing. Australia has to define itself
in some way when considering those outside its borders and this means
that it has to find, or invent, a sense of difference.
In Australia’s
case perhaps our search for and identification of Others has been
historically unique. In fact a look into our recent past causes one
to wonder if we have really yet formed a nation at all. We still run
one of the world’s last colonies while our monarch lives in far
off Britain. If a nation is definable by notions of a shared history,
culture, traditions and language, ethnic identity and the like, with
whom are we meant to be sharing these constructs? Our institutions
show nothing in the way of originality, having been imported from
Britain, and even nowadays we still find it difficult to locate exactly
when in time we became a nation.
If the boundaries
are to be inclusionary and encompass the Aboriginal inhabitants of
our country then Australia’s foundation date would be impossible
to pin down. If, on the other hand, the boundaries are drawn to exclude
these people we still have problems deciding exactly when Australia
became Australia and we became Australians. We have a choice of dates
or events from which we can consider ourselves to have become a nation.
Should we choose the first fleet’s landing in 1788, Federation
in 1901 or our “baptism of fire” at Gallipoli in 1915? Arguments
can also be made for the date of the Statute of Westminster in 1928
or even in the 1980s when appeals to the Privy Council were abolished.
Therefore, if we deny the existence of the Aboriginal population,
there was no history in Australia prior to 1788. If this is so we
have to work out where our previous historical background lies. It
would seem that it lies somewhere within the history of the British
Empire and on this basis our nationalism must be grounded in the year
zero - Britain’s year of 1788.
We have never
been completely confident our own identity because that identity has
been so closely linked to that of a mother country, or, rather, a
mother empire. We have largely viewed ourselves as being a scion of
a confident Britain but not wholly British. This is manifest even
today in our obsession with sport, (the only area in which we think
we can compete with Britain on equal terms) and the newsworthiness
of our sporting achievements when we beat the mother country.
Our sense of
identity (or the lack thereof) can be seen daily in the television
media where visiting film stars, sports personalities and the like
are so often asked what they think of Australia. The point being that
British TV media does not need to ask British visitors what they think
of Britain because the British are secure in their identity and a
disparaging comment concerning their country would, most likely, be
taken more as a matter of personal opinion. The British, put simply,
are “big” enough to take criticism and are not in need of
reassurance from film stars and sporting personalities.
This sense of
inferiority to Britain made Australia all the more eager to define
itself against Others who it perceived to be lower down the scale
of “Empire” than itself. Almost all of Asia, we knew, had
been colonised by white European powers and, for the most part, by
the British — our mother empire. Our sense of Otherness to Asia
was therefore, I would argue, unavoidably influenced in large part
by this fact.
As a country
born of British colonisation the USA does not suffer the identity
crisis that is so evident in Australia. This is largely because it
was founded on a strong revolutionary tradition having fought, and
defeated, its mother country to gain its independence. This gave the
USA a sense of pride that we in Australia can never have. Our nation
was made a nation by an act of the British parliament without the
need for revolution or even a real independence movement. If the USA’s
nationhood can be said to have come with a bang, Australia’s
can barely be rated as a whimper.
This painless
birth of our nation goes a long way to explaining why Australia has
had the need to define itself in the first place. Its sense of nothingness,
its shallow roots engendered a sense of inferiority. This was keenly
felt as early as the outbreak of WW I and helps explain our eagerness
to go to war against Turkey - a country we knew nothing about. It
was a war in which most of our participating soldiers could not have
located the country of the enemy on the map. Nevertheless, the enemy
were sufficiently Other for us to know we should fight against them
and we have built a lasting legend - with scant regard to the truth
- around those who took part. We were in need of the birth pains we
had missed out on and Gallipoli served the purpose well at the time.
Thus, Australia
had had to involve itself in a degree of intellectualising and soul
searching that some other countries may not have had to concern themselves
with in order to find identities with which they felt comfortable.
This search for an Australian identity has been made somewhat more
perplexing by the nature of our geographical position. We are a country
still dominated by Anglocentric values sitting on the edge of Asia
surrounded by an Otherness we would more easily embrace if only the
Others would content themselves with recognising their inferiority
to us.
The inferiority
of the Other is a fundamental part of the construct. No nation is
content with feeling inferior to all others and once it recognizes
that it is, in its own perceptions, inferior to another it can take
one of two paths to rectify or restore its image. It can examine its
perceived superior and find a flaw. This often takes forms such as
“they may have defeated us militarily but they are, nonetheless,
uncultured” . The other path is to look elsewhere for an Other
that it considers itself superior to. We should be mindful in this
discussion that Australians, who felt themselves inferior to the British,
also failed to defeat the Turks in their first real war. Under these
circumstances our need for an inferior Other became greater and Asia
and Asians helped to fill a significant gap in our image of ourselves.
When examining
Asian Otherness in Australia it seems apparent to me that our past
“White Australia Policy” has had an excessive amount of
influence on the population at large; it sets us apart from that other
cultural and racial melting pot, the aforementioned America. The USA
does not define itself to the same degree against Asia because it
had already been accepting immigrants of diverse nationalities for
over two hundred years before Australia disbanded its White Australia
Policy. America has therefore benefited from a greater racial mix
over a longer period of time and is able to define itself against
not only Asians but, say, Eastern and central Europeans and Mexicans,
also.
Differing degrees
of Otherness are to be found in contemporary Australian imagery. The
Otherness of a native-born Frenchman, or German, for example, is not
nearly so evident as that of a native born, Lebanese. As we move a
little further away from our British roots so people become slowly,
but perceivably, less acceptable and more Other. In the Australian
psyche Greeks and Italians are more Other to us than are the aforementioned
French and Germans. Those indigenous to the Middle East, with what
we describe as “swarthy” skins, become even more differentiated
but not to the same extent as the inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent.
As we move further
eastwards, it should be noted, people’s visible appearance changes
from those who “look like us” to those who are visibly different.
When we reach Southeast Asia — which for the majority of Australians
is the only Asia with which they have any familiarity — we meet
peoples of an even more strikingly Other appearance. Here we have
an important point in the discussion. The visible differences in people
are what first marks them as Other. The Frenchman or the German on
the streets of Hobart is indistinguishable from a white “Australian”.
This difference
in appearance is the first building block in the construction of the
imagery that marks Asians as different and it is a difference around
which we Australians have created a racial stereotype that lumps all
Asians together. We are generally unaware that a Cambodian visiting
the Great Wall of China feels as “different” as does a Welshman
who visits Warsaw.
This difference
in physiognomy combined with our ignorance of Asian geography and
Asians themselves enables a certain section of Australian society
to recall a stereotypical Asian face when they hear the type of speech
given by a political leader such as Pauline Hanson. In Ms Hanson’s
maiden speech to Parliament, it may be recalled, she stated:
“…
I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians ….
They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do
not assimilate.” …
The words “being
swamped by Asians”, it seems to me, would have brought to mind,
in most Australians, the same stereotypical Southeast Asian face.
It will be noted here that Ms. Hanson in the above speech homogenized
all Asian cultures and religions.
Our lack of knowledge
and lack of interest in Asia and Asians generally has served, in the
Australian mind, to blend together all of the diversity in their religions,
cultures, nationalities and so forth and present them as if they were
one amorphous mass. Having one mental image, or handle, as it were,
with which to think about and classify Asia is simple. Most people
would find it easier to use this mental construct than having to distinguish
between some fifteen or so countries of which they know little.
It is interesting
to note that in terms of food Australians are much more accepting
of Asia. Almost every city dwelling Australian can tell the difference
between, say, Thai and Indian take away food. Many Australians are
familiar with, and are able to distinguish between, dishes from various
Asian countries whether or not they can name the capital cities of
the countries from which these dishes come. Furthermore, so accepting
are we of foreign food generally that it would be difficult to find
a restaurant in an Australian city that advertises itself as being
either Australian or British.
Defining what
we are with any amount of objectivity is almost impossible without
reference to an Other. Attempting to define ourselves as Australians
from within Australia is limited by the small frame of reference
available; if you do not know that Asians exist, you can not define
yourself as a white, non Asian Caucasian. It is far easier to define
ourselves against what we are not. In doing so this definition is
limited by the amount of knowledge we have about those we define ourselves
against. Thus, as we learn more about Asia and Asians, as our media
portrays ongoing and current happenings in Asia, our perceptions of
Asia may sway back and forth. The Asian Other is thus, ipso facto,
not a static construct. It is dynamic, it changes over time and with
perceptions gained from the media’s reportage of current affairs.
In defining ourselves
against what we are not Asia gives us more scope than defining ourselves
against Europeans because the sense of Otherness is greater. One of
the reasons for this is to be found in our religious differences.
Europeans, we can positively identify ourselves with because we see
them as being Christians and we know that to be, say, Hindu, Buddhist
or Muslim is to be different to us. By the same token, the general
public’s knowledge of Buddhists stretches little further than
the image of Buddhist monks or Hare Krishna sect members proffering
begging bowls. Little effort is therefore required to construct the
image of Buddhists as being lazy. As we tend to focus on the negative
when we talk about Others, Australians, since the happenings of September
11th, find it increasingly easy to identify Muslims as
terrorists. At the same time we, being a part of the western, Christian,
American “good guys” camp, can easily come to terms with
the idea that we are part of the terrorized group.
What we eat goes
some way to defining us against Asians. Despite our ongoing “love
affair” with Asian restaurants - Asian restaurants are certainly
no passing fad - what we eat is still mainly determined by the Jewish
dietary laws of the Bible’s Old Testament. These laws tell us
that we should not eat snakes, dogs, horses, insects and so forth.
Recent media coverage of the soccer World Cup held in Japan and Korea
has made Australians realise that in Korea dog is on restaurant menus.
This has re-kindled memories from the early 1970s when press coverage
of Vietnamese immigrants to Australia informed the population that
the Vietnamese also ate dogs. Hence we can postulate with some degree
of certainty that one component of the Australian image of Asians
is that they eat dogs. This, for Australians, represents an easily
recallable Other as we are, by and large, disgusted at the thought
of people eating the kind of animals we regard so lovingly as household
pets.
Fear has played
a part in Australia’s view of Asia and, consequently, our image
of Asia as being Other. Historically Australia has viewed Asia with
trepidation since the mid nineteenth century when Chinese males came
to the country seeking their fortune on the goldfields of Victoria.
The fear that Asians would pollute our white Anglo Saxon bloodlines
was very real throughout the nineteenth century and the intellectual
community made much of the threat to our long-term existence that
this posed. However, such theories as Social Darwinism, phrenology
and the Great Chain of Being which showed Asians to be lower than
us on the evolutionary scale were never really taken up by the working
class. It was the incorrectly perceived threat posed by Asian - predominantly
Chinese - labour to the working class during the 1840’s —
1890’s that gave most Australians their dislike of all Asians.
Anti Chinese leagues sprang up in all States, Australian made Chinese
furniture was boycotted by union members, the shearers union barred
Chinese labour in their charter and a long going seaman’s strike
against the ASN Shipping company, which threatened to use Asian labour,
all contributed to Asia as the Other in popular Australian imagery.
The word popular, when used in the “Asia as Other”
context is important as university based intellectuals are often thinking
on a level far removed from workaday reality in such discourses.
The ambitions
and excesses of Japan in WWII presented an image of an aggressive
Asian Otherness that Australians had probably suspected existed all
along and one which our media had been describing for decades. In
Japan’s case, however, the Other imagery has faded of later years
as we come to rely more on their investment in Australia, for jobs
in the motor industry and so forth. As one of our best trading partners
a boycott of Japanese cameras, automobiles, motorcycles and watches
would, these days, be unthinkable. Gone are the days when we referred
to them as The Yellow Peril. The reasons for this change in perceptiveness
of the Japanese is a very extensive subject far too large to attempt
to cover in a short essay such as this. However, that fact that the
Japanese became “Americanised, modernised and industrialised”
has made them more acceptable to us. We tend not to paint all Japanese
with the same “Asian brush” when we think of them despite
the fact that they have been the only Asians that have posed anything
of a threat to us throughout our short history.
In Australia’s
recent past Asia’s Communist Otherness has been perceived as
an insidious threat. Post WWII we saw the “dog eating” North
Koreans and North Vietnamese embrace communism and in both cases Australia
sent contingents of troops to engage in wars against them. The Red
Tide, as the Chinese were commonly called in the 1960s, seem now to
have receded from our minds to the point where Australia is courting
China in an effort to win lucrative supply contracts. Our fierce anti
communist stance so evident in the cold war has all but disappeared
and we now find ourselves in a period of transition with regard to
our imagery of the Asian Other. This imagery, as stated elsewhere
in this essay, is therefore revealed to be a dynamic construct.
The imagery of
Asians as Others softens more easily when we see them excel in things
we pride ourselves on but are unable to achieve. Examples of this
are that the Chinese have the technology to put telecommunications
satellites into orbit and we do not. Japan is clearly industrious
and produces so many automobiles that it provides jobs for Australians
here in our own country while we do not have a national car. Examples
such as these and the fact that Australians are travelling abroad
in Asia more than ever before is going some way to attenuating our
negative image of Asians.
As an Other in
Australian imagery Asia figured significantly in the early years of
white occupation. It helped Australians determine who they were and
their notions of Asians being inferior to themselves helped them to
develop a positive national ego out of a disorganised id. The various
perceived threats that Asia presented went some way towards binding
Australians together as a nation. Australians had to be different
to somebody else and there was little pride in having trounced the
Aboriginal inhabitants they first encountered. Asia thereby filled
a vacuum.
Australia having
participated in no wars of its own and having no foundation myth rooted
in a mythical past was in need of an Other. Our geographical proximity
to Asia had much to do with the Asian as Other imagery but not purely
on the basis of the perceived threat of a military invasion.
Asians were virtually
the only Others Australian’s came into contact with prior to
federation. Nobody else wanted to come to Australia; a British penal
colony held little appeal. Apart from a limited number of Californian
Americans who came during the gold rushes (and were not very different
to ourselves), few people, even non-English Europeans, came here and
after federation our white Australia Policy kept Asians from physical
contact with us. Our long period of isolation gave us ample time in
which to create the negative and somewhat inaccurate image of Asia
that is so difficult for us to shake off even today.
In summation
white Australia’s unique foundation and historical background
in connection with its incongruous geographical position has made
for an equally unique Asian Other in the minds of most Australians.
Unique though it is, it nevertheless owes a degree of its Asian imagery
to its colonising mother country, Britain. A feeling of inferiority
towards the mother country has engendered the so-called “cultural
cringe” which has made us look down on Asians because we feel
we are looked down upon by Britain. I do not subscribe to the theory
that our cultural cringe is a cringe from Asia. In my view
this is a different cringe based upon fear that is a recent construct
not yet fully acculturated in the Australian mind.
Of the many images
and intellectual constructs which go to make up the Asian Other in
the minds of Australians two points stand out. The first is that physical
appearance is the first marker that triggers the intellectual processes,
which lead to the development of the Other in the mind set. The second
is ignorance of Asia and Asians, their different cultures and so forth,
that causes Australians to think of all Asians negatively and as being
cast in the same Asian mould.
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This
essay was written at The University of Tasmania 2002/2003 on the subject
of
“Asia as an Other in the Australian Imagery.”