9

When thought fails performance may begin to announce its claims.

On the stage a horse and buggy suddenly make their appearance. The horse is a rather forlorn chestnut. Its name is of course Dobbin. In the back of the buggy is a huge white egg.

A white spotlight shines brightly on the egg.
At the rear of the stage is a large crocodile. It is dimly lit with a red light. It is more ominous than really threatening.
An old anthropologist wanders across the stage plaintively calling ‘Tommy, Tommy.’ There is a hint of an American accent.

A crowd gathers.
Voice 1: What for that egg? What for that nhepun?
Voice  2: Must be something
Voice  3: Can you eat him?
Voice  4: Don’t be silly
Voice  3: Can’t you boil him?
Voice  4 : Might be
Voice  3: Ah (triumphantly), must be scramble him

10

The Egg of the State, the bountiful thing, the flightless bird.  As one of the crowd says, ‘Must be bloody big bird somewhere.’

11

The image has a life of its own. It does not succumb to any final dismembering or interpretation. The image must be allowed to work its magic without too much scrutiny. You might as well challenge the shield of your enemy and what is emblazoned there. The more it is challenged the more impervious it becomes.

If I announce — foolishly — that I am an Enemy of the State it is not as if I am an Enemy of the People. The State has no consensual aspect to it. And if there is a contract — social contract — I have no idea what its terms are or what it encapsulates by way of my interest.

It is hard not to reach the conclusion that ‘The Contract’ is driven by particular sectional interests; that it does not represent (or guarantee) the social as such but congeals around particular conceptions and aggregations of the social which undoubtedly stand against the social as it might be envisaged in its entirety; that it is in its very nature divisive and partialising, on the one hand, and normalising and totalising on the other. It is less enabling than stifling and thwarting, and works less towards an objectification (recognition) of all interests than the valorisation of this or that interest. (FN5)

12

When routine is exalted to The All. When routine is challenged or ruptured.
I’m at the Clinic, a prestigious institution. The young women at Reception are helpful though apt simply to poke forms in front of you, to fill in. It’s a form of occupational therapy, I suppose. The specialist is a pleasant man, affable, with a fondness for small aircraft. He makes them, his violon d’Ingres. I’m impressed.

I’m encouraged to undergo a procedure. It’s expensive  (I’m not on a pension, I don’t subscribe to a Health scheme; I’m a free floater). I’m given more forms. There are procedures to observe: pre-op dietary measures; someone to accompany you from the Clinic once the anaesthetic has worn off sufficiently. With respect to the latter I wonder who is the beneficiary of this unnegotiable requirement, me (the patient) or the Clinic. I am not asked if there are any conditions I might wish to impose.

Marcellis is in a rush to take me through the pre-op instructions. ‘You’ll have to excuse me’, I say, ‘my eyesight is very poor’. Her response is to read through them even faster. ‘My eyesight is very poor’, I repeat, ‘that’s why I was on a disability pension.’ I might have said that my hearing was good, my memory exceptional, my capacity to absorb and to act on instructions in a methodical way first-rate. But by now I’m totally locked into my limiting condition; there’s no thought of possibility. ‘Just read here’, she says, stabbing at the printed pages with a cheap biro. ‘Look’, I say, ‘I’m to all intents and purposes clinically blind, certainly with printed material’. ‘OK, that’s alright, just read here.’ The biro stabs, again and again.

This is hardly the first time I’ve been subject to this bureaucratic disconnect. I wonder what the ‘normal subject’ looks like. I suspect there is no such thing.

Let us note that it is not the word that is king, it is the written word. Unless of course it is the doctor: ‘PATIENT INSTRUCTIONS  Unless otherwise instructed by the doctor’.

One is left to wonder at the insistence on ‘instruction’.

13

We can become accustomed to any life world, even the most sordid and oppressive. It’s the matter of return to it once one has been exposed to something else, a world less sordid, a world less oppressive. But, I wonder, if people keep on returning to conditions that are ostensibly unsavoury, unhygienic, ‘demanding’, maybe they have their reasons, not, as one might think, because it represents a place of last resort but because it offers a superior product, a superior, more entertaining, more sustaining social. No, people do not just vote with their bellies; and worlds of meaning may well triumph over worlds of servicing.

The trick then is not to challenge that life world, to treat it with disdain or the sort of casual disbelief that is apt to accompany an inner attitude or certainty of a ‘better way’. Those who adhere to this position should question why it is that life ways they undoubtedly consider intolerable should be so tenaciously clung onto. The trick is to offer, through example or suggestion, some adjustment, other ways of doing things which can be easily and willingly taken on board — something that one embodies in one’s own person, not some abstract dehumanised ‘system’. And crucially, of course, to be able to handle the ‘refusal’ or ‘rejection’ of one’s ‘little ways’ with something like aplomb. Sometimes I think that white society is in a frenzy of disbelief that what it considers the palpably good is so casually rejected, spurned, ‘misdirected’. Or that its universally conceived ‘general benefits’ are so casually disregarded, even ‘abused’.

Scene: A special ‘classroom’ in a small remote Aboriginal community. Standing side-by-side are three senior women, all of them former teacher’s aides and highly regarded. We know each other well, a relationship extending over decades. When I enter the room (on their invitation, as it happens) they remain silent, taciturn, even a little downcast. A European woman, stocky with short-cropped hair, is busily directing 7 or 8 infant charges at a low round table. Each of them sits on a little chair — a cut-down version of a conventional kitchen chair. In fact, the whole scene is an enactment of a conventional western meal-time scene.
The three Aboriginal women continue to stand. They’re not wearing shoes. They cross their arms in front of their chests. We exchange glances.

Nobody offers to introduce me to the ‘waypela’.  Nobody offers to introduce her to me. We might as well be two passing spacecraft. There is no attempt to create a social. I’m positioned as a sort of witness. I feel ‘ghostly’.
‘Now Darlene’, one of the little girls is instructed, ‘just wait’. Each pre-school tot is dispensed an identical serving of baked beans on white bread. Each has its own plate.

‘Darlene, wait.’

Control, orderliness, ‘equalising’, that’s today’s diet — along with the mediocre food. No idea that to sit properly means to sit cross-legged; that children of this age habitually take food ‘on the run’; that mealtimes are unscheduled and only roughly shared. Food appears on a demand or availability basis. There may be a sense of feast or famine. (FN 6)
Later I discovered that there was not just one program in place but three. Yes, suffer the little children indeed! Remediation at full blast! (FN7)