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The, as he puts it, "ten years of work on Australian multiculturalism" (11) which Ghassan Hage synthesises in his
first book-length study -- White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society -- have, I think,
been ten years very well spent indeed. What he has come up with is a lucid, engaging and comprehensively argued
explication of an increasingly significant and ubiquitous trope in both public and private expressions of the
Australian national consciousness: the, slightly paranoid in some ways, "discourse of Anglo-decline" (20). Simply
put, this discourse adds up to a good old fashioned moan (the Poms, it seems, are not the only ones whingeing around
here anymore). It's a lament for the days gone by, the golden years of an egalitarian, white, Anglo-Celtic symbolic
centrality in imaginary (and real) Australia. It is also an exercise in finger pointing, in naming and blaming the
architects of the new élite, cosmopolitan, multicultural imaginary (and real?) Australia. It is all about a
feeling, which some people express, that there has long been a conspiracy to displace Anglo-Australia in favour of
Australasia. The discourse of decline is an idea which Hage has been touting around the blocks for a few years now
and I, for one, am delighted to avail of the chance which this book offers to read and think about it at greater
length.
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Alongside the perceived decline, both feeding into it and arising out of it as it were, is a phenomenon which Hage
calls the "White Nation fantasy. ... A fantasy of a nation governed by white people, a fantasy of White supremacy"
(18). In one sense he is using fantasy here in what he calls the "commonsense understanding of the term: something
one yearns for" (68). Thus the White Nation fantasy is at the same time an expression of yearning for the ideal
national order that might be achieved were it not for multi-racial immigration, and for the ideal national order
which apparently, for some people at least, existed at some point in the past, before it was overwhelmed by the
'chaotic onslaught' of mass (non-white of course) immigration. In another sense, though, Hage is using fantasy in
Lacanian psychoanalytical terms, where fantasy is not just about the idealised good life, but is also about an
idealised image of the self/subject living that good life: "People don't have fantasies. They inhabit
fantasy spaces of which they are a part" (70). So the White Nation fantasy is of an ideal White Australia inhabited
by an ideal White self/subject, an empowered governor of an empowering social space. Is it any wonder some folks
around these parts are talking decline? Ideal white fantasy island this ain't.
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Part of what Hage does with this notion of a White fantasy world is demonstrate the striking similarity he sees as
existing between the two apparently diametrically opposed positions, or social philosophies if you will, which
constitute what he calls White Racism and White Multiculturalism. Proponents of both positions, he argues, see
themselves as nationalists at the centre of a national space. Add 'idealised', a reasonable addition since both
positions are all about ideally achieving the ideal Australia, and you have 'idealised nationalists at the centre of
an idealised national space': lo and behold, White Nation fantasy. All that separates the two is what their
respective definitions of an ideal Australia incorporate. It's a pretty simple idea really, I think, or at least it
seems pretty simple when Hage expounds upon it at length with his engaging blend of polemic and narrative, but then
there's plenty of good ideas that are pretty simple really.
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This similarity is also apparent in a consideration of the politics of tolerance versus intolerance of visible
ethnic minorities in Australia, what Hage calls "those who are Third World-looking" (19). The advocacy of tolerance
is a political stance which implies that the cultural diversity, both visible and invisible, in the national space
which the regulated presence of Third World-looking people brings about is good, is to be encouraged and will lead
to the enrichment of us all (that is, all us Whites). The expression of intolerance of the presence, even
regulated, of those same different-looking people, however, arises out of the attitude that diversity is bad and
threatening, that it will weaken and corrupt our society and ourselves, and that exclusion is the most desirable
response. Where proponents of the two extremes meet is in their shared assumption that they have both the power and
the right to tolerate, or not to tolerate, as they see fit, and to compel/encourage others to do the same. Both
assume, in other words, their own centrality in the national space, their own enfranchisement in the affairs of the
nation -- "they perceive themselves to be the enactors of the national will within the nation" (47) -- and with this they
both assume a supervisory role over the process of achieving Australianness, particularly in relation to migrants.
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This self-perceived centrality of the White Australian subject is part of the White Nation fantasy too, if only
because it is artificial and imaginary. The "Real" of this fantasy, according to Hage, "is that feelings that they
had no time for those who want to call their Australianness into question are quite widespread among migrants"
(228). Hage quotes one Australian-Lebanese who, at the age of forty-six, has spend twenty-six years living in
Australia, as he provides a succinct rebuttal of the Hansonite White Australian urge to "supervise" his integration:
what I can't stand is her acting as if I have to give her some account about how Australian I am ... I mean who
the hell is she to consider me or not consider me. I certainly don't need anyone like her to tell me whether I am a
nice Aussie boy or not. (229)
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As an Australian-Irish myself, who by now has spend almost as much of my adult life living in Australia as I have in
Ireland, I couldn't agree more. Nevertheless, the discourse of decline, and the White Nation fantasy, continue to
be regularly played out in Australian public life, fuelled by the 'immigration debates' that seem to roll around one
after the other. Hage is a lecturer in Anthropology, and he provides a nice pithy metaphor, one that I found
especially satisfying, from within that discipline to sum up his position on these perennial socio-political
stoushes: they can be thought of as "seasonal festivals where White Australians renew the belief in their possession
of the power to talk and make decisions about Third World-looking Australians" (241).
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There's a lot I liked about this book, finding it, as I did, both valuable and interesting; and there's nothing
worth mentioning that I can think of that I didn't like. In concentrating on the positioning of immigrants Hage
does pay scant attention to what would be a similar positioning of indigenous Australians in the White Nation
fantasy, but he acknowledges this omission with the reasonable explanation that, like the frequently seen split
between class-focussed work and gender-focussed work in the academy, these two aspects of the one dialectic are big
enough and complex enough to be usefully treated individually. Aborigines and fantasies of White supremacy would, I
think, take up another book-length study; one that's probably worth looking forward to.
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Details
White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society.
By Ghassan Hage. Annadale, NSW: Pluto, 1998. ISBN: 1-86403-056-9; RRP: A$ 24.95.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Paul Mc Cormack. "Fantasy Island? Ghassan Hage's 'White Nation'." M/C Reviews 16 Oct. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/white2.html>.
Chicago style:
Paul Mc Cormack, "Fantasy Island? Ghassan Hage's 'White Nation'," M/C Reviews 16 Oct. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/white2.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Paul Mc Cormack. (1999) Fantasy Island? Ghassan Hage's 'White Nation'. M/C Reviews 16 Oct. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/white2.html> ([your date of access]).
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![[image]](http://media.socialchange.net.au/pluto/images/whitenation.gif)