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Writing/Reading
a Life: the Rhetorical Practice of Autobiography
SAGE Publications, Inc.200610.1191/0967550706ab044oa
ChristineHalse
University of Western Sydney, Australia, c.halse@uws.edu.au
Address
for correspondence: Christine Halse, School of Education, University of Western
Sydney, Building 1, Bankstown Campus, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, NSW
1797, Australia; Email: c.halse@uws.edu.au
This essay examines how the
introduction/preface to a non-fiction text is constructed as autobiographical
practice — a sort of `introduction-as-memoir'. The use and autobiographical
effects of rhetorical tropes (stake inoculation, metaphor and binary oppositions)
are examined in the introduction that prefaces Massacre myth (Moran,
1999), a polemic account of the 1926 police massacre of Aborigines that was
the catalyst for Australia's `History Wars'. Using the analytical methods
of deconstruction, I tease out how language, structure and a (seemingly)
objective account of historical virtues are recruited to the project of autobiography,
and illuminate the role of language in the construction of the authorial subject
(and Others), and show how these are entangled with broader social, political
and epistemological issues. The analysis underlines the dialogic relationship
between text, reader and society, and the instability of truth claims and
the authorial subject of autobiography.
INTRODUCTION
This essay turns the analytical I/eye on the rhetorical construction of the
authorial subject in the introduction/preface of a non-fiction book. Attending
to Derrida's invocation to put texts sous rature (under erasure), this decon-
structive (ad)venture unpicks the textual crafting of a particular (novel)
form of autobiographical practice – a sort of `introduction-as-memoir'.
Attending to how rhetorical tropes produce the authorial subject, this essay
focuses the analytical lens on how a potted memoir is fused with a (seemingly)
non- autobiographical account of historical virtues and recruited to the project
of autobiography. Illuminating the rhetorical construction and autobiographical
effects of text (even when they do not appear particularly autobiographical)
exposes the reliance of autobiographical truth on language and the entanglement
of autobiographical practice with broader social, historical and epistemological
contexts and claims.
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Like
other auto/biographical forms, the `introduction-as-memoir' is a constructed
text that is open to multiple readings. This essay offers one (of many possible)
readings of the construction of the authorial subject in the introduction/preface
to Massacre myth (Moran, 1999),1 a polemic account of the 1926 police massacre
of Aborigines at Forrest River in north-west Australia that was the catalyst
for a very public and acrimonious national debate amongst historians and in
the media – coined the History Wars – about the true history
of black and white relations in Australia. The interest of this essay is not
with the arguments presented in Massacre myth or with the `true story' of
the Forrest River massacre. These are matters of on-going debate in other
forums (eg, Green, 2003a; 2003b; Halse, 2002; Halse and Fraser, 2005; Moran,
2002a; 2002b; 2002c; 2003; 2004; 2005; Windschuttle, 2000a; 2000b; 2000c).
But the bickering about who got the facts of the massacre right or wrong has
deflected attention from how language has been deployed to give credibility
to particular truth claims and to construct different speakers/writers as
authorities whose account of the massacre can be trusted as true. This essay
makes a start in addressing this omission by teasing out the autobiographical
effects of the rhetoric deployed in the introduction/preface to Massacre myth.
The essay is structured in three parts: an overview of the theoretical framework
of the analysis (Autobiography as rhetorical practice); a dis- cussion of
the historical and political context that set the terms for the introduction/preface
(Setting the scene); and a description of the introduc- tion/preface followed
by a more detailed deconstruction of the auto- biographical effects of three
pivotal rhetorical tropes: metaphor; stake inoculation; and binaries (The
rhetorical construction of the writer). AUTO/BIOGRAPHY AS RHETORICAL PRACTICE
As Auto/Biography exemplifies, contemporary auto/biographical writing has
been marked by a broadening of genre and form. The introduction to Massacre
myth falls into this nebulous, auto/biographical assembly: part personal history
and part historiographic critique. In presenting a particu- lar fragment of
the writer's life and social world, the introduction takes on the guise of
a truncated version of the memoir: Unlike autobiography, which moves in a
dutiful line from birth to fame, omitting nothing significant, memoir assumes
the life and ignores most of it. The writer of a memoir takes us back to a
corner of his or her life that was unusually vivid or intense – childhood,
for instance – or that was framed by unique events. By narrowing the
lens, the writer achieves a focus that isn't possible in autobiography; memoir
is a window into a life. (Zinsser, 1987: 21)
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Like
the memoir, the `introduction-as-memoir' that prefaces Massacre myth is a
referential form of life writing that deploys `memory, experi- ence, identity,
embodiment and agency' (Smith and Watson, 2001: 3). Nevertheless, it presents
itself as a realistic and true account of events, of who the author is, and
of how the author came to be the sort of person who wrote a certain book in
a certain way. The reader is invited (and expected) to believe that the writer's
story has been accurately remembered, faith- fully reproduced, and that it
is a transparent and real picture of the truth. Herein lies the illusion.
Autobiography preserves the fantasy that it pro- vides a `window into a life'
(Zinsser, 1987: 21) by turning a blind eye to its textual construction. Yet
critical scholarship has highlighted the fictions of autobiography and challenged
the notion that autobiographical texts are referential to life and that the
remembered account can resurrect the truth of the past (eg, Aldridge, 1993; Bruner, 1991; Fisher-Rosenthal, 1995; Gergen and Gergen, 1986; Lieblich et
al., 1998; Stanley, 1992). The auto- biographer cannot artlessly retrieve
memories and their original meanings from the past to accurately (re)depict
the original lived experience. Memories are always partial and selective; coloured by attitudes, beliefs and values; reconfigured by experience; and
fashioned by language (see Bonjione, 2001; Conway, 1990; Josselson, 1995; Rubin, 1986). To para- phrase Rubin (1986: 4), autobiographical memory is
more a reconstruc- tion than a reproduction. Surveying the issues that have
concerned contemporary theorizing of auto/biography, Aldridge (1993) draws
particular attention to the recogni- tion that `the self is constructed in
auto/biographical writing, rather than being fully-formed, and then represented
(either partially or in total) by the auto/biographer'. Like other forms of
autobiographical practice, the truncated memoir that introduces a non-fiction
text – the `introduction-as- memoir' – is a performative act
of textual identity construction. Rosenwald and Ochberg underline this point
in their description of life writing and narrative: `How individuals recount
their histories ... shapes what individ- uals can claim of their lives. Personal
stories are not merely a way of telling someone (or oneself) about one's life; they are means by which identities may be fashioned' (1992: 1). Poststructural
theory has been influential in unsettling the ontological certainty of autobiography
by problematizing the taken-for-granted foun- dations of humanism: the transparency
of language; the stability of the subject; and the rational production of
knowledge and truth (St Pierre, 2000a; 2000b). In this frame, the coherent,
unitary, writing self is always/already compromised: `The subject of the speech-act
can never be the same as the one who acted yesterday: the I of the discourse
can no longer be the site where a previously stored-up person is innocently
restored' (Barthes, 1986: 17).
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In particular,
poststructuralism has attended to the constitutive nature of textual practice
and to how the subject is brought into being through text. The subject `does
not exist ahead of or outside language but is a dynamic. Unstable effect of
language/discourse and cultural practice' (St Pierre, 2000b: 502). In Derrida
and Ewald's terms: There is not a constituted subject which engages itself
in writing at a given moment for some reason or another. It exists through
writing, given [donné] by the other: born [né] ... through being given [donné],
delivered, offered and betrayed all at one and the same time. (1995: 279)
Barthes (1986) takes this position further by contending that the writer is
always present in a text even when it purports to be an objective, real- istic
account. For these reasons, he urges us to take the text as the primary analytic
focus, rather than the real person who has written it. This epistemological
shift (re)focuses the analytical lens on the deploy- ment of language and
structure in texts. But language is not an innocent tool. Its purpose is to
persuade and to interpellate readers to take up and believe the writer's account
of self and the social world. The relative brevity of an introduction/preface
to a non-fiction book forces the writer to make delicate and strategic decisions
about what aspects of his or her past to include or exclude in order to craft
the authorial self, to make particular points, and to persuade readers that
the writer's persona and account are exactly as he or she presents them to
be (see MacLure, 2003). At the heart of this task is a discursive inter-textual
power relationship between text, reader and society that makes autobiography
a political project whereby each instance of language incrementally reproduces
and/or transforms power relations, culture and society (see Fairclough and
Wodak, 1997). Consequently, like other autobiographical forms, the `introduction-as-
memoir' operates in multiple registers. On the one hand, it presents itself
as a realistic and factual story – an artlessly devised and candid
account of the truth about the writer and part of his or her life. On the
other hand, it is a rhetorical act that entangles the discursive with the
real and flickers with illusion. What makes autobiography so seductively persuasive
is that it does not seem rhetorical but presents itself as a straightforward,
plausible, realist account (MacLure, 2003). For this reason, Barthes (1967:
73) cau- tions us to be wary of apparently realist writing: `far from being
neutral, it is on the contrary loaded with the most spectacular signs of fabrication'.
But readers are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with a writer's fanciful
tales. They have the power to accept, reject or to disrupt the mean- ing of
any autobiographical text: `We may be textually persuaded, cajoled, led and
misled; but we can, and we do, also scrutinize and analyse, puzzle and ponder,
resist and reject' (Stanley, 1992: 131). Derrida (1978) urges
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us to
deconstruct and disassemble texts by putting them sous rature (under erasure)
and exploring and critiquing their contradictions, silences, and the ways
in which what appears be real depends on what is privileged and/or excluded
from the text. The analytical work of deconstruction involves unpicking `the
textual means (both content and structure) by which particular kinds of readings
are intended, and also silences, the absences from a piece of writing' (Stanley,
1992: 155). This kind of criti- cal practice both disrupts and complicates
the textual presentation of the unitary authorial self – unsettling
what appears to be straightforward and self-evident and “disrupting
common sense” about the naturalness or inevitability of identities,
values and concepts, thus showing the workings of power and material interests
in the most seemingly innocent of texts' (Luke, 1995, cited in MacLure, 2003:
9). While auto/biographical critique is familiar with the use of rhetorical
analysis to tease out the transparency of language and to disrupt the illu-
sion of realism (eg, Bakhtin, 1981; MacLure, 2003; Stanley, 1992; Stronach
and MacLure, 1997), it has been less zealous about scrutinizing how the (apparently)
non-auto/biographical also produces the authorial subject, in contrast to
areas like sociology and critical psychology (see eg, Fairclough and Wodak,
1997; Walkerdine, 1990). Yet, if we heed the injunctions of Derrida and Barthes,
this sort of analytical, textual work is an obligatory consequence of attending
to the recent theoretical develop- ments in auto/biographical theory: the
ontological challenges of poststruc- turalism and deconstruction and the epistemological
recognition that autobiography (and the `introduction-as-memoir' as a particular
form of autobiography) is a performative act of authorial identity construction.
This essay takes up these conceptual agendas with a deliberately trans- gressive
intent: to provoke autobiographical critique to embrace a broader and more
catholic construction of what does and might constitute auto- biographical
practice (including the introduction/preface to a non-fiction book); to excavate
the autobiographical constructions secreted within the language of (apparently)
non-autobiographical components of texts; and to illuminate how autobiography
is at play, even when the text presents itself as otherwise. SETTING THE SCENE
Massacre myth had its genesis in a turbulent social and political context.
According to the accepted historical account, in 1926 a police expedition
massacred and burned the bodies of Aboriginals near the Anglican mission at
Forrest River in Western Australia. The Reverend Ernest Gribble, head of the
mission, reported the rumours of the killings and, in 1927, the Western Australian
government established a Royal Commission to investigate the
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allegations.
The Royal Commissioner concluded that 11 Aboriginals were killed and burned
and that four died while in the custody of the policemen leading the party:
Constables Denis Regan and James Graham St Jack (Wood, 1927). The constables
were charged with murder but the case was dismissed by a committal hearing
that concluded that there was insufficient evidence for a successful criminal
prosecution. The conventional wisdom of the massacre has been recorded in
history texts, articles, doctoral theses, biographies and popular journals
(eg, Biskup, 1973; Bolton, 1981; Broome, 1982; Elder, 1989/1999; Evans, 1961; Fitzgerald, 1984; Goddard, 1978; Green, 1989; 1995; Halse, 1993; 1996a; 1996b; 2002; 2005; Wise, 1985). The story is so entwined in Australia's historical
and cultural psyche that it had been woven into historical fiction (eg, Stow,
1958). In 1994, the established account of the massacre was challenged in
a three-page `Special Feature' published in the `Big Weekend' supplement of
The West Australian (8 October, 1994: 1–3), the local newspaper of
Perth, the capital city of Western Australia. The author, Rod Moran, was a
freelance writer, poet and popular historian, and later a staff writer for
The West Australian and a regular commentator in the right-wing journal Quadrant.
Moran alleged that the Reverend Ernest Gribble fabricated the story of the
massacre to hide his illicit relationship with an Aboriginal woman and that
Constables Regan and St Jack were innocent and falsely condemned by the 1927
Royal Commission. The feature's headlines reflected its tone and subject matter:
`Massacre myth: review of evidence clears police of outback killings'; `Facts
overtake fiction in a big histori- cal injustice'; `Ungodly verdict on mission
priest's work'. One section, headed `Agony over sins of father', claimed that
research by Constable St Jack's son, Terry, had disproved the allegations
against his father, and that the `demonic reputation' thrust on his father
by historians caused the family continued suffering and trauma (p. 3). The
feature sparked a four-month debate in The West Australian (8 October 1994
to 18 February 1995) with contributions from historians, academics, Aboriginal
communities, journalists, as well as the broader community. Of the nine letters
to the editor published during the debate, two commended the discussion. The
others were critical: `Forrest River killings happened' and `Akin to holocaust
denial' (15 October 1994, `The Issues': 62), `Claims denigrate a revered figure'
(24 October, `The Issues':12), `Massacre evidence ignored' (18 February 1995,
`Big Weekend': 2). Nevertheless, the bulk of news space was assigned to Moran
who published three articles elaborating on his theory and a letter responding
to his critics (8 October 1994, `Big Weekend': 1–3; 19 October 1994,
`The Issues': 15; 28 January 1995, `Big Weekend': 2; 24 October 1994, `The
Issues': 12).
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In the
midst of the debate, The Forrest River massacres (1995) was pub- lished. Written
by Neville Green, an academic at Edith Cowan University in Perth and a critic
of Moran's arguments during The West Australian debate (15 October 1994: 62; 25 January 1995: 12), the book was based on Green's PhD thesis (University
of Western Australia, 1989) and his track record of research with the Forrest
River Aboriginal community (eg, Green, 1986; 1988; 1989). It adhered to the
conventional wisdom of the massacre and was positively reviewed in The West
Australian as: `what may well come to be regarded as the definitive version
[of the massacre] ... an impressive testimony of detailed and careful scholarship'
(21 January 1995, `Big Weekend': 3). Massacre myth was published four years
later. It elaborated on the argu- ments Moran presented in The West Australian
debate and was based largely, but not exclusively, on a critique of the evidence
presented to 1927 Royal Commission and drafts of Constable St Jack's unfinished
memoir, provided by the St Jack family. The book revived public debate about
the truth of the Forrest River massacre (eg, Green, 2002; 2003a; 2003b; 2004; Halse, 2005; Morgan, 2002; Moran, 2002a; 2002b; 2002c; 2002d; 2004; 2005; Windschuttle, 2000a; 2000b; 2000c) and triggered a broader political and ideological
imbroglio about white, colonial treatment of Aboriginal Australians – the History Wars – that has been played out in a range of forums, including
scholarly publications (eg, Attwood and Foster, 2003; Breen, 2003; Macintyre,
2003; Macintyre and Clark, 2003; Manne, 2001; 2003; Reynolds, 2001; Windschuttle,
2002; 2004). The mêlée reflected Australia's long struggle with its messy,
racial past. Until the 1960s, Australian history was a narrative of British
discovery, set- tlement and subjugation of terra nullius (uninhabited land).
In 1968, anthro- pologist W.E.H. Stanner (1979: 214) described the deliberate
exclusion of Indigenous Australians from Australia's written history as the
`Great Australian Silence'. His rebuke inspired a new generation of historians
who `re-cast the moral drama' of Australian history by representing colonization
as invasion; Aboriginal responses as resistance; and describing the racism
underpinning the violence of settlers (Moses, 2003: 350). The `new historians
of the dispos- session' (Manne, 2003: 3) included scholars like Charles Rowley
(1970), Henry Reynolds (eg, 1984; 1999) and Peter Read (1999) whose research
and writing shaped the legal and political changes in Australian race relations
policy during the second half of the twentieth century: the granting of Aboriginal
citizenship (1967) and Native Title (1992); the beginning of racial reconciliation
(1991); and the investigation into the forced removal of Aboriginal children
from their families (1997) (Manne, 2003: 3–4).2 The introduction to
Massacre myth played a pivotal role in the decla- ration of the History Wars.
It issued a clarion call to conservatives to revise the work of a generation
of liberal historians and set the tone of the battle by publicly challenging,
for the first time, the scholarship
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of the
post-Stanner revisionists.3 The introduction also laid out the episte- mological,
theoretical and methodological basis of the conservative take on historical
research and writing. Building on the empiricist tradition, the introduction
to Massacre myth called for a forensic approach to historical analysis that
resonated with other writers, including Keith Windshuttle who took up the
cudgels and became the most prolific and public protag- onist for the conservative
case (eg, Windschuttle, 2000a; 2000b; 2000c; 2000d; 2001; 2002; 2004). The
conservatives were christened `denialists' by their opponents (see Manne,
2003) because they challenged the repre- sentation of colonization as a narrative
of violence and abuse, disputed claims about the number of Aboriginals killed
in frontier clashes, and argued that narratives of white abuse of Aborigines
had been fabricated by left-wing intellectuals and historians for their own
agendas. Consequently, entangled in the rhetorical construction of the `introduction-as-memoir'
that prefaces Massacre myth are broader issues about the textual strategies
and intertextual relationships that the conservatives invoked in their campaign
to (re)interpret and (re)write Australian race relations history. THE RHETORICAL
CONSTRUCTION OF THE WRITER The relatively lengthy introduction to Massacre
myth (14 pages) consists broadly of two parts. The first section is a brief,
chronological account built around a central epiphany or turning point (Denzin,
1989) that outlines the writer's background; how he came to write Massacre
myth; The West Australian debate; and the (forlorn) efforts of the St Jack
family to persuade members of the Western Australian establishment to alter
the historical record and clear Constable St Jack's name. The second section
comprises a thematically organized critique of a series of phenomena alleged
to have obscured the truth about the Forrest River massacre and black/white
relations in Australia. The first is described as the `Chamberlain effect'
and alludes to a prominent and controversial legal case in Australia in which
Mrs Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of the murder of her infant child. The
baby's body was never found and Mrs Chamberlain insisted that she was innocent
and that the baby was stolen by a dingo (a wild Australian dog). Eventually,
after a lengthy series of appeals and a Royal Commission, Mrs Chamberlain
was freed. The writer draws parallels between the Forrest River and Chamberlain
cases, arguing that both relied on circumstantial evidence, generated powerful
public emotions but lacked suf- ficient evidence to establish a prima facie
case against the accused (p. xxviii). The second phenomenon is alleged to
be the emergence of a cadre of histo- rians and university intellectuals – labelled l'historien engagé – who have been captured by the `Chamberlain
effect' and lent their literary skills and moral and intellectual authority
to progressive causes and polemic rather
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than
reporting the facts. The third element is the development of a group of intellectuals
alleged to have a psychological need to position Aborigines as victims so
that they can take up the role of saviour. The introduction con- cludes by
comparing the Forrest River massacre with the Holocaust and Sandakan Death
Marches in north Borneo. In the latter incidents, there were multiple forms
of evidence, including eyewitnesses and forensic and docu- mentary evidence
that were assessed and judged by the courts. In contrast, the text argues
that there was no forensic, ballistics, or eyewitness evidence for the Forrest
River massacre and that `new facts' uncovered by academic research exposes
Reverend Gribble as `a most dubious character' (p. xxxii).4 STAKE INOCULATION
The text presents itself as a dispassionate, honest account of the writer
and how he came to write Massacre myth but the tidy linearity of this `introduction-as-memoir'
is interrupted if we attend to the textual deployment of stake inoculation.
This (awkward) technical term is used by discourse analysts to describe rhetorical
manoeuvres that seek to persuade readers that a writer's stake in an account
is contrary to what might be expected (see Potter, 1996). The rhetorical practice
of stake inoculation serves dual purposes: it is a defensive strategy designed
to protect the writer from the possible scepticism of readers and an offensive
strategy that lays out exactly why the writer can and should be trusted. Thus,
the act of stake inoculation takes for granted the inter-textual relationship
between text and reader and that the constructed account of a life cannot
be disembodied from the inter- locutors who constitute the writer's dialogic
imagination (Bruner, 1986). The introduction/preface of Massacre myth begins
with a potted auto- biography that sets out the writer's expertise to write
about the Forrest River massacre. He is a journalist, published author and
an experienced historical researcher, citing as his credentials a commissioned
oral history and a research project on police work in the 1950s. The text
asserts a record of writing positively about Aborigines and Aboriginal history,
specifically a biography of Tom Gray: `a remarkable Aboriginal identity ...
overlooked by academic social history' (p. xxi), and a newspaper story about
the emergence of black literary intellectuals: `a most important and intrinsically
interesting development' (p. xxi). Readers are told that he has mentioned
massacres in his previous writing and suggested that these victim-stories
had to be told because, after all, the last `mass murder' of Aborigines in
WA [Western Australia] had occurred at Forrest River in 1926, within living
memory. My view then was, and still is, the victim-stories have to be faced
by contemporary Australia as part of black and white reconciliation. (pp.
xxi–xxii)
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Language
is always embedded in the social, in history, and in politics (Fairclough
and Wodak, 1997) but autobiography seeks to render this investment invisible
to preserve the pretence that what is presented is a true account of what
really happened. Attending to the inter-textuality of stake inoculation, the
narrative display of the writer's credentials is both and at the same time
a rebuttal and a defence against the sort of criticisms levelled in the letters
to the Editor during The West Australian debate: `emotional journalism' (Harry
Venville, 15 October 1994: 62); `highly questionable research' (Frank Chulung,
15 October 1994: 62); and `whitewash the past savagery of colonialism' (Noel
Olive, 15 October 1994: 62). The judicious textual detailing of the writer's
advocacy of Aborigines plays a double role by presenting a counter-argument
to the charges during The West Australian debate of an `offensive and misleading
denial of [Aboriginal] history' (Kimberley Land Council and the Oombulgurri
Association Inc., 18 February, 1995: 2) that triggered `deep distress among
Aborigines in the Kimberley and elsewhere' (Frank Chulung, 15 October 1994:
62) and undermined reconciliation between black and white. As one contributor
described: At best this is in poor taste given that Australian society is
reaching for reconciliation between its Aborigines and those who came after.
At worst it is analogous to neofascists who today claim there was no Holocaust
... All Australians should accept the evidence of history and learn from it
to build a more equitable and democratic society. (Noel Olive, 15 October
1994: 62) The introduction lays out, up front and in advance, the writer's
connec- tion with the St Jack family: he had met Constable St Jack previously
but did not know of his involvement with the massacre; he contacted the St
Jack family for help with a different research project (not to learn about
the massacre); he discovered that Constable St Jack had died; and it was Terry
St Jack who suggested that Moran investigate `the possibility of a false history'
of the massacre (p. xxiii). The text assures readers of the writer's concern
about the `gravity of the Forrest River allegations and the demands of intellectual
honesty' (p. xxiii), and that he studied the Royal Commissioner's report and
archival sources before deciding to write about the massacre. The text emphasizes
that the St Jack family was `most helpful and open in the discussion of the
allegations that had haunted them for decades' (p. xxiii) and gave the writer
`full access to their material' (p. xxiv), but that the writer insisted on
a professional relationship and intellectual independence: I made it clear,
on the basis of what I had read thus far, while the analysis would be a sceptical
one concerning the Royal Commission, if I found
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anything
irrefutably implicating either of the police in the killings, then I would
have to say so publicly. The family understood this and empahsised [sic.]
that they were interested only in the unvarnished truth of the matter. (p.
xxiv) Attacked during The West Australian debate for his `apparent intention
of clearing the tainted name of the police involved in this murderous affair'
(Noel Olive, 15 October 1994: 62), the careful layering of chronol- ogy in
the introduction/preface inoculates the writer from a stake in the massacre
story by asserting/defending the motives of the St Jack family and by constructing
a textual argument that the writer stumbled onto the massacre story through
a sequence of fateful incidents and at the sugges- tion of someone else. Similarly,
the possibility that the writer's connec- tion with the St Jack family might
be read as tainting his independence and integrity is anticipated and countered
by asserting his commitment to the `truth' and by strategically selecting
language to position Massacre myth as rigorous, objective research and scholarship:
`detailed investiga- tion' (p. xxii); `critical and sceptical re-analysis
of the accepted wisdom' (p. xxx); `the possibility [italics added] of a false
history' of the massacre (p. xxiii). Stake inoculation functions as an autobiographical
double move: script- ing the writer in a particular light as a particular
type of person while simultaneously challenging and erasing other (less desired)
constructions that the writer imagines readers might hold. Through these rhetorical
manoeuvres, an autobiographical persona is crafted: a writer with the expe-
rience, qualifications and integrity to write about the massacre frankly,
objectively and truthfully, with concern for Aboriginal Australians and a
commitment to racial reconciliation, and whose account of the massacre can
be trusted. Of course, readers have no way of establishing the truth or otherwise
of this autobiographical persona – understanding is contingent on the
relationship established between the writer and the collective reader by/through
the text. More pointedly, the textual appearance of honesty and lack of guile
disguises the text's own workings as an artful act of textual construction,
thereby deflecting attention from how the text produces the authorial self
and from the possibility that the truth might be other than as presented.
THE JOURNEY METAPHOR The metaphor of a journey appears in the introduction's
title: The track to Forrest River and the alleged massacres of 1926 and resurfaces
in the third paragraph, where readers are invited to learn why the writer
`took the track' to `the supposed killings' and about the `wider issues encountered
along the way' (p. xxi). The journey is replicated in the introduction's
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structure
which starts at an unspecified time in the writer's past and pro- gresses
to the present: The alleged events of 1926 ... had been a vague background
piece of my general knowledge concerning the history of WA's far north for
many years. I cannot recall where I first encountered the story. But I certainly
assumed that it was true and that the events it recounts had been established
as fact by competent professional historians. (p. xxi) The key events leading
to the publication of Massacre myth are plotted: a `simple challenge' from
an amateur historian to read the report of the 1927 Royal Commission; the
discovery that the report contained `so many inconsistencies and contradictions
in some of the most central evidence that it was unclear ... how a skilled
Magistrate could find the case as clear cut' (p. xxiii–xxiv); and further
archival investigations that confirmed that the conventional wisdom of the
massacre was wrong. Through this textual sequencing, the writer presents what
Denzin (1989) describes as an epiphany (a pivotal, personal experience) that
changed the writer's understanding and triggered his resolve to correct the
public record of the massacre. The journey metaphor is more than a linear,
autobiographical narrative of personal transformation or a guileless textual
tool to depict what actu- ally happened in real life. As a well-worn literary
device in western auto/biography and an allegory for knowledge acquisition
and spiritual awakening in religious writing and spiritual texts, the journey
metaphor carries moral insinuations of travelling along a noble and virtuous
path. The metaphor also provides a narrative structure of intellectual and
moral development that portrays the writer as progressing from a state of
inno- cent ignorance (when he was artlessly unaware of the truth) through
a period of searching and discovery (studying the documents and archives)
to a state of revelation and enlightenment (when he realized the facts and
the truth). The spiritual/sacred inflections of the metaphor – and
implicit distancing from the profane – conjure allusions to a confessional
act (I was realized I was wrong) and repentance (I discovered the errors of
my ways and know better now) and doing penance (I will make amends for my
errors by correcting the public record). The metaphor does autobiographical
work by assembling a textual per- sona of the writer as an honest, virtuous
authorial subject: someone who admits his mistakes and works to correct them; who is open-minded and lacking in duplicity; who is driven solely by a noble
commitment to the public interest. As MacLure (2003) points out, the power
of rhetorical allusions to familiar literary narratives lies in their resonances
with readers' socially constructed understandings of the world. These allow
the moral
107
overtones
that attach to metaphors to pass unnoticed, seducing readers into trusting
that the constructed text reflects what it purports to represent. BINARIES
The manufacture of this `introduction-as-memoir' is also made possible by
a series of binary oppositions that (seem) unrelated to the project of autobiog-
raphy: primary sources/secondary sources; good history/bad history; good historians/bad
historians. Binaries involve an oppositional power relation- ship in which
one side of the binary becomes superordinate by constructing its oppositional
other as somehow lacking or deficit (Derrida, 1978). The `introduction-as-memoir'
positions good history and good historical research in a discourse of scientificity
that conflates historical practice with notions of scientific and unscientific
inquiry. The text configures primary sources (written documents in archives)
as good by endowing them with positive attributes: they contain `nuggets of
fact' (p. xxx) and provide `cred- ible forensic and documentary evidence'
(p. xxxi). In contrast, secondary sources (books written by historians) are
invested with an array of negative qualities: they use circumstantial evidence
(pp. xxviii–xxix); contain `many errors of fact and/or analysis (p.
xxv); and/or engage in polemic (p. xxx). Classifying historical sources may
appear reasonable but the `violent hierarchies' of meaning (Derrida, 1998:
93) that binaries construct do epistemic violence because they structure and
constrain thought in oppo- sitional, hierarchical ways that delimit understanding
and establish regimes of truth that position particular categories of knowledge
(eg, archival records) as worthwhile and discredit or dismiss other (different)
forms of knowledge (eg, secondary sources). Through this work, binaries make
the introduction's ascription of opposing moral attributes to each side of
the binary seem natural, logical and fair: `belief and knowledge, fact and
opinion, appearance and reality' (p. xxix). Binaries also colonize by affixing
themselves to other words and concepts in ways that fashion conflating oppositions.
Good history is configured as impartial, disciplined and verifiable: a `rigorous
approach to evidence, analy- sis and judgement' (p. xxix); `credible forensic
and documentary evidence' (p. xxxi); the search and defence of the `truth'
(p. xxxi) that reputedly involves `a critical and sceptical' approach (p.
xxx); a commitment to `intel- lectual honesty' (p. xxiii); the use of primary
sources and careful `sifting [of] the complexities and ambiguities for nuggets
of fact which will contribute to the lode of truth' (p. xxx). In contrast,
bad history is constituted as failing to provide `substantive counter-evidence'; `assertions and statements of belief'; lack of familiarity with the `wider
archival and academic work'; `errors of fact and/or analysis' (p. xxv); and
concern with polemic rather than `careful weighing of the evidence and reporting
on it' (p. xxx).
108
By
inflecting binaries with notions of scientificity, the text assembles a catalogue
of historical virtues that lay out the criteria for readers to catego- rize,
evaluate and judge the worth of different historical texts. But position-
ing in history in a discourse of scientific realism constrains how history
is conceptualized and enacted and what is possible and approved history in
the text's moral schema. The text advocates a `forensic and documentary' (p.
xxix) approach to history that privileges written texts: `arguing ... from
the primary sources' (p. xxiv); the discovery of `new facts' (p. xxxii); the
use of `rare, original documents', including Terry St Jack's `extensive archive
on the case' and drafts of Constable St Jack's memoir (p. xxiii). A `forensic
and documentary' (p. xxix) approach to evidence summons the discourse and
language of the courts and the positivism of science. In this rubric, Aboriginal
oral accounts are eschewed as `rumour' or `reports' – unless confirmed
by other documentary or eye-witness evidence (p. xxxi). By subjecting oral
and written testimony to the same evidentiary criteria, the forensic method
erases their substantive differences and makes a case for excluding the personal
insights, perspectives and information that are only available through oral
accounts. Excluding Aboriginal oral testimony from the repertoire of approved
sources available to historians is more than a methodological manoeuvre. It
has political consequences because it reinforces the cultural and historical
hegemony of colonization and the white colonizers. As Gwyn Prins (1992: 137)
describes: `without access to such resources, historians in modern, mass-literate,
industrial societies, that is, most professional historians, will languish
in a pool of understanding circumscribed by their own culture'. Invoking a
discourse of scientificity also alludes to, but does not engage with, a lengthy
debate about the identity of history and the nature of his- torical practice.
The empiricist tradition that grew out of the nineteenth- century rationalism
and was entrenched by Leopold von Ranke and his followers takes for granted
the existence of a single and incontestable truth about the past that can
be uncovered by systematically excavating the his- torical documents. In this
commonsense, realist view, history is conceptu- alized as `a corpus of ascertained
facts' (Carr, 1964: 9); historical practice is the persistent mining of the
written sources; and the historian is an invisible servant to the primary
sources whose responsibility is `the uncovering of new facts, the endless
reordering of the immense detail that makes the historian's map of the past'
(Steedman, 1992: 613–14). In con- trast, interpretive historians decry
the fundamentalism of the documentary positivists as antiquarianism (Hobsbawn,
1997) and argue that the histo- rian's intervention and interpretation cannot
be dislocated from what makes the past comprehensible and what comes to be
known as history (eg, Geyl, 1955; Hobsbawn, 1997; Lowenthal, 1985; Moses,
2003). As MacIntyre and Clark (2003: 29, 216) explain in their discussion
of the
109
Australian
historiography: `The facts do not exist prior to the interpreta- tion that
establishes their significance ... History is not revealed to us in tablets
of stone, it has to be created from the remains of the past. It is not fixed
and final but a form of knowledge that is constantly being supple- mented
and reworked.' By representing good history and good historical practice as
an orderly, predictable and scientific process, the text locates the writer's
work in a discourse of historical virtues and systematic, impartial and dispassionate
analysis that is impervious to inaccuracy and misinterpretation. There are
autobiographical consequences to the textual conflation of history and science.
By attaching the presence (or absence) of historical virtues to individuals,
they are (re)configured into personal character attributes and moral traits.
Thus, by casting the writer's work as good (scientific) history, the text
inscribes the writer as a virtuous and disciplined scholar – a dispassionate,
logical and methodical scientist who works with documen- tary, archival sources
and whose agenda is to uncover the knowable and incontestable truth of the
past. In contrast, the description of l'historien engagé as `unashamedly advocates
for a particular point of view' (p. xxx) casts a shadow over the accuracy
and trustworthiness of their work by imputing an absence of principles, integrity
and honesty. The absence of a rigorous, scientific approach to history also
suggests a lack of intellec- tual rigour, hard work and lackadaisical ethical
standards. There are traces of this insinuation in the charge that Green's
Forrest River massacres (1995) contains `many errors of fact and/or analysis'
and that `profes- sional historians' got the massacre story wrong despite
being `trained for a much more rigorous approach to evidence, analysis and
judgement' (pp. xxi, xxix). In the same vein, the integrity of those who support
the estab- lished account of the massacre is questioned through ascriptions
that insinuate dishonesty, deceitfulness or moral hypocrisy. There is evidence
of this rhetorical manoeuvre in the commentaries on the members of the Western
Australian establishment who reportedly ignored Terry St Jack's efforts to
correct the (alleged) `slander of his late father's name' (p. xxvii). For
instance, the Archbishop of Perth is represented as a morally duplici- tous
character who lent his `moral authority' to the highly dubious received `wisdom'
about the massacre by launching Green's book despite being given a `detailed
critique' of the book's `errors of fact and analysis' (p. xxvii). Configuring
historical virtue as a personal attribute provides the logic for carving advocates
of different accounts/interpretations of the Forrest River massacre into opposing
camps of right and wrong. In this moral universe, there are no intermediate
positions or shades of grey. The binary is accom- plished, in part, through
the rhetorical silencing/erasure of others. With few exceptions, however,
these characters are a faceless collective: the unknown
110
readers
who condemned the writer during The Western Australian debate; the nameless
bad historians alleged to do bad history because their version of massacre
differs from the writer (p. xxi); the unidentified intellectuals and l'historien
engagé alleged to engage in polemic. Constituted as Other, these groups are
the object of commentary but their voice is excluded from the text. Being
while not being, they cannot respond to the identity thrust upon them – although their opposition hovers, ever present in the textual arguments used
to negate their existence. The silencing of these Others slides into a more
complex rhetorical silencing of Green's (contrary) account of the massacre.
The criticism of his book as `seriously flawed' (p. xxv) is compounded by
undercutting his scholarly expertise – detailed in Forrest River massacres
(1995) – by describing him as `a retired WA teacher with a long interest
in Aboriginal history' (p. xxv). This textual slur of omission is bolstered
by attacking the integrity and expertise of the (unidentified) reviewers who
commended Green's book. Perhaps the most important [point] is that, almost
without exception, those who have been commissioned to comment on the book
obviously had no acquaintance with the wider archival and academic work on
the case, nor any substantial knowledge concerning the chief accuser, Reverend
E. R. B. Gribble ... In short in the ranks of those who have been given the
task of commenting on the veracity of the Forrest River Massacres it is difficult,
at the time of writing, to find a qualified mind amongst them. (p. xxvix)
The rhetorical strategies of omission and criticism reaffirm the histori-
cal virtues proclaimed by the text and do autobiographical work by erod- ing/erasing
Green's authority and credibility to write about the massacre. The doubleness
of these rhetorical, autobiographical manoeuvres is that the silencing of
the oppositional Other simultaneously works to assert and affirm the writer's
textual identity as a person of integrity and as a practi- tioner of good
(virtuous) history. POSTSCRIPT The aim of this essay is not to assert a new
autobiographical, master narra- tive of the writer or to suggest that the
introduction to Massacre myth deli- berately set out to dupe (innocent) readers.
Rather, the purpose was to challenge and to provoke autobiographical critique
to widen its analytic lens by illuminating the entanglement of autobiography
in language in a particular, if novel, form of autobiographical practice.
The art in the artless `introduction-as-memoir' that prefaces Massacre myth
is that it relies on the autobiographical effects of rhetoric and on an account
of historical
111
virtues
grounded in broader political, methodological, epistemological and historical
debates. Nevertheless, the dialogic relationship between text, reader and
the social world mediates how the `introduction-as-memoir' is read/understood
and this dynamic has profound epistemological implica- tions. Because of its
construction in/through text, the authorial self is always fragmentary, mutable
and diffuse – `the decision of each reading' (Derrida, 1981: 63) – and, therefore, cannot produce the definitive, authen- tic and unbiased autobiographical
account. This insight does not erase the authorial subject in the `introduction-as-memoir'
that prefaces Massacre myth but it underscores the multiplicity of authorial
selves present in any text, the fallaciousness of truth claims and the textual
performativity of the authorial self in autobiography.
NOTES
1 The book's title is used
hereafter for brevity and clarity. All Roman numeral citations refer to the
Introduction of Massacre myth.
2 For overviews of the
role of politics and ideology in Australian historiography, see Macintyre,
S. and Clark, A. 2003: The history wars. Melbourne University Press.
Also Attwood, B. and Foster, S.G. 2003: Frontier conflict: the Australian
experience. National Museum of Australia, 1—30; Reynolds, H. 1984:
The breaking of the `Great Australian Silence': Aborigines in Australian historiography
1955—1983. University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
Australian Studies Centre.
3 Macintyre and Clark represent
Keith Windshuttle as the first to challenge `the veracity of the historians
who had written on the subject' (2003: 162).
4 The reference is primarily
to C. Halse, 1993: The Reverend Ernest Gribble and race relations in Northern
Australia (PhD); University of Queensland. Later published as C. Halse,
2002: A terribly wild man: The life of the Reverend Ernest Gribble.
Allen & Unwin. See also C. Halse, 1996: The Reverend Ernest Gribble:
a `successful' missionary? In B. Dalton, editor, Lectures in North Queensland
history, 5. James Cook University, 218—47; C. Halse, 1996: Ernest
Gribble. In D. Pike, editor, Australian dictionary of biography, 14,
1940—1980. Melbourne University Press, 330—31.
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NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR
CHRISTINE
HALSE is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.
She is the author of the biography, A terribly wild man: the life of the Reverend
Ernest Gribble (Allen & Unwin, 2002), Australia's most famous and infamous
missionary, as well as several other publica- tions on Gribble's life and
work with Aboriginal Australians. Her substan- tive research interests are
in the social, cultural and psychological constructions of identity. Her methodological
interests are in life writing, discourse analyse and research ethics.