Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 A Post-Apology Carceral Regime : Encountering Refugee Art in Australia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

On 13 February 2008, the newly-installed Australian Prime Minister of the day, Kevin Rudd, made a now-landmark speech saying ‘Sorry’ to the Stolen Generations. Symbolically, the Apology was considered ‘a turning-point in the process of reconciliation’ (Kossew 171), a way of righting a historical wrong that would lead to a new chapter in the nation’s history. We can compare this speech to statements made by Rudd on his brief return to leadership prior to the September 2013 elections, when he introduced a strict refugee resettlement policy whereby all refugees arriving to Australia by boat were to be resettled in Papua New Guinea, and none would be allowed to settle in Australia, even after their claims for asylum had been processed. Despite widespread criticism from members of his own party, Rudd refused to back down over his hardline refugee policy. He repeatedly said that he made ‘no apology’ for the fact that he had to make some tough decisions (Uhlmann; Scarr and Jones). Ostensibly the policy was to stop people perishing on the treacherous journey from Indonesia to Australia in unseaworthy boats but it was also clearly a political manoeuvre in an effort to appeal to more conservative forces in a last-ditch attempt to win an unwinnable election. Since then, Rudd’s political opponents have made similar statements of being ‘unapologetic’ for their own asylum seeker policies (Borello; Whyte). It is this period of Australian cultural and political life that I refer to as ‘post-apology’ (Introduction)

Notes

  • Epigraph: Aesthetic judgments and ethical choices take place as face-to-face experiences --Susan Stewart  

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Humanities Review Unfinished Business : Apology Cultures in the Asia Pacific no. 61 May Monique Rooney (editor), 2017 11455878 2017 periodical issue

    'This special section of Australian Humanities Review, entitled ‘Unfinished Business: Apology Cultures in the Asia Pacific’, arose out of a Monash University Arts Faculty Interdisciplinary Research Project of the same name. This project brought together an interdisciplinary team across the fields of Literary Studies, History, Film, and Cultural Studies, encompassing aspects of law, human rights and ethics. The project sought to understand how various forms of cultural practice and narrative mediate our comprehension of the past and of ongoing human interactions within and between nation-states, in particular, of past, present and future social and cultural interactions that coalesce around the material and symbolic consequences of apology in the Asia Pacific region.' (Editorial Introduction)

    2017
Last amended 10 Feb 2021 10:56:53
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