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Abstract
Distinct from rurality, the Australian desert has long functioned as a signifier of remoteness in the dominant imagination; a product of spatialised binary relations between ‘progressive’ (white) mainstream or idealised white countryside, and disordered/dangerous Aboriginal periphery. Remoteness constitutes a complex racial dynamic that has historically mediated white teachers’ and missionaries’ desires to travel to the social margins. This article adopts a discursive understanding of remoteness to examine contemporary white teachers’ decisions to work in Aboriginal schools in the desert – decisions that are often articulated through unwitting recourse to the ‘three Ms’ or ‘tourist’. The article explores these identity constructs and how they enable different performances of whiteness. It examines how white people’s desires are often covertly raced but does not however, position the teacher as a priori racist. Rather, desire is theorised as a social construct in which subjects invest, which may at times contribute toward processes of decolonisation. This rendering moves beyond a logic of individualism and underpins the argument that recognising how these dynamics play out is vital with respect to understanding the place of white teachers inside remote Indigenous Education. Moreover, such insights are valuable for appreciating how whiteness continues to be reproduced in White Australia under a guise of good intentions.
Acknowledgment
The research on which this article is based was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Where ‘white’ signals the entwinement of gender, class and race in the making of white identity, and is a position that is subject to change over time (see for example Elder, Ellis, and Pratt Citation2004, 209; McClintock Citation1995, 4; Randell-Moon Citation2006, 2). In this article, the term white is consequently used to refer, generally, to the most privileged group in a race structured society.
2. The interviews with white teachers on which this article is based were carried out in one such site where traditional owners had not only requested but demanded greater control over the education of their children. These moves were mobilised under the steam of the self-determination thrust in Australia, and the broader study examined the consequent way in which white teachers working in this region are positioned at the nexus between the desires and worldview of the local people, express requests to teach for the problematic notion of self-determination, and the dictates and dominant epistemology of the state. This article expands its focus to look more generally at the phenomenon of white people’s desires to work in remote Australia.
3. In other words, a mode of governmentality that has long constituted White Australia’s attempts to ‘deal with’ the Aboriginal problem (i.e. the problem that Aboriginality presents to the project of white settler nationalism).
4. For a theorisation of the contact zone see Haggis, Schech, and Rainbird (Citation2007).
5. The ‘white’ teachers who took part in this study were diverse in age, and religious and political persuasion. They grew up in different areas and spent different lengths of time teaching in desert schools. The interview sample comprised of eight males and seven females who were recruited along ethical lines by way of a ‘call for participants;’ the sample arrived at was therefore opportunistic. Six of the participants were first-time teachers while the remaining nine had been teaching (on and off) for anywhere between three years and three decades. All of the teachers identified as ‘mainstream Australian,’ and this was despite the fact that two were born overseas.
6. See for example Starr (Citation1991).
7. All proper names have been changed to protect anonymity.
8. It is worth noting that touristic imperatives can emerge owing to broader structural relations, which in this case link to the difficulty of first year teachers securing employment in the sought-after mainstream.
9. On the colonial gaze, see Urry and Larsen (Citation2011) and Heron (Citation2007).
10. The broader study theorised a gendered correlation between the ‘white’ women teachers’ propensity to exhibit touristic motivations while, by and large, those exhibiting ‘missionary’ desires were white men. A possible explanation was that travel had enabled the white women to gain access to power by circumventing the gendered constraints of home. In contrast, the white men were able to secure an authoritative pretense through aligning themselves with the missionary identity of ‘saviour’.
11. This resonates with Heron’s (Citation2007, 45) research into dispositions of white Canadian development workers in sub-Saharan Africa when volunteers are driven by the same racialised rationales.