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Ten Days in Brisbane The saga of Baby Asha is over for the moment. She was a two year old Nepalese girl, born in Darwin to parents who sought refugee status. The parents were transferred to the refugee detention centre on Nauru Island in accordance with the policy which sees the Australian government process applicants for refugee status off-shore at Nauru and Manus Islands. Asha suffered burns on Manus Islands and was transferred to the Lady Cilento Hospital in Brisbane. The doctors treated her and then refused to release her because her safety could not be guaranteed at the refugee centre. This stance sparked a spontaneous swell of support from hundreds of Brisbane residents. Brisbane is a conservative city in a conservative state in a conservative country. The sight of so many people making signs and rushing to the hospital to defend the child was a deeply moving experience for myself who has been a life-long card carrying member of the “Judea National Liberation Front”, and who has attended more demonstrations (tiny) than I care to recall. In face of the demonstrations the Government backed down and allowed Asha and her parents to be placed in community detention here in Brisbane. It is election year after all. The Asha Affair has to be placed in the context of the attempt by all Australian governments to discourage refugees from coming here in boats. Our former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, even went to the UK and advocated his policy of ‘stopping the boats’ as a solution to the refugee crisis in Europe. Lest one questions the relevance of turning back boats in the landlocked countries of Europe, one needs to understand that what Abbott was advocating was a policy of extreme cruelty backed up by a determination to preserve the “cultural basis” of Europe. Australia history is one of being a white colonial settler nation, where the local Indigenous population have often been treated with extreme brutality. The constitution drawn up in 1901 also declared that Australia was White country and accordingly non-whites were excluded. This status was only changed in 1972. Consequently, there is a populist basis for racist rhetoric around “rag heads” and “boat-people”. Both major political parties Liberal and Labor have vied with each other to capture this inherently racist sentiment. Xenophobia and paranoia have been milked ruthlessly for votes by Prime Minister Howard, and Abbott on the Conservative side and by Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard on the Labor side. For most Australians the refugees are the Feared Despised Other and seemingly there was no policy too cruel that was not electorally popular. That seems to have changed with the Asha affair. I believe that calls for some reflection and what follows is an attempt to begin the conversation. I would like to initiate what hopefully will become an exchange by contrasting two positons on what it is to be human. Firstly we have that articulated most forcibly by Alain Badiou[1] <#_ftn1>, who incidentally is a fearless campaigner for the rights of migrants in France. Badiou wrote This systematic killer [‘the human animal’] pursues in the giant ant hills he constructs, interests of survival and satisfaction neither more nor less estimable than those of moles or tiger beetles. He has shown himself to be the most wily of animals, the most patient, the most obstinately dedicated to the cruel desires of his own power.[2] <#_ftn2> The above quote reads as a blunt neo-Nietzschean inspired attack on humanist ethics. But, Badiou is above all a subtle thinker and he does leave the door ajar with his affirmation that humanity has an impulse that seeks to take it beyond ‘being-for-death’ and towards immortality[3] <#_ftn3>. We note, with considerable gratitude, the rejection of the Heideggerian dogma of ‘being-for-death’ as the defining characteristic of *homo sapiens*. Nevertheless, Badiou’s argument that it is the attitude towards truth which will facilitate the opening towards immortality and transcendence is at best obscure. It does though have tantalising echoes of Bhaskar’s characterization of meta-Reality as a philosophy not of being but as a ‘philosophy of truth’[4] <#_ftn4> What is missing is a theory of human nature which allows for a tendency towards decency to assert itself and also a theory which sees the moral evolution of humanity as open[5] <#_ftn5>. But Badiou’s radical anti-ethical position prevents him from making such a move. By contrast, Bhaskar, especially in his meta-reality moment, has no such difficulty. When on Sunday, the 21st February, the authorities informed Asha’s mother that she was going to be taken out of the hospital and the police and Serco Security officers visibly mobilized, a call went out along the social media and within minutes a crowd of over 1000 emerged to prevent the child being seized. This was the ‘spontaneous right action’ which Bhaskar dreamed of and wrote about. To listen over the phone to the crowd singing *Amazing Grace* was deeply moving. One did not have to be a believer to understand that the crowd were seeking to access their ground states of love and solidarity. In the face of goodness, the state retreated and Asha and her parents are not being returned to Nauru. But of course the world of duality is not so easily defeated. The Murdoch press and the right wing commentariat circulated a story that the mother had deliberately burned her child so they could get out of Nauru. There is no substance in these slanders but their very existence is testimony to the need for continuing struggle to confront and defeat the lies and deceit that make up the world of dual being. But for now a child is safer and we have seen the pulse of freedom in action. Gary MacLennan 27.2.2016 Brisbane Levinas Spiritual base Thoughts on goodness versus evil Badiou versus Bhaskar Badiou, A. (2001). *Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil*. London: Verso. Bhaskar, R. (2002). *meta-Reality: The Philosophy of meta-reality*. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Bhaskar, R. (2008). *Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom*. London: Routledge. ------------------------------ [1] <#_ftnref1> Badiou (2001) gives us a sustained anti-Kantian polemic against the notion of universal human rights and the placement of ethics at the forefront. For Badiou, as an (ex) Maoist, politics must always be in command. [2] <#_ftnref2> Badiou, A. (2001). *Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil p.59* [3] <#_ftnref3> Badiou (2001) pp.11-12. [4] <#_ftnref4> Bhaskar (2002, p.xxiv) [5] <#_ftnref5> In DPF Bhaskar writes ‘Any dialectic of liberation from ills (qua absence) is committed to the possibility of changing four-planar human nature, so that we must regard the *moral evolution of the species as open’ * (2008, p.266; original emphasis). _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
