Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

AN AUSTRALIAN ARCHIVE OF FEELINGS

2011; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 69 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08164649.2011.606603

1465-3303

Rosanne Kennedy,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

Abstract Abstract The Sorry Books campaign, held in 1998, was a popular reconciliation event that created conditions for the Australian public to apologise to the 'Stolen Generations' when the Howard government refused to offer a parliamentary apology. Feminist and queer approaches, with their complex analyses of emotion in the public sphere and their attention to the formation of counter-public archives of memory, are particularly productive for analysing the Sorry Books campaign as an Australian case study of compassionate politics. In this article, I draw on the work of Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich and others to develop a range of frameworks for analysing and evaluating the Sorry Books campaign. Notes 1. For an analysis of responses to Rudd's apology, see Muldoon and Schapp Muldoon , Paul , and Andrew Schapp . ( forthcoming ). Confounded by recognition: The Apology, the High Court and the Aboriginal Embassy in Australia . In Theorizing Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Agonism, Restitution and Repair , Alexander Hirsch . London and New York : Routledge . [Google Scholar] (forthcoming). Sara Ahmed (2004 Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) discusses the Sorry Book Campaign in relation to affect. 2. When I gave a paper on the Sorry Books at the Beyond Reconciliation conference in Cape Town in 2009, the constitution of my audience, which was almost entirely female, raised further questions about compassion and the gendering of sentiment. In the days after my session, several women were eager to share with me their personal reactions to the Sorry Books. 3. The State Library of South Australia and the Battaye Library in Perth also have sizeable collections. 4. See, for example, Berlant, ed. (2004); Garber (2004). 5. See Tompkins' seminal Sensational Designs (1985); and Berlant's 'Poor Eliza' chapter in The Female Complaint (2008). 6. In August 2004, the AIATSIS archive of Sorry Books was added to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register. 7. I thank Helen Moran, Indigenous Co-chair of the National Sorry Day Committee, for this information. 8. For a sociological analysis of reconciliation in Australia, see Short (2008 Short, Damien. 2008. Reconciliation and colonial power: Indigenous rights in Australia, Aldershot: Ashgate. [Google Scholar]). 9. Short (2008) documents CAR's support, early in the reconciliation movement, for a campaign to educate non-Indigenous Australians about the historic injustices suffered by Indigenous people in the process of settlement. 10. Keating's Redfern Park speech, 10 December 1992, launched the 1993 Year of the World's Indigenous People. 11. For analysis of the National Inquiry's commitment to aiding the healing process of Stolen Generations and the nation, see Devitt (2009). 12. For an account of the rise of the figure of the witness in the Eichmann Trial and subsequent decades, see Wieviorka (2006 Wieviorka, Annette. 2006. The era of the witness, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]). 13. Whether the assumption that people connect through pain across social, economic and cultural differences is warranted, or indeed something to strive for, is a debated issue; for another perspective, see Berlant (2000). 14. This image has been widely deployed in Holocaust narratives for its affective power, and particularly, for its ability to compel the viewer or reader to identify with the suffering of the mother and child. Margaret Kelleher suggests that 'the image of the woman in pain, the female victim, more readily compels the identification of its readers' (quoted in Kahane 2000, 165). 15. For an extended analysis of the maternal trope in the Australian context, see Kennedy (2008). 16. See Walsh (1999); Foley and Watson (2001); The First National Sorry Day (1998). 17. Manne delivered the lecture at the Victorian State Library on 27 November 1997. 18. This print is held in the Printed Collection archive of the State Library of Victoria. 19. Naomi Schor (1987 Schor, Naomi. 1987. Reading in detail: Aesthetics and the feminine, New York: Methuen. [Google Scholar]) discusses the gendering of the detail. 20. Some of the unofficial Sorry Books are simply blue Collins notebooks, or other purchased notebooks that are not adorned in any way. 21. For analysis of the hierarchical structure of recognition entailed in witnessing, see Oliver (2004). 22. Bringing Them Home recommended, in Recommendation Six: 'That churches and other non-government agencies which played a role in the administration of the law and politics under which Indigenous children were forcibly removed acknowledge that role' and offer apology (HREOC 1997). 23. The Sorry Book from the Uniting Churches in Canberra is held in the National Library of Australia. To protect the identity of individuals, who may not have realised that the Sorry Books would be deposited in a public library, I have omitted identifying details when quoting from them. For the purposes of scholarly research, I have included the box number and book from which the quote is taken. Pages in the Sorry Books are not numbered. 24. In opposition to this criticism, Tompkins ardently defended sentimental narrative, arguing that Uncle Tom's Cabin played a major role in the abolition of slavery in the United States.