The Resignation of the Governor-General: Family Drama and National Reproduction

Barbara Baird

doi:10.5130/csr.v15i1.2054

PDF

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v15i1.2054

Keywords:

Hollingworth resignation, politics, the child, national identity, parenthood

Barbara Baird

Flinders University

Abstract

This article tells the story of the 2003 resignation of Peter Hollingworth as Governor-General as part of an ongoing hyper-anxiety in Australia about the state and status of ‘the child’. The sexually abused child sits at the centre of this story and carries a heavy burden with respect to the past and future of the white Australian nation. The recuperation of that child to a state of innocence, repeatedly, as stories of its abuse keep returning to our front pages and political agendas, is necessary for the reproduction of the white nation. This article shows that the Hollingworth drama is entwined with the current politics of motherhood and fatherhood and the carriage of national feeling and temporality through the performances of these always racialised identities. Attending to the politics of the historical construction of the child, and the idealised parents who abuse or protect it (but never allow this child a voice or a sexuality of her or his own), thus becomes a part of the project of accountability to the past which has also occupied public life in Australia over recent years.

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2009): Homefronts

Section

Articles (Peer Reviewed)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed undera Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Open Access Citation Advantage Service). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (ie. a copy of a work which has been published in a UTS ePRESS journal, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the UTS ePRESS publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

d) Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.

Author Biography

Barbara Baird, Flinders University

Barbara Baird is Head of the Department of Women’s Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, a university built on the land of the Kaurna people. Her research has focused on the history and cultural politics of sexuality and reproduction in Australia and the mutually constitutive nature of the politics of sexuality, gender, race and nation. She has recently edited a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘the child’.

Article Sidebar

Main Article Content

Abstract

Article Details

Barbara Baird, Flinders University