ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the role that guilt plays in Australia’s construction of its outsiders by focusing on contemporary migrant experience. I build upon Sarah Ahmed’s work on the politics of emotion to read migrant interviews in relation to media: films, political speeches, and other discursive structures that facilitate social organization in Australia. In the first part of this paper, I argue that a ‘multicultural narrative’ positions the nation as a ‘happy home,’ and examine how this can displace feelings of guilt in the migrant by rendering possible social transgressions positive steps towards attaining a greater social good. In the second section of this paper, I discuss Australia’s ‘hatred narratives.’ I do not define hatred as a necessarily aggressive emotion, but instead, demonstrate the way particular words can be affectively charged because of the histories they invoke, and show how this affect can be mobilized to create outsiders who are not welcome in the national imaginary and Australian society. These narratives however, are not fixed: political parties can appeal to tropes that have accumulated in affective value – such as the ‘home’ – in order to achieve different political goals, and to organize social groups by aligning individuals with or against affectively charged objects.

摘要

本文通过关注当代移民经历，探讨了愧疚感在澳大利亚对外来者建构中所扮演的角色。我以莎拉·艾哈迈德关于情感政治的著作为基础，阅读了与媒体有关的移民访谈：电影、政治演讲和其他促进澳大利亚社会组织的话语结构。在本文的第一部分中，我认为“多元文化叙事”将国家定位为“幸福的家园”，并研究了这如何通过使可能的社会越轨行为向实现更大的社会进步迈出积极的一步，从而消除移民的负罪感。好的。在本文的第二部分，我讨论澳大利亚的“仇恨叙事”。我并不将仇恨定义为一种必然具有攻击性的情绪，而是，展示特定词语如何因其所援引的历史而受到情感上的影响，并展示如何利用这种情感来创造在国家想象和澳大利亚社会中不受欢迎的局外人。然而，这些叙述并不是固定的：政党可以诉诸情感价值积累的比喻——例如“家”——以实现不同的政治目标，并通过使个人与情感上的对象结盟或反对来组织社会群体。